Bangkok, October 26, 1999 -- Talk among the Filipinas here, attending a UN-sponsored Asia-Pacific intergovernmental meeting, is how the Estrada administration unceremoniously lopped off the rest of the Philippine delegation at the last minute.
The meeting here is called the "High Level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review the Regional Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action." It seeks to consolidate the inputs of the Asia Pacific region to be submitted to the UN in time for a global review of the implementation of the agreements signed by the world's governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995.
If anybody still needed to be told how much the Estrada administration values women - at least on the official level - then the fate of the Philippine delegation to this conference is instructive. At the last minute, citing budgetary constraints, Malacanang struck off most everyone in the list of the official delegation, save for Amelou Benitez Reyes, chair of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women. But others, including Ermelita Valdeavilla, the NCRFW Executive Director, and representatives of government agencies who sit on the NCRFW board, were not allowed to leave.
Officials of UN-Escap, the body organizing the conference, were counting on Ruth Limjuco of the department of foreign affairs to chair the drafting committee, which will prepare the final statement. To ensure that the conference runs smoothly, the NGO delegation even volunteered to pay for Limjuco's fare, though I don't know if the government has taken up the offer. Still, Limjuco's nomination as chair of this crucial committee was approved by the conference so I suppose she will make it here in time.
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IT'S certainly ironic that the Philippine government should now be abandoning its historically strong support for women's programs and concerns especially in this period of great challenges for the women in the region.
Patricia Benitez Licuanan, who did the country proud when she chaired the main committee of the Beijing conference in 1995, spoke for the women NGOs in the region this time around.
The past few years have been particularly difficult for our region, she noted. Non- government organizations, Tatti Licuanan said, "recognize the challenges posed by new trends that perpetuate injustices, threaten world peace, and impede women's empowerment such as the negative impact of globalization, the Asian financial crisis, the intensification of armed and other forms of violent conflict, an escalation in the use of religious, ethnic, cultural and other forms of identity-based construct to deny women equality, rights and resources."
So much has been gained in the years since the Beijing conference, Licuanan said. But at the same time, they "deplore the lack of comprehensive, integrated implementation of the Platform." The women's groups also noted "the low level of political will and the relative absence of genuine monitoring and evaluation and other institutional mechanisms." And even as women celebrate the growth of social movements working for women's empowerment, "the signs of backlash are not lost on us."
In sum, while Beijing symbolized a tremendous leap forward for the women in the developing world, they - we - have been scrambling backwards ever since.
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GREAT has the impact been of the regional financial crisis on the people in the region, but especially the women.
The Indonesian delegate noted how the crisis resulted in "economic recession, social turmoil and political disarray" in his country. Since 1997, he said, there has been a marked deterioration in the situation of women in Indonesia. The country's poverty incidence, for instance, had been down to 11 percent before the crisis hit, but has since risen to 29 per cent. In human terms, I wonder, how many families in Indonesia slipped once more below the poverty line as a result of the financial crunch?
Researcher Jeanne Illo, speaking at the side session on "Women and the Governance of Poverty" sponsored by the Philippine NGO Beijing Score Board, pointed out the "multi-dimensional nature of poverty," noting how it has both "a gender and regional face" since the majority of the world's poor are women, while there has been reduction of poverty only in urban areas but not in rural towns.
What should an anti-poverty program include? Illo posts the following requirements: it should improve access to opportunities, including access to credit, reform of the legal framework, social opportunities such as education, health, food, etc., and recognition of the concept of "social exclusion," which she describes as "very subtle, anti-female notions of capability."
At the same time, she said, a government anti-poverty program must be participatory, inclusive and of course efficient.
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SR. SOL Perpinan brought up quite an interesting point at the open forum following Illo's presentation. When, she wondered, would migrants be considered as contributors to the economies of the host countries?
Though she had no answers to that question, Illo said she indeed would endorse Sr. Sol's call for the contributions of non-nationals to be included and acknowledged in country reports to conferences such as this.
If the events of the past few years, since the women of the world gathered in Beijing, have taught us anything, it is that we are all interconnected, and that the fate of one nation may well spill over and impact on its neighbors. This we have learned in Asia, as the financial crisis and the recurring stock market and currency market shocks have shown us.
How ironic then that the Philippines, which the rest of the region looks up to in terms of progress made in mainstreaming women's concerns in government, should now be humiliated by the stark evidence of its current government's indifference to the cause of women.
* The Isis-UNIFEM media team for the High-level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review the Beijing Platform for Action in Asia and the Pacific is composed of Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Lorna Israel, Isis International-Manila; Suchita Vemuri, Women's Features Service; Babita Basnet, Sancharika Samuha-Nepal ; Adelle Khan, Fiji Women's Crisis Centre; Ung Vanna, Khmer Women's Voice Centre; Lim Siu Ching, All Women's Action Society-Malaysia; Fatmawati Salapuddin, Bangsa Moro Women and Development Foundation-Philippines; Rina Jimenez-David, Philippines; Chitraporn Vanaspong, Thailand.
