In 1995 in Beijing, China, women gathered at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women to review and appraise the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women to the Year 2000 and to adopt a Platform for Action, which identified goals for obstacles to the advancement of women in the world. In the resulting Beijing Platform for Action, women won a broad-based agenda for promoting and protecting their human rights worldwide, while establishing the principle of shared power and responsibility between women and men in all arenas. In Beijing, the world acknowledged that women’s rights were central to development and peace, and that women’s issues and global issues are one and the same.

Yet, despite some policy gains, women – especially poor women - around the world continue to face many of the same critical issues that were addressed in Beijing. The neo-liberal economic model and market driven policies that promote unfair trade and privatization of public goods and services, the increasing power and lack of accountability of multinational corporations, the resurgence of many forms of fundamentalisms, the escalation of military conflict, the persistence of violence against women around the globe, and the escalating backlash against women’s sexual and reproductive rights have created a stifling climate for progressive changes in women’s lives. As global forces threaten all human rights and as global inequities grow, the challenges facing women, their families and communities are ever more complex, and we as feminists cannot afford to have our perspectives on these critical questions marginalized.

Beijing +10 provides the global women’s movement the opportunity to assess governments’ implementation of the Beijing Platform; to give Avoice to issues important to women; to unite for our common agenda for peace, human rights and social justice both in country and across the globe; to advance feminist perspectives and not just defend gains won in the recent past; to look ahead and build upon the victories achieved at the global level and as a global movement; to not only strengthen our common fight for these gains, but also boldly move ahead to set new feminist agendas for ourselves, for our governments and for the multilateral system; to push for women’s full equality at the UN and in local, national, regional, and global processes. We must use this occasion to advance a feminist agenda for the 21st century. The Beijing + 10 process is a political moment of world attention on women that can be used to focus on our concerns and to build momentum for re-politicization of gender equality work.

Documents

• Regional Preparatory Meeting for the 10-year Review of Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action - Report by the Economic Commission for Europe (14-15 December 2004)
• Review of the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action by the European Union - Report by the European Women’s Lobby (November 2004)
• Progress made within the European Union - Report from the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union
  

Italian reports

• Italian Government's Review of the implementation of the Beijing platform for action and the outcome documents of the 23rd special session of the general assembly (December 2004)
• Shadow Report - On the women’s situation in Italy, ten years after the U.N. World Conference on women - promoted by several women’s NGOs (December 2004)
• Concluding comments by CEDAW: Italy (January 2005)
  

Background: Beijing+5 (2000)

• Resolution adopted by the General Assembly - Political declaration
• Part I - Further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action
• Part II - Achievements and obstacles in the implementation of the twelve critical areas of the Platform for Action
• Part III - Current challenges affecting the full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action
• Part IV - Actions and initiatives to overcome obstacles and to achieve the full and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action