Representatives from Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will be among delegates from over 100 countries in attendance at a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly 5-9 June, 2000. The UN Special Session will be convened at its New York Headquarters under the title Beijing +5. This Meeting comes five years after the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China.
CARICOM Member States will coordinate their approach to the deliberations similar to their participation in Beijing. The CARICOM Secretariat will be represented at the Meeting.
At this Special Session, the General Assembly will undertake an appraisal of the progress made on the implementation of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies and the Beijing Platform for Action. The former resulted from the Third World Conference on Women, which was held in Kenya and the latter came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
The UN General Assembly will also consider further actions and initiatives during the Special Session
The coordinated approach being adopted by CARICOM Member States for this Special Session of the UN General Assembly was due in part to technical assistance from the United Nations Fund for Women, (UNIFEM), the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean/Caribbean Development Cooperation Committee (UNECLAC/CDCC).
In preparation for the Special Session, national and regional consultations were held to examine the work done by Member States since the Beijing Meeting.
Coming out of Beijing, the Caribbean decided to focus on four priority areas, as determined by the findings from research done at the national and regional levels. These areas are all forms of violence against women, inadequate health care and related services, inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making, and the girl child.
Head of CARICOM’s Women’s Division, Ms Gemma Tang Nain informed that since Beijing, of those areas, the issue of all forms of violence against women occupied a great deal of attention in Member States. She stressed that the extent to which so many Member States continue to dedicate so much resources to addressing these issues is an indication of the gravity of the situation.
“A lot of resources are directed to this area, but I can’t say the situation is any better today because there is still evidence of women and their children suffering from violence, sometimes with their lives,” said Tang Nain.
She added that the issue of health is a of growing concern as the evidence is starting to show that an increasing number of women in their prime reproductive years are being infected with HIV .
She stressed that at the UN Special Session it is expected that the Region, will focus on the work done since Beijing, point to whatever challenges that exist and outline the way forward. A number of Caribbean delegations are being led at the Ministerial level.
