After Beijing: emphasis on poverty eradication.

• Position: Women

A "gender perspective" should be integrated by Governments and the private sector into policies and programmes dealing with poverty, child and dependent care, and the media, according to conclusions reached by the Commission on the Status of Women, meeting for the first time since the landmark 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing. Women's concerns, it stressed, had to be "mainstreamed" in order to help eliminate poverty, manage the impact of economic and social changes on families, and counter sexism and violence in the global media.

The Commission, capping its fortieth session (New York, 11-22 March) by adopting 17 resolutions, decisions, and "agreed conclusions", also recommended that the Economic and Social Council adopt a multi-year work programme for the Commission that would enable it to review, through the end of the century, the 12 critical areas of concern identified in the Beijing Platform for Action as the main obstacles to women's advancement. Those are: poverty; education; health; violence; armed conflict; economy; decision-making; institutional mechanisms; human rights; media; environment; and the girl child.

Established in 1946 as a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council, the 45-member Commission is the main inter-governmental body created by the UN to prepare recommendations and formulate policies on gender issues, monitor the status of women and promote their equality and rights. In 1995, the Fourth World Conference also assigned the Commission a central role within the UN system for monitoring the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, and asked it to review the critical areas of concern and integrate follow-up to the Conference into its agenda.

While women had come a long way, they still had some distance to cover before all their goals were attained, the Secretary-General's Special Adviser on gender issues, Assistant Secretary-General Rosario Green, told the opening session. The Commission's efforts had to continue the work begun in Beijing so that women and men could address the next millennium's problems on the basis of equality, she emphasized.

The partnership of Governments, civil society and the UN, which had helped lead to the Beijing Conference, should now be built upon to press for further progress, Ms. Green declared. The "first partners" were Governments, on which the implementation of some decisions reached by the Commission would rest. Struggle at the national level should push ahead to ensure that Governments kept their commitments made at the Conference. Women's participation at all levels of decision-making would help secure the mainstreaming of women's issues, she stressed. (Ms. Green was designated Senior Adviser on 28 December 1995, to help the Secretary-General achieve the effective integration of gender perspective into UN policies and programmes.)

Angela...