Draft Platform for Action: 12 critical areas of concern.

• Author: Seufert-Barr, Nancy
• Position: Fourth World Conference on Women - Cover Story

To provide a basis for preparatory discussions and final negotiations at the Beijing Conference, the UN Commission on the Status of Women has issued a draft Platform for Action, focusing on 12 "critical areas of concern" that have been identified as obstacles to the advancement of women. Related to these concerns, the draft proposes to:

1. Poverty

   * Create social security systems wherever they do not exist.

   * Develop gender-sensitive national and international policies, including those related to structural adjustment.

   * Provide poor women with economic opportunities and equal access to affordable housing, land, natural resources, credit and other services.

   * Devise statistical means to recognize and make visible the work--including unpaid and domestic--of women and their contribution to national economies.

2. Education

   * Closing the gender gap in primary and secondary school education by the year 2005.

   * Eradicate illiteracy of women worldwide by 2000 or another target date to be agreed at the Conference.

   * Improve women's access to and provide funding for vocational training, science and technology.

   * Develop curricula, textbooks, and teaching aids free of gender stereotypes.

3. Health

   * Strengthen and reorient health services in order to reduce maternal mortality by at least 50 per cent of the 1990 levels by the year 2000.

   * Strengthen preventive programmes that address threats to women's health.

   * Make efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and recognize the impact of those diseases on women.

   * Promote research on and increase funding for women's health issues and services.

4. Violence

   * Take integrated legal and social measures to prevent violence and protect women.

   * Adopt measures to eliminate trafficking in women and eradicate violence against women who are vulnerable, such as those with disabilities and migrant workers.

   * Study the causes of violence against women and effective measures of prevention.

5. Armed conflicts

   * Increase and strengthen women's participation in conflict resolution.

   * Promote women's contribution to fostering a culture of peace.

   * Reduce the incidence of human rights abuses in conflict situations protect refugee and displaced women, and provide assistance to women of the colonies.

6. Economic disparity

   * Enact laws to guarantee the rights of women and men to equal pay for equal work, and adjust work patterns to promote the sharing of family responsibilities.

   * Provide women with equal...