Women want an equal say in UNCED

Women are half the world's population, yet we have almost no say in the environment and development policies that affect us and the survival of this planet. This has been true ever since the first UN Environment Conference in 1972 - the foundation for most environmental policies in the last 20 years.

For the current Earth Summit the picture is somewhat better, thanks to Secretary General Maurice F Strong. In the UNCED secretariat and in the International Facilitating Committee (IFC) of "Independent Sectors", women's interests are strongly represented and women hold a significant number of key posts.

The world needs particularly
the input of women …
for they represent the
very gender that
creates life.

Nevertheless, women are nearly invisible in the national delegations preparing for UNCED. A few countries have appointed women to participate as observers. Women also represent some NGOs, but generally these women participate as technical experts not as activists concerned with the political issue of gender equity.

Although we women are the vast majority of grassroots activists, very few of us are in positions of power, setting the priorities and making the decisions on issues to be tackled nationally and internationally.

The Miami Congress

To make sure that women's voices and concerns are heard in the national and international meetings preparing for the Earth Summit, in UNCED itself and in the parallel meetings in Brazil, women activists from around the world mobilized a World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet in Miami, Florida.

The organizers of this event are an International Policy Action Committee (IPAC) of 55 women which include political pacesetters, grassroot activists, economic analysts, environmental scientists and human rights leaders from 32 countries.

It was decided that the five-day congress in Miami should be a Tribunal, with a panel of distinguished women jurists (from Guyana, Kenya, Australia, Sweden and India) who will hear witnesses testify on their successes and fail ures in combating ecological and economic devastations. Participants will act as jurors taking evidence from the Tribunal, along with their own experiences, to a series of workshops where they will develop recommendations and actions for a healthy planet.

They will deal with tough issues. Some relate directly to the UNCED agenda (i.e. an entire plenary session devoted to the women's dimension of the Earth Charter and another session on who will pay to transfer the technology necessary for sustainable development). Other sessions will include issues UNCED is skirting: family planning and sexual politics; poverty, maldevelopment and the misallocation of resources; bioengineering and its consequences for women; war and peace.

A Women's Action Agenda

The culmination of these discussions will be a Women's Action Agenda to be presented to a concluding Summit Meeting of women heads of state and government, top UN officials and other world leaders. Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and UNCED Secretary General Maurice F Strong have already agreed to participate. These Summit leaders will be asked to incorporate the Women's Action Agenda into the UNCED decisions at Rio '92, their own national agendas and into every aspect of Earth Summit follow-up activities.

The Miami World Congress will directly follow the smaller Global Assembly of Women and the Environment, convened by the UN Environment Programme's Senior Women's Advisory Group. The Assembly will focus on replicable environmental successes, and its recommendations will be presented to the World Women's Congress for policy action.

Our mutual goals for the 1990s and beyond are to encourage women's global solidarity and empowerment, to expand and deepen women's networks, to educate and inform, and to create a local, national and global capacity to act. As Claes Nobel said at the United Nations on June 5th, World Environment Day. The world needs particularly the input of women ... for they represent the very gender that creates life. Therefore, for the sake of global survival, men and women must, in this decade, become equal and cooperative partners in creating the common good for our common future."

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