From 28 February to 11 March 2005, the Commission on the Status of Women of the United Nations will take the opportunity to consider and review the Beijing Platform for Action at its 49th session. However, no world conference or special session of the General Assembly will convene, inhibiting the women’s movement and the international community from convening this year. Therefore, INSTRAW would like to assemble brief commentaries on women’s experiences at one or more of the following conferences: Mexico 1975, Nairobi 1980, Copenhagen 1985, Beijing 1995, and the Beijing 5+ special session, 2000.
In addition, INSTRAW would like to receive insight on how these conferences affected the participant’s life or women’s/gender issues in the participant’s community. Such accounts may be anecdotal, may focus on the relevance of the conferences to the women’s rights agenda, or consist of critical reviews of the implementation of conference goals and will be featured on the Beijing Review Section of the INSTRAW website.
These commentaries may be submitted in English, French, or Spanish and should not exceed 1,000 words. The submission deadline is 15 February 2005. Commentaries may be sent to INSTRAW at instraw@un-instraw.org.
Compiled from: Gathering Women's Experiences, World News, News, The Network of East-West Women-POLSKA/NEWW, www.neww.org, January 2005.