---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 11:47:45 -0600
From: BROUILLETTE AMY SUSAN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: About Women's Environment & Development Organization [WEDO]
THE WOMEN'S ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION
WEDO
OUR VISION
To foster women's leadership and advocacy skills to transform
women's concerns about the environment, development, population and
gender equity into actions, programs and policies in countries
around the world, with women as active and equal participants in
decision-making in both the governmental and non-governmental arena
-- from the community to the international level. We aim to
promote women playing major roles in the growing worldwide movement
for global security, economic justice, democracy, human rights and
women's empowerment.
OUR OBJECTIVES
To mobilize women activists, grassroots leaders and policy-makers
worldwide and empower these women to become effective advocates in
their respective countries and in regional and global forums by
joining together with those in WEDO to:
a) Promote women's perspectives: move the Women's Action Agenda
21 adopted at the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet, much
of which is incorporated into the UNCED Agenda 21, into policies
for implementation; organize women's caucuses, update and bring
women's perspectives and policies into the agenda UN Commission on
Sustainable Development and related post-UNCED conferences, the UN
International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, the
UN World Summit for Social Development in March 1995, the UN Fourth
World Conference on Women in September 1995; and continue to
advocate open access and increased participation by NGOs in the UN
system, expanding the reforms already adopted and new reform
opportunities leading towards the UN's 50th Anniversary in 1995.
b) Organize and support local capacity-building: organize Women
for a Healthy Planet groups and encourage existing organizations to
evaluate the environmental, democratic and social priorities of
their communities, extend our global network and strengthen our
system of regional focal points or coordinators; support and
develop capacity-building initiatives at national and regional
levels to train and encourage women to monitor public and private
environment, development and women's rights policies, programs and
institutions; and
c) Advocate gender-balance: seek equal inclusion of women in
government bodies, all NGOs and public policy-making groups and
intergovernmental bodies, including the UN and its specialized
agencies, reshaping institutions so that women may rise to
leadership positions and become active decision makers at all
levels.
THE RATIONALE
Women are half the world's population, yet when it comes to making
decisions that affect the earth, its inhabitants, and its natural
resources, women are virtually invisible. Power and responsibility
are skewed by gender throughout the world.
Globally, women account for only 11% of members of legislatures and
make up less than 11% of parliamentary representation in 71
countries, including the USA, UK and France. At present, there are
only three women presidents (Iceland, Ireland and Nicaragua) and
five women prime ministers (Bangladesh, Dominica, Norway, Pakistan
and Turkey).
Women hold no cabinet positions in 100 countries and in the UN
itself, of 181 members states only seven missions are headed by
women, and there are only three women at the senior grades of
Under-Secretary General. And in the corporate world the glass
ceiling continues to limit women's rise to top management positions
and decision making. At the same time women form a large majority
of the world's poor and illiterates.
These statistics are disheartening, given that women have been at
the forefront of initiatives that have alerted the world - and its
policy makers - to the need for new and expanded environment and
development programs. For example:
Rachel Carson unveiled the lethal legacy of water and
soil pollution and biologist Janet Gibson led the
campaign to set up the Hoi Chan marine reserve, which
protects the world's second largest barrier reef, off the
coast of Belize. In upstate New York, Lois Gibbs took the
lead in exposing the deadly effects of toxic chemicals
and hazardous waste consumption on the health and well-
being of a community, while in Quito, Ecuador, local
women protested local factories' chemical emissions and
demanded alternative action.
The late Petra Kelly provided leadership in forming the
Green Party movement in Germany, and Russian zoologist
Maria Cherkasova helped stop the destruction of the local
ecology by organizing protests against Central Asia's
Katun river dam project. Wangari Maathai, founder of the
Green Belt Movement, organized the planting of more than
ten million trees in Kenya and physicist Vandana Shiva
was instrumental in helping the Chipko movement prevent
the felling of trees in rural India.
These women serve as examples of the unsung leadership and
organization by women every day in every part of the world. Given
the influence a handful of women have wielded, it is inspiring to
imagine the impact a knowledgeable and well-organized global
network of women can have on environment and development planning,
policies and programs worldwide. The problems demand that the
collective wisdom, knowledge and experience of women be brought to
bear on the decision making process.
OUR TRACK RECORD
WEDO has addressed these issues and can modestly point with pride
to what it has achieved in the past couple of years. Most notable
accomplishments are the following:
* establishment in 1990 of a high powered advisory council of
environment and development experts -- the 51-member International
Policy Action Committee in preparation for the UN Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED);
* convening of the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet
held in Miami 8-12 November, 1991, which produced a North/South
consensus document, the Women's Action Agenda 21;
* negotiated greater access for NGOs and women to participate in
UNCED and WEDO co-chair Bella Abzug served as a special advisor to
Secretary General Maurice Strong throughout the UNCED process;
* successfully convened and coordinated women's caucuses
throughout the UNCED process, particularly during negotiations at
the third and fourth Preparatory Committee meetings;
* through skillful negotiation during the entire UNCED process,
ensured that a women's perspective was incorporated into Agenda 21,
the official document that governments endorsed at Rio in June
1992, in a separate chapter as well as in hundreds of provisions
taken from the Women's Action Agenda 21;
* organized the women's tent, Planeta Femea, in collaboration with
REDEH, our Brazilian partner, the largest and most active of all
structures in the '92 Global Forum, in Rio de Janeiro, parallel to
UNCED's Earth Summit;
* continued a women's caucus at the 47th General Assembly of the
United Nations which was successful in strengthening the convening
resolution for the Commission on Sustainable Development;
* prepared an analysis and resource manual on our UNCED
methodology and experience which serves as a step-by-step model for
NGOs on how to influence the UN process and bring women's
perspectives into UN deliberations and agreements; the manual also
assists researchers and activists by including a detailed
comparison of Agenda 21, and the Women's Action Agenda 21
facilitating analysis of what women gained in the UNCED process and
outlining the unfinished agenda;
* promoted and continue to distribute its Community Report Card,
translated into many different languages, as a grassroots tool for
organizing and implementing the Women's Action Agenda 21 and
facilitating a holistic analysis of natural environments, political
systems, social priorities and human development issues in a
community;
* supported regional initiatives in southern Africa, West Africa,
Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe and North America for
planning and conducting training of trainers and community
activists to adapt and implement the Community Report Card project
and other strategies by women to build a mass-based, inclusive
environmental movement;
* brought together a team of women from developing countries in
January 1993 for a series of training, briefing, brainstorming and
advocacy sessions in Washington and New York to strengthen their
role as multipliers in sharing information in their regions and
influencing the early stages of International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD) preparations, which included
meeting with the International Women's Health Coalition, the NGO
Planning Committee for the ICPD, the International Development
Conference, US pro-choice and women's organizations;
* WEDO organized and hosted a briefing luncheon at the UN for
representatives of UN missions on women's perspectives on
population and the direction we hoped that ICPD would take in its
preparations, with the above team of women from developing
countries acting as spokeswomen;
* using the UNCED precedents, successfully negotiated with ICPD
Secretary General Nafis Sadik for full and open access by NGOs to
participate in the ICPD process including specific opportunities
for oral interventions at the Plenary as well as the Committee on
the Whole;
* assembled a diverse international team of women to participate
in and influence the early planning stages, particularly on NGO
access, for the Fourth World Conference on Women, which began at
the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, acting as the
preparatory committee for the Beijing conference, in Vienna March
15-20, 1993;
* convened a strategic briefing at the US Capitol on April 27,
1993 for the new and incumbent women members of Congress on the
international women, environment and development agenda, featuring
first-hand reports by Secretary General Nafis Sadik of the ICPD and
Secretary General Gertrude Mongella of the UN World Conference on
Women. The briefing served as a model for women to undertake in
their own countries;
* encouraged women NGO leaders to get appointed to their
respective country's official delegation to the ICPD PrepComs;
* convened a daily women's caucus of 132 women, a majority of whom
were from the South, who also met in Regional Caucuses, at the
second Preparatory Committee meeting of the ICPD in May 1993; the
caucus prepared the Women's Concept consensus document in response
to the Secretariat's official document, thereby enabling women from
41 countries in all regions to make substantive input in detailed
form;
* submitted the Women's Concept paper to the ICPD Secretariat and
UN Population Division as guidance for the Annotated Outline
submitted to the 47th General Assembly;
* with leadership from a WEDO coordinator in Africa, contributed
women's perspectives to the International Desertification
Conference in Geneva in June 1993;
* led by WEDO co-chair Jocelyn Dow from Guyana, convened a women's
caucus at the Preparatory Committee meeting of the Sustainable
Development for Small Island Developing States conference in
August-September 1993;
* sent the Secretariat's Annotated Outline to members of the
women's caucus at PrepCom II and prepared and presented a women's
Annotated Outline to the ICPD Secretariat, UN Population Division,
missions and to delegates on the Second Committee of the UN in
November 1993;
* WEDO Co-chair Bella Abzug attended a US State Department
briefing for US delegates to PrepCom II (Abzug was a delegate) and
presented the WEDO-compiled suggested revisions to the Annotated
Outline in November 1993;
* organized follow-up to Women's Action Agenda 21 and developed
plans for collective NGO action on the World Summit on Social
Development at the "Between the Summits: Down to Earth" conference
in December 1993 in Copenhagen;
* advocated successfully to relevant UN bodies, governments and
delegates to the Third Committee for full access of NGOs to the
preparatory process leading up to and including the 4th World
Conference on Women, as stated in resolution L33;
* participated in numerous ad hoc advocacy campaigns on a wide
range of timely issues related to US legislation, multilateral
institutions, human rights, gender-balance, and UN actions,
often in collaboration with other NGOs;
* forged a remarkable degree of consensus among women and women's
networks on substantive issues to impact on the political and
policy-making process.
For further information please contact:
Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO)
845 Third Avenue, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10022 USA
Tel: (212) 759-7982 Fax: (212) 759-8647
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
