Beijing +10: Dutch NGOs review progress on Beijing Action Platform

Holland is not a large country, but its women’s movement has international fame and its government has a reputation for supporting the advancement of women worldwide. At least, that was the case until recently. In January this year 50 Dutch NGO’s published their joint study on how the Dutch government has done on its promise to advance the position of women, made in 1995 in Beijing at the 4th United Nations World Conference on Women. Publishing the review is part of an NGO strategy to revitalise the Dutch government’s role in supporting gender equality processes, at home and in the world.

According to the report, few promises have been kept. “Did the Beijing Platform for Action Accelerate Progress? Dutch Beijing+10 NGO report” doesn’t mince words. At the national policy level, the government has failed to show its political commitment to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. It has never attempted to fulfil the entire scope of the Platform for Action. In 2000, after pressure from the women’s NGO community, the government adopted a long-term strategy plan but by 2002 this was already shelved. Instruments like gender budgeting and gender impact assessments are under-utilised. The current Dutch subsidy policy is endangering the secure infrastructure of women’s organizations that supports the gender equality process in the Netherlands. The authors of the report write: “It seems that this government exercises its subsidy policy as an instrument to prevent critical input from women’s organizations, preventing them from lobbying and influencing gender equality policy.”

For many years the international women’s movement has been able to rely on support from the Dutch government in developing their initiatives. But the report finds that the Dutch government is not complying to the BPfA’s condition for funding that is to commit adequate financial resources for activities designed to implement the BPfA and to “conduct a critical analysis of their assistance programmes so as to improve the quality and effectiveness of aidthrough the integration of a gender approach”. The authors conclude: “the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action is a noncommittal, non-obligatory cause. After an initial promising start, with the formulation of policy intentions (in 1995 and 1996) and the suggestions for improvement provided by the IOB evaluation (in 1998), attention for the implementation of the BPfA has progressively waned to the point where it has now become completely invisible”.

The 50 NGOs formed the Initiative Beijing+10, Time for Action, and organised, on January 15 2005, the Dutch Beijing+10 review meeting. 650 participants discussed the most pressing themes in the Dutch feminist landscape, including women and Aids, women and water, the media representation of diversity, women and armed conflict, violence against women and women and power.

A sixteen-point Agenda for the Future resulted, which will be presented to the minister responsible for gender equality, Aart Jan de Geus, on March 8. The Agenda provides guidelines to the government on how to effectively implement the BPfA. The women’s movement has the task of keeping up the pressure on the government in the coming 2 years to effectuate the Agenda for the Future, to the letter.

The IIAV hosted the secretariat of the initiative and plays a key role in the organization.