Partnerships: Moving Beijing Forward

UNESCAP High-level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review Regional Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, and its Regional and Global Outcomes
Bangkok, 7-10 September 2004

Information Note on the Panels and Parallel Sessions

The High-Level Meeting will involve plenary sessions in which government representatives will report on their own implementation status. In addition to the plenary review, there will be two panel discussions and a number of parallel sessions during the meeting. The first panel will focus on issues/concerns including globalization and the economic empowerment of women, violence against women and the trafficking of women and children, a gender responsive information society, gender and HIV/AIDS, and governance and the political participation of women. The second panel will focus on the selected approaches and strategies necessary for creating and sustaining an enabling environment for empowerment of women, such as partnerships including regional cooperation and civil society participation, gender mainstreaming, a rights-based approach, and working with men. Each panel will be followed by a number of parallel sessions designed to further the understanding of the topics of the panels, and most importantly, with an aim to increase the capacity of the participants to deal with the issues/apply the strategies.

Panel I, Moving Beijing Forward: Gaps and Challenges
will be held on 7 September 2004 from 13.30 to 17.00, and the accompanying parallel sessions will be held on 8 September 2004 from 08.30 to 12.00. The panelists will include:

• Professor Jayati Ghosh (India) will be speaking on “Globalization and the Economic Empowerment of Women”. Prof. Ghosh is a trained economist, university professor and researcher on globalization and gender issues in the Asia-Pacific region. She has written numerous research papers and presented at various conferences on issues relating to women’s economic empowerment, globalization, and the informal sector. She is a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School for Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India.

• Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka) will be speaking on “Violence Against Women and Trafficking of Women and Children”. Dr. Coomaraswamy was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women for the period 1994 - 2003. In her reports to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights she has written on violence in the family, violence in the community, violence against women during armed conflict and the problem of international trafficking. She is also the Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

• Dr. Nancy Hafkin (USA) will be speaking on a “Gender Responsive Information Society”. Since 2000, Dr. Hafkin has been the Director of Knowledge Working, a consultancy firm specializing in information technology and international development. In this capacity she has worked on numerous gender and ICT consultancies for the UN System, governments, foundations, universities and other institutes in Asia. From 1995-2000 she worked as the Chief of the Development Information Section for UNESCA and from 1986-1995 was the Chief of the Pan African Development Information System and in both positions worked extensively on gender and ICT issues.

• Ms. Maire Bopp Du Pont (French Polynesia) will be speaking on “Gender and HIV/AIDS”. Ms. Bopp Du Pont was diagnosed with AIDS and pneumonia in October 1998 while completing her final academic year in Fiji, and was the first and youngest Pacific Islander to make her status public to the media, during a regional media meeting in November of the same year. She has worked as a full time radio Journalist and now is the Chief Executive Officer for the Pacific Islands AIDS foundation (PIAF). She has received several awards for her advocacy work including Pacific Islands News Association Media Freedom Award (1999), the UNDP Race against Poverty Award (2000), the Story Board Award for Best Journalism student of the University of the South Pacific (2000), and a grant from the global cosmetics MAC-Fund as a further recognition of her work (2001).

• Dr. Socorro Reyes (Philippines) will be speaking on “Governance and the Political Participation of Women”. Dr. Reyes was the team leader of the Gender Support Programme in Pakistan for UNDP – a five-year programme focusing on strengthening women’s access to and participation in politics and government. She is the founding President of The Center for Legislative Development (CLD), a Philippine-based NGO that assists in the capability building of national and local legislatures and broadening civic participation in the legislative process. A former Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at De La Salle University, she has written and published articles on legislators' effectiveness and citizen participation in law-making. She is a founding member of various NGOs and other organizations working on issues relating to gender and governance.

Panel II, Moving Beijing Forward: Strategies and Approaches for Creating an Enabling Environment will be held on 9 September 2004 from 08.30 to 12.00, and the accompanying parallel sessions will be held on 9 September 2004 from 13.30 to 17.00. The panelists will include:

• Dr. Shireen Lateef (Fiji) will be speaking on “Partnerships and Strengthening Regional Cooperation”. Dr. Lateef is the Principal Social Development Specialist for the Regional and Sustainable Development Department, Poverty Reduction and Social Development Division at the Asian Development Bank. In this capacity, she supports ADB's gender and development activities, focusing on promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women including loan projects that are designed to directly benefit and empower women, as well as technical assistance to build the capacity of government to address and reduce gender disparities; and special sector studies on emerging issues for women in the region such as trafficking of women and children.

• Dr. Patricia Licuanan (Philippines) will be speaking on “Partnerships and Strengthening Civil Society Participation”. Dr. Licuanan is the President of Miriam College in the Philippines. She was the Chair for the Preparatory Committee and the Main Committee of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and is a key figure in the Asia-Pacific region in the building of strategies to strengthen civil society participation and engagement with governments on gender and development issues. She is the Chairperson, Southeast Asia Watch: Eyes on the Beijing Platform for Action (SEAWatch) a regional network of NGOs to ensure the effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

• Ms. Carolyn Hannan (Sweden) will be speaking on “Gender Mainstreaming”. Ms. Hannan is the Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women. She was formerly the Senior Policy Advisor on Gender Equality in the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (1992-1998) and the Chair of the OECD/DAC Working Party on Gender Equality (1995-1997). More recently, she has worked as the Principal Officer for Gender Mainstreaming in the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues at the United Nations in New York. In this context she provided advice and support and monitored progress in gender mainstreaming throughout the United Nations.

• Professor Savitri Goonesekere (Sri Lanka) will be speaking on the “Rights-based Approach”. She is a Professor of Law at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and has previously been Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Head, Department of Legal Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka. Professor Goonesekere is a Member (and former Chairperson) of the Committee on Feminism, International Law Association, UK, and of Sri Lanka's National Committees on both Women and Children. She has been a Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and at the Harvard Law School, USA, and completed work on this book as a Senior Research Fellow at UNICEF's International Child Development Centre, Florence, Italy. She has been a member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) since 1999.

• Dr. Michael Flood (Australia) will be speaking on “Working with Men for Gender Equality”. Dr. Flood is a Research Fellow at the Australia Institute, a public interest think-tank. He recently held a position as a Lecturer in Women's and Gender Studies at the Australian National University. He has also worked as the Sexual Health Promotion Coordinator at Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT and as a community educator with the Domestic Violence Crisis Service and the Legal Aid Office. His research and activist interests include men and masculinities, sexualities and especially male sexuality and heterosexuality, interpersonal violence and especially men's violence against women, sexual and reproductive health, and boys and youth cultures.