2000 - Advocacy Guide to Women's World Demands

In Montréal, Québec, Canada, on October 18, 1998, 140 women from 65 countries adopted a platform of world demands for the World March of Women in the Year 2000. The Coordinating Committee of the World March of Women proposes this working tool to support the spokespeople of this project and the ever-growing group of people who are taking part in the relay of this world march.

The Advocacy Guide to Women's World Demands is a tool for individuals or women's groups who will be working with women at a grassroots level, making presentations at special events or lobbying their governments and regional or international bodies.

In addition to putting the demands of the World March of Women in the Year 2000 in their social, economic and political context, this Guide explains each demand from a feminist perspective. Our analysis often strikes a common chord with other groups advocating rights and promoting equality and justice.

Putting the demands in context provides groups with certain key elements for understanding the scope and meaning of each demand. The demands are summarized at the beginning of this Guide.

No doubt, each woman or group will adapt elements of the analysis presented in this Guide according to how it relates to their work and will flesh out the analysis based on their own particular situation and context.

A March to fight poverty and violence against women

The World March of Women is part of the same continuum as the four major world conferences on women convened by the United Nations. It is even more closely linked with the parallel forums organized around these meetings. We are urgently demanding that member States comply with the decisions taken at these international meetings and follow through on the respect of commitments contained in the international treaties, conventions and covenants that they have signed.

Obviously, our demands go beyond the current commitments made by States. The World March of Women in the Year 2000 is a new "international meeting" taking place over many months, convened by the women's movement itself. For the Québec women's movement, it began in May 1995, with the "Bread and Roses" March Against Poverty. It continued later that year in Beijing, where women from Québec proposed an ambitious rallying plan on an international scale to fight poverty and violence against women. Since the very beginning, women from many countries have helped make this project happen. This project, the World March of Women in the Year 2000, is about women gathering from around the globe. It is being prepared in international meetings, branching out into national meetings in each of our countries. It is about international actions generating national actions with thousands of women around the world.

On March 8, 2000 we will be launching awareness and support card campaigns to demonstrate support for the demands of the World March. In June 2000, the United Nations Organization (UNO) 1 will make an international assessment of the Platform for Action at the Beijing +5 meeting. On October 17, 2000, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, women from the participating countries will meet in front of the United Nations after having marched in their respective country.

We are certain that our international mobilization and pooling of ideas and analyses will generate world political pressure that cannot be ignored. It will be strong enough to initiate radical changes that are indispensable to the well-being of the world's population. This is how women will march forth into the new millenium: they will put the world back on track through sharing, peace and formal equality and they will proclaim that women more than ever will be players in fostering major change.

About the Guide's structure

The first part of this Guide is called "A World in Need of Change". It provides an analysis of the social, economic, financial and political system that is primarily responsible for today's generalized poverty and violence against women. The two main themes - poverty and violence - are developed through analytical texts that include the wording of the demands.

The second part summarizes all of the world demands. Demands on the theme of poverty are labeled with the letter "P" and demands concerning violence are marked with the letter "V". The number after the letter is the same number that was assigned in the Special Newsletter. The next section presents each of the demands of the World March of Women in the Year 2000, taking into account a logical sequence and reasoning. The order in which the demands are presented has been changed in keeping with the development of the theses.

The Guide ends with a text linking the various elements of the Beijing Platform for Action to the demands of the World March of Women in the Year 2000. Our platform of demands was inspired by the Platform and other demands brought forth by women's movements around the world. This global action from the women's movements around the world is solidly anchored in the work of many women at the local and international level. It must allow us to engender change and it must become a means to be used by each of us to improve living conditions for women wherever they may be.

The appendix to this Guide contains useful information or definitions on political, economic and legal institutions for understanding the demands of the World March of Women.

Objective limitations of a project in constant evolution

Time and material resources have limited the objectives of this project. The multiplicity of ideas, exchanges, and past and future meetings expand the boundaries of the project and make this tool a work in progress. The challenge of writing these pages was to make information available as simply and rapidly as possible, with arguments influenced by the evolution of the world's situation. It is now up to all of us to enrich this Guide with information, notes, quotes and strategies that will be developed in the coming months.

The vast majority of the women who worked on this text are North American - with the distinct characteristic of being French-speaking. This influence will surely be apparent within the text or between the lines. We are aware of this fact and we strongly encourage women to enrich this text from their own viewpoint, based on their own realities. We must look upon this Guide as a collective work in constant evolution.

NOTE

1. See the appendix for more information on the structure of the ONU and its various international instruments.