Maintitle

Copyrights

Alicia Bárcena

Executive Secretary

Antonio Prado

Deputy Executive Secretary

María Nieves Rico

Chief, Division for Gender Affairs

Ricardo Pérez

Chief, Publications and Web Services Division

The present compilation of the commitments adopted by the governments at past sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean is also available under the libguide Regional Gender Agenda [online] http://biblioguias.cepal.org/RegionalGenderAgenda/.

LC/G.2682/Rev.1 • S.17-00759 • September 2017

© United Nations • Printed in Santiago

Maintitle

Copyrights

Foreword

Regional Plan of Action La Habana (1977)

Regional Programme of Action Mar del Plata (1994)

Santiago Consensus (1997)

Lima Consensus (2000)

Brasilia Consensus (2010)

Santo Domingo Consensus (2013)

Montevideo Strategy (2016)

Reservations and Declarations

Contents

Foreword

The first Regional Conference on the Integration of Women in the Economic and Social Development of Latin America was held almost 40 years ago (Havana, 1977). It provided a regional forum for exchange after the World Conference of the International Women’s Year in Mexico City in 1975, and supported the idea of social demands for women’s rights and gender equality (which were starting to spread from country to country) being translated into government commitments. On that occasion ECLAC member States adopted the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development, the region’s first road map for progress towards the recognition of women’s contribution to society and to make visible the obstacles that they faced in improving their situation. At that same conference, the Governments gave the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) a mandate to convene periodically, at intervals of no more than three years, a Regional Conference on Women.

In fulfilment of this mandate, over the next four decades ECLAC organized 13 Regional Conferences on Women, first through its Women and Development Unit, then its Division for Gender Affairs. This intergovernmental platform, with the active participation of the women’s and feminist movement and the support of the entire United Nations system, has become the main forum for the negotiation of a broad, profound and comprehensive Regional Gender Agenda, in which women’s autonomy and rights are front and centre. Policies for development and overcoming poverty have always been a key focus at these meetings.

In Mar del Plata (Argentina) in 1994, the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, was adopted in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women scheduled in Beijing in 1995. It contained an updated assessment of the situation of women in the region, proposed public policies to reduce equality gaps and incorporated new problems that had not been addressed in the Havana Plan. The Programme of Action also highlighted women’s contribution to the democratization processes under way in many of the region’s countries and the importance of encouraging a cultural shift to dismantle the patriarchy and the dominant gender system that subordinated, devalued and discriminated against women in various areas.

The discussions at the regional conferences that followed resulted in the adoption of successive consensuses, in Santiago (1997), Lima (2000), Mexico (2004), Quito (2007), Brasilia (2010) and Santo Domingo (2013). These consensuses expressed the political will and commitment to taking decisive steps towards gender equality, and emphasized the importance of State institutions in support of gender equality and the urgent need to provide specific funding. They also called on other governmental and non-governmental actors to adhere to equality policies and mainstream the gender perspective. The discussions and proposals regarding violence against women and feminicide, sexual and reproductive rights, diversity of situations and identities, migration, unpaid work, time use, care, sexual division of labour, new technologies, economic development, participation in decision-making processes, citizenship and parity democracy represented milestones and held significant political and discursive sway, to the extent that they were replicated and influenced other international agreements and agendas, such as that on population and development.

These regional instruments are cumulative and each new negotiation process and document recognizes the valuable contribution to policies and programmes made by its predecessors, resulting in a collection of adopted texts embodying a wealth of policy and technical content. These documents together make up the Regional Gender Agenda that draws strength from and feeds back into the platforms and programmes of action of United Nations conferences and the binding commitments undertaken by the Governments through the signing and ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol, and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará).

The building of this Regional Gender Agenda draws on the ability, strength and creativity of women in Latin America and the Caribbean and their organizations, which have forged ahead during periods of dictatorship, restored democracy, neoliberalism, economic growth and also crisis. Women have managed to overcome obstacles, organize and build a regional perspective, while also participating actively in global discussions and making themselves heard beyond the region, striving to push the boundaries of what is possible.

For ECLAC, equality goes hand in hand with development and is understood as involving more than the distribution of resources; gender equality is one aspect of what it proposes. The Regional Gender Agenda recognizes women’s rights and equality as central and cross-cutting elements of all government efforts to strengthen democracy and ensure inclusive and sustainable development.

In the light of the legacy of the process of building the Regional Gender Agenda, and its content, as well as the new challenges arising in the context of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, at the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Montevideo, 2016) the Governments of the region adopted the Montevideo Strategy for Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda within the Sustainable Development Framework by 2030.

The Montevideo Strategy is being adapted to national realities and Governments are using it to carry out assessments, identify priorities and formulate public policies for gender equality as part of their sustainable development strategies.

This publication is a contribution to the implementation of the commitments undertaken. It is a compilation of all the agreements adopted by the Governments at the sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and will serve not only as a tool for reference, but above all as a tool for action and for building a future based on the collective memory of the women of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Alicia Bárcena

Executive Secretary

Economic Commission for Latin America

and the Caribbean

REGIONAL PLAN OF ACTION LA HABANA (1977)

First Regional Conference on the Integration of Women in the Economic and Social Development of Latin America (La Habana, 1977)

REGIONAL PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE INTEGRATION OF WOMEN INTO LATIN AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT[1]

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The World Conference of the International Women’s Year held in Mexico in 1975 affirmed in its Declaration that the status of women is inseparable from the development process. It also recognized that the current situation in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres, both national and regional, prevents the full utilization of women’s human and material potential in the development process so that it is necessary to seek ways of transforming the conditions existing in the region.

2. The question of the inequality of the vast majority of the Latin American female population is indeed closely linked with the problem of under-development, which exists not only because of inadequate internal structures but also as a result of a profoundly unjust world economic system.

3. However, although the elimination of under-development is an indispensable requirement for the full emancipation of women, it does not ensure the immediate elimination of the discrimination which afflicts them, resulting from the implantation and persistence of age-old prejudices and their low educational, technical and cultural level which greatly limits their access to and incorporation into work. The struggle against under-development must therefore be combined with the adoption of measures for the immediate and speedy integration of women into national and international life as an important element for development, the maintenance of peace and regional co-operation. Thus, as women become more aware of this fact they will become natural and active participants in the struggle against all types of domination. They thus constitute enormous social potential for the socio-economic transformation needed by the region.

4. Our region is characterized by a high rate of unemployment and underemployment. This phenomenon is proportionally greater in the case of women, and at times reaches rates three times higher than those for men of the same age groups. This chronic situation tends to be aggravated by the unjust system existing in international economic relations.

5. Women have played an important role in the history of mankind in the struggle for national liberation, political and economic independence, the strengthening of international peace, the elimination of colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism, foreign occupation, foreign domination, racism, apartheid and all types of discrimination.

6. During recent decades there has been an intensification of the incorporation of women into the political life of their countries and of their struggle for structural changes which would eliminate the social roots of the discrimination against them.

7. The United Nations has played an important role in the efforts aimed at equality for women. The General Assembly has approved basic resolutions and key documents such as the Declaration on the elimination of discrimination against women which have contributed to the struggle to secure the full integration of women into development. Similarly in seminars such as those of Caracas and Buenos Aires and the World Conference in Mexico, which gave rise to the World Plan of Action, the basic principles for advancing in the struggle for the liberation of women have been reaffirmed.

8. There is an urgent need for the regional community to adopt measures in keeping with the needs of the countries of Latin America in order to co-operate with them to accelerate the rate of their economic development and significantly improve the standard of living of their peoples, paying particular attention to the situation of women who, as in other regions of the world, live and confront every day an endless series of political, social and economic problems that are particularly serious and pressing in the under-developed world.

9. It is thus essential to take action aimed at making effective the New International Economic Order, of which the Charter of the Economic Rights and Duties of States constitutes a fundamental element since it is based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and co-operation between all States, whatever their economic and social systems.

10. The purpose of this document is to present a minimum action programme, within the framework of principles of justice, equality and respect for State sovereignty, aimed at the promotion of equality of opportunity and responsibility for women in the common effort to overcome the obstacles which hinder the development of both men and women as individuals and as members of a society.

11. In accordance with paragraph 28 of the World Plan of Action, which states that since there are wide divergences in the situation of women in various societies, cultures and regions, reflected in differing needs and problems, each country should establish its own national strategy and the interdisciplinary and multilateral machinery in its government structure to ensure the application of recommendations of importance within the framework of its needs and priorities.

12. It is essential that these recommendations should be incorporated in development plans and programmes and in sectoral analyses, so that the machinery for the integration of women in development may be an integral part of the International Development Strategy in the Second United Nations Development Decade, in observance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on the elimination of discrimination against women, and in order to contribute effectively to its adjustment to the principles and postulates of the New International Economic Order.

II. ACTION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL

A. FUNDAMENTALS

1. Structural changes

13. The issue of inequality and discrimination, as it affects the vast majority of the women of the world and as it manifests itself in the permanency of age-old prejudices and women’s low educational level, is closely linked with the problem of under-development, which is mainly the result of unsuitable internal structures and a profoundly unjust world economic system.

14. The problems which hinder the participation of women in the economic, political, social and cultural life of their countries are closely linked with the general state of under-development. It is therefore fundamental to effect, on the one hand, the necessary changes in socio-economic structures and, along with them, specific actions that tend to change the Latin American woman’s situation so that she is an initiating and active agent in changing the existing structure and a determining factor in achieving full equality of the human couple. Particular attention must be paid to women in rural areas, as it is well known that the region is characterized by the uneven development of the city and the countryside, to the detriment of the latter. This implies that the situation of women in rural areas is worse; they suffer not only from isolation, but also from lack of education, employment and other evils which cause them to migrate to the cities in search of work, with the corresponding sequel of prostitution, begging and growth of slum areas.

15. There is therefore a pressing need to implement strategies to eradicate the evils which affect women in rural areas.

16. Action proposals:

(a) To governments

(1) To implement the necessary profound changes which will make possible the solution of the problems facing women in the political, economic, social and cultural fields.

(2) To effect economic, political and social structure changes in Latin America, by promoting Latin American unity and strongly defending the sovereignty of States, their natural resources and all their economic, political and social activities.

(3) To support all multinational enterprises, regional producers and similar bodies which offer possibilities for an increase of national workers in the work force, under optimal conditions, in order to contribute to eliminating the structural deformation of Latin American economies and their foreign dependency.

(4) To back SELA and its Action Committees as well as all Latin American co-operation bodies, as a genuine expression of the development of collaboration and unity among the countries of the region.

(5) To formulate and implement rural and urban development programmes, particularly those which benefit women.

(6) To formulate and implement programmes of integrated rural development which provide for structural changes, agrarian reform, employment policies, the creation of co-operative organizations of workers and small-scale industry, education, health and welfare services, price-fixing, marketing and financing and credit services.

(7) To promote and strengthen popular participation, especially of women, at every level, including the decision-making level, particularly by means of elections.

(8) To take steps to ensure the redistribution of resources and income to the under-privileged rural and urban groups, which will benefit the majority of the population.

(b) To women

To participate actively in implementing all the actions proposed, at all levels, using and/or creating the appropriate means and mechanisms to do so.

2. Legislative measures

17. It is evident that legislation, in so far as it affects women, impedes their integration into development; while it is true that legislative measures are not in themselves sufficient to ensure women’s equality, the elimination of all discriminatory criteria opens the way to equality.

18. The de facto discrimination that exists in all our countries has its basis and effectiveness in de jure discrimination and it is urgent to take measures of a legal nature that ensure the legal equality of the sexes.

19. Action proposals:

To governments

(1) To revise existing legislation in order to eliminate those aspects that affect the legal and social status of women and prevent their full integration into society.

(2) To adopt legislative measures that ensure women’s full legal equality with men.

(3) To eliminate discrimination against women because of race, religion, national origin, civil status or any other reason, through the adoption of legislative or any other measures.

(4) To adopt legislative and administrative measures that ensure women’s full political, cultural, economic and social participation.

(5) To ratify the international agreements and treaties on women’s status and put them into practice.

(6) To revise the relevant international instruments in order to eliminate outdated standards and seek to update them.

3. Administrative machinery

20. The World Plan of Action and the Caracas and Buenos Aires Seminars, recognized the need for interdisciplinary, multisectoral machinery at the national, regional and interregional levels for the formulation and implementation of policies and proposals aimed to secure the objectives of equality and integration for women.

21. Action proposals:

(1) Governments, in accordance with their own administrative systems of work, should immediately establish and strengthen machinery with adequate staff and budgets for the purpose of accelerating the achievement of the objectives of the global, regional and national plans within the Decade for Women.

(2) The functions of the machinery established by governments should include the following:

(i) To recognize and affirm the dignity of women as human beings, constantly taking into account their status as productive citizens and consumers;

(ii) To increase the qualitative and quantitative participation of women in development programmes;

(iii) To conduct research to determine objectively the real position of women and the factors that negatively influence this position, as the necessary base for diagnosing, formulating policies and drafting proposals aimed at fully incorporating women into the process of integral development;

(iv) To consider and promote policies, action and programmes aimed at integrating women fully into the economic, political and social development process;

(v) To combat the persistence of current attitudes on the traditional functions assigned to the sexes through changes in the educational systems and traditional cultural patterns;

(vi) To combat the factors which cause the marginalization of women from economic, political and social development and to act as a communication channel to ensure that the points of view of women are recognized and reflected in government policies;

(vii) To participate in co-ordinating inter-institutional action in programmes and plans that seek and foresee the incorporation of women into development and in the supervision, control and evaluation of their implementation;

(viii) To devise and propose the necessary measures for the establishment of programmes and action to secure for women equality of rights, opportunities and access to work, education, specialization, professional and technical training, equal pay for equal work, assistance, pensions and social security;

(ix) To struggle to eradicate from the mass media stereotypes and taboos and the image of women as an object.

(x) To inform and advise women on the rights offered to them both by national legislations and by international agreements and conventions;

(xi) To revise the legislation existing in countries and to propose the necessary changes to eliminate all the norms which discriminate against women;

(xii) To urge governments to implement the international conventions and to revise and modify the laws which contradict these conventions;

(xiii) To widely disseminate the obligation of the human couple to share family responsibilities and the right and obligation to participate in and share the efforts, actions and responsibilities of social, political and economic development.

(3) It is considered that the minimum functional structure should include inter alia, the following spheres: (i) participation in the formulation of national plans, policies and programmes, co-ordination and promotion; (ii) research and diagnosis; (iii) programming and evaluation; (iv) documentation and information; (v) public relations and publicity;

(vi) guidance and advisory services; (vii) relations with regional and international bodies.

(4) For its operation, the following bodies should be set up:

(i) A general co-ordination body responsible for planning, directing and co-ordinating the directives and policies of the mechanisms, in accordance with the national development plans;

(ii) An executive body responsible for supervising and controlling the implementation of the policies and plans approved by the competent bodies.

(5) Sectors such as the following could be represented in the organization: (i) ministries and government bodies; (ii) public and private bodies; (iii) women’s organizations; (iv) co-operatives; (v) voluntary organizations; (vi) rural women; (vii) housewives; (viii) ethnic and religious groups; (ix) employers, workers, trade unions and other organizations; (x) well-known persons with specialized knowledge; (xi) student organizations.

(6) Specialists in this field chosen in consultation with the relevant organizations should participate in the organization and operations of these bodies; they would interpret and protect the rights and interests of women and could influence the planning of policies which respect and enforce the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in particular the Declaration on the elimination of discrimination against women.

B. MEASURES FOR THE INCORPORATION OF WOMEN IN ACTIVE ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE

1. Employment

22. In the majority of Latin American countries it may be observed that a very low percentage of women is incorporated in the labour force. Most of them carry out unskilled work. The higher rate of female economic activity shows a distortion as regards both sectoral occupation and age. It is concentrated in the service sector, especially domestic work, including unpaid family workers. Women are frequently the object of discrimination and exploitation as regards pay, working conditions and hiring practices. In general there are real limitations on the incorporation and retention of women in work, and this hinders their participation in the political, economic and social life of their countries.

According to current data, the female work force is concentrated in the cities and primarily in the large capitals, where the greatest quantity of services and jobs traditionally attributed to women are grouped together, and yet where they do not have the social and educational facilities to enable the great majority of them to remain employed. Against the background of the chronic unemployment and under-employment affecting the region, this further worsens the position of women.

23. Action proposals:

(a) To governments

(1) To adopt legislative measures and formulate the employment policies necessary to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment of women workers in both the public and private sectors, including equal pay for work of equal value and equality in promotions, working conditions and social benefits.

(2) To formulate and execute government planning policies that provide for the effective integration of women in rural development, with a view to reducing their migration to urban areas which only worsens the problem of “marginality”.

(3) To draw up government development plans that include training and vocational education courses for women in urban and rural areas in order to prepare them to participate more effectively in the national labour force and contribute to the development of their communities.

(4) To promulgate measures which prohibit the employment of minors and regulate the employment of adolescents, while providing these groups with easy access to education and training, as well as professional and technical preparation.

(5) To promulgate and implement labour legislation recognizing the employment status of domestic workers and providing them with the same rights to work benefits and social security as accorded to other paid workers, including the right to organize trade unions and guaranteed minimum wages.

(6) To recognize, support and promote the right of workers to organize representative trade unions and associations which strive for equal opportunities and working conditions for all workers, including women, in the public, private, domestic and rural sectors, so that the benefits of trade unionism and collective bargaining may be known and enjoyed by more women workers, thus improving their economic status.

(7) To review national labour legislation, eliminating so-called “protective laws” that tend to cause discrimination against women by excluding them from certain jobs, and to pass new laws which prohibit discrimination against women and minority groups.

(8) To ratify and implement ILO Conventions, especially Conventions Nos 100 and 111 which deal with equal pay for work of equal value and discrimination against women workers, and to request the ILO to revise its other conventions in order to eliminate from them the protective provisions that discriminate against women.

(9) To undertake an immediate study and review of job evaluation systems in co-operation with CEPAL, ILO (PREALC) and other competent bodies in order to promote equality of remuneration and upgrade the employment sectors where women tend to be concentrated.

(10) To take measures to establish mechanisms for controlling and eradicating the practice of sexual coercion of women as a condition of employment and promotion.

(b) To governments and other concerned bodies

(1) To actively promote, through governments, employers, trade unions and other organizations, the effective access of women to employment, particularly in the non-traditional and better-paid sectors from which they have been traditionally excluded.

(2) To guarantee for women through governments, employers and trade unions, under equal conditions with men, the full enjoyment of social security, pension, insurance and any other benefits which may be included in national labour legislation, labour-management agreements or collective contracts.

(3) For all governments, employers and trade unions to adopt measures to provide for flexible work schedules and part-time employment opportunities in those sectors where this is feasible, ensuring that part-time workers are covered by social security, pension and other benefits, thus encouraging the increased integration of women into the labour force and making it possible for them to contribute better to overall national development.

(4) For governments, employers and trade unions to adopt and actively support legislative measures which guarantee the rights of pregnant workers to paid leaves of absence before and after delivery without the loss of job, promotion, pension, seniority or other rights, and to provide facilities for the working mother to nurse her child.

(5) In line with overall development plans, for governments and involved organizations to promote the increased participation of women in agricultural co-operative activities, thus contributing to the more effective integration of women in food production, higher community earnings, stronger self-help programmes and improved standards of living.

(6) That governments and involved organizations should make provisions in designing development plans, for programmes to train women in the techniques of the production, processing and marketing of rural products.

(7) To create employment and develop rural areas which are losing population and provide jobs for women, particularly young women who tend to migrate, in order to encourage them to remain in their place of origin.

(8) For labour organizations to adopt policies to increase the participation of women in their activities at all levels, including leadership positions; to recognize the special needs of women members by incorporating these needs in collective agreements, and to carry out organizing campaigns in sectors where women workers are concentrated in order to improve the economic status of women workers and contribute to national development.

(9) For trade unions to promote the creation and strengthening of women’s sections to contribute with their specialized work to greater participation by women in all aspects of labour.

2. Education

24. Education is an essential factor in the economic and social development of peoples and a basic right of men and women as social beings; to receive it is therefore a principle of equity and justice which cannot be foregone without violating a universal standard.

25. Women represent a high percentage (between 60 and 80 per cent) of the total illiterate population. Even in the countries considered to be of a higher cultural level, the percentage of women with secondary, special and higher education is very low.

26. There is also discrimination in the nature and content of the education provided and in the options offered to girls, which tend to restrict them to stereotyped roles and occupations.

27. The impossibility of access to education by majority groups of the population, particularly women, has led the latter to turn to the traditional sectors of the economy, basically domestic services, trade, artisanal activities and agricultural work.

28. There is also the special problem of young people leaving school for economic reasons, because of their need to go to work to contribute to the family income, because of pregnancy, or other factors.

29. Action-proposals:

(1) To conceive and programme formal and informal education as an integral part of a national development strategy suitable for accelerating the integration of women in development and promoting social equality and their self-fulfilment.

(2) To adopt an education policy which provides equality of opportunity for men and women in both rural and urban areas, regardless of race, colour, creed and religion, thus making education accessible for all members of society.

(3) To revise and update legislation on education with the precise objective of making it more accessible to the general population and especially to children and young people, and to provide the means to ensure its application.

(4) To create new programmes and strengthen those already in existence to eliminate illiteracy, establishing a fixed time for its elimination, and also to devise post- literacy programmes which prevent the loss of literacy through lack of use. To determine the causes which produce a higher rate of illiteracy among the female population, and take the necessary steps to eradicate them.

(5) To establish free and compulsory primary education and free secondary education, ensuring attendance through suitable means with the support of social organizations, and making an effort to provide children and young persons with all the resources of education: textbooks, transportation, food, etc.

(6) To establish coeducation at all levels as a means of obtaining better education and suitable relationships between the two sexes.

(7) To reorient the function of schools so that they become multiple-training centres and nuclei for social development, by linking the content of programmes and teaching methods with productive activities which already exist or which should be carried out for development, as well as health, nutrition and other programmes.

(8) To increase women’s incorporation into high school, pre-university, university and post-graduate education through national scholarship plans and educational loans and by using the scholarship programmes offered by countries inside or outside the area, as well as programmes for bilateral and multilateral technical assistance and those offered by international organizations.

(9) To foster a suitable relationship between the demand for human resources posed by the country’s development and the supply provided by the educational system in terms of the country’s resources, establishing effective educational and vocational guidance services and eliminating the taboos that limit women’s entry into technical careers.

(10) To adopt concrete measures for women to be drawn to, enter, become established in, and re-enter the various levels of education by providing them with facilities such as study by audio-visual systems, the extension of non-academic and irregular education, open education, correspondence courses, supervised studies and other forms of training.

(11) To establish education programmes aimed at training the women of rural and indigenous areas and of the marginal urban zones, so as to furnish them with meaningful apprenticeships for meeting the priority needs recognized by the community.

(12) To carry out a reform of the educational system designed to: (i) preserve national cultural values by promoting historical research and protecting ethnic groups by providing them with education in their own languages; and (ii) revalue in texts and other educational material the role which women can and should play, with a view to eliminating the distorted image of them generally offered by the prevailing cultural patterns.

(13) To include in school programmes suitable courses on family life, administrative, agricultural and industrial topics and methods, and topics related to various professions which facilitate the incorporation of women into urban and rural working life in skilled positions.

(14) To set up orientation programmes to raise the level of awareness of parents and teachers about the need for women to participate fully in and complete all levels of education.

(15) To organize permanent education programmes with a view to raising the educational levels.

(16) To establish broad plans of scholarships, educational credits, grants and other measures which guarantee the education and training of young people who for various reasons have limited access to educational centres.

(17) Day care and similar facilities should be provided for women and girls who have responsibility for the care of children, to allow them to continue their studies.

(18) To revise, discuss and edit school texts and teaching materials used in school education programmes in order to eliminate from them the traditional stereotypes of men and women, this revision, discussion and editing being carried out in each country by groups of interdisciplinarian technical specialists, taking national interests into account and avoiding cultural penetration.

(19) To promote pre-school education as a means of achieving a more complete education, since it enables the student to develop integrally both as an individual and as a social being. This pre-school education should be directed by education ministries or by the institutions which each country considers to be the most practical and viable for the implementation of these programmes.

(20) To produce, in each country of the region, audiovisual and other educational materials that permit and facilitate development of the concept of equality between men and women and that can be reproduced and used by the respective educational system.

(21) To create awareness of and attend to the educational needs and special problems that women and young people with physical and mental handicaps confront.

(22) To develop specific educational programmes that permit young people who have not finished their studies because of early pregnancies and other causes to be trained for participation and integration in development.

(23) To see that the scholarship plans drawn up by international agencies for the region are oriented toward offering educational opportunities in priority areas determined by the governments, and that they are aimed at women as well as men.

(24) In recognition of the contribution being made by those students who legitimately have to lose school hours in the interest of the family economy and consequently the national economy, governments should develop programmes that help those students enter, remain and advance within the formal educational system.

3. Health

30. According to CEPAL and United Nations studies the health problem in the region is alarming. Low life expectancy, high mortality rates and the region’s critical public health situation highlight the differences which exist between the health and living conditions of the Latin American countries and those of the developed countries of the world. This is all the more worrying if one bears in mind the great differences which exist in this field among the different countries of the region and among the different social groups and regions within each country.

31. Suffice it to say that, according to CEPAL figures, 1,000,000 children under the age of five died between 1965-1970, whereas if the mortality rates of the developed countries had existed this figure would have dropped to 300,000. The hospital bed situation is likewise critical: most countries have no more than 2.5 beds per 1,000 inhabitants. There is a similar shortage of doctors, to the point that in one country of the region, for example, there was only one doctor for every 13,264 inhabitants in 1972.

32. Most of the population live in unhealthy conditions, undernourished, ignorant of the elementary standards of hygiene, and without access to health resources, because of the unjust distribution of wealth.

33. Because of the special care they need during pregnancy, childbirth and lactation, women, together with children, are worst affected by the situation. There is also the problem of the increasing cost of medicines and the monopolistic control exercised over them by transnational enterprises as well as the shortage of available and suitable medical resources.

34. Action proposals for governments and their competent bodies:

(1) To make the population aware of its right to health, through the mass communication media and other means.

(2) To provide free access to health services, to cover all the needs of the population in the different countries of Latin America.

(3) To broaden the medical and paramedical infrastructure and services to achieve full and suitable medical coverage for the entire population.

(4) To ensure sufficient investment in public health programmes, particularly in rural zones and marginal urban areas, which benefit the entire population without discrimination on any ground.

(5) To formulate programmes to reduce mortality among mothers and babies by improving nutrition, hygiene and health services for mothers and children and by educating parents.

(6) To review public health programmes periodically and adjust them to the needs of the population.

(7) To develop special plans for mother and child health within the framework of overall and community medical services by providing prenatal, postnatal and childbirth services end gyneco-obstetric services.

(8) Likewise to develop programmes aimed at providing special services for adolescent girls and for women past child-bearing age.

(9) To guarantee free access to medicines through public health institutions and to adopt measures to avoid, by all possible means, the negative effect on the price and distribution of medicines stemming from the control of production and distribution by the transnational corporations.

(10) To exercise effective control over medicines whose improper use represents a health hazard, and over those which are harmful to health.

(11) To establish priority national food and nutrition policies which ensure rational consumption by the population groups most vulnerable from the social and biological standpoints (such as pregnant women, babies, children, adolescents, old people, etc.).

(12) To encourage breast feeding during the early months of the life of the child as the natural basic feeding, as well as the consumption of natural foods, because of the benefit this represents for the child’s physical and mental health and future development, taking into account the nutritional needs of the mother who suckles her child. In addition, to put an end to all propaganda aimed at encouraging nutritional practices based on artificial feeding, to the detriment of breast feeding.

(13) That governments be urged to prepare the necessary statistical data on the state of health and sanitary facilities of the country and to set minimum health care levels according to internationally defined health standards.

4. The family

35. The family is the nucleus which generates and transmits the values, norms and attitudes which orient the individual and collective conduct of the members of a society. As the mediating institution between the individual and the social group it is particularly important as regards the situation of women and the possibility of broadening their social participation and eliminating the factors of the discrimination against them.

36. The family in most cases inculcates and promotes among its members activities and vocations which are based more on sex than on their possibilities and aptitudes as human beings. This situation not only affect’s women’s opportunities of individual development but also directly influences other problems of development which have become priority matters.

37. The division of work established on the basis of sex, supported by tradition and customs under the pretext of biological determinism, assigns to the man the role of supporting the home and relegates the woman to a secondary and passive role limited to the narrow confines of the home, with the sole basic purpose of matrimony and child-bearing.

38. The changes in the structure and functions of the family as a consequence of the urbanization and industrialization process and its instability in relation to internal migration are not detected in most cases.

39. In the majority of cases, tradition and custom assign to the woman of the family a greater responsibility in affective and formative roles in relation to the children, limiting man’s role in the fulfilment of such responsibilities.

40. One of the fundamental limitations on the access of women to work, education, management responsibilities and possibilities of development is the excessive work load imposed on them by the domestic tasks which are wrongly viewed as the exclusive occupation of women, and this has an enormous influence on the millions of women incorporated into production and services, who, on top of their working day, have the added burden of all the domestic chores.

41. In many cases, the early age at which women contract marriage and begin productive life, together with the scarce opportunities offered to them to share the responsibilities arising from the family functions which are socially assigned to them, constitute a series of limitations on broadening their education and acquiring sufficient elements for their development.

42. The right of the two spouses to decide together on the number of children is not always exercised because of inadequate information and the lack of adequate medical resources and attention; moreover, in many cases, there is a conception of the matter which excludes the woman from these fundamental decisions on the basis of the ancient tradition that they should be taken by the man alone.

43. As regards the promotion of the family, there is a need both to improve the situation of women within stable unions and to attend to the needs of those who do not form part of a family, have left the family, or are themselves heads of families.

44. There is therefore a need for a revaluation of the role of the Latin American woman in society and in the family so as to help her to secure the active place due to her and to participate in the transformation of the socio-economic structures which have subjected and marginalized her.

45. Action proposals:

(1) To promote the equality of rights, opportunities and responsibilities of both sexes within the family and to ensure that the man participates in and shares family responsibilities in a more active and conscious manner.

(2) To eliminate the factors relating to the cultural attitudes and elements which hinder the development of women, projecting in positive terms how important it is, for the healthy development of children, individuals, the family and society, that women should assume the functions which truly correspond to them. To create conditions which favour the balanced development of the child as an individual and social being.

(3) To protect through adequate laws and policies the rights of women in the family, whether the latter be the result of matrimony or of common law marriage.

(4) The laws on marriage should: (i) be brought in line with the international norms relating to human and civil rights; (ii) ensure that both spouses have full legal capacity on a basis of absolute equality; and (iii) ensure equal rights for the spouses at the time of entry into and at the dissolution of marriage.

(5) To provide family guidance with a view to strengthening the family as the most important nucleus of society, and recognize its rights as regards its constitution and protection.

(6) To provide information on family legislation, with special emphasis on women heads of families, whose situation is not sufficiently clearly defined, in order to contribute to the strengthening and welfare of the family nucleus and the improvement of the situation of children born out of wedlock.

(7) To respect the right of the individual and the couple to receive information and decide, freely and responsibly, on the number and spacing of their children. Each country, within the framework of its population policies, shall decide on the legal machinery to enable information to be disseminated on this subject.

(8) To include in all school study plans at the appropriate levels, and in non-school educational plans, family education programmes including sexual education and psychosexual development in order to prepare young people of both sexes for responsible marriage and child-bearing and to eliminate cultural patterns and customs which encourage and perpetuate ideas of superiority or inferiority based on sex.

(9) To provide unmarried mothers with full legal and social status in their capacity as parents and grant them the corresponding legal and social protection.

(10) To ensure that children born out of wedlock have the same rights and obligations as children born within wedlock.

(11) To implement a policy for the creation of clinics and hostels which provide the necessary protection for mothers, whatever their marital status, before and after giving birth.

(12) To establish in national legislation the principle of shared parental authority as well as shared legal custody of their children.

(13) To establish forms of conjugal partnership which provide for equal rights and duties between the spouses and the shared management of the partnership.

(14) To promote the use of the mass media, and especially radio and television, to strengthen the unity and stability of the family, guaranteeing that programming complements national plans of study and avoids the praise of violence, criminal conduct and other antisocial attitudes.

(15) To establish in national legislation measures to compel fathers to provide for the children’s maintenance.

5. Social services and other facilities for the incorporation and permanency of women in work

(a) Child care

46. The integral education of children should be an essential goal for all societies. The institutions created for the purpose of the education and care of children make an important contribution to securing this objective and also guarantee the working woman adequate care for her children during the working day.

47. It is also important to create conditions which provide the working woman with care for her children at the other levels of education, especially during the recess periods of teaching activity.

48. Irrespective of the particular characteristics of each country of the region, it is a global reality that the working woman, who is both mother and housewife, has an excessive burden of activities as she is usually responsible not only for the care of the children but also for the home chores and sick family members.

49. There is therefore an urgent need to take decisions to establish installations devoted to the care of the children of working women. This would reduce the rate of women leaving work and increase the number entering employment, as employers would have no justification for refusing female labour on the grounds of instability, as they now tend to do.

50. Action proposals:

(1) That governments, employers and trade unions adopt measures for the establishment of quality child care centres, ensuring the integral education of children and making it easier for women to embark on work and study.

(2) That governments direct the appropriate national bodies to establish school lunch programmes and improve the facilities already in existence.

(3) That governments and other appropriate bodies extend and strengthen scholarship programmes, giving priority in them to the dependent children of mothers who are heads of families, go out to work, or have low incomes.

(4) That governments and other appropriate bodies establish and promote, both in the urban and the rural sectors, programmes which assure children quality care and recreation either on a daily basis or during vacations and holidays, either free of charge or on such terms that children of low-income families may have access.

(b) Social services

51. According to CEPAL, UNESCO, ILO and FAO figures, in the fields of education, housing, health and the cost of living the standard of living has not improved during the period 1959-1975, and has even deteriorated in many cases. Despite the differences between countries, some of which have in recent years taken steps to introduce measures promoting the creation of social services, the situation of the region continues to give cause for concern.

52. Action proposals:

1) That governments encourage the establishment of institutions to carry out research and promote the creation of social services aimed at looking after the welfare of children, such as child care services, public health programmes, infants’ institutions and boarding and semi-boarding schools, and other services such as workers’ canteens and centres for the care of the elderly and the physically and mentally handicapped, all of which facilitate the incorporation of women into work.

2) That governments encourage the development of community-based social services, such as laundry, food and domestic services, allocating part of the national budget to these programmes and promoting self-help programmes in these areas.

3) That governments and other institutions pay particular attention to the needs of elderly women, who generally receive less assistance than elderly men, even though they are in the majority in the over-fifty age group and are more often indigent and in need of special care.

4) To prepare draft laws and provisions to guarantee social security, especially for women, and to ensure the observance of those laws already in existence.

6. Housing

53. The housing deficit in Latin America is calculated at 20 million units. According to CEPAL (1975), the housing deficit is of such magnitude that not only is an immediate solution problematical, if not impossible, but the same is true of the prospects of solution within a reasonable period of time.

54. It is clear that women, as the members of the family who spend most time in the home, are faced with a critical situation which, although it can be alleviated with remedial measures, can only be finally solved through a profound change in the socio-economic structure.

55. The improvement of the availability of housing requires a combination of suitable economic and social policies aimed at the production and renovation of houses for low-income groups. This should be combined with an increase in government services providing water and electricity supply, transportation, sewage services and road systems. Women should be included in the planning of new settlements and housing projects so that decisions on these matters can benefit from their experience as the persons who must use the home as a base of operations.

56. Programmes should facilitate self-help efforts to meet housing needs, especially in the case of women who are heads of households, and women should participate in the organization and execution of such efforts.

57. Action proposals:

(a) To governments

(1) To take the necessary measures to guarantee the right of citizens to housing.

(2) To plan and finance the design of human settlements, both urban and rural, and urban housing complexes, taking into account the needs of the entire population and women’s full participation in this process as the basic users of the houses.

(3) To initiate changes in the agrarian structure and the consequent programme of human settlements as an essential element for improving living conditions, modifying population trends, eradicating marginality and diminishing the exodus towards the towns.

(4) To rationally programme urban and rural settlements, including in their construction installations designed for collective use such as schools, health centres, nurseries, laundries, shops and recreational areas, and to facilitate the supply of resources and services that the homes cannot themselves provide.

(5) To promote self-help housing programmes and facilitate women’s participation in them, especially in the case of those who are heads of households, in order to cover their housing needs.

(6) To eradicate unsanitary neighbourhoods and replace them by new human settlements with adequate urbanistic characteristics.

(b) To governments and other organizations

(1) To pay special attention in housing design to the needs of the family. The use of the following should be encouraged: (i) construction materials which require minimum maintenance, (ii) equipment and utensils which do not represent a danger to users, (iii) all that makes the construction and use of housing more economical and functional, and (iv) the use of local raw materials in house construction and encouragement of the use of those raw materials in housing plans.

(2) To organize orientation and training courses which help the family to make rational use of housing. To encourage the formation of community associations or groups which ensure that the norms of community living are respected and encourage the solidarity and participation of all the families of the community in their own self-improvement and mutual aid.

(3) To promote programmes designed to facilitate home ownership for women, especially those who are heads of households, by giving them access to credit and insurance and granting them loans at low interest rates.

7. Political participation

58. Although in Latin America women currently form about half the electorate, only 3 per cent of them are members of legislative bodies and an even smaller proportion are members of executive bodies.

59. As a result, women do not participate in decision-making, their opinions are neglected and their needs are not taken into account in the planning of development.

60. Efforts must be made so that in practice women have the same rights and opportunities as men to vote and participate in public and political life at the national, local and community level with an understanding of their responsibilities as citizens and the guaranteeing of their rights, so that they may participate in the solution of the problems which affect society and those which affect them directly as women. This means that measures must be taken to promote female participation in political activities and in the organs of power.

61. Action proposals:

(1) To support and promote the participation of women in political activities on an equal footing with men.

(2) To create awareness among women of the importance of their participation in political activity at all levels.

(3) To encourage women to run for public and elective office.

(4) To establish norms aimed at organizing adequate publicity, with the help of the mass media, in order to awaken among men and women a greater interest in the political participation of women, both nationally and internationally, and also greater female participation in electoral processes and in political management in general.

(5) To apply the necessary measures in rural and urban areas to enable women to have opportunities for political, cultural and technical training and access to courses for administrative levels where they will have real possibilities of promotion.

(6) To periodically review the number and occupational status of women employed at different levels of the State apparatus and the private sector so as to determine their participation and seek the corresponding equilibrium through the adoption of measures to remedy existing injustices.

(7) To demand women’s representation on all commissions, boards, and corporations in regional and international organizations, as well as greater participation in the delegations designated by governments for international and regional conferences and forums.

(8) To demand and keep watch over compliance with the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly that provide for a greater participation of women in the Secretariat, in all bodies and agencies of the system and at different levels, but especially the top levels, and to seek their equitable and adequate participation.

(9) To call also upon all the other international and regional organizations to accord women the same opportunities as men in the nomination for and assumption of posts at all levels according to their capacity.

8. Other social questions

62. The prevailing economic and social situation is largely responsible for the continued existence of problems such as prostitution, delinquency, the illegal traffic of people, rape, illicit drug traffic, drug addiction and other forms of crime and antisocial conduct.

63. Prostitution is one of the most serious problems which persists in most of the countries of the continent, essentially because for many women it is the only means of subsistence.

64. Moreover, attention must be paid to the situation of women prisoners, ensuring respect for their human dignity and carrying out efforts for their effective rehabilitation.

65. It is therefore necessary to take these problems into consideration in order to make the efforts required to secure the reincorporation of these women into the societies of their countries.

66. Action proposals:

(a) The struggle against prostitution and the illicit traffic in persons

(1) To take legislative and other steps to eradicate prostitution and the illicit traffic in people.

(2) To take appropriate legal measures to punish those who live off prostitutes, such as pimps, and eliminate the illicit traffic in people.

(3) To create sufficient incentives and the necessary conditions (education, infrastructure, employment opportunities, etc.) for rural women to remain in their milieu, thus avoiding migration from the country to the towns.

(4) To adopt the necessary measures to create rehabilitation and orientation centres for women where they are re-educated and guided as to their true role in society, providing them with adequate facilities in the rehabilitation process and ensuring them employment opportunities.

(5) To promulgate laws which prohibit and punish the prostitution of minors, to revise existing legislation, and to see that it is strictly observed, ensuring that it provides for rehabilitation and re-education through special institutions for minors.

(6) To carry out broad campaigns to make the populace aware of the myriad dangers engendered by prostitution.

(b) Protection of female prisoners

(1) To review penal legislation in order to eliminate all inhuman and discriminatory treatment of women.

(2) To provide pregnant women prisoners with the special attention maternity requires, and implement systems of imprisonment which enable them to give their children the necessary care so that the normal development of their personalities is not affected.

(3) To provide for the proper care and supervision of the dependent children of women prisoners.

(4) To establish systems of imprisonment with separation of the sexes which ensure full respect for the dignity of both women and men, as well as their effective rehabilitation.

(5) To prevent rape or any other sexual abuse which violates the physical and mental integrity and the dignity of women prisoners, and censure corruption and take measures to protect all women and children against all physical abuse in penal establishments and re-education centres.

(6) To ensure respect of the human rights and physical integrity of women deprived of their freedom for any reason, and ensure the protection of all persons against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, in accordance with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

(c) Drug and narcotics addiction

(1) To encourage the establishment of centres for the guidance and social integration of young people, with a view to the prevention of drug addiction among children and youths, and carry out rehabilitation and adaptation programmes for those suffering from such social illnesses.

(2) To review national legislation in order to combat and eliminate the improper use of narcotics and enervating drugs, and impose severe sanctions on persons who induce others, particularly minors, to use any kind of narcotic drugs.

(3) To publicize widely the dangers to physical and mental health involved in the use of any narcotic or enervating drug and psychotropic substances, with a view to warning young people about the risks of drug addiction, with special emphasis on the preparation of suitable programmes in this respect.

(d) Rape and other sexual crimes

(1) To review current legislation and procedures concerning rape and the abuse of women’s dignity with a view to ensuring respect for the physical integrity and dignity of the victim, and to impose severe punishments on those guilty of such crimes. The gravity of the punishment imposed on those convicted of rape should be in keeping with the severity of the crime.

(2) To guarantee privacy in the investigation of rape cases and other sexual crimes and those involving a woman’s morality, in order to protect the victim from humiliation and shame.

(e) The physical abuse of women and children

To promulgate the penal legislation necessary to protect women and children from physical aggression, maltreatment, violent attacks, incest and all other forms of sexual crimes and violence and to assure that the penal measures are strictly complied with.

9. Creation of national interdisciplinary and multisectoral research commissions

67. The shortcomings of most of the studies carried out in the region, resulting sometimes from an inadequate conceptual framework and in other cases from an inadequate interpretation of statistical data or limitations due to the lack of such data, make it an urgent task to co-ordinate and promote research on the status of women.

68. It is therefore essential to obtain and construct statistics on fundamental aspects in order to have a basis for carrying out comparative studies of men and women; to use indicators which permit the periodic evaluation of how the situation of women is progressing or deteriorating in the various spheres of social and economic activity in the different countries; to carry out investigations rapidly to understand the interaction of factors that influence women’s conditions; and to seek the support of universities and research centres in these tasks and all those being carried out in order to provide a true picture of Latin American women today.

69. Interdisciplinary analysis, by bringing together economists, jurists, teachers, sociologists, psychologists and other social scientists in research teams, will also make possible a structural and complete view of the problems of women, thus representing a great improvement on the isolated picture obtained by analysis from the angle of only one of these disciplines.

70. The multisectoral study by interdepartmental groups of the problems which affect men and women from all walks of life will make it possible to take decisions rapidly and effectively on the basis of the situations observed, with a view to solving the problems of women.

71. Action proposals:

(1) To create or strengthen national mechanisms so that countries’ research activities are carried out in an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral manner and in co-ordination with other national and international agencies and institutions.

(2) To study and evaluate the effect of global economic and social changes on the situation

of women.

(3) To study the real effect of legislative measures on the actual participation of women in the political, economic and social life of their countries.

(4) To study the conditions of female employment more fully and thoroughly and to improve the criteria and mechanisms for the collection and presentation of statistics and information in order to gain a better knowledge of the situation, importance and true participation of women in productive activities, bearing in mind that many women who are primarily engaged in domestic chores also carry out complementary activities which represent family income. Furthermore, to study the causes of the situation of women in employment in order to have more background material to overcome the obstacles which arise.

(5) To continue research efforts, including the search for economic indicators to determine the impact of the unremunerated functions carried out by women in agriculture, in the home (in both urban and rural areas), and in voluntary organizations.

(6) To study the effects of the prevalence and spread of indiscriminate consumption at the global level on the national economy, on economic and social development, and on the situation of women.

(7) To study the influence of the discriminatory customs, practices, attitudes and beliefs which hinder the training and education of women and their contribution to the development process, and ways of eliminating their effects.

(8) To promote research activities to identify discriminatory practices in education and training and to formulate the relevant recommendations with a view to ensuring educational equality.

(9) To study fertility, fecundity and mortality rates and health and nutritional problems, especially as they relate to women and children.

(10) To study ways of promoting the utilization and consumption of products of high nutritional value which, through tradition, ignorance or structural distortions of the economy and society, do not form part of the diet even when they exist in various areas of the region.

(11) To study and evaluate, in the countries where family planning programmes are carried out, the impact of these programmes on women in the light of their real needs.

(12) To carry out indepth research on the effects on women’s health of the different contraceptive methods, the indiscriminate use of which is encouraged by the publicity of the companies which produce them and by the fact that they are bought and sold without proper medical control.

(13) To carry out research into the effects of the control exercised by transnational and national corporations over the production, marketing and the promotion of consumer goods in the different countries of the region which fosters an artificial and distorted image of the role women should play in the progress of their nation, as well as having other adverse social effects, and to promulgate laws to curb false claims by manufacturers.

(14) To improve the registers, information and research on the processes which occur within the family, such as births, marriages, loss of parents, divorce and migrations, and to encourage research on social attitudes to child-bearing, divorce, widowhood and marriage so as to assemble useful information to contribute to the better development of the family.

(15) To improve the criteria used for collecting statistics on women heads of families.

(16) To study the needs for specific services for women and children in the various social groups and the need for families to help in the establishment and development of community services for solving problems relating to the care of children and domestic work.

(17) To study the economic and social causes of the practice of prostitution, the forms of exploitation of women who practice this activity and other antisocial conduct, and also the relation between these phenomena and the urbanization processes.

(18) To investigate the effects of the mass media on women and their image and on the social attitudes to that image, and also the ways of utilizing those media to reverse this situation and contribute to the better incorporation of women into the process of economic, political and social development of their countries.

(19) To pinpoint those groups of women who receive less benefits from economic and social development and analyse the relationships between the various indicators, regarding these groups.

(20) To promote historical research designed to bring out the important although neglected contribution of women to national development.

III. THE DISTORTION 0F THE IMAGE OF WOMEN BY THE MASS MEDIA AND BY THE PREDOMINANT CULTURAL PATTERNS IN GENERAL

72. The mass media offer great possibilities in their role of information, education, entertainment and advertising: (a) as a vehicle of social change; (b) for the dissemination of information in the fields of education and training; (c) to eliminate prejudices and stereotypes; and (d) to accelerate acceptance of the increasingly broad responsibilities of women and promote their integration into development on an equal footing with men.

73 In many cases however, the mass communication media do not comply with these objectives because in general they tend to present and reinforce a stereotyped, degrading and immoral image of women, whom they treat as sexual objects and as agents to promote indiscriminate consumption, particularly when seeking to market various types of articles.

74. The mass media should be taken to mean not only radio, television, cinema, the press, advertising, etc., but also the theatre, literature, story-telling and puppet shows and other forms of communication which in many countries are essential to reach the rural areas.

75. The mass media tend to have a harmful effect on attitudes and values relating to the role of women in society and frequently create obstacles to positive changes in patterns of behaviour by perpetuating the stereotypes and myths about women.

76. Despite the technological and scientific advances made in the area of communications, most of the countries of the region continue to be in a situation of dependence in relation to the monopolies owning the communications equipment and services.

77. Similar dependence is to be observed in the sphere of international information, since it is the transnational news agencies which set the trends in the information and publicity to which the Latin American public has access.

78. To a very considerable extent, the communications media, in general basically motivated by the economic interests of the transnational enterprises, have perpetuated the enslavement of women by showing them a reality which is alien to them and, by disguising their real identity, have contributed to keeping them restricted to the confines of the home, prevented the development of their critical consciousness and propagated the concept of their role as useful merchandise for consumption, reaching the extreme of using the female body as an element to encourage pornography as an object of consumption.

79. Illustrated magazines, films, radio and television programmes, beauty contests etc., attempt to impose patterns whereby beauty is viewed as the weapon of the female sex, minimizing the virtues and qualities of women and underestimating their abilities and values which could be directed more effectively towards the collective effort for economic and social development.

80. It is therefore essential to recommend measures to prevent the transmission of a distorted image of women, to the detriment of their status as human beings with responsibilities and rights in society.

81. Action proposals:

(a) To governments

(1) To promote the utilization of the mass media to disseminate educational programmes in spheres of national interest such as health, nutrition, population, employment, training, legal information specifically concerning women and the family, and other questions of social importance which would contribute to ensuring that equality between men and women is not only a recognized legal principle but also a social reality.

(2) To promote the production of films, radio and television programmes and other materials which encourage women to play a more dynamic role in society and promote their socio-cultural development and political consciousness and to create educational information centres or banks which would facilitate the attainment of these objectives.

(3) To adopt measures to prohibit the degrading exploitation of women through the mass media as sex symbols and instruments of economic interests.

(4) To encourage governments to oppose the promotion of beauty contests such as they exist today, since they perpetuate the image of women as a symbol of sexual gratification and commercial exploitation.

(5) To take measures to have those responsible for the mass media project a dignified and positive image of women, eliminating the commercialized and stereotyped images of them (particularly pornographic publications), their utilization in showing sexual crimes and violence, and also all propaganda which tends to impede the changes needed to revalue the role of women. This will contribute to changes of attitudes and mentalities in both men and women which should promote women’s equality, integration and full participation in society.

(6) To guide women not to acquire products which are harmful to health and human dignity and detrimental to the family budget, through information campaigns on family responsibility and nutrition, awareness of the risk involved in self-medication, alcoholism, and food habits which are detrimental to the health of mother and child.

(7) To prevent the insinuation of preconceived roles for girls and boys through the influence of books, comics and television programmes and instead to encourage the publication of comics and the production of children’s television programmes which support national educational programmes.

(8) To restrict the diffusion of radio and television programmes, films, publications, messages and articles which encourage cultural archetypes contrary to the social reality or the cultural values of each people.

(9) To organize publicity campaigns in support of community and preventive medicine.

(10) To encourage and broaden the access of women to scholarship systems in communications and telecommunications research centres.

(b) To governments and the mass media

(1) To utilize the mass media to bring about the elimination of sexual stereotypes in education and information activities and the projection of a positive image of women and men.

(2) To encourage the effective utilization of the mass media to secure a change of mentality with respect to women.

(c) To the mass media

(1) To promote greater participation by women in the activities carried out by newspapers, magazines and radio and television programmes and in the production of films and documentaries, as well as adequate representation in administrative and directive posts.

(2) To encourage the mass media to consider their policies and practices in respect to hiring, training and promotion in order to ensure that there is no discrimination against women and that they have equal promotion opportunities in all categories of professional, technical and decision-making posts in the mass media.

(3) To prevent the utilization of women as models in advertisements and other publicity activities which are detrimental to the norms and values of the family.

(d) To governments, the mass media and other institutions

(1) To utilize the mass media and the activities of social organizations to contribute to the education of the family and especially the housewife and also to keep her fully informed of employment and educational opportunities open to her and ways of taking an active part in the life of society.

(2) To encourage the training and participation of women as communications and telecommunications experts in national and international bodies.

(3) To include in the courses on journalism and communications sciences material which gives rise to discussion about the distorting effect of the mass media on the values and conduct of women in our society.

IV. ACTION AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL

1. Governments

82. In order to carry into practice the preceding action proposals, Governments should commit themselves to according importance and priority to measures to improve the situation of women both as a means of achieving the objectives of social progress and development and as an end in itself.

83. The solidarity of all the women in the world, and particularly those within the region, is likewise indispensable in order to put an end to the inequality and discrimination of which they are the victims in countries of the area.

84. Non-governmental, national and international organizations and their subsidiary bodies should work jointly and individually, within their own spheres of interest, to put the proposed measures into practice.

85. Women should be equitably represented in the delegations sent by governments to the different conferences, international committees and other events, so that they may participate fully in the formulation of policies at the national and international levels.

86. Action proposals:

(1) To support all action aimed at producing the structural changes necessary for the full incorporation of women into economic, political and social life.

(2) To support the efforts and struggle of the women of the region to defend full national sovereignty.

(3) To take the necessary measures for the implementation of resolutions 28 and 29 of the Mexico Conference, which call for the participation of women in the strengthening of international peace and security, the process of détente, peaceful coexistence and international co-operation, and in the struggle against colonialism, racism, racial discrimination and foreign domination.

(4) To support the efforts of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations whose goal is the strengthening of international peace and security, the development of friendly relations among nations and the fostering of active co-operation among States, by encouraging women, in every possible way, to participate actively in the efforts of such organizations.

(5) To support actions aimed at effectively implementing the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States with a view to the radical transformation of the prevailing unjust international economic order.

(6) To encourage technical co-operation and training and advisory services, including co-ordination with the national and regional activities of the bodies of the United Nations system.

(7) To seek the adoption of conventions and the observance of official international declarations and to make arrangements for the submission of periodic reports and other procedures for the evaluation of the observance of those instruments and whatever others are adopted.

(8) To encourage, by means of international meetings and seminars, the regional and international exchange of information.

(9) To express the desirability that the parties concerned should ratify without delay the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty and the Treaty on the Permanent Neutrality and Functioning of the Panama Canal signed in Washington by the Heads of State of Panama and the United States on 7 September 1977, since these treaties are based on recognition of the sovereignty of the Republic of Panama over the entire national territory, which will help to promote the real incorporation of women into the process of development. These treaties, as noted in the Washington Declaration signed on the same date by the Heads of State and representatives of the Republics of the Americas, represent a milestone in the strengthening of the relations between the nations of the Western Hemisphere and guarantee to all countries the continued accessibility and neutrality of the Panama Canal.

2. CEPAL

87. In addition to the measures adopted by governments to transform the situation faced by Latin American women and to promote the prompt and full integration of women in the development process on the basis of equality with men, it is necessary for CEPAL to assume an even greater role in formulating policies, developing machinery and instruments, and co-ordinating and implementing measures that permit women to participate equally with men in the political, economic and social life of the respective countries of the region as a whole.

88. Action proposals:

(1) To convene within the framework of CEPAL, on a permanent and regular basis and at intervals of no more than three years, a United Nations Standing Regional Conference on the Integration of Women in the Development of Latin America. This conference will have the following functions:

(i) To determine regional and sub-regional needs for technical assistance and give support to all the United Nations bodies operating in the region in order that they can meet such needs;

(ii) To put forward recommendations to governments and to CEPAL itself based on studies carried out by the secretariat on the most feasible way of implementing the agreements adopted by the United Nations regional conferences;

(iii) To review and appraise periodically the activities of CEPAL and other United Nations agencies in compliance with the Programme for the Decade of Women, and in particular to draw up recommendations for the regional conferences on women to he held before the World Conference scheduled for 1980;

(iv) To periodically evaluate the accomplishment of the Regional Plan of Action;

(v) To provide a forum for the exchange of information which will facilitate the mutual co-ordination and support of the programmes for the integration of women into economic and social development at various levels and permit the countries in the region to share the corresponding experience.

(2) The Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference will continue their functions until new ones are appointed and will be the link between governments and the secretariat of CEPAL in the field of women’s integration in development.

(3) The secretariat of CEPAL will act as the Permanent Secretariat of this Regional Conference and will regularly consult with its Presiding Officers.

(4) In carrying out this function the secretariat of CEPAL will consult with the United Nations specialized agencies which have programmes on women’s integration in development. For this purpose, CEPAL will regularly convene inter-agency meetings on the implementation of the programmes and mandates of the Conference.

(5) The secretariat of CEPAL will create within CEPAL (including ILPES and CELADE and in collaboration with the United Nations Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs) a specialized interdisciplinary unit on women’s integration in development with the following objectives:

(i) To periodically evaluate the legal, economic, political, social and cultural status of women both of rural and urban areas in the different countries of the area, in accordance with the objectives and priorities fixed in this Regional Plan of Action. This must be done through an interdisciplinary and multisectoral approach that will permit evaluation of the current situation and trends;

(ii) To undertake activities aimed at disseminating the action stemming from this Regional Plan of Action on the basis of the studies undertaken;

(iii) To advise those governments that request it on the measures to be taken to fulfil the decisions adopted by the United Nations in relation to the integration of women in development;

(iv) To ensure that all CEPAL’s programmes reflect a concern for women’s needs;

(v) To ensure that the recommendations of the United Nations regional conferences on questions concerning women are implemented;

(vi) To prepare, in consultation with the governments, projects for national, sub-regional or regional training and development programmes for women in those areas mentioned in preceding chapters of this Regional Plan of Action;

(vii) To collaborate in regional meetings held by the United Nations specialized agencies on topics connected with economic and social development and further the actions stemming from this Regional Plan of Action;

(viii) To provide aid to those governments that request it, in co-ordination with governmental and intergovernmental organizations, with a view to identifying the measures necessary for drawing up policies, strategies and programmes for strengthening women’s contribution to economic and social development, and to assist in formulating requests for technical and financial aid for such programmes;

(ix) To draw up a general review and appraisal plan for the region. This must be done immediately in order to be able to have a general plan that can be used for the 1979 biennial review.

(6) In executing this Regional Plan of Action, within its field of competence, the CEPAL secretariat will establish forms of co-ordination and co-operation with United Nations bodies and all those regional and interregional, intergovernmental, public and private institutions that may be working on this subject.

(7) CEPAL’s sub-regional offices will act as liaison offices between the governments of the respective sub-regions and the secretariat’s specialized unit on women’s problems, as regards programmes of technical assistance and collaboration with the national bodies in charge of women’s integration in development;

(8) In order to implement the goals of this Plan, the Conference:

(i) Requests the Secretary-General of the United Nations to assign additional resources to the CEPAL secretariat from the regular budget to strengthen its regular activities concerning women and to facilitate the establishment within the CEPAL secretariat of a specialized unit for the integration of women in development;

(ii) Requests the Voluntary Fund for the Decade of Women to give the greatest possible support to CEPAL’s activities, programmes and specific projects deriving from the priorities laid down in this Regional Plan of Action in the field of the integration of women in development and consistent with the criteria established by the United Nations for disbursements from the Fund;

(iii) Requests the Administrator of UNDP to give the greatest possible co-operation -on the national and regional level- to the provisions of the present Regional Plan of Action, supporting the specific activities, programmes and projects of the CEPAL secretariat aimed at the achievement of its goals;

(iv) Requests the Executive Secretary of CEPAL to explore and negotiate with bodies for international co-operation, on a bilateral or multilateral basis, financial support for specific programmes connected with the fulfilment of the goals of the present Regional Plan of Action.

[1] Taken from the report of the First Regional Conference on the Integration of Women in the Economic and Social Development of Latin America (E/CEPAL/1042/Rev.1).

REGIONAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION MAR DEL PLATA (1994)

Sixth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Mar del Plata, 1994)

RESOLUTION ON THE REGIONAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION FOR THE WOMEN OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, 1995-2001[1]

The Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean,

Endorsing the content of the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development (Havana, 1977); the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (Nairobi, 1985); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; and the resolutions on women adopted since 1985 by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly,

Taking into account resolution No. 1 on a new regional plan of action, adopted at the fifth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Curaçao, 1991),[2]

Also taking into account the recommendations formulated at the meetings of the Presiding Officers elected at the fifth session of the Regional Conference,

Considering the new proposals of ECLAC contained in the resolutions adopted by its member countries for the 1990s, which express the need to take an integrated approach to development in order to achieve the objectives of changing production patterns with social equity, including gender equity,

On the understanding that the new Regional Programme of Action does not replace any of the instruments already in force, but rather seeks to complement them by reflecting the changes observed in the region and their impact on women and by setting forth a basic package of priority activities for Latin America and the Caribbean that can be carried out in the next five years,

Recommends the adoption of the new Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001.[3]

A. BACKGROUND

This document was elaborated on the basis of resolution No.1 of the fifth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Curaçao, 1991) (ECLAC, 1991), the guidelines put forward by the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference (ECLAC, 1992a, 1992b, 1993a, 1993b, 1994a), the inputs of the Meetings of Specialized Agencies and Other Bodies of the United Nations System (ECLAC, 1992c, 1993c, 1993d), the recommendations of the meeting of experts, the comments of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference and the special contributions of the International Conference on Central American Refugees (CIREFCA), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

This Programme of Action is not intended to replace the instruments already in force,[4] but rather to complement them by reflecting the changes observed in the region and their impact on women and by setting forth a basic package of priority activities for Latin America and the Caribbean that can be carried out in the next five years.

The backdrop for this Programme in the 1990s is one of economic progress in many countries of the region, accompanied by the persistence and intensification of serious problems of poverty and extreme poverty, aggravated by the debt crisis, structural adjustment programmes and social backwardness. For example, since the crisis of the 1980s, income distribution has been more inequitable in Latin America and the Caribbean than anywhere else in the world (ECLAC, 1993f) and the region has suffered a decline in economic and social investment which is affecting the quality of education, health and housing and of the basic services provided to large segments of the population (ECLAC, 1993f, 1990 and 1994b).

The persistence of poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to the enormous debt burden in many of its countries and territories, which has propelled them into formally or informally adopting structural adjustment policies with stringent conditionalities. This has impacted negatively on the region’s capacity to invest adequately in the human development and institutional resources needed to confront the spread of poverty. For women, the combined effect of the debt burden and adjustment measures has also been to increase their productive and reproductive work, with deep implications for their economic, physical and social well-being.[5]

This situation has arisen simultaneously with the globalization of the world economy, the internationalization of communications and impressive technological advances. Despite the significant progress made in other areas, the pre-eminence of the market as the primary mechanism of resource allocation has been unable to correct deep-rooted economic, political, cultural and social inequalities.

In this context of globalization, interdependence and swift technological change, social issues can no longer be separated from economic growth and scientific and technological development, nor can they any longer be considered secondary concerns. Experience shows that accelerated economic growth does not necessarily lead to higher levels of well-being for the entire population, and that it can often accentuate social inequality and marginalization. It is therefore essential to devise new answers based on an integrated approach that addresses all aspects of development simultaneously: growth, equity, environmental sustainability, security, solidarity, participation, peace and respect for human rights.

In the political sphere, the 1990s have witnessed a renewed emphasis on democratic principles, the concept of citizenship and individual rights, accompanied by the emergence of new social actors, efforts at consensus-building and a growing questioning of political leaders.

Studies on the situation of women have confirmed that the structural inequality of society persists, as manifested by the lack of opportunities and of access to employment, basic services, power and decision-making at all hierarchical levels, and by the persistence of educational content which reinforces stereotyped sexual roles in textbooks and curricula —making it more difficult to exercise reproductive rights— and the weakness of mechanisms for promoting the advancement of women. This structural inequality is compounded by a deterioration of living conditions for the majority of women, of all ages and ethnic groups; the increase in migration; and the growth of the informal sector of the economy, in which more and more women are forced to work because of the crisis of the 1980s, a situation which is becoming worse in some of the subregions, especially in rural areas.

In some subregions, migration of women has increased along with the longer-standing migration of men in search of employment. Rural stagnation, family dislocation and homeless children are some of the consequences of the uprooting of family members. Furthermore, the global recession has made it very difficult for new migrants to sustain a livelihood.

The above has prompted a calling into question as to whether greater participation of women in public life is due to structural changes. Such changes should lead to a real opening-up of new opportunities and thus to effective equality of women and men in society, and ensure just conditions for the promotion and participation of women, without discrimination on grounds of sex, race or ethnic group, and the appropriate social and economic changes.

In recent years, the new concept of gender equity has been developed as a means of approaching this problem; though not yet an object of consensus, it is a dynamic idea that is still evolving and that represents a basic contribution to the analysis of women’s position in society. The gender inequalities in the economic, political, social and cultural spheres have arisen from the biological differences between the sexes in terms of reproduction.

Actions taken to improve the situation of women must scrupulously reflect the principle that biological differences should not lead to social inequalities.

The new proposals which the member countries of ECLAC are adopting for the 1990s assert the need for an integrated approach to development (ECLAC, 1990) that reconciles the differences between economic and social policies and addresses the various facets of social equity in such a way as to promote the emergence of democratic, productive societies in the region. This process requires complementarity between economic and social policies, educational reform, the strengthening of health services, investment in human resources, assurance of environmental sustainability, modernization of institutions and democratic consensus-building on equitable growth. In pursuing these objectives, countries should take the gender dimension into account and recognize the right of women to the full exercise of citizenship.

These proposals, in order to be effectively implemented, require a conceptualization of development centered on human beings and their needs, which cannot be dealt with through the logic of the market.

The building of full citizenship for women —i.e., development of the capacity for self-determination, the expression and representation of interests and demands, and the full exercise of individual and collective rights— is a still unfinished task in Latin America and the Caribbean, notwithstanding the progress which some countries have made in this area. Only if women are actively incorporated into public life can their societies benefit from the important contribution that women can make, not only to meet their own economic, social and cultural needs but also to contribute as full-fledged citizens. This incorporation should be carried out on the basis of forms of political representation that reflect a concept of development which does not ignore private life and considers gender differences.

The Programme of Action takes into account not only the regional context, but also the more specific framework of recent and forthcoming regional forums, so as to incorporate the topic into a wider agenda. Particular consideration has been given to the Latin American and Caribbean Regional Plan of Action on Population and Development, the results of the International Conference on Population and Development, of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, of the World Conference on Human Rights and of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People, the guidelines formulated on family issues and the recent debate that led to the adoption of the Guidelines for a Latin American and Caribbean Consensus on the World Summit for Social Development. The Programme of Action is based on the advances made in the States of the region with regard to equality of opportunity.

In accordance with this background, the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, revolves around eight priority areas: gender equity; economic and social development with a gender perspective: women’s equitable share in the decisions, responsibilities and benefits of development; elimination of poverty; women’s equitable participation in decision-making and in the exercise of power in public and private life; human rights, peace and violence; shared family responsibilities; recognition of cultural plurality in the region; and international support and cooperation.

The Regional Programme of Action puts forward a minimum set of measures on which consensus has been reached and which form a systemic whole; i.e., the strategies complement each other, and if they are to yield the expected results their implementation must be coordinated. The Programme is aimed at improving the status of all women in the region, regardless of their age, particularly rural women and those belonging to different population groups, such as indigenous, black, disabled and uprooted women.

B. RATIONALE OF THE PROGRAMME

In 1975, the countries represented at the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held at Mexico City, adopted the first international instrument for systematically promoting women’s integration into development: the World Plan of Action.

In view of the differences between the various regions, the States Members of the United Nations decided on that occasion that the above-mentioned instrument should be complemented with regional guidelines. In 1977, the member countries of ECLAC formulated and adopted at Havana the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development. They also decided to establish a permanent intergovernmental forum to address that issue, the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, which would meet every three years to evaluate the progress made in implementing the Regional Plan of Action and to offer guidelines for future action.

Two more world conferences on women were held: one at Copenhagen in 1980, at which the participants elaborated the Programme of Action for the Second Half of the United Nations Decade for Women, and one at Nairobi in 1985, at which the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women were adopted. The Strategies, which were based on the 1975 Plan and the 1980 Programme, became the primary world-wide instrument in this field, further enriching the 1977 Plan of Action for Latin America and the Caribbean, the regional counterpart of the Strategies.

In 1991, the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean recommended, at its fifth session (Curaçao ), that a regional programme of action for 1995-2001 should be elaborated to complement the aforementioned instruments, taking into account the changes observed in the region during the 1980s and the need for supplementary action to accelerate the processes under way.

In General Assembly resolution 45/129, Economic and Social Council resolution 1990/12 and Commission on the Status of Women resolution 36/8A, the States Members of the United Nations recommended that the Fourth World Conference on Women should be held at Beijing in 1995 and that a Platform for Action should be elaborated for 1995-2001. This Regional Programme of Action for 1995-2001 therefore constitutes both an output of the sixth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Mar del Plata, 1994) and an input to the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), and reflects the priorities of the Latin American and Caribbean member countries for the next five years.

C. CORE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROGRAMME

To expedite the achievement of gender equity and the complete integration of women into the development process, together with the full exercise of citizenship in the framework of sustainable development with social justice and democracy.

D. STRATEGIC AREAS

Area I: Gender equity

Area II: Economic and social development with a gender perspective: women’s equitable share in the decisions, responsibilities and benefits of development

Area III: Elimination of poverty among women

Area IV: Women’s equitable participation in decision-making and in the exercise of power in public and private life

Area V: Human rights, peace and violence

Area VI: Shared family responsibilities

Area VII: Recognition of cultural plurality in the region

Area VIII: International support and cooperation

AREA I: GENDER EQUITY

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Cultural, political, legal and economic contexts, as well as social, economic and educational practices that perpetuate inequality between women and men.

b) Insufficient awareness among women and men of gender discrimination and of the need to stop it.

b’) Difficulties encountered by women and their organizations in joining forces on the basis of their needs and proposals.

c) Insufficient political will to ensure the full participation of women in the economic and social development process.

d) Lack of macroeconomic policies which take gender equity into account and are based on the effective participation of women and men in society.

e) Limited capacity of public and private institutions to develop agendas that include gender concerns.

f) Insufficient institutional strength of public entities responsible for women’s issues.

g) Precarious linkages among Governments, non-governmental women’s organizations and international agencies with respect to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of gender policies.

h) Insufficient linkage between women’s organizations and the institutions of society and the State.

i) The failure to recognize and value the unremunerated work which women carry out in agriculture, food production, child-rearing and household activities, and the failure to adequately support this work.

j) Insufficient research on women’s situation and participation in all areas throughout their lives, as well as insufficient data disaggregated by sex.

k) Limited exchange of information, communication and collaboration with respect to women’s issues among Governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.

l) Scarcity of statistics disaggregated by sex.

Progress

a) Growing emphasis on citizenship and individual rights and greater respect for diversity in democratic societies, factors which are enabling women to participate as social agents.

b) Women’s heightened awareness of their rights, and strengthening of their organizations and bargaining power.

c) An increase in the number of academic and research centres and universities that study and research gender relations.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE I

Incorporating the gender perspective into development planning at the highest levels and into social and economic policies and decisions to correct the inequality of relations between women and men caused by the persistence of discriminatory cultural contexts and economic and social practices.

Strategic objective I

To consider the specific needs of women and their equitable participation in the design, formulation, implementation and integrated evaluation of economic and social policies from a gender perspective, in the following areas:

- National, regional and international development agencies;

- Policies, programmes, plans and projects, in accordance with an integrated approach to development;

- Non-governmental organizations, the business sector and civil society.

Strategic action I.a Ensuring that those responsible for formulating and implementing plans and policies are familiar with the gender perspective and trained in its application, so that women and men are given equal opportunities for access to and participation in the countries’ development processes and in the equitable distribution of benefits.

Strategic action I.b Conducting comparative analyses of women’s and men’s needs, capacities and participation in development processes to detect and correct gender inequities in the design of public policies; and considering, in the processes of analysis and evaluation, the impact of economic and social measures on women and men, using quantitative and qualitative indicators, as well as case studies at the local, national and regional levels.

Strategic action I.c Conducting broad-based, permanent awareness campaigns on the gender perspective, making use of the local and international media and public education programmes run by Governments and the private sector, to make society sensitive to the need for more balanced, egalitarian participation by women and men in development processes.

Strategic action I.d Establishing permanent training mechanisms and ensuring that all social groups have access to them, and introducing the gender perspective in all stages of training.

Strategic action I.e Instituting action programmes to achieve more balanced and egalitarian participation by women and men in the development process, and ensuring that these programmes have the continuity they need in order to make a real cultural impact.

AREA II: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT WITH A GENDER PERSPECTIVE: WOMEN’S EQUITABLE SHARE IN THE DECISIONS, RESPONSIBILITIES AND BENEFITS OF DEVELOPMENT

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Political, administrative and financial deficiencies of public initiatives to guarantee women’s full exercise of citizenship.

b) Persistence of a welfare-oriented approach that limits structural reforms to promote gender equity.

c) Lack of gender perspective in development planning.

d) Insufficient establishment of legal instruments and insufficient implementation of those already established, especially the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and insufficient political will among States to ensure their implementation.

e) Lack of legal instruments ensuring equality of rights, and insufficient implementation of existing legal instruments which perpetuates the gap between de facto and de jure equality.

f) Persistence of ethnic and cultural discrimination, which worsens the situation of the region’s indigenous and black women, and continuation of a system based on an official language whose use discriminates against a large percentage of the population and limits women’s opportunities to participate in the development of society.

g) Insufficient participation of women in the debt and structural adjustment negotiations, which ultimately has a negative effect on their lives, those of their families and their society.

h) Lack of equity in access to jobs, productive employment, training, credit and business activities, housing and land, and in wages, working conditions and social security systems, a situation which has been worsened, in the past decade, by changes in labour and social security legislation resulting from adjustment policies.

i) Failure of public policies to recognize the economic contributions made by urban and rural women through non-wage-earning productive activities.

j) Growth of unemployment and underemployment, especially among women, which tends to depress wages and weaken trade unions.

k) Rural women’s limited access to the means of production.

l) Insufficient statistical data showing the real proportion of women in the economically active population (EAP).

m) Insufficient opportunities for large sectors of the female population to enter and stay in the education system; maintenance of school curricula and teaching practices that limit women’s opportunities to participate in society and reinforce the lack of equity between women and men, as well as women’s subordination, instead of promoting their confidence and self-esteem.

n) Insufficiency of education reforms at all levels, in terms of leading to real changes in educational plans and programmes, teacher training and the updating of curricula in university and non-university higher education.

o) Insufficient coverage of health care services for women, failure to adapt these services to women’s needs and cultural orientation, and lack of information programmes to alert women to health risks, a situation aggravated by the growing privatization of such services.

p) Lack of clear proposals on sustainable development that provide for the equitable sharing of its benefits between women and men, and lack of opportunities for women to participate in identifying problems and formulating and implementing policies and programmes related to environmental concerns, which would make their contributions to the solution of those problems more efficient and effective.

q) Lack of the necessary political will to carry out specific actions to improve resources management so as to achieve sustainable development.

r) Characterization of women solely as domestic administrators of the environmental crisis.

Progress

a) Inclusion of sectoral actions directed towards women in development plans and strategies; establishment of government offices for women in nearly all countries; and legal recognition of women’s citizenship and individual rights.

b) Improvement of women’s legal status; ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women; as well as the ratification of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women; and launching of a process of amending national legislation in keeping with such instruments.

c) The larger role which women’s organizations in civil society are playing in formulating policies from the gender perspective.

d) Growth of the proportion of women in the economically active population.

e) Greater number of women participating at all levels of education and continuing their education; and significant increases in the proportion of women professionals.

f) Improvement of teacher training to promote women’s integration into formal and non-formal education.

g) Growing recognition of the importance of comprehensive health care and greater concern with respect to the health conditions to which women are exposed in the workplace.

h) Increased recognition of the importance of environmental protection, and of the adoption of Agenda 21 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE II

Ensuring that the decisions, responsibilities and benefits of development are distributed equitably between women and men.

Strategic objective II.1

To create or strengthen the political, administrative, legislative and financial capacity of government institutions that formulate, coordinate and evaluate public policies aimed at improving the status of women and promoting gender equity, and to ensure that such entities become a permanent part of the highest level of the State apparatus.

Strategic action II.1.a Setting up, in countries where they do not exist, or consolidating government institutions for women; ensuring their definitive incorporation into the highest level of the State structure, and seeing that they are provided with the necessary financial, technical and material resources on an ongoing basis.

Strategic action II.1.b Providing those responsible for the design, implementation and coordination of public policies with systematic training in the elaboration and analysis of gender variables and indicators, to ensure that the gender perspective is applied to the processes of diagnosis, monitoring, systematization and evaluation and to uphold high standards of technical preparation.

Strategic action II.1.c Promoting the participation of government institutions for women in the design, discussion, formulation and amendment of draft laws, to ensure that women’s interests and needs are taken into account.

Strategic action II.1.d Promoting the establishment of a system for monitoring and evaluating compliance with agreements, conventions, programmes and policies to benefit women, with the participation of non-governmental organizations and women’s movements.

Strategic objective II.2

To incorporate into national legislation principles and norms established at the international level so as to ensure the equitable participation of women in all aspects of society and to set up the necessary mechanisms, institutions and services for their effective implementation.

Strategic action II.2.a Making national legislation consistent with international and regional norms that promote the advancement of women, especially in the areas of education, employment, health, human rights, political participation and the eradication of violence, and adopting and implementing policies, programmes and measures to guarantee the effective implementation of legal norms designed to improve the situation of women; proposing the legal provisions needed to achieve full gender equity, and promoting their adoption; and supplementing and amending secondary legislation, where necessary, to make it consistent with the legal provisions adopted at the constitutional level.

Strategic action II.2.b Conducting, through the mass media, systematic campaigns, educational programmes and legal aid seminars to disseminate detailed information on women’s rights and on judicial and administrative procedures for the effective exercise thereof, as well as on the work of government and non-governmental organizations that support women, to increase women’s legal literacy, and ensuring that these campaigns and programmes primarily target vulnerable groups of women that suffer from discrimination.

Strategic action II.2.c Raising the awareness of legislators and public officials of the need to carry out legal reforms to achieve gender equity.

Strategic action II.2.d Preparing and promoting the adoption of an optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women that provides, among other mechanisms, for the right of individuals to submit petitions, as recommended in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights.

Strategic action II.2.e Urging the States of the region to sign, ratify and implement, before the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, adopted by the Organization of American States.[6]

Strategic objective II.3

To ensure that women have equitable access to productive work, to employment, to productive resources and to new technologies, within the framework of policies to improve their social and economic situation, and to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment with respect to working conditions and pay, as well as possibilities for job-related improvement and development and for women’s access to executive positions.

Strategic action II.3.a Establishing follow-up and evaluation procedures to monitor compliance with the agreements adopted by the countries of the region to ensure that all women have access to employment on the same terms as men, guaranteeing them career advancement opportunities, job stability and equal pay for work of equal value.

Strategic action II.3.b Promoting legislation that guarantees equal employment opportunities for women and men and includes measures against gender discrimination.

Strategic action II.3.c Promoting the design and implementation of human resources training policies geared towards achieving social and gender equity by radically redirecting the gaining and vocational education offered to all women, especially young women, towards non-traditional fields, followed up with activities in the areas of guidance, formal education and industry and the use of advanced technologies, in order to meet the requirements of labour markets and demands for human resources in the public and private sectors, and especially within enterprises.

Strategic action II.3.d Designing strategies that take women’s socio-economic and cultural differences into account, and creating the necessary policy tools to ensure that women have the same access as men to all productive resources (land, capital and labour) and to technological resources and special credit lines

Strategic action II.3.e Improving women’s working conditions by eliminating wage discrimination, ensuring full respect for women’s labour rights and guaranteeing their access to social security systems, and enacting legislation geared towards setting up support services for working women and men, such as child care and other socio-domestic services, and establishing mechanisms for the effective implementation of such provisions

Strategic action II.3.f Promoting, through affirmative action, women’s egalitarian participation in the decision-making processes of workers’ organizations, taking diversity into account and encouraging the application of the gender approach in those organizations; carrying out business and trade union coordination activities to improve women’s integration in the labour market and enhance their capacity to negotiate with the public sector, workers’ organizations and private employers.

Strategic action II.3.g Eliminating employers’ discriminatory practices with respect to women, such as requiring proof of use of contraceptives and reporting of pregnancy.

Strategic action II.3.h Promoting women’s access to the highest levels of administration and management in public and private industry, commerce and services.

Strategic action II.3.i Increasing women’s opportunities for education and training in administration, management and the other skills they need in order to participate actively at all levels of the public and private sectors.

Strategic action II.3.j Improving the working conditions of women who perform unwaged labour and women who work in the informal sector; compiling information on the value of their work to ensure that commensurable benefits accrue to them under social security and retirement systems.

Strategic action II.3.k Creating mechanisms for quantifying and determining the value of the economic contribution of women’s unwaged work in the home and in agriculture, food production, reproduction and community work; designing gender indicators to recognize the value of these contributions to GDP; and defining as workers, in the System of National Accounts, persons who perform unwaged labour.[7]

Strategic action II.3.l Ensuring that women’s demands are taken into account in the process of negotiating integration agreements in the region, and systematizing information on those demands.

Strategic action II.3.m Promoting research that can be used as a basis for comparative analysis of the employment and work situation of women and men in urban and rural areas, disaggregating the data collected by sex, class, ethnic origin and region; evaluating the impact of international trade liberalization on employment and migration.

Strategic action II.3.n Conducting research, creating economic opportunities and designing technologies which address the specific needs of women and help them to meet some of the challenges posed by their multiple productive and reproductive roles.[8]

Strategic action II.3.o Ensuring that statistical data from any source, especially censuses, national surveys and permanent statistical systems, is disaggregated by sex and ethnic origin, with particular attention to statistics on labour, wages and the production system in general, in both the public and private sectors; revising techniques and methodologies for compiling data; and guaranteeing civil society’s access to statistics and their dissemination at the national level.

Strategic action II.3.p Promoting and strengthening alternative financing systems and models, including the involvement of non-governmental organizations in this process.

Strategic objective II.4

To ensure that the population in general, and especially girls and women, have access to formal and informal education that prepares them for the full exercise of their rights and of full citizenship, equitable participation in decision-making and the egalitarian sharing of family and household responsibilities, and to ensure that girls remain in the educational system.

Strategic action II.4.a Strengthening the full exercise of citizenship by promoting reforms in formal and non-formal education, reorienting research and adapting school curricula.

Strategic action II.4.b Promoting increases in budgetary allocations for education, recognizing them as a form of productive public investment.

Strategic action II.4.c Ensuring that the countries of the region comply with the agreements adopted on promoting the education of women and girls and preventing discrimination for reasons of gender, race or ethnic group, guaranteeing respect for cultural identities, and measuring this compliance through follow-up and evaluation bodies specializing in the gender perspective.

Strategic action II.4.d Eliminating sexism and other forms of discrimination from educational processes and the messages conveyed by education and the mass media, to promote more equitable relations between women and men and to eliminate the stereotypes that are reproduced and inculcated through those channels.

Strategic action II.4.e Conducting research and taking actions to eradicate female illiteracy, reduce women’s drop-out and repetition rates and encourage women, especially rural and indigenous women, to remain in the educational system.

Strategic action II.4.f Reducing disparities in access to tertiary education, where they exist, and ensuring that training opportunities are available to women so that they can enter and stay in universities and that women have equitable access to career development scholarships and fellowships abroad and at home.

Strategic action II.4.g Promoting women’s access to non-traditional scientific and technical careers —following the conduct of feasibility studies— by disseminating, as widely as possible, information on all available options for professional training and on the demands and conditions of the job market, adapting school curricula and instituting affirmative-action programmes for that purpose.

Strategic action II.4.h Establishing and promoting communication policies and strategies to combat the dissemination of stereotyped images of women and men in the media, and encouraging messages that reflect the diversity of women’s roles, living conditions and viewpoints; designing gender awareness and training programmes for teachers in the educational system and for media personnel to induce them to adopt attitudes characterized by gender equity.

Strategic action II.4.i Conducting multidisciplinary research on the different roles played by women throughout history, disseminating the findings thereof and incorporating them into school textbooks at all levels of education.

Strategic action II.4.j Ensuring the creation of a policy environment which facilitates the access of drop-outs and teenage mothers to continued education.

Strategic action II.4.k Promoting the access of women of all ages to physical education and sports, to enhance their self-esteem and autonomy by encouraging them to value their bodies and their leisure time.

Strategic action II.4.l Incorporating the issues of environment and sustainable development, sexual and reproductive health and gender equity into programmes of study and improving their content, to promote greater responsibility and awareness in those areas.[9]

Strategic action II.4.m Developing educational actions that take advantage of the talents and skills inherent in women’s cultural identities, and especially those of disabled women.

Strategic action II.4.n Fostering collaboration between organizations of the women’s movement and government institutions for women in the formulation of proposals on education policies.

Strategic objective II.5

To provide preventive and comprehensive health care for women, respecting their ethnic and cultural identity, and to ensure high quality care and have equitable access to it at all stages of their lives, taking into consideration the differential impact of gender on the processes of health and disease.

Strategic action II.5.a Promoting the establishment of decentralized programmes of integral, prevention-oriented health care, especially in rural areas, ensuring that women participate equitably in their design and execution and that steps are taken to provide quality services which are affordable, accessible and culturally acceptable.

Strategic action II.5.b Maximizing the use of local health care systems by promoting the incorporation of gender criteria, community participation and self-care, especially in preventive health care programmes.

Strategic action II.5.c Promoting the inclusion, in public health policies, of specific programmes for women and men to prevent and deal with teenage pregnancy, especially in early adolescence, in a context of integral health care that includes actions such as the provision of non-sexist sex education.

Strategic action II.5.d Allocating human, material and financial resources for integral health care for women throughout their lives; improving the health and nutritional status of pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers, inter alia by providing breast-feeding education and support services which can contribute to birth spacing, better maternal and child health and higher child survival rates.

Strategic action II.5.e Promoting research to identify women’s health care needs, especially in the areas of mental health; drug use; sexual and reproductive health; breast-feeding; teenage pregnancy; fertility by place of residence, educational level and income bracket; all causes of maternal mortality; specific occupational and sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s vulnerability to them and to AIDS; the health of girls and older women; and all the health risk factors linked to the social construct of gender and to socio-economic conditions; and promoting actions to meet such needs.[10]

Strategic action II.5.f Considering health indicators for women as indicators of a country’s development.

Strategic action II.5.g Promoting measures to improve information on women’s health and record-keeping in that regard, by incorporating gender analysis into statistical information systems.

Strategic action II.5.h Providing better family planning services and establishing systems for offering information and compassionate counselling to all women, including those with unwanted pregnancies, while recognizing the importance of abortion as a public health problem and the principle that abortion should in no case be considered a method of family planning. The implementation of this action should conform to the provisions of the relevant paragraphs of chapter 7, on reproductive rights, of the Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, held at Cairo, Egypt.[11]

Strategic action II.5.i Encouraging the adoption of measures to protect and promote women’s reproductive rights, to guarantee democratic discussion of those rights and to provide the necessary services in conformity with the paragraphs on reproductive rights contained in chapter 7 of the Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, held at Cairo, Egypt.[12]

Strategic action II.5.j Respecting the right of couples and of women to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, and strengthening women’s capacity to exercise this basic right by giving both women and men access to the information, education and means they need to act on those decisions; carrying out educational programmes and activities to encourage men to participate more equitably and responsibly in family planning.

Strategic action II.5.k Designing compulsory sex education programmes, at the level of school boards, from the first year of school.[13]

Strategic action II.5.l Fostering collaboration between organizations of the women’s movement and government institutions for women in the formulation of proposals on health care policies.

Strategic objective II.6

To achieve equitable participation of women in the design and management of environmental policies.

Strategic action II.6.a Elaborating policies, laws, regulations and other instruments, in all relevant areas and at all levels, to ensure the protection of the environment and natural resources, making use of the results of specialized meetings, such as Agenda 21 adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development; urging Governments to ensure the equitable integration and participation of women and men in the planning, design, formulation and implementation of environment policies and programmes and in the implementation of specific actions in that field.

Strategic action II.6.b Requesting Governments to set up programmes to raise the awareness of the public at large about the sustainable use of natural resources to ensure the survival of future generations, and the need to endeavour to improve and conserve the environment, especially in regions where ecological costs are particularly onerous for the female population.

Strategic action II.6.c Providing and appropriately channelling the financial resources needed to strengthen women’s participation in environmental management; enlisting the support of the international community, especially international technical and financial cooperation agencies, to encourage them to allocate more financial resources for the implementation of specific projects related to the sound use and protection of natural resources.

Strategic action II.6.d Creating the necessary material, technical and training conditions to enable women and men to contribute to environmental protection in both urban and rural areas, taking their needs and viewpoints into account.

Strategic action II.6.e Developing environmental policies and education programmes that address the impacts of environmental degradation on women and men and management initiatives in this field.

Strategic action II.6.f Promoting, through formal and non-formal education programmes, at various educational levels, in the communications media and in the process of development policy planning, the concept that sustainable development is indissociable from the elimination of gender inequalities.

Strategic action II.6.g Introducing, in formal educational curricula, instruction modules on the relationship between the environment and survival and on environmental preservation.

Strategic action II.6.h Promoting research by government and non-governmental institutions on the relationship between women and the environment to determine how the two issues interact, especially with regard to natural resources, in both urban and rural areas, to support the formulation of appropriate policies.

Strategic action II.6.i Addressing the structural issues that inhibit women’s use of sustainable agricultural and natural resource management techniques, such as market imperfections; lack of land tenure; limited access to appropriate technologies, training and credit; and low levels of participation in community resource management groups.

Strategic action II.6.j Expanding economic opportunities for women in sustainable natural resource management and environmental protection to encourage these practices.

Strategic action II.6.k Encouraging the use of appropriate production technologies, giving priority to research, promoting endogenous technologies and suitably adapting imported technologies, so as to achieve harmonious development of the community while preserving the environment.

AREA III: ELIMINATION OF POVERTY AMONG WOMEN

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Increase in extreme poverty, which affects women proportionally more than men; widening of income disparities; and deterioration of the quality of life.

b) Gradual decline in government spending on social programmes, specifically those aimed at promoting gender equity.

c) Increasing shift from governments towards the private sector and civil society of responsibilities for providing social services.

d) Increase in unemployment, poverty and inequality as a result of the external debt crisis and the implementation of adjustment and restructuring policies.

e) Increase in the number of households headed by women, most of whom work in the informal sector without legal or social protection.

f) Increasing female migration caused by poverty, which then leads to the intergenerational reproduction of poverty.

g) Lack of specific studies on how women are affected by poverty, with data disaggregated by sex.

h) Insufficient statistical data and research on how poverty affects women and men differently.

Progress

a) Growing interest in the implementation of programmes and projects targeted at poor women, especially uprooted women.

b) Increase in the participation of communities and social and non-governmental organizations, especially women’s groups, in dealing with the problems of the poor.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE III

Reviewing and modifying, where appropriate, macroeconomic policies and adjustment programmes in the region to correct and overcome their negative effects, such as an increase in unemployment, poverty and violence, which have been particularly detrimental to women.[14]

Creating the conditions for reducing and overcoming poverty, in the framework of a sustainable development process and taking into account each country’s level of development and socio-cultural characteristics.

Strategic objective III. 1

To review, modify and integrate macroeconomic and social policies, especially in those countries where debt servicing and structural adjustment policies exist, in order to promote growth and social equity, through, among other actions, policies which allocate resources to increase employment opportunities and wages for women, giving special attention to the needs of groups of poor women and combating marginalization, taking into account people’s ethnic and socio-cultural characteristics.

Strategic action III.1.a Formulating and implementing development policies aimed at substantially improving the living conditions of the poor, ensuring that women, especially young women, participate equitably in designing and implementing them, and that enough resources are allocated to meet the objectives of those policies; evaluating the impact of economic and social policies on the groups of women they affect.

Strategic action III.1.b Promoting mechanisms for the systematic involvement of national machinery on women’s affairs in designing and monitoring economic and social policies with an integrated approach, to guarantee social equity and equality.

Strategic action III.1.c Promoting the consideration, in the allocation of investments, of the social, economic and cultural asymmetries or differences between different areas or communities, giving special attention to groups living in extreme poverty.

Strategic action III.1.d Raising the level of employment and personal development of women and men who are marginalized and poor by providing equal opportunities for access to free technical and vocational training and to scholarships. Encouraging women’s entry into training and economic activities that are directly linked to current demands and that can yield substantially higher wages or profit levels.

Strategic action III.1.e Promoting employment and vocational programmes that provide support to women’s cooperatives, informal-sector women entrepreneurs, associations of female producers, self-managed enterprises and other forms of productive organization. Expediting the enactment of legislation to provide legal protection for those programmes, so that women in the formal and informal sectors, especially those who are heads of household, can improve their linkages with the market and increase their productivity and income levels.

Strategic action III.1.f Improving the quality of life of women, especially those in the poorest groups, by establishing credit systems for small businesses run by women and eliminating obstacles to women’s access to all productive resources, especially training, technical assistance and basic social services.

Strategic action III.1.g Ensuring that women in small and medium-sized businesses receive training on technical-administrative issues.

Strategic action III.1.h Designing labour capacity-oriented programmes for women heads of household and facilitating their access to adequately paid work or their efforts to establish income-generating activities by themselves.

Strategic action III.1.i Redoubling efforts to generalize the use of statistics disaggregated by sex and to ensure that they include gender and ethnic indicators, and promoting the incorporation of analyses differentiated by sex into statistical systems, thereby facilitating the conduct of more precise studies of the needs of women and men; and ensuring the provision of the necessary technical and financial resources for that purpose.

Strategic objective III.2

To create the necessary conditions for ensuring that adequate coverage and quality of education are provided to poor women, taking into account their ethnic, national and age characteristics, as well as the specific problems of disabled, uprooted, rural and migrant women.

Strategic action III.2.a Ensuring that women and men, girls and boys, especially those in vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination, receive an education that incorporates the gender approach and seeks to strengthen the exercise of citizenship in conditions of equity, inter alia by teaching them about their human and civil rights and duties.

Strategic action III.2.b Establishing decentralized entities to monitor, supervise and evaluate the educational achievements of women and men, especially in terms of variables such as whether they live in urban or rural areas or belong to vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination, and ensuring that women can enter all fields of education and training.

Strategic action III.2.c Supporting women’s efforts and advancement through a wide-ranging public education process conducted by the government and private sectors, with the help of the mass media, recognizing their autonomy and decision-making capacity and strengthening organizations of all types, especially grass-roots organizations, that help women to meet their objectives.

Strategic action III.2.d Creating quality informal educational opportunities for women and girls.

Strategic action III.2.e Carrying out literacy programmes and projects to eradicate illiteracy, especially among women in vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination, ensuring respect for cultural differences.

Strategic action III.2.f Supporting the cause of indigenous peoples and women so that they can define their own development goals and preserve their cultural identity, without prejudice to their civil rights or to the unity of the State, and allocating the necessary financial and material resources for that purpose.

Strategic action III.2.g Designing educational programmes that specifically address the special needs of street children, especially girls, to enable such children to stay in school.

Strategic objective III.3

To ensure access to comprehensive, high-quality preventive health care services to poor women, taking into account their cultural, linguistic and age characteristics.

Strategic action III.3.a Establishing and equipping local centres that provide comprehensive health care and give priority to the major health risks to women in vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination, with emphasis on preventive services and with the participation of women.

Strategic action III.3.b Allocating resources to provide comprehensive health care to women throughout their lives, especially during pregnancy, puerperium and breast-feeding, and to ensure health care for working women.

Strategic action III.3.c Providing appropriate health information, education and services to young women, especially pregnant teenagers.

Strategic objective III.4

To give women living in poverty, especially heads of household, access to decent housing and adequate infrastructure services to sustain a living.

Strategic action III.4.a Designing and implementing housing programmes especially tailored for women in vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination —rural and urban women who are in the subsistence economy or who are heads of household, displaced, refugees or disabled— and providing credit on easy terms and technical assistance to ensure their access to basic infrastructure.

Strategic action III.4.b Promoting women’s and men’s involvement in the design, construction and improvement of their dwellings so that their needs and sociocultural differences are taken into account, and ensuring greater decentralization of housing policies to facilitate this process at the local level, making use of local resources.

Strategic action III.4.c Eliminating legal barriers that prevent women from obtaining housing in their own names or claiming the status of heads of household, and designing housing policies that give priority, in terms of access to credit for urban and rural housing, to single mothers who are heads of household.

Strategic action III.4.d Removing legal barriers that deny women the right to gain, hold and transfer title to their homes and properties.

Strategic action III.4.e Establishing building codes, enforceable at the community level, to guarantee access of the disabled to physical and social infrastructural services.

Strategic objective III.5

To stem migration from the countryside to the cities by means of investment in rural development and other specific measures.

Strategic action III.5.a Improving the situation of rural women by investing in rural development, designing employment policies and programmes and taking specific measures (provision of infrastructure, technology and services) to help reduce poverty in that sector and the rate of rural-to-urban migration, as well as the consequent break-up of families.

Strategic objective III.6

To promote, at all levels of government, of the State and of civil society, actions to make rural women’s contribution to development and their productive role in society visible.

Strategic action III.6.a Revising legislation, policies, plans, programmes and projects to facilitate women’s access to land, production facilities and natural resources.

Strategic action III.6.b Designing programmes to support the activities carried out by rural women, including food production, employment in agro-industry and product marketing.

Strategic action III.6.c Making public and private agricultural organizations and the general population aware of the rights of rural women, and providing training on the subject.

Strategic action III.6.d Improving the living conditions of rural women by providing basic infrastructure and services and promoting programmes designed to alleviate their burden of housework.

Strategic action III.6.e Developing the capacities of rural women through the promotion of organization and training, to strengthen them as social agents.

Strategic action III.6.f Training women already in the rural productive sector to become effectively involved as exporters individually and in groups in their own right.

Strategic action III.6.g Providing training to ensure that the methodologies and timing of technology transfer activities are suitable for rural women.

Strategic action III.6.h Disaggregating agricultural production data by sex and socio-economic situation, to heighten the visibility of rural women’s economic contribution to agricultural production.

AREA IV: WOMEN’S EQUITABLE PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING AND IN THE EXERCISE OF POWER IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Existence of an institutional, social and cultural structure that hinders women’s access to power at

all levels.

b) Persistence of cultural patterns and stereotypes that reserve public power for men and assign exclusively to women domestic chores and functions.

c) Lack of legal instruments and the restrictive nature of the institutions in which power is vested.

d) Continued existence, in social and political institutions, of machinery that is explicitly or implicitly discriminatory.

Progress

a) Greater participation of women in power structures, although to different degrees in different countries.

b) Evidence of a growing concern about the situation of women in national, State, regional and international agendas.

c) Strengthened collaboration between the State and women’s organizations in democratic systems.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE IV

Ensuring that women have equitable access to power structures and decision-making processes by creating mechanisms and actions that allow for their effective participation in the development of a full-fledged democracy.

Strategic objective IV.1

To promote and ensure the equitable participation of women in all public and private power structures by taking affirmative steps to secure and expand their access to the exercise of power, as an integral element of citizenship, at the legislative, judicial, executive, supervisory and planning levels.

Strategic action IV.1.a Strongly encouraging all newly elected Governments to appoint, on equal terms, more women to decision-making positions in their cabinets and administrations, especially in the field of economics, in the various branches of government.

Strategic action IV.1.b Encouraging the establishment of women’s rights commissions, consisting of both women and men, in the legislative branch of government, and promoting their coordination with government institutions for women.

Strategic action IV.1.c Ensuring women’s equitable participation in all high-level commissions and entities, inter alia as official foreign representatives and as diplomats.

Strategic action IV.1.d Demanding that training in the gender perspective be made compulsory at all levels of State coordination.

Strategic action IV.1.e Using training modules that incorporate the gender perspective to train women, including indigenous women, in leadership and empowerment, to strengthen their possibilities of performing leadership functions in the upper echelons of the State structure and in all institutions of society, and to raise awareness of the need for women to participate equitably in decision-making processes.

Strategic action IV.1.f Urging political parties to guarantee equality of opportunity for women in terms of access to party leadership positions and to the process of selecting candidates for elective office, including the adoption of specific affirmative-action measures such as reforms of electoral codes and the establishment of progressive minimum quotas until equitable participation is assured, and carrying out programmes of information and guidance —for both women and men— on the importance of women’s participation in political parties.

Strategic action IV.1.g Encouraging and supporting, through the mass media, the effective participation of women and young women, especially new voters, in decision-making processes and in the exercise of their political rights and responsibilities, including that of standing for elective or appointive office, as part of their citizenship.

Strategic action IV.1.h Encouraging the communications media to include women, on an equitable basis, in positions where decisions are taken on administrative issues, programming and the content of the messages conveyed.

Strategic action IV.1.i Establishing mechanisms and procedures to guarantee women’s equal opportunity for advancement in public, political and union careers, and fostering gender equity in terms of promotions, professional development and other areas.

Strategic action IV.1.j Promoting operational changes in public and private organizations to encourage greater participation by women in their activities and meetings.

Strategic action IV.1.k Promoting the creation of conditions and opportunities for women to be elected to public office.

Strategic action IV.1.l Stimulating, in all areas of society, both public and private, processes of change geared towards consolidating equitable and democratic relationships between women and men.[15]

Strategic objective IV.2

To promote positive measures to create the necessary conditions for women’s equitable participation and political representation in businesses, trade unions, political parties and other formal and informal areas of civil society, and in all decision-making processes and in the area of development planning.

Strategic action IV.2.a Promoting changes in the inequitable and sexist conceptions underlying the behaviours of women and men.

Strategic action IV.2.b Adopting affirmative-action measures to help increase women’s participation in decision-making processes.

Strategic action IV.2.c Promoting the empowerment of women in all aspects of private and public life so that they can exercise their rights, express their needs and interests and gain greater autonomy and personal, economic and social power, in their capacity as citizens.

Strategic action IV.2.d Funding and conducting studies to identify the factors that obstruct or hinder women’s full participation in decision-making processes; establishing mechanisms to help increase their participation in those processes; and disseminating all information gleaned from these studies.

Strategic action IV.2.e Raising public awareness of the necessity and desirability of women’s participation in decision-making processes and power structures.

Strategic action IV.2.f Carrying out awareness campaigns to promote women’s full participation in all public power structures, recognizing the need to change the distribution of responsibilities and work in the private sphere.

Strategic action IV.2.g Designing, implementing and strengthening formal and informal training programmes on management, organization, negotiation, administration and leadership for women’s organizations and women in general.

Strategic action IV.2.h Promoting recognition of and respect for the autonomy of women’s movements and non-governmental organizations, and raising the awareness of other organizations of civil society so that they incorporate the gender approach and use equitable procedures for distributing posts; and systematizing processes of consultation with non-governmental organizations and women’s organizations in the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies that support women.

Strategic action IV.2.i Promoting collaboration between government agencies and non-governmental organizations to raise awareness of the need to eliminate existing inequalities, and establishing joint monitoring procedures to ensure the effective implementation of policies designed to correct that inequality.

Strategic action IV.2.j Supporting the funding and strengthening of women’s organizations, systematizing and disseminating the knowledge they generate and promoting their linkage with other social entities.

AREA V: HUMAN RIGHTS, PEACE AND VIOLENCE

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Insufficiency of measures taken to guarantee women’s full exercise of human rights and citizenship.

b) Various types of violence of structural origin directed against women and lack of recognition that it is a public problem.

c) Failure to comply with international conventions aimed at eliminating inequality between women and men and discrimination against women.

d) Persistence of gender-based discriminatory legislation which reinforces women’s unequal status in society and the family.

e) Obsolete nature of penal law.

f) Limited recognition of women’ rights as human rights.

g) Shortcomings in the administration of justice and difficult access for women to judicial proceedings.

h) Insufficient support services for female victims of violence.

i) Persistence of conditions permitting impunity for those who commit crimes against women.

j) Inadequacy of systems of rehabilitating perpetrators of acts of violence against women through training in non-violent ways of settling disputes.

Progress

a) Significant progress in seeking to settle disputes through political negotiations.

b) Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

c) Adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and of other human rights instruments.

d) Recognition of the topic of violence against women as an issue for public debate.

e) Emergence of initiatives to provide support to female victims of violence.

f) Adoption of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women.

g) Promotion of Culture of Peace Programmes, which have received international, regional and national support, and contributed to the repair of the social fabric and the achievement of reconciliation, with a leading role for women.

h) International recognition of women’s reproductive rights.[16]

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE V

Ensuring the universal, inalienable, indivisible and integral nature of all the human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) of women, as well as consistent respect for and protection of these rights in a healthful environment at all times and in all places.

Strategic objective V.1

To consolidate full respect for the human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) of women in the region, within a context where priority is given to the elimination of gender-based violence and discrimination and to the rights of poor and uprooted women, taking ethnic and racial differences into account.

Strategic action V.1.a Establishing and strengthening mechanisms for ensuring compliance with international conventions and all programme areas of regional and national plans of action, in order to close the gap between de jure and de facto equality to help ensure that women, particularly those in situations of greater vulnerability, participate fully in all areas of society, and urging States which have not ratified the relevant conventions to do so without reservations.

Strategic action V.1.b Establishing and/or updating legal and administrative mechanisms for the protection of women’s human rights to ensure that they effectively safeguard the full exercise of those rights.

Strategic action V.1.c Eliminating or amending all national legislative provisions whose application promotes or permits discrimination against women in civil, criminal, family, procedural, labour, commercial and administrative law, and in the areas of education and health.

Strategic action V.1.d Bringing national legislation into line with international norms, especially with regard to women’s human rights, and urging Governments to draw up and promulgate new national laws and penal, civil, administrative and procedural regulations to prevent, punish and eradicate all forms and manifestations of violence against women.

Strategic action V.1.e Ensuring that national constitutions expressly set forth the principle of equality between women and men and prohibit all forms of sex discrimination; making secondary legislation consistent with constitutional provisions that reflect international commitments in that regard and with all provisions that safeguard human rights.

Strategic action V.1.f Including specific provisions in national legislation to safeguard respect for the rights of uprooted and migrant women and women who belong to particular ethnic groups.

Strategic action V.1.g Promoting the promulgation of affirmative-action laws to expedite the process of achieving equity between women and men.

Strategic action V.1.h Decentralizing and broadening the coverage of services for the administration of justice, especially in rural and marginal urban areas, and adopting other mechanisms to give women greater access to legal services.

Strategic action V.1.i Disseminating information on legally recognized human rights so that women become fully aware of them and learn to demand that they be respected in all areas of national life.

Strategic action V.1.j Urging States to incorporate gender-sensitive educational programmes on human rights into all levels of formal and non-formal education and training programmes for government officials.

Strategic action V.1.k Creating or strengthening appropriate national and subregional mechanisms and follow-up procedures for promoting the human rights enshrined in national and international instruments, particularly the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, as well as procedures for reporting human rights violations; guaranteeing the effective involvement of women’s movements in such mechanisms and procedures, and paying special attention to all forms of violence against women in situations of vulnerability and discrimination —particularly forced prostitution of women and girls, sexual abuse of and trafficking in women, teenagers and children, and sexual harassment in the workplace— and to the victims of such crimes.

Strategic action V.1.l Adopting a theoretical framework with which more effective steps can be taken to promote equality and combat violence, taking the concept of human rights as the cornerstone of that framework; to that end, including the subject of human rights in national education programmes to ensure that all women are fully aware of the human rights enshrined in international and national law so that they can promote and protect those rights.

Strategic action V.1.m Encouraging the efforts of the Commission on the Status of Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to prepare an optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, providing for the right of individual petition, as recommended in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights.

Strategic action V.1.n Creating the necessary conditions and providing sufficient resources for the incorporation into society of women affected by armed conflicts and pervasive violence, with special emphasis on young, refugee, displaced and repatriated women. Providing the means to facilitate intervention by human rights organizations and women’s organizations so that their efforts can help prevent and eliminate all forms of violence or abuse perpetrated against women.

Strategic action V.1.o Creating conditions in which victims of human rights violations, particularly those deriving from political violence, are assured of the right to take appropriate action under civil, criminal and administrative law.

Strategic action V.1.p Establishing more appropriate legal, psychological and medical services for victims of human rights violations and violence, and giving priority to the allocation of resources to establish, operate and develop such services.

Strategic action V.1.q Promoting the adoption and implementation of an international convention against all forms of overt and covert sexual exploitation, including sex tourism and child prostitution, which provides for the establishment of social services to assist victims of all forms of sexual exploitation and for the prosecution of traffickers and managers of the sex industry.

Strategic action V.1.r Establishing and strengthening programmes to promote a culture of peace, foster peace processes and help eradicate violence in society and in the upbringing of girls and boys, with particular emphasis on the elimination of the type of violence portrayed in the mass media, including that in the movies, on television and in cartoons.

Strategic action V.1.s Promoting research on violence against women of all ages, using non-traditional statistics and data from other available sources and devising a system for recording such information, disaggregated by sex, in public entities that deal with situations of violence, such as police departments, legal offices and health services; disseminating the findings thereof, conducting public awareness campaigns and integrating reports and studies by Governments and specialized non-governmental organizations for that purpose; and ensuring that States cooperate with regional and international research mechanisms.

Strategic action V.1.t Urging the region’s Governments to sign, ratify and implement the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, adopted by the Organization of American States (OAS).

Strategic action V.1.u Giving priority to proposed legislation in the economics field that would help ensure women’s access to the resources they need for integral development, as well as to capital and markets.

Strategic action V.1.v Promoting the adoption of measures to protect women’s reproductive rights.[17]

Strategic action V.1.w Adopting the recommendations of the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) on recognizing the value of housework.

Strategic objective V.2

To promote action to make visible and eliminate all types and forms of violence against women.

Strategic action V.2.a Heightening the visibility of the phenomenon of violence through legislation, and penalizing it as a public problem of law-and-order; promoting the decentralization of systems for reporting acts of violence and of mechanisms for providing protection against all forms of violence against women.

Strategic action V.2.b Promoting the conduct of awareness, training and development programmes, incorporating the gender perspective, to ensure that persons and organizations that deal with female victims of violence or disabled women can provide timely and increasingly humanized technical responses.

Strategic action V.2.c Raising the consciousness of women to make them aware of how women are portrayed as objects in advertisements and in programmes which do not highlight women’s full capacity.

Strategic action V.2.d Implementing training activities aimed at the communications media and journalists’ associations to ensure that they promote respect for women and censure violence against women.

Strategic action V.2.e Promoting research and studies on the situation of women, taking into account the specific features of different vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination, to influence the formulation and reformulation of laws and policies to eradicate violence in all its manifestations.

Strategic objective V.3

To sensitize the mass media to the impact of the pervasive culture of violence, with the aim of eradicating the image of women in the media, which is the product of discrimination.

Strategic action V.3.a Carrying out mass communication campaigns to promote peace, tolerance, solidarity and mutual respect.

Strategic action V.3.b Promoting information activities or campaigns on the existence of a pervasive culture of violence in the region, its manifestations in the form of violence against women and possible techniques for addressing both problems positively by eliminating the discriminatory image of women in public advertisement, television and radio programmes and the print media.

Strategic action V.3.c Providing gender sensitivity training for personnel in the communications sectors, especially film producers; audio, visual and print media; advertising and marketing personnel and their agencies; and specialized organizations and associations, in order to reduce and eliminate the negative and stereotyped images of women and the impact of these images on the perpetuation of an increase in violence against women in particular and society in general.

AREA VI: SHARED FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) The discrepancy in some countries between traditional family structure and the forms family structure takes in the different communities that make up the region.

b) Persistence of the roles socially assigned to women within the family.

c) Scarcity of services to meet basic family needs.

d) Failure to recognize motherhood as a social responsibility at the level of everyday life.

e) Predominance of the patriarchal concept of the family.

f) Insufficient recognition of and support for diverse family types.

Progress

a) Legal recognition of the variety of family structures in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and concern for the issue of shared family responsibilities.[18]

b) Increased recognition of the economic value of women’s unwaged work including housework.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE VI

Promoting more equitable sharing of family responsibilities between women and men, stimulating public debate on the need for greater flexibility in social roles and fostering recognition of the diversity of existing family structures.

Strategic objective VI

To stimulate, in all areas of society, processes of change to consolidate democratic family structures.

Strategic action VI.a Promoting public campaigns and the necessary changes in educational plans and programmes in order to raise society’s awareness of the value of the time socially necessary for the care of the home and family and of the need for equitable distribution of these tasks among all members of the household.

Strategic action VI.b Promoting the implementation of communication strategies to highlight issues such as the new roles being played by women in society, the diversity of family structures and the democratization of the distribution of housework among members of households, women and men, promoting democratic relations among family members.[19]

Strategic action VI.c Conducting studies and establishing mechanisms to quantify the contribution and the economic value of the unpaid work performed by women, especially housework, participation in agriculture and the care and feeding of children, and incorporating that contribution into national accounts.[20]

Strategic action VI.d Persuading Governments to increase budgetary allocations to social development programmes, and harmonizing economic adjustment measures with actions to strengthen the capacities of families of all types to ensure their proper development and socialization.[21]

Strategic action VI.e Ensuring, in each country, that women and men have access to contraceptives and that women are enabled to exercise their reproductive rights freely; promoting research on scientific methods of regulating male fertility to balance the use of contraceptives for women. In the context of this action, it is considered that, as stated in paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, “in circumstances in which abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe”.[22]

Strategic action VI.f Helping families to improve parenting skills in order to help combat gender biases; fostering the analysis of families as the place where the socialization process significantly contributes to the origin of the gender-based division of labour and gender stereotypes.

Strategic action VI.g Stressing the need for Governments to recognize, in their migration and assignment policies, the importance of enhancing the development potential of families, preserving their integrity and contributing to their reunification.

Strategic action VI.h Demanding that the State provide favourable conditions for motherhood and breast-feeding, and raising society’s awareness of its shared responsibility for protecting these practices.

Strategic action VI.i Fostering and encouraging the equal participation of women and men by promoting measures such as parental leave for both sexes, to enable them to achieve a better balance between their household and public responsibilities. Taking steps to ensure that the rights of the child are observed, with particular reference to adequate financial support from parents, by way of the enforcement of laws on child-support payments, and to the legal and social protection of children from all forms of child abuse.

Strategic action VI.j Conducting gender studies to identify institutional barriers to equal access to justice, and imposing remedies in cases where gender bias has tainted the decision of the courts.

Strategic action VI.k Promoting the consideration of housework as an economic contribution in the relevant legislation.

AREA VII: RECOGNITION OF CULTURAL PLURALITY IN THE REGION

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Persistence of cultural models which exclude, silence or distort women’s identity and knowledge in all areas of social life and which are expressed within the family, education, mass communication and art.

b) The exclusion or marginalization of some groups of people in the decision-making process on the basis of cultural or ethnic factors, which results in dual discrimination in the case of women.

c) The exclusion of some groups of people from full participation in the political process, and from the social, political and economic benefits of development.

d) Persistent discrimination against women in the mass media, which is a factor that limits their presence in decision-making positions.

Progress

a) The formation of women’s organizations that are transmitting their own culture and ethnic values, and defending their right to participate.

b) Greater openness at the global level with respect to recognizing cultural plurality and strengthening its visibility. Examples of such a process are the proclamation of the World Decade for Cultural Development and of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People, as well as the convening of the World Summit for Social Development.

c) Incipient recognition of women’s contribution to culture throughout history.

d) The increasing involvement of women in the creation of alternative communications, organizations and networks in the fields of culture and communications.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE VII

Promoting cultural equity and respect for cultural diversity resulting in the visible and equitable participation of women and men of all ethnic and cultural groups both in the region and within their societies.

Strategic objective VII.1

To recognize and value women’s cultural plurality and to meet their needs in terms of gender equity, respecting cultural diversity and identities.

Strategic action VII.1.a Supporting the cause of indigenous peoples, ethnic groups and other vulnerable groups that suffer from discrimination so that they can preserve their cultural identity and define their own development goals, and supporting the organization of women in these groups so that they can participate equitably in designing, managing and administering such development efforts.

Strategic action VII.1.b Promoting the enactment of the necessary legislation to ensure that indigenous languages are recognized and officially used in areas where indigenous peoples live, and adopting measures to facilitate the education of people in their own language and the teaching of the official language as a second language.

Strategic objective VII.2

To provide women and men with education from an early age to promote sensitivity to and knowledge of human sexuality, gender equity and cultural diversity.

Strategic action VII.2.a Highlighting the negative impact on women of the sexism rooted in family structure and relations.

Strategic action VII.2.b Promoting a positive attitude towards women’s integration into public life and men’s integration into private life.

Strategic objective VII.3

To motivate families and those belonging to the education system and social organizations who are involved in the creation and transmission of culture to give equal value to different cultures, and to respect gender equity in all forms of cultural expression.

Strategic action VII.3.a Implementing actions to motivate the family, the educational system and all social organizations to become involved in the creation and transmission of culture, to ensure that they assign equal value to the sexes and respect gender equity in all forms of cultural expression. Ensuring that the existing cultural plurality and diversity is reflected in the visible and equitable participation of the members of all ethnic groups in the wider areas of society.

Strategic objective VII.4

To encourage the development of a pluralistic, non-discriminatory social image of women in culture and communications.

Strategic action VII.4.a Projecting a realistic and pluralistic image of women in the messages transmitted and campaigns waged by Governments and organizations of civil society through the mass media, and promoting the extension of that image to all of the messages conveyed by the mass media.

Strategic action VII.4.b Encouraging women’s involvement as spokespersons on issues of public interest.

Strategic objective VII.5

To promote women’s participation and initiatives in matters relating to artistic and cultural expression, particularly where the goal is to counteract violence against women.

Strategic action VII.5.a Fostering women’s artistic and cultural development by promoting their participation in creative processes and in competitions, programmes and other activities in the cultural field.

Strategic action VII.5.b Promoting women’s participation in high-level positions in national and intergovernmental public entities that organize and finance artistic and cultural projects.

Strategic objective VII.6

To eliminate sexist expressions from linguistic usage, and to help create a form of discourse that expresses the reality of women.

Strategic action VII.6.a Promoting the adoption of measures to eliminate sexist expressions in linguistic usage and to help create a form of discourse that expresses the reality of women’s situation, especially in school curricula and educational materials.

Strategic objective VII.7

To allow women access to new telecommunications and information technologies and train them to operate the systems in question.

Strategic action VII.7.a Stimulating the establishment of information networks linking women to organizations concerned with gender issues, to promote and support efforts towards cultural change.

Strategic action VII.7.b Promoting women’s participation in the development of innovative initiatives in the mass media, especially with respect to the incorporation of new information technologies.

Strategic objective VII.8

To strengthen women’s participation in decision-making in the mass media.

Strategic action VII.8.a Systematically and continually raising awareness of the goal of non-discrimination against women among media managers and professionals of both sexes.

AREA VIII: INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT AND COOPERATION

DIAGNOSIS

Obstacles

a) Tardy and unequal access to international cooperation for the application of the Nairobi strategies.

b) A lack of emphasis and application of women-in-development approaches, and limited flexibility for incorporating the gender perspective in cooperation policies and programmes of some organizations from the viewpoint of acquisition and exercise of power by women.

c) Weakness in strategic planning and the failure to adopt indicators which facilitate an assessment of behaviour, directionality and impact in projects financed by different organizations.

d) Limited access to financing in major areas such as research, diagnosis, systematization, and follow-up of actions, as well as in training, raising of awareness and communication.

e) Conditions (even if only occasional) imposed by a number of cooperation agencies and organizations which do not entirely reflect women’s interests.

Progress

a) Financial contribution for the development of projects designed to generate income and which target women in vulnerable situations.

b) Support for the establishment and strengthening of women’s organizations and for the creation of alternative services.

c) Technical and financial cooperation that promote Government institutions dedicated to the advancement of women.

STRATEGIC GUIDELINE VIII

Ensuring that at the policy level international cooperation incorporates the gender perspective in carrying out autonomous, integrated projects.

Strategic objective VIII

To promote, among international support agencies, Governments and civil society, actions leading to ongoing processes for the analysis and monitoring of cooperation policies that incorporate the gender perspective.

Strategic action VIII.a Negotiating with bilateral and multilateral organizations on increasing the amount of funds earmarked for the implementation of actions, plans and projects through which the countries can put this Regional Programme of Action into practice, considering research as a priority aspect of their design and execution and emphasizing gender training for both government officials and international cooperation agency staff.

Strategic action VIII.b Urging international cooperation agencies to support the conduct of a critical analysis of the structural causes and the effects of poverty among women, with a view to reorienting and channelling resources to help achieve the objectives of the Regional Programme of Action.

Strategic action VIII.c Promoting an ongoing process of dialogue among Governments, government institutions for women, international cooperation agencies and women’s organizations, through the establishment of national commissions to promote coordination and collaboration and to facilitate the analysis of various processes, the identification of cooperation priorities and the new theoretical approaches that emerge from the day-to-day implementation of actions. All the participants in those commissions should be involved in designing and monitoring the national plan of action deriving from this Regional Programme of Action.

Strategic action VIII.d Ensuring that this Programme of Action is used as a frame of reference in distributing the support of international cooperation and that efforts are made to strengthen the operations and mechanisms of both government and non-governmental agencies that promote the advancement of women at all levels.

Strategic action VIII.e Urging cooperation agencies to establish and guarantee the operation of inter-agency committees at the national, regional and international levels, in order to coordinate their actions and contribute to the implementation of this Regional Programme of Action in the context of their respective mandates.

Strategic action VIII.f Promoting horizontal negotiation between cooperation agencies and organizations of the women’s movement with a view to increasing the amount of funds earmarked for women’s projects.

E. FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES FOR THE REGIONAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION FOR THE WOMEN OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, 1995-2001

Upon adopting this Programme of Action, at its sixth session, the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean requests:

a) That ECLAC continue to convene regular sessions of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into Development as a forum for monitoring the implementation of the Programme of Action and evaluating its effectiveness and for making adjustments in priority areas and actions, as required.

b) That the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean assume responsibility for following up the implementation of the Programme of Action in collaboration with Governments, and with the participation of national bodies responsible for policies and programmes for women as well as of the subregional groupings.

c) That with a view to keeping the Programme of Action up to date, the ECLAC secretariat take into account the results of the meetings of United Nations forums which bear directly or indirectly on the situation of women, so as to incorporate them, where appropriate, into the recommendations of the regular regional conferences on women.

d) That the ECLAC secretariat continue to assist the Presiding Officers in ensuring the best possible coordination with the specialized agencies and organizations in the United Nations system, intergovernmental bodies and non-governmental bodies whose work is related to the status of women and promotion of the gender perspective.

e) That the ECLAC secretariat present to the Presiding Officers a list of such agencies and organizations, to be regularly updated, including all the organizations that constitute the core body of institutions whose work is linked to the Regional Programme and whose cooperation should be actively sought.

[1] Taken from document LC/G.1855. The implementation of the Regional Programme of Action was subsequently extended beyond the year 2001 by virtue of agreement (a) of the Lima Consensus (see p. 70).

[2] ECLAC, Report of the Fifth Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.1684(CRM.5/6)), Santiago, Chile, 12 November 1991.

[3] The reservations entered by countries are set forth in the report of the sixth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.1850(CRM.6/7)). In the present text, they are indicated in footnotes.

[4] The main instruments in force are considered to be the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development (Havana, 1977), the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (Nairobi, 1985), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the resolutions on the subject adopted since 1985 by the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

[5] The United States delegation entered a reservation with respect to this paragraph.

[6] The delegation of Mexico entered a reservation on this strategic action.

[7] The delegation of France entered a reservation on this strategic action.

[8] The delegations of Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Venezuela entered reservations on this strategic action. The delegation of Guatemala said that it understood ‘’productive and reproductive roles” in terms of the scientific approach of gender theory.

[9] The delegations of Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action.

[10] The delegations of Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action.

[11] The delegations of Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action.

[12] The delegations of Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action. The delegation of Argentina said that it accepted the concept of reproductive rights as reflected in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights and in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

[13] The delegations of Argentina and United States entered a reservation on this strategic action.

[14] The United States delegation entered a reservation with respect to this paragraph.

[15] The delegations of Dominican Republic and Honduras entered a reservation on this strategic action.

[16] The Ecuadorian delegation entered a reservation with respect to this subparagraph.

[17] The delegations of Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action. The delegation of Argentina said that it accepted the concept of reproductive rights as reflected in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights and in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

[18] The Ecuadorian delegation entered a reservation with respect to this subparagraph.

[19] The delegations of Dominican Republic and Honduras entered reservations on this strategic action.

[20] The delegation of France entered a reservation on this strategic action.

[21] The delegations of Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru entered reservations on this strategic action.

[22] The delegations of Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru entered a reservation on this strategic action. The delegation of Argentina said that it accepted the concept of reproductive rights as reflected in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights and in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

SANTIAGO CONSENSUS (1997)

Santiago Consensus adopted at the seventh session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago, 1997)[1]

The Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, at its seventh session,

Recalling that at its sixth session, held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in September 1994, the Regional Conference identified the obstacles to the improvement of women’s living conditions and position in society and formulated the proposals contained in the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, adopted at that session,[2]

Taking into account that, in the light of the international priorities identified by the Commission on the Status of Women of the United Nations on the basis of the Platform for Action,[3] and the regional priorities emanating from the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, the Presiding Officers elected at the sixth session of the Regional Conference —in consultation with member countries— established the goal for the seventh session of identifying more precisely the obstacles to the effective practice by women of their citizenship, particularly with respect to access to power and participation in decision-making, as well as those stemming from poverty, with a view to proposing measures to overcome them more rapidly,

1. Welcomes the documents prepared by the secretariat for the seventh session of the Regional Conference, acknowledging that they reflect the requirements expressed by the Governments with respect to the topics addressed therein;[4]

2. Notes with satisfaction that during the 1990s, the issue of gender has received growing attention in other intergovernmental forums, among others United Nations world conferences and the following regional meetings:

(a) The Caribbean Ministerial Meeting on Poverty Eradication (28 October-1 November 1996), which adopted the Directional Plan of Action for Poverty Eradication in the Caribbean;

(b) The First Regional Conference in Follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development (São Paulo, 6-9 April 1997), which adopted the Consensus of São Paulo;[5]

(c) The CARICOM/ECLAC/UNIFEM Post-Beijing Encounter: Caribbean Subregional Ministerial Conference (Georgetown, 6-8 August 1997), which adopted the Georgetown Consensus;

3. Reaffirms the agreements and commitments made at those meetings and at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995);

4. Notes with satisfaction that in the period since the Fourth World Conference on Women there has been a strong move towards the inclusion of the issue of gender on governmental agendas and in State machinery, including the establishing and strengthening of national machineries for women’s development in the region, and that various countries have adopted plans to promote equal opportunities for women in which, inter alia, measures are proposed for eradicating poverty and increasing women’s participation in decision-making processes and their access to power;

5. Notes with interest the continuing work of women parliamentarians, politicians and ministers, who have been promoting the issue of gender at decision-making levels, as well as strengthening the coordination of women’s non-governmental organizations at the regional, subregional and national levels;

6. Emphasizes the importance of the elements of the diagnostic analysis contained in the reports of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), entitled “Access to power and participation in decision-making. Latin America and the Caribbean: policies for gender equity towards the year 2000” and “Sustainable development, poverty and gender. Latin America and the Caribbean: working towards the year 2000”;

7. Proposes, three years after the sixth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean,[6] which served as the regional preparatory meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women:

(a) To accelerate the process of implementation and follow-up of the Platform for Action, the Regional Programme of Action and the CARICOM Plan of Action, by incorporating into national development strategies solutions to the problem of the inequality of women through public policies and programmes at the national level to train skilled human resources, productive employment programmes, changes in school curricula, amendments to existing legislation and the inclusion of the gender perspective in all programmes;

(b) To apply to development an integrated approach linking social and economic policies in order to achieve equity, bearing in mind that, if development is to be sustainable, the gender perspective must be explicitly brought into these policies, since all plans, programmes and policies inevitably embody a certain viewpoint on gender and determine on that basis what roles individuals should play in society; to ensure that plans and programmes fully incorporate an appropriate gender perspective in their policies and decisions (“mainstreaming”) and provide for the equitable distribution of resources in society;

(c) To ensure, in the course of the modernization of the government apparatus and public-sector reform which is under way in virtually all the countries of the region, that priority is given by the State to the social development agenda;

(d) To strengthen national mechanisms or government offices for the promotion of women in the technical, budgetary and politico-administrative spheres, in order to enable them effectively to exercise their functions of managing and monitoring public policies to foster gender equity, which is the responsibility of all State entities;

(e) To allocate in the national budget the necessary resources for the implementation of actions towards women’s advancement, especially those oriented to eradicating poverty among women and providing women with greater access to decision-making positions;

(f) To incorporate the development of gender indicators by gathering all statistical information disaggregated by sex, especially in national censuses, economic and household surveys and other statistical registers; to create a data bank of gender indicators that can be periodically updated;

(g) To stress the need for a participatory, coherent and coordinated approach among all partners in development in the implementation of national poverty eradication plans or programmes that fully take into account the gender perspective;

(h) To introduce a gender perspective in environmental planning in order to ensure the inclusion of women in decision-making and in the evaluation of the impact of natural disasters, in keeping with the important contribution of women to economic and social development and environmental protection, which are mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development;

(i) To design and implement policies to encourage women’s participation at the national, federal and local level; to incorporate the gender perspective in local government agendas and policies, especially those concerning training; and to use networks of women’s organizations to strengthen their activities and establish alliances with other institutions;

(j) To incorporate gender analysis into studies of migratory movements, since the figures reveal an increasingly significant involvement of women in the phenomenon; to incorporate analysis of such aspects as the special features of migration deriving from women’s involvement, the impact it has on children, the disadvantages women face in comparison with men in the receiving cities, and the fact that in many communities male migration leaves women to cope with the problems of family subsistence and management of the household’s resources; to identify and analyse not only international migration, but also emerging phenomena such as movements of temporary workers and migrants and migration within and between cities, which have increased considerably over the past few decades;

(k) To promote respect for the human rights of women who are refugees, migrants, internally displaced or otherwise uprooted and face problems of security due to the situation in which they live and their gender, as well as women who are victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation;

(l) To encourage the countries to pass and review legislation concerning the situation of refugees and displaced persons so that it incorporates the gender perspective and explicitly recognizes gender-based persecution as one of the grounds on which a person may be considered a refugee;

(m) To urge that all persons, especially women and girls and among them especially those who live in rural areas, are members of indigenous groups, or are uprooted, have the proper legal documentation, so that they are guaranteed the exercise of their rights;

(n) To promote the recognition that power-sharing in all spheres, from private to public is the key objective towards which all actions should converge, since it is an essential requirement of democracy, and to promote the reinforcement of women’s role as citizens, understood as their active participation in society via access to all decision-making levels;[7]

(o) To give stronger consideration to affirmative, positive action, including such mechanisms as establishing a minimum percentage of representation for both sexes, in order to accelerate the achievement of gender equality in political representation, boards, commissions and other public appointments, and in the granting of national honours and awards, bearing in mind that some Governments within the region have already agreed to this;

(p) To promote the establishment and support the strengthening and work of women’s organizations and networks in order to help reinforce their capacity to influence public and political affairs in the countries;

(q) To undertake to develop and institutionalize systems for structuring and compiling sex-disaggregated information on political participation, focusing on the differential access of women and men to political decision-making positions in organized civil society; to disseminate such information widely on a regular basis;

(r) To design and develop, as part of the plans, programmes and public policies geared to ensuring the effective exercise of women’s political rights, training strategies for men, with a view to arousing in them a sensitivity to women’s political rights, and for women, with a view to helping to strengthen their capacity for leadership and for influencing public and political affairs; such training should have a strategic orientation and a sense of process, so that it does not translate into limited, isolated or uncoordinated activities;

(s) To develop special plans for young women aimed at strengthening their capacity for and interest in leadership and influencing their choice of profession;

(t) To facilitate the exercise by women of their right to equal access to ownership and control of property, especially in rural areas;

(u) To encourage shared responsibility for roles within the family so that they are more compatible with the actual activities of its members, promoting public policies to that end and the enactment of new legislation which contributes to an equitable distribution of duties and rights within the family; to design and implement, especially at the local level, programmes to support the family in performing new and complex functions, ensuring that they emphasize the aspects of solidarity and non-discrimination; and to establish child-care centres in neighbourhoods, business firms and government agencies;

(v) To ensure maternity leave and promote the extension of leave to the fathers, in order to encourage both parents to share the responsibility for the care of their children, and to eliminate barriers to the hiring of women;

(w) To promote programmes to enhance women’s access to the labour market and to employment which take into consideration their control over resources; to implement political and legal reforms to prevent gender discrimination and set up mechanisms to help put an end to the division of labour between men and women and the segmentation of employment;

(x) To establish mechanisms to encourage companies to hire and train women; to work to ensure that programmes of both the public and private sectors provide funding for training purposes which also benefit women;

(y) To establish national mechanisms which permit the monitoring of compliance with international and national labour standards;

(z) To create mechanisms for ensuring maximum dissemination of information on jobs, wages and legal norms; to give wide publicity to laws that guarantee the rights of citizens, both male and female, and to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; and to conduct campaigns to promote the image of women as subjects who have rights, capable of creating new frames of reference for themselves;

(aa) To analyse the design and implementation of macroeconomic and structural adjustment policies and their impact on women’s quality of life, with the participation of the Governments, ECLAC, the multilateral financial institutions and the organized women’s movement, with the aim of taking appropriate measures to correct any negative effects of such policies;

(bb) To urge regional and international organizations to provide financial and technical cooperation to conduct research and undertake other initiatives on women and poverty, paying particular attention to, inter alia, women’s unpaid and low-paid work;

(cc) To develop gender-sensitive teaching materials, classroom methods and curricula and gender-training programmes for teachers in order to break down gender stereotypes and offer non-discriminatory education and training aimed at the physical and intellectual development of girls and boys, recognizing that teacher training is an essential component of gender-sensitive programmes for eliminating the differential behavioural expectations of girls and boys that reinforce the division of labour by gender; to promote research into methods for improving teachers’ capacity to impart gender-sensitive instruction and to disseminate such methods widely in order to support the development of multicultural, gender-sensitive curricula in all areas of instruction;

(dd) To support the establishment of education research centres, or strengthen those already existing, which would take responsibility for disseminating research findings within the region, thereby avoiding duplication and waste and maximizing scarce resources;

(ee) To design and implement policies geared to raising women’s earning potential (wage policies, job training and retraining, and support for microenterprises), ensuring adequate employment conditions in order to improve the situation of poor households;

(ff) To carry out regular training programmes on gender awareness and planning for civil servants at both national and local government levels, in order to help them to analyse the different effects sectoral policies and programmes have on men and women and to ensure equality of opportunity;

(gg) To accelerate action in promoting an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres through the implementation of:

(i) Gender analysis and planning;

(ii) Gender management systems;

(iii) Gender impact assessments;

(hh) To formulate and implement pilot programmes on the national level that apply the gender dimension to the planning process; a suggested theme is poverty eradication, which requires a multisectoral approach, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and operativity of this type of planning;

(ii) To emphasize the prevention of violence against women and children and the prosecution of offenders and urge the enactment of legislation where it does not already exist; to promote legal aid for poorer women to ensure their access to such legislation where it does exist, and the provision of counselling services for the victim and rehabilitation for the perpetrator of violence against women; to develop appropriate training, advocacy and awareness programmes for judicial, legal, medical, social, educational, media and police personnel to sensitize them to the nature of gender-based acts and threats of violence, to ensure fair treatment of female victims and compliance with legislation on violence against women and children;

(jj) To conduct studies and adopt measures to enforce the implementation of international agreements related to women, within institutional frameworks;

(kk) To support the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in its monitoring of the related Convention;

(ll) To contribute to the process of elaborating and revising the draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women;

(mm) To support and foster the active participation of citizens, particularly women, in ensuring the accountability of State commitments regarding development;

(nn) To promote affirmative actions and programmes in order to eliminate inequality based on age, ethnicity or race, as well as socio-economic status, and to facilitate the access to development of those groups which have been discriminated against and marginalized;

(oo) To continue making efforts to allocate and distribute new and additional resources from all available funding sources for development;

(pp) To formulate and improve programmes aimed at protecting the health and sexual and reproductive rights of women, in accordance with the provisions adopted at the Cairo and Beijing Conferences;

(qq) To develop and strengthen comprehensive preventive and health care programmes, designed specifically for women, that are accessible and cover both rural and urban areas and provide sufficient high-quality care, paying particular attention to the most common problems that limit their activity and shorten their lives, such as iron deficiency anaemia, malnutrition and frequent psychological and mental problems, often overlooked;

(rr) To promote information, education and appropriate preventive and support services on sexual and reproductive health for adolescents, recognizing that pregnancy in adolescence has social and economic effects;

(ss) To endorse the proposals which place emphasis on education in the exercise of full citizenship and urge the Governments to guarantee, through their women’s offices and in collaboration with organizations in society, the operation of leadership training programmes for women holding public office; such programmes should permit the development of self-esteem and technical and political capabilities by women policy-makers from a gender perspective;

(tt) To increase the coverage and quality of education and eliminate existing barriers preventing girls and adolescent women from enjoying this right, fundamental for the full exercise of citizenship; to expand the coverage of adult literacy programmes for women;

(uu) To effectively address issues of women’s poverty, as well as women’s absence from positions of decision-making, which requires a parallel concern for issues of masculinity and traditional male attitudes and behaviour and their impact on areas of sexuality and relations of power and domination of women, recognizing that this is a growing concern in many countries of the region which needs to be examined with a view to promoting more positive male attitudes and behaviour in the private and public spheres;

(vv) To promote the conduct of research on women and governance and gender socialization with a view to arriving at strategies to improve women’s involvement in power and decision-making at all levels; and

(ww) To promote access by women to modern communication media and state-of-the art technology through ongoing training.

[1] Taken from the report of the seventh session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2016(CRM.7/7)).

[2] The Regional Programme of Action for Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, which was approved by the Governments at the sixth session of the Regional Conference, updates the Regional Plan of Action on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, adopted in Havana in 1977 at the first session of the Regional Conference.

[3] These priorities are listed in the report of the fortieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, held in March 1995.

[4] Especially with reference to the analysis and proposals contained in the documents entitled “Access to power and participation in decision-making. Latin America and the Caribbean: policies for gender equity towards the year 2000” (LC/L.1063(CRM.7/4)) and “Sustainable development, poverty and gender. Latin America and the Caribbean: working towards the year 2000” (LC/L.1064(CRM.7/5)).

[5] For the full text of the Consensus of São Paulo, see ECLAC, Report of the First Regional Conference in Follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development (LC/G.1972(CONF.86/4)), Santiago, Chile, 1997.

[6] The sixth session of the Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, convened by ECLAC in pursuance of its resolution 509(XXIII), was held in Mar del Plata in September 1994.

[7] As has been recognized by the countries in various international instruments, most notably the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001.

LIMA CONSENSUS (2000)

Lima Consensus adopted at the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Lima, 2000)[1]

The countries represented at the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean,

Recalling that six years have passed since the adoption of the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, five since the adoption of the Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and three since the seventh session of the Regional Conference, which identified obstacles and established priority areas of action through the Santiago Consensus,

Considering the Port-of-Spain Consensus, adopted at the Third Caribbean Ministerial Conference on Women, held in October 1999,

Reiterating its adherence to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women as the legal framework for commitments undertaken at the sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Fourth World Conference on Women, and our primary responsibility for implementation and accountability in respect of these agreements,

Recognizing the existence of a global consensus as to the relevance and urgent need to fulfil all commitments assumed at regional and international intergovernmental meetings, especially the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992), the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the World Summit for Social Development (1995), the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), and at the five-year review processes for those conferences, as well as the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) (1996) and the World Food Summit (1996),

Acknowledging the efforts undertaken by the Governments of the region to mainstream the gender perspective in public policy and to create mechanisms for formulating policies to promote equity and equality,

Asserting the need to accelerate, further, and consolidate successes already achieved and to take vigorous action to overcome constraints and obstacles created by the persistence of policies and cultural practices that do not take into account the gender perspective and therefore accentuate inequities, particularly in regard to gender,

Concerned by the persistence of discrimination in relation to the enjoyment of human rights, which are universal, indivisible, inalienable and interdependent,

According priority to overcoming, in the shortest possible span of time, all obstacles to sustainable human development, the elimination of poverty, the attainment of social justice, and the equitable participation of women in political affairs and their access to full citizenship in the countries of the region,

Recognizing that in spite of the apparent and real advances made by women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean, the fundamental structure of gender relations remains disadvantageous to the majority of them,

Concerned by the profound economic and social inequities and the escalation of the culture of violence, including gender-based violence, which are apparent in Latin America and the Caribbean,

Recognizing that economic globalization, trade liberalization, structural adjustment programmes, external debt and the resulting migration patterns are factors which, among others, can have specific and sometimes negative impacts on the lives and situation of women, particularly those of the least economically developed regions, and can cause the dislocation of families, communities and nations,

Concerned with the inadequate allocation of resources for development and for the implementation of the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing,

Recognizing the importance of working to ensure that women are able to participate on an equal footing and are properly represented in the media,

Recognizing the important contribution of non-governmental organizations, especially those concerned with women’s issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, including those set up following the Fourth World Conference on Women, in connection with the implementation, monitoring and appraisal of the Platform for Action and the Regional Programme of Action and with the design and implementation of public policies aimed at promoting gender equity and equality,

Welcoming the documents prepared by the secretariat for the eighth session of the Regional Conference, especially the document entitled “The Challenge of Gender Equity and Human Rights on the Threshold of the Twenty-first Century”, and acknowledging that it reflects the consensus view of the Governments of the region following a series of evaluations and reports prepared, in many cases, with the participation of civil society,

Having discussed the subject of “Gender equity: the foundation for a just and equitable society” and, within that context, two strategic areas of the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001, namely, (1) gender equity, and (2) human rights, peace and violence,

The countries represented at the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean undertake to:

(a) Strengthen the implementation of the Regional Programme of Action beyond the year 2001, promote the effective implementation of the Platform for Action, and participate actively in the appraisal of and follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women;

(b) Promote the effective application of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women as a legal framework for all programmatic action in connection with those two instruments, and appeal to the States parties to review their reservations to both conventions;

(c) Urge the States of the region to sign, ratify and implement the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women;

(d) Reorient public policies, placing social and gender equity at the centre of governmental concerns, and achieve this by systematically basing these policies on assessments of their differential impact on men and women and monitoring their implementation;

(e) Create or strengthen institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women and the promotion of equal opportunity and endow them with sufficient amounts of all relevant types of resources, a legal identity and budgetary autonomy, along with political support at the highest level so that they may, inter alia, promote and monitor gender policies on a transversal basis;

(f) Promote socio-economic policies that foster growth and sustainable development with equity and equality in order to combat the intergenerational transmission of poverty by allocating, redistributing and increasing resources;

(g) Emphasize the need for a coherent, coordinated and participatory approach among all partners in development in the implementation of national poverty eradication plans and programmes which fully take into account the gender perspective;

(h) Promote positive actions to overcome any negative effects of globalization and trade liberalization and to ensure equal and fair access to its benefits and opportunities;

(i) Orient State policies so as to redress inequalities and guarantee the protection of the human rights of women and girls, devoting special attention to rural and indigenous, black, disabled, displaced, migrant and refugee women, focusing action on the elimination of the existing gap between de facto and de jure equality and taking into account the pluricultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual nature of the countries of the region;

(j) Strengthen democracy in the region through the adoption of policies and measures that facilitate women’s rights to full and equal citizenship and their participation in decision-making in all sectors and at all levels, bearing in mind that democracy is based on the freely expressed will of the people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems;

(k) Support the strengthening of women’s organizations and networks and their work in civil society, in order to increase their capacity to influence public affairs in the countries as they relate to the search for a solution to the problem of women’s inequality and their participation in the design, evaluation and monitoring of public policies at all levels;

(l) Support the implementation of plans and programmes of action aimed at ensuring access to education for girls and boys together with satisfactory educational coverage and quality, promote the elimination of all forms of sexist discrimination in educational processes and content, and do away with the stereotypes that are perpetuated through these channels;

(m) Promote a cultural change whereby all sectors of society will become involved in the empowerment of women and in the search for gender equity and equality, in particular by engaging men as active and integral players in this change;

(n) Guarantee the protection of women’s human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights, and address violations of these rights with particular attention to all forms of gender-based violence and its root causes, including the reproduction of a culture of violence;

(o) Guarantee, at the national level, preventive and comprehensive health care for women and equitable access to quality health care services at all stages of their lives, bearing in mind the differential impact of gender in terms of health and illness;

(p) Formulate and improve programmes designed to safeguard women’s health and uphold their sexual and reproductive rights in accordance with the provisions adopted in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development and in Beijing at the Fourth World Conference on Women;

(q) Promote measures to ensure a better quality of life for women at all stages in their lives, and especially for elderly women;

(r) Prevent and combat all forms of violence against women and girls and their underlying causes;

(s) Promote and mobilize, with the support of international cooperation, the resources necessary to protect and care for women and children who are victims of armed conflict;

(t) Promote peace according to the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter as an indispensable condition for achieving social and economic development with equity;

(u) Develop strategies for creating more and better jobs for women along with equitable systems for providing social protection;

(v) Promote recognition of the social and economic contribution made by the unpaid work performed by women, predominantly in the home, and urge Governments to provide them with social security coverage;

(w) Promote action aimed at fostering equitable access for women to communications and new information technologies and at helping to counteract stereotypes of women in the media;

(x) Strengthen systems for collecting and processing statistical data disaggregated by sex, and adopt the use of gender indicators that will contribute to a baseline analysis of the status of women and to the implementation of public policies at the national and regional levels and that will make it possible to improve the monitoring and assessment of regional and international agreements;

(y) Urge bilateral and multilateral international cooperation agencies to strengthen their technical and financial support programmes on the basis of mutual respect and to foster an exchange of experiences in light of the fact that international cooperation is an effective means of promoting equality, equity and human rights;

The countries represented at the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean resolve:

1. That the Lima Consensus will constitute the region’s contribution to the special session of the United Nations General Assembly entitled, “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”;

2. To submit the agreements adopted at this session of the Regional Conference to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for its consideration at its twenty-eighth session, to be held in Mexico City from 3 to 7 April 2000.

[1] Taken from the report of the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2087(CRM.8/6)).

Mexico City Consensus adopted at the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico City, 2004)[1]

The Governments of the countries participating in the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean,

Gathered in Mexico City from 10 to 12 June 2004,

Recalling that next year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the United Nations World Conference of the International Women’s Year (the first of the world conferences on women), held in Mexico in 1975; the tenth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women; and the fifth anniversary of the special session of the General Assembly entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”, of the Millennium Summit and of the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean,

Considering that at the eighth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Lima, Peru, in February 2000, it was agreed that the implementation of the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean should be extended beyond 2001,

Bearing in mind that the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean is a subsidiary organ of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and that its Presiding Officers, at their thirty-fifth meeting, agreed that the ninth session of the Conference should focus on reviewing the implementation and fulfilment of international and regional agreements and on the analysis of two central themes of strategic importance to the region: (i) poverty, economic autonomy and gender equity and (ii) empowerment, political participation and institution-building,

Acknowledging the contribution of the women’s movement, in all its manifestations, to the development of public policies with a gender perspective in the region, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, and, in particular, to the development of machineries for the advancement of women at the international, regional and national levels,

Highlighting the significant contribution women make towards reducing poverty and strengthening democracy, gender equality, social justice and development in the countries of the region,

Voicing their concern about the negative social effects of structural adjustment policies and, under certain circumstances, free trade, one of whose dimensions is the fragmentation of social policies, and about heavy external debt service obligations,

Recognizing that the benefits and costs of globalization are inequitably distributed, both within and between countries, and that developing countries face special difficulties in meeting this challenge,

Acknowledging the progress made in the areas of legislation, education, health, labour, measures to end violence, sustainable development and the design of public policies that promote gender equity,

Recognizing that this progress is insufficient and that efforts and available resources must be redoubled if the countries are to meet their common goals and objectives, given the multiple obstacles they continue to face in this regard,

Further recognizing the importance of promoting and strengthening affirmative actions for empowering rural, indigenous, Afro-descendent, young and elderly women and for increasing their access to resources,

Deploring the various forms of violence and their manifestations against women, adolescents and children in the region,

Recognizing the magnitude of migration in the region and the need to promote and protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrant men and women, while acknowledging the importance of remittances as a major source of foreign exchange in migrants’ countries of origin, as well as the positive contribution migrants make to the societies that receive them,

1. Welcome the document prepared by the secretariat, entitled “Roads towards gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean”, and recognize that, as it represents the outcome of a process of consultation with representatives of the States members of the Conference, which included five subregional meetings, two of which were conducted using communication technologies, it reflects an approach that is shared by the Latin American and Caribbean Governments;

2. Reaffirm the agreements adopted at the three subregional preparatory meetings for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, and South America, held in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Honduras and Brazil, respectively, to provide inputs for this ninth session of the Conference;

3. Also reaffirm our commitment to the objectives set out in the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the Plan of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001) and the Millennium Declaration (New York, 2000) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, and to all agreements reaffirming Governments’ adherence to this international agenda;[2]

4. Reiterate that the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Caribbean Community Plan of Action and the commitments referred to in paragraph 3 above is an essential contribution to the achievement of the development goals contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration;

5. Note with satisfaction that most of the national delegations accredited to this ninth session of the Conference include parliamentarians and representatives of civil society, in accordance with the agreement adopted at the thirty-fifth meeting of the Presiding Officers;

6. The Governments of the countries participating in the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean reaffirm our determination to:

(i) Adopt measures in all spheres, particularly the political, social, economic and cultural spheres, including legislative measures and institutional reforms, to ensure the full development and advancement of women of all ages, with a view to guaranteeing their access to justice and their exercise and enjoyment of all human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men;

(ii) Strive to incorporate a gender perspective, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, into the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies, using follow-up and assessment instruments and guaranteeing transparency in public management to institutionalize accountability and disseminate information on progress towards the fulfilment of goals and the genuine civic participation of women;

(iii) Ensure that the gender perspective, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, is fully included in the design and implementation of national development plans and public policies and programmes in all areas of State action, as well as in the process of budgeting resources to finance them;

(iv) Design and implement public policies that help to redress the conditions of poverty affecting women in the region, especially in least developed countries and small island developing States, and that recognize the differential impact on men and women of the uneven distribution of the benefits and costs of globalization;

(v) Adopt proactive policies to promote job creation, including affirmative actions for ensuring that men and women enjoy equal conditions in the labour market, and to strengthen women’s entrepreneurial capacity, ensuring full respect for their rights at work and their individual rights, as well as their equitable access to the benefits of social protection;

(vi) Recognize the economic value of unpaid domestic and productive work, afford protection and support to women working in the informal sector, particularly in relation to caregiving services for children and elderly persons, and implement policies for reconciling family and work responsibilities, involving both men and women in this process;

(vii) Encourage States to include gender impact considerations, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, in developing their national policies and positions relative to the negotiation of bilateral and regional trade agreements, and to include gender equity and equality as a priority within national and regional trade capacity-building strategies;

(viii) Review and assess policies and legislation with a view to strengthening the parental obligation to pay economic support for boys, girls and adolescents and other dependants, and exhort States to negotiate treaties for prosecuting and/or collecting monies due from those who evade these obligations;

(ix) Implement education policies that meet the countries’ development needs, encouraging education for all women and promoting their access to economic, technological and scientific activities conducive to their equitable participation in a globalized world;

(x) Foster a culture of respect for the human rights of women and carry out wide-ranging programmes to raise awareness in this regard at all levels of education, and incorporate human rights education with a gender, racial and ethnic perspective at all levels of education;

(xi) Review and implement legislation guaranteeing the responsible exercise of sexual and reproductive rights and non-discriminatory access to health services, including sexual and reproductive health, in accordance with the Lima Consensus;

(xii) Intensify efforts for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, while safeguarding the rights of women and girls living with the virus and guaranteeing access, without discrimination, to information, care, education and services for HIV/AIDS prevention;

(xiii) Strengthen the full participation of women in environmental conservation and management with a view to achieving sustainable development;

(xiv) Take steps to promote and protect the human rights of migrant men and women, in accordance with each country’s constitutional precepts and the international instruments in force;

(xv) Adopt the comprehensive measures needed to eliminate all forms of violence and their manifestations against all women, including domestic violence, sexual abuse and harassment, incest, sexual exploitation and the trafficking and smuggling of women and girls, forced prostitution, murder, systematic rape and violence in situations of armed conflict, among others, and to eliminate unilateral measures contrary to international law and the Charter of the United Nations;

(xvi) Promote all women’s access to information and communication technologies as a means of eradicating poverty and fostering development;

(xvii) Enhance the development of an information system based on statistics disaggregated by sex, with a view to effectively mainstreaming a gender perspective, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, in all government programmes and policies, placing special emphasis on the issues of poverty, unpaid work, time use, gender-based violence and international migration;

(xviii) Design and revise laws to ensure that, where private ownership of land and property exists, women are accorded full and equal rights to own land and other property, including through the right to inheritance, and undertake administrative reforms and other necessary measures to give women the same right as men to credit, capital, appropriate technologies and access to markets and information;

(xix) Guarantee that national machineries for the advancement of women are provided with financial and human resources, build their political capacity and consolidate their institutional status at the highest possible level to ensure that they can fulfil their mandates efficiently and effectively;

(xx) Develop closer ties of collaboration between national machineries for women and regional and international organizations;

(xxi) Promote the full and equal participation of men and women at all levels of decision-making in the State, society and the marketplace, and promote the participation of civil society, including non-governmental organizations and women’s organizations, in decision-making processes at the local, national, regional and global levels to progress in the construction and exercise of full citizenship by all the women of the region;

(xxii) Develop instruments for monitoring and assessing public policies with a view to mainstreaming a gender perspective, taking racial, ethnic and generational diversity into account, in all State actions;

(xxiii) Invite legislative bodies in the region to review their countries’ laws with a view to harmonizing them with international instruments concerning human rights and the elimination of discrimination against women, children and adolescents;

(xxiv) Urge Governments that have not yet done so to consider ratifying and effectively implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol, as well as the Inter-American Convention for the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, and to adopt an effective mechanism for the implementation and follow-up of the latter Convention by the States parties thereto;

(xxv) Promote international cooperation to support the activities of national machineries for the advancement of women to implement the Beijing Platform for Action, and urge United Nations organizations and specialized agencies to continue to support national efforts to ensure equal rights and create opportunities for women in the region through cooperation programmes, studies and research, among other initiatives, in accordance with their mandates;

7. Welcome the research agenda proposed in the document “Roads towards gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean” and request the ECLAC secretariat to take the necessary steps to put it into practice, in collaboration with Governments in the region and other international organizations;

8. Declare that the Mexico City Consensus shall constitute the region’s contribution to the work of the Commission on the Status of Women at its forty-ninth session, to be held in March 2005;

9. Request the Chairperson to submit the present Consensus to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for consideration at its thirtieth session, to be held in June and July 2004;

10. Thank the people and Government of Mexico for having provided the facilities for holding this session of the Conference and for their warm hospitality.

[1] Taken from the report of the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2256(CRM.9/6)).

[2] United Nations, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women (A/CONF.177/20), Beijing, 1995; Report of the International Conference on Population and Development (A/CONF.171/13/Rev.1), Cairo, September 1994; Report of the World Summit for Social Development (A/CONF.166/9), Copenhagen, 6-12 March 1995; Report of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (A/CONF.189/12), Durban, 31 August - 8 September 2001; Millennium Declaration (General Assembly resolution 55/2), New York, September 2000.

Quito Consensus adopted at the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Quito, 2007)[1]

The Governments of the countries participating in the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, represented by ministers or machineries for the advancement of women at the highest level, gathered in Quito, Ecuador, from 6 to 9 August 2007,

Considering that the population of Latin America and the Caribbean is diverse, multicultural and multilingual and is composed of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, mestizos and diverse ethnic groups, among others,[2]

Reiterating Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean resolution 605(XXX), in which it took note of the report of the ninth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, reaffirming the agreements set forth in the Mexico City Consensus, especially the need to evaluate and reverse the negative effects of structural adjustments on the paid and unpaid work, autonomy and living conditions of women, and reiterating the agreements adopted at the three subregional preparatory meetings for the tenth session of the Regional Conference, which were held for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, and South America in the first half of 2007 in Saint John’s, Antigua and Barbuda,[3] Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Santiago, Chile, respectively,

Bearing in mind that the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean is a subsidiary organ of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and that its Presiding Officers, at their thirty-ninth meeting, agreed that two themes of strategic importance for the region would be reviewed at the tenth session of the Conference: (i) political participation and gender parity in decision-making processes at all levels; and (ii) the contribution of women to the economy and social protection, especially in relation to unpaid work,

Reaffirming the full relevance of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, the International Labour Organization conventions related to equality, provided that they have been ratified by the countries, the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the Plan of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001), the Millennium Declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (New York, 2000), the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (approved by the Human Rights Council, 2006) and the recommendations made by the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, as well as all the ensuing agreements reaffirming Governments’ adherence to the international agenda set out in those documents,[4]

Recognizing the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and inalienability of human rights and advances towards equality won by means of international standards relating to the promotion, protection and exercise of the human rights of women throughout their life cycle, as well as of collective rights,

Reiterating the linkage among human rights, the consolidation of representative and participatory democracy, and economic and social development,

Reaffirming the duty of States to guarantee human rights through due diligence and the adoption of all necessary measures to ensure their full application,

Recognizing that the lay character of States contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and guarantees the exercise of their human rights,

Recognizing the social and economic value of the unpaid domestic work performed by women, caregiving as a public matter which falls within the purview of States, local governments, organizations, companies and families, and the need to promote shared responsibility by women and men within the family,

Recognizing the importance of the economic and social value of the unpaid agricultural and subsistence work performed by rural and campesino women, and being aware of the need to make this work visible and arrive at an accounting of its contribution to national economies and to the cohesion of our societies,

Recognizing the significant contribution made by women in their diversity to the productive and reproductive dimensions of the economy, to the development of multiple strategies for dealing with poverty and to the preservation of knowledge and practices which are fundamental for sustaining life, especially for food security and sovereignty and for health,

Recognizing that the sexual division of labour continues to be a structural factor in the economic inequalities and injustices which affect women within the spheres of the family, labour, politics

and community affairs and which pave the way for a failure to value and to remunerate women’s

economic contributions,

Recognizing women’s contribution to the return and strengthening of democracy, gender equality, social justice, the development of the countries of the region and the inclusion of populations that have historically been discriminated against,

Recognizing the valuable contribution of the different indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples and nationalities to the governance of States, as well as to the preservation of the cultural heritage and the reproduction of sociocultural values in the historical territories upon which the life of our peoples is founded,

Recognizing the contribution made by women’s and feminist movements, in all their diversity, to the development of public policies in the region that incorporate a gender perspective, and in particular to the deepening of democracy and the development of a public gender-based institutional structure,

Recognizing the work of institutional machineries for the advancement of women in formulating, designing and managing public policies for equality between women and men at the highest level of the States of the region and, at the same time, being aware that States are the ones which should take up the challenges of guaranteeing the human rights of women, girls and adolescents in the region,

Recognizing that parity is one of the key driving forces of democracy, that its aim is to achieve equality in the exercise of power, in decision-making, in mechanisms of social and political participation and representation, in diverse types of family relations, and in social, economic, political and cultural relations, and that it constitutes a goal for the eradication of women’s structural exclusion,

Condemning the diverse forms of violence perpetrated against women, especially homicide of women, femicide and feminicide,

Rejecting structural violence, which is a form of discrimination against women and acts as an obstacle to the achievement of equality and parity in economic, labour, political, social, family and cultural relations, and which impedes women’s autonomy and their full participation in decision-making,

Recognizing that the region’s economic and social development is directly related to the creation and establishment of comprehensive public social security systems that afford universal access and coverage, that are linked in with a broad spectrum of public policies and that are capable of ensuring the well-being, a quality life and full citizenship for women,

Recognizing that poverty in all its manifestations and unequal access to resources in the region, which have been deepened by structural adjustment policies in those countries where they were applied, continue to be an obstacle to the promotion and protection of all the human rights of women, and that the elimination and reduction of political, economic, social and cultural inequalities should therefore figure among the principal objectives of all development proposals,

Considering that all forms of discrimination, particularly racism, homophobia and xenophobia, are structuralizing factors that lead to inequalities and exclusion in society, especially against women, and that, therefore, their eradication is a common objective of all the commitments assumed in this declaration,

Recognizing gender inequities as social determinants of health that lead to the precariousness of women’s health in the region, especially in areas related to sexual and reproductive rights, which are manifested in the spread and feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and in high maternal mortality rates due, among other factors, to unsafe abortions, teenage pregnancies and the insufficient delivery of family planning services, which demonstrates the limitations of the State and society that still exist in fulfilling their responsibilities in relation to reproductive work,

Considering that sexist language needs to be eliminated in all national, regional and international reports, statements and documents, and that actions need to be promoted for the elimination of sexist stereotypes in the media,

Having reviewed the document entitled “Women’s contribution to equality in Latin America and the Caribbean”,[5]

1. Agree:

(i) To adopt measures in all necessary areas, including legislative and budgetary measures and institutional reforms, to reinforce the technical capacity of government mechanisms for the advancement of women and their ability to have an impact on policies, as well as to ensure that they attain the highest-ranking level in the structure of the State and that the gender-based institutional framework as a whole is strengthened so that they can fulfil their mandates;

(ii) To adopt all necessary affirmative action measures and mechanisms, including the necessary legislative reforms and budgetary allocations, to ensure the full participation of women in public office and in political representative positions with a view to achieving parity in the institutional structure of the State (executive, legislative and judicial branches, as well as special and autonomous regimes) and at the national and local levels as an objective for Latin American and Caribbean democracies;

(iii) To foster regional and international cooperation, in particular in the area of gender, and to work for an international order conducive to the exercise of full citizenship and the genuine exercise of all human rights, including the right to development, which will redound to the benefit of all women;

(iv) To broaden and strengthen participatory democracy and the inclusion of women on an egalitarian, pluralistic and multicultural basis in the region, guaranteeing and encouraging their participation and valuing the function they perform in social and economic affairs and in public policymaking, and adopting measures and strategies for positioning them in decision-making spheres, opinion, information and communication;

(v) To strengthen and increase women’s participation in the international and regional spheres where the agenda for security, peace and development is defined;

(vi) To promote activities that will enable the countries of the region to share strategies, methodologies, indicators, policies, agreements and experiences that facilitate progress towards the achievement of parity in public office and political representative office;

(vii) To promote regional mechanisms for providing women with political education and training for leadership such as the recently created Caribbean Institute for Women in Leadership;

(viii) To develop electoral policies of a permanent character that will prompt political parties to incorporate women’s agendas in their diversity, the gender perspective in their content, actions and statutes, and the egalitarian participation, empowerment and leadership of women with a view to consolidating gender parity as a policy of State;

(ix) To seek the commitment of political parties to implement affirmative action and strategies for communication, financing, training, political education, oversight and internal organizational reforms in order to achieve participation by women on a basis of parity, taking into account their diversity, both internally and at decision-making levels;

(x) To adopt legislative measures and institutional reforms to prevent, punish and eradicate political and administrative harassment of women who reach decision-making positions through electoral means or by appointment at national and local levels, as well as in political parties and movements;

(xi) To encourage and secure the commitment of the media to recognize the importance of parity in women’s participation in political processes, to offer fair and balanced coverage of all candidates and to cover the various forms taken by women’s political participation and the issues that affect them;6

(xii) To adopt public policies, including laws when possible, for eradicating sexist, stereotypical, discriminatory and racist content in the media and to motivate them to promote egalitarian relationships and responsibilities between women and men;

(xiii) To adopt measures of co-responsibility in family and working life that apply equally to women and men, bearing in mind that sharing family responsibilities equitably and overcoming gender stereotypes create conditions conducive to political participation by women in all their diversity;

(xiv) To adopt measures in all spheres of institutional democratic affairs and, in particular, in economic and social areas, including legislative measures and institutional reforms, to ensure recognition of unpaid work and its contribution to families’ well-being and to countries’ economic development, and to promote its inclusion in national accounts;

(xv) To implement comprehensive public social security systems, with universal access and coverage, that are linked to a broad spectrum of public policies and are capable of ensuring women’s well-being, quality of life and full citizenship;

(xvi) To formulate policies and programmes for providing quality employment, social security and economic incentives designed to guarantee decent paid work to women who have no income of their own, on equal conditions with men, in order to ensure their autonomy and the full exercise of their rights in the region;

(xvii) To guarantee the elimination of all discriminatory, precarious and illegal labour conditions, and to encourage women’s participation in creative, innovative occupational sectors that transcend sexist forms of labour segregation;

(xviii) To formulate and implement public policies to broaden sustainable access for women to land ownership and access to water, other natural and productive resources, sanitation and other services, and financing and technologies, valuing work done for household consumption and recognizing the diversity of economic initiatives and their contributions, with particular guarantees for rural women, indigenous women and Afro-descendent women in their historical territories when relevant;

(xix) To implement public affirmative action policies for Afro-descendent women in countries where they are not fully integrated into the development process and for indigenous women as measures of social reparation to ensure their participation, on an equal footing, in the region’s political, economic, social and cultural affairs;

(xx) To formulate and apply State policies conducive to the equitable sharing of responsibilities by women and men in the family, overcoming gender stereotypes and recognizing the importance of caregiving and domestic work for economic reproduction and the well-being of society as one of the ways of overcoming the sexual division of labour;

(xxi) To equalize the labour conditions and rights of domestic work with those of other types of paid work in accordance with ratified International Labour Organization conventions and international standards of women’s rights, and to eradicate all forms of exploitation of domestic work by girl and boy children;

(xxii) To eliminate the income gap between women and men and wage discrimination in all areas of work, and to propose that legislative and institutional mechanisms that give rise to discrimination and precarious working conditions be abrogated;

(xxiii) To develop instruments, especially time-use surveys, for periodically measuring unpaid work performed by women and men in order to make such work visible and recognize its value, to incorporate their results into the System of National Accounts and to design economic and social policies accordingly;

(xxiv) To ensure that sexual and reproductive rights, which are human rights, and that universal access to comprehensive healthcare, which includes sexual and reproductive healthcare, are considered to be an essential condition for guaranteeing women’s participation in political affairs and in paid work and, hence, in decision-making positions for all women and, as a matter of priority, for young women, the poorest women, indigenous women, Afro-descendent women, rural women and women with disabilities;

(xxv) To implement measures and policies that take into account the linkages between social and economic vulnerabilities as they relate to women’s possibilities of participating in politics and in paid work, especially in terms of access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, water and sanitation, and HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care, with priority being placed on the poorest women and their families;

(xxvi) To promote public policies aimed at strengthening adolescent and young women’s access to education and their continuation in it, to job training, sexual and reproductive health, employment, and political and social participation for the full exercise of their rights;

(xxvii) To adopt the necessary measures, especially of an economic, social and cultural nature, to ensure that States assume social reproduction, caregiving and the well-being of the population as an objective for the economy and as a public responsibility that cannot

be delegated;

(xxviii) To adopt measures that contribute to the elimination of all forms of violence against women and their manifestations, especially homicide of women, femicide and feminicide, as well as to the elimination of unilateral measures that run counter to international law and to the United Nations Charter, whose fundamental consequences are borne by women, girl children and adolescents;

(xxix) To guarantee access to justice for women, adolescents and girl children who have been victims of gender violence, with no discrimination whatsoever, through the creation of legal and institutional conditions that guarantee transparency, truth, justice and the consequent reparation of the violation of their rights, strengthening public policies for protection, prevention and care with a view to the eradication of all forms of violence;

(xxx) To develop comprehensive, non-sexist public education programmes designed to counter gender and racial stereotypes and other cultural biases against women and promote relationships of mutual support between women and men;

(xxxi) To review and harmonize laws and regulations at the national and regional levels in order to ensure that the practices of smuggling and trafficking in persons are established as criminal offences and to develop public policies from a comprehensive and gender-based perspective in order to support prevention and to guarantee protection for people who have been victims;

(xxxii) To eradicate the causes and impacts of organized crime networks and of new types of crimes that are interrelated with modalities of economic exploitation that victimize women and girls on a differential basis and that infringe the full exercise of their human rights;

(xxxiii) To adopt laws, public policies and programmes based on research into the conditions and impacts governing interregional and intraregional migration by women in order to fulfil international commitments and guarantee the full security, promotion and protection of all their human rights, including mechanisms for the reunification of families;

(xxxiv) To promote respect for undocumented women’s integral human rights and to take steps to guarantee full access to identity and citizenship documents for all women, especially for those who have been excluded from this right, such as indigenous, Afro-descendent and rural women;

(xxxv) To undertake efforts to sign, ratify and disseminate the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol as a means of ensuring its application;

(xxxvi) To reaffirm our decision to promote the adoption of the International Rural Women’s Day within the United Nations as an explicit recognition of their economic contribution and the development of their communities, in particular with regard to the unpaid work they perform;

2. Instruct the Presiding Officers of the Conference to specifically devote one of the meetings they hold each year to an evaluation of the fulfilment of the commitments set forth herein, and agree that at the eleventh session of the Regional Conference, scheduled for 2010, a general medium-term assessment of the progress made should be undertaken;

3. Request the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, together with other organizations in the United Nations system, to collaborate with member States that request them to do so in following up on the fulfilment of the agreements that have been adopted through the creation of an equality observatory that will help strengthen national gender machineries;

4. Request the Chairperson to submit the agreements set forth herein to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for its consideration at its thirty-second session, to take place in the Dominican Republic in 2008, and, within the framework of the events marking its sixtieth anniversary, to hold a high-level activity to evaluate the Economic Commission’s contributions in the area of gender during the period;

5. Note with satisfaction that the majority of the national delegations accredited to this tenth session of the Conference include representatives of civil society, indigenous women and parliamentarians;

6. Commend and support the Women and Development Unit of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for the excellent work that it has been carrying out for the benefit of the women of Latin America and the Caribbean;

7. Express our gratitude to the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, to the First Vice President of Spain, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, and to the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, María Fernanda Espinosa, for their participation in this session of the Conference;

8. Thank the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and United Nations agencies for their contribution to the organization of this session of the Conference;

9. Thank the people and Government of Ecuador for having provided the facilities for this session of the Conference and for their generous hospitality;

10. Express appreciation for the Government of Brazil’s offer to host the eleventh session of the Regional Conference and accept that offer with gratitude;

11. Thank the Mayor of the City of Quito, Paco Moncayo Gallegos, for having declared all participants in this session of the Conference illustrious guests of this city in recognition of their contribution to the visibility of women’s presence in this public forum;

12. Also thank the feminist women’s networks for their participation.

[1] Taken from the report of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2361(CRM.10/8)).

[2] See the Declaration of Indigenous Women of the Americas, which appears as annex 8 of the report of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2361(CRM.10/8)).

[3] See the Saint John’s Declaration, which appears as annex 1 of the report of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/G.2361(CRM.10/8)).

[4] United Nations, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women (A/CONF.177/20), Beijing, 1995; Report of the International Conference on Population and Development (A/CONF.171/13/Rev.1), Cairo, September 1994; Report of the World Summit for Social Development (A/CONF.166/9), Copenhagen, 6-12 March 1995; Report of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (A/CONF.189/12), Durban, 31 August - 8 September 2001; Millennium Declaration (General Assembly resolution 55/2), New York, September 2000.

[5] LC/L.2738(CRM.10/3).

[6] See operative paragraph 2(m) of resolution 58/142 of the United Nations General Assembly.

BRASILIA CONSENSUS (2010)

Brasilia Consensus adopted at the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Brasilia, 2010)[1]

The Governments of the countries participating in the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, represented by ministers and delegates of the highest level devoted to promoting and defending women’s rights, gathered in Brasilia from 13 to 16 July 2010 to discuss achievements and challenges relating to gender equality with a focus on women’s autonomy and economic empowerment,[2]

Reaffirming the validity of the Quito Consensus and its continued relevance, as well as the regional consensuses adopted at previous sessions of the Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, and restating our commitment to international treaties on women, principally the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, the Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the Programme of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001), the conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the other instruments, standards and resolutions pertaining to gender equality and women’s empowerment and progress,

Bearing in mind that the Region has joined the United Nations Secretary-General’s Campaign “Unite to End Violence against Women”,

Bearing in mind also the need to redouble efforts in order to fulfil internationally agreed development goals, including those established further to the United Nations Millennium Declaration of the General Assembly (New York, 2000),

Bearing in mind further resolution 54/4 on women’s economic empowerment adopted by the Commission on the Status of Women of the United Nations at its fifty-fourth session (New York, 2010),

Recognizing that over the 15 years since implementation of the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) countries have made significant strides in particular as regards the increase in women’s access to education and health, the adoption of egalitarian legal frameworks for building and strengthening machineries for the advancement of women, the design of plans and programmes for gender equality, the definition and implementation of national equal opportunity plans, the enactment and enforcement of legislation which deters and penalizes perpetrators of all forms of violence against women and which guarantees the human rights of women, the growing presence of women in decision-making positions and action taken to fight poverty,

Recognizing also the persistence of obstacles which show the need to redouble efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and which limit or prevent full gender equality, such as the feminization of poverty; the sexual division of labour; the lack of social protection and of full access to education and health care, including sexual and reproductive health care; unpaid domestic work; racial and ethnic discrimination; and unilateral measures contrary to international law and to the Charter of the United Nations whose basic consequences fall disproportionately on women, adolescents and girls,

Highlighting the active, coordinated contribution made to those processes by Governments and by international agencies devoted to the promotion and defence of the rights of women and of civil society, through the feminist and women’s movement,

Reiterating the contribution made by the feminist and women’s movement in the region to deepening democracy, building real equality and developing institutions and public policies on gender,

Reaffirming that the secular character of States contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and helps to ensure the full exercise of their human rights,

Reaffirming also that parity is a key condition for democracy as well as a goal for eradicating the structural exclusion of women in society, which affects primarily indigenous and Afro-descendent women and those with disabilities, and that it is aimed at achieving equality in the exercise of power, in decision-making, in mechanisms for participation and social and political representation and in family, social, economic, political and cultural relationships,

Considering that unpaid domestic work is a burden that falls disproportionately on women and, in practice, constitutes an invisible subsidy to the economic system that perpetuates their subordination

and exploitation,

Considering also that one feature of the demographic transition taking place in the countries of the region is the ageing of the population, which overburdens women with the task of caring for older persons and for the sick,

Recognizing that access to justice is essential in order to safeguard the indivisible and comprehensive nature of human rights, including the right to care,

Drawing attention to the fact that the right to care is universal and requires solid measures to ensure its observance and to achieve co-responsibility of the whole of society, the State and the private sector,

Highlighting the significant contribution that women in all their diversity make to the productive and reproductive dimensions of the economy, to the development of multiple strategies for dealing with poverty and preserving knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and practices that are fundamental for survival and for sustaining life, especially for comprehensive health and for food and nutrition security,

Considering that progress in the region is uneven and that challenges to gender equality persist and require constant State investments and policies on issues such as the sexual division of labour, unpaid domestic work, the elimination of discrimination in the labour market and social protection for women, the prevalence and persistence of violence against women, racism, sexism, impunity and lesbophobia, parity in all areas of decision-making and access to high-quality universal public services in the areas of public awareness, education and health-care, including sexual and reproductive health care,

Considering also that the right to land ownership and to access to water, forests and biodiversity in general is more limited for women than for men, that the use of these natural resources is conditioned by the sexual division of labour, that environmental pollution has specific impacts on women in both rural and urban milieus, and that it is necessary for the State to recognize the contribution of women to biodiversity conservation, to implement affirmative action policies and to guarantee the exercise of their rights in this area,

Considering further that women are marginalized from access to and control of the media and new information technologies, and that States should design specific policies which, together with general policies, ensure their participation on an equal footing,

Bearing in mind that food, energy, and financial crises threaten the sustainability of women’s achievements and underscore the urgent need for more rapid progress in the area of gender equality,

Considering that the measures adopted to achieve macroeconomic stability have not reduced gender inequalities and that the tax burden and public investment remain low,

Recognizing that, despite the measures taken to predict, prevent or minimize their causes and mitigate their adverse consequences, climate change and natural disasters can have a negative impact on productive development, time use by women, especially in rural areas, and their access to employment,

Reaffirming the need to overcome the tendency to link equality policies exclusively to social issues,

Stressing the importance of and need for broad, inclusive, sustainable, redistributive, solidarity-based and strengthened social security systems that work as social protection mechanisms for vulnerable populations, promote social justice and help reduce inequalities,

Considering that women’s comprehensive health is a fundamental right that involves the interaction of social, cultural and biological factors and that gender inequality is one of the social determinants of health,

Bearing in mind that Latin America and the Caribbean is still the most inequitable region in the world and exhibits widening gender, ethnic and racial gaps; that the social, political, cultural and economic patterns underlying the sexual division of labour must be changed without delay; and that the key to this is a new equation between the State, society as a whole, the market and families in which unpaid domestic work and caregiving are construed and treated as public matters and a responsibility to be shared among all these spheres,

Emphasizing that economic autonomy for women is born out of the interrelationship between economic independence, sexual and reproductive rights, a life free from violence, and political parity,

Recognizing the importance of strengthening State structures and the strategic role played by machineries for the advancement of women, as well as the need to endow these machineries with autonomy and with the necessary human and financial resources to enable them to have a cross-cutting impact on the structure of the State with a view to building strategies for promoting women’s autonomy and gender equality,

Recognizing also the persistence of racism and the resulting accumulation of disadvantages for Afro-descendent and indigenous women,

Considering that women’s comprehensive health depends on concrete measures aimed at reducing maternal morbidity and mortality and adolescent maternity and ensuring a better quality of life, and that Millennium Development Goal 5 is the furthest from being achieved,

Bearing in mind that organized crime and de facto powers, which threaten security and democracy-building, and armed conflicts and the displacements they cause, have a particular impact on the trafficking of persons, sexual commerce and women’s lack of safety,

Recognizing that the territory historically occupied by indigenous women forms the basis for their economic and cultural development,

Decide to adopt the following agreements in order to address the challenges to women’s autonomy and gender equality,

1. Attain greater economic autonomy and equality in the workplace

(a) To adopt all the social and economic policy measures required to advance towards the attribution of social value to the unpaid domestic and care work performed by women and recognition of its economic value;

(b) To foster the development and strengthening of universal care policies and services based on the recognition of the right to care for all and on the notion of sharing the provision of care between the State, the private sector, civil society and households, as well as between men and women, and of strengthening dialogue and coordination between all stakeholders;

(c) To adopt policies conducive to establishing or broadening parental leave and other childcare leave in order to help distribute care duties between men and women, including inalienable and non-transferable paternity leave with a view to furthering progress towards co-responsibility;

(d) To encourage the establishment, in national accounts, of a satellite account for unpaid domestic and care work performed by women;

(e) To promote changes in the legal and programmatic framework aimed at achieving recognition in the national accounts of the productive value of unpaid work, with a view to the formulation and implementation of cross-cutting policies;

(f) To develop active labour market and productive employment policies to boost the female labour-market participation rate, the formalization of employment and women’s occupation of positions of power and decision-making, as well as to reduce unemployment rates, especially for Afro-descendent, indigenous and young women who suffer discrimination based on race, sex and sexual orientation, in order to ensure decent work for all women and guarantee equal pay for equal work;

(g) To promote and enforce equality-in-employment legislation which eliminates discrimination and asymmetries of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation in access to the labour market and employment continuity, in decision-making and in the distribution of remuneration; establishes mechanisms for the filing of complaints; and provides for the sanctioning of sexual and other forms of harassment in the workplace;

(h) To promote and encourage the enactment of legislation that extends to female domestic workers

the same rights as those of other workers and establishes regulations to protect them, promotes their economic and social valuation and ends child domestic work;

(i) To promote the ratification and implementation of Convention 156 of the International Labour Organization;

(j) To ensure equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value, in conformity with the international conventions that have been ratified, particularly Conventions 100, 111 and 112 of the International Labour Organization, and with international standards relating to women’s rights;

(k) To promote the adoption of policies and programmes on professional training for both rural and urban women in competitive and dynamic areas of the economy in order to achieve access to technologies, the recognition of traditional technologies and fuller and more diverse and skilled participation by women in the labour market while taking into consideration the constraints imposed by the double working day;

(l) To ensure women’s access to productive assets, including land and natural resources, and access to productive credit, in both urban and rural areas;

(m) To promote the valuation and recognition of women’s economic contribution in rural areas, in traditional communities and indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples or minority groups, and of migrant women through remittances;

(n) To promote also the economic and financial autonomy of women by means of technical assistance, by fostering entrepreneurship, associations and co-operatives and integrating women’s networks into economic and productive processes and local and regional markets;

(o) To encourage and strengthen the adoption of systems to oversee and promote gender equity in the public and private sectors, with a view to non-discrimination in employment, the reconciliation of professional, private and family life, and the prevention and elimination of all forms of gender violence in the workplace, especially sexual and other forms of harassment;

(p) Enact legislation directed towards the accreditation of non-formal studies and education programmes which qualify adult women for productivity and employment;

(q) Adopt measures to end all forms of economic violence against women, particularly those that infringe their human dignity or exclude them from the right to receive financial resources, with a view to encouraging their autonomy and the respect of their labour-related rights.

2. Enhance the citizenship of women

(a) To promote and strengthen State policies that ensure respect for and the protection and observance of all the human rights of women of all ages and walks of life as the substantive foundation for democratic processes;

(b) To ensure freedom of religion and worship, providing that women’s human rights are respected;

(c) Ensure that fiscal policies combine criteria of effectiveness with criteria of equity, with emphasis on their redistributive and progressive function, and that they ensure the development of women;

(d) Promote and ensure gender, race and ethnic mainstreaming in all policies, especially in economic and cultural policy, and coordination between branches of government and social stakeholders to ensure gender equality;

(e) To increase public investment in social security, so as to comprehensively address the specific care and social protection needs of women that arise in situations related to ill health, disability, unemployment and life cycles, especially childhood and old age;

(f) To strengthen the production of the disaggregated statistical information needed to raise the profile of gender inequality issues in the spheres of physical and economic autonomy and decision-making;

(g) Adopt an approach of gender, race and ethnic equality and the corresponding measures in relation to economic, fiscal and tax policy, agrarian reform, and access to ownership of land, housing and other productive assets, in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth;

(h) Conduct studies on how the economic, financial, food, energy and environmental crisis affect women and, in particular, internal and international migratory flows and the reconfiguration of all spheres;

(i) Make progress in the adoption of measures to improve the status of migrant women and their families, bearing in mind their vulnerability, in order to improve their labour-market situation and social inclusion;

(j) To develop policies that favour the settlement of rural women and rural employment in areas undergoing productive restructuring and to ensure that mechanisms needed to implement them are in place;

(k) Implement measures aimed at eliminating the specific constraints faced by women in accessing formal financial services, including savings, credit, insurance, and money-transfer services;

(l) To ensure women’s right and access to ownership of land and housing provided under government housing programmes, with the respective title deeds, while respecting the right of indigenous women to their land since this forms the basis for economic and social development;

(m) To promote the reformulation of national social security systems in order to extend their coverage to female workers in the informal market, female rural family workers, independent female workers, female domestic workers,

different forms of family, including same-sex couples, and women engaged in caregiving activities;

(n) To encourage the review of existing national social security systems, in order to guarantee women’s rights as beneficiaries, taking into account the state of their participation in the labour market;

(o) To implement systems of management of natural and anthropic risks with a gender, race and ethnic focus for addressing the causes and consequences of natural disasters and the differential impacts that such disasters and climate change have on women, focusing especially on the recovery of sustainable livelihoods, the administration of refuges and shelters, sexual and reproductive health, the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence and the elimination of obstacles to women’s rapid integration or reintegration in the formal employment sector, due to their role in the economic and social reconstruction process;

(p) Promote the reform of the education system and educational practices in order to transmit the notion of co-responsibility in family and public life;

(q) Encourage the elimination of gender stereotypes through measures directed at the education system, the media and business;

(r) Incorporate the variables of sex, ethnicity and race, considering self-identification as a basic criterion for recording information in population and housing censuses, household surveys, rural surveys and vital statistics, among others;

(s) Prepare and implement lifelong learning policies and plans with sufficient resources and measurable targets, directed in particular at young and adult women, in order to enable them to exercise their citizenship more fully.

3. Broaden the participation of women in decision-making and the exercise of power

(a) To increase and enhance opportunities for the equal participation of women in making and implementing policies in all spheres of public authority;

(b) To adopt all necessary measures, including amending legislation and adopting affirmative policies, to ensure parity, inclusion and alternation of power, in the three branches of government, in special and autonomous regimes, at the national and local levels and in private institutions, in order to reinforce the democracies of Latin America and the Caribbean from an ethnic and racial point of view;

(c) To contribute to the empowerment of indigenous women’s leaderships in order to eliminate existing gaps and ensure their participation in decision-making, and respect the principle of free, prior and informed consent in the design and implementation of national and regional public policies;

(d) To promote the creation of mechanisms which ensure women’s political partisanship and participation and which, as well as parity in candidate registers, ensure parity of outcomes, equal access to campaign financing and electoral propaganda, and women’s participation in decision-making within party structures, and support such mechanisms where they already exist; in addition, create mechanisms to sanction non-compliance with legislation in this area;

(e) To encourage measures to ensure women’s access to decision-making and strengthen their unionization, among others, in both urban and rural areas, in order to make further progress towards equal opportunities and equal treatment for men and women in the workplace;

(f) To encourage also the creation and strengthening of government machineries for policies on women at the national and subnational level, endowing them with the necessary resources and highest hierarchical status within the Government, in keeping with national contexts;

(g) Promote parity-based representation in regional parliaments, for example, the MERCOSUR Parliament, the Central American Parliament, the Andean Parliament and the Latin American Parliament;

(h) Promote also the creation and strengthening of citizens’ mechanisms for oversight of electoral processes and the establishment of institutional mechanisms to ensure compliance with legislation aimed at guaranteeing women’s political participation;

(i) Create mechanisms to support the political participation of young women in decision-making, free of discrimination based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and to ensure that their forms of organization and expression are respected and not subjected to generational stigmatization;

(j) Promote measures to increase women’s presence on corporate boards.

4. Address all forms of violence against women

(a) To adopt preventative and punitive measures as well as measures for protecting and caring for women that further the eradication of all forms of violence against women in public and private spheres, with special attention to Afro-descendent, indigenous, lesbian, transgender and migrant women, and those living in rural, forest and border areas;

(b) To broaden and guarantee effective access to justice, and to free legal assistance for women in violent situations, and provide training and awareness-raising, from a gender perspective, for staff and officials responsible for administering justice;

(c) To take all effective measures necessary to prevent, punish and eliminate all forms of trafficking and smuggling of women, adolescents and girls for sexual exploitation or any other purpose;

(d) To formulate and apply measures for combating violence against women who are engaged

in prostitution;

(e) To promote the human rights of women deprived of their freedom;

(f) To mainstream into public safety policies specific measures for preventing, investigating, sanctioning, penalizing and eliminating femicide and feminicide, understood as the most extreme form of gender violence against women;

(g) To promote policies and programmes for the prevention of violence against women, directed at aggressors and their families with a view to preventing reincidence;

(h) To promote policies aimed at changing the sociocultural patterns that reproduce violence and discrimination against women;

(i) To create national gender-based violence surveillance systems to collect, compile and analyse data on gender-based violence in an effort to influence national and local policies

and programmes;

(j) To ensure that women are not victims or at risk of any type of violence in situations arising from natural and climate disasters and that the humanitarian assistance provided in such cases takes into account women’s needs, in order to avoid the double victimization of women;

(k) To promote and strengthen programmes of awareness-raising and training with a gender focus, directed towards those responsible for administering justice, in order to ensure high-quality attention and eliminate institutional violence against women;

(l) To adopt, in the framework of regional and national strategies, public safety measures with a perspective of gender and of urban or community diversity, as forums for bringing all people together so as to guarantee an environment free of violence against women;

(m) To ensure free, comprehensive multi-professional services for women who are victims

of violence;

(n) To promote and adopt measures to ensure budget allocations for programmes aimed at preventing violence against women.

5. Facilitate women’s access to new technologies and promote egalitarian, democratic and non-discriminatory practices by the media

(a) To promote actions that facilitate women’s access to communications and new information technologies, including education and training in the use of such technologies for networking, advocacy and exchange of information, educational activities, and the specialized use of these technologies in economic activities;

(b) To formulate policies aimed at eliminating sexist and discriminatory contents in the media and train communications professionals correspondingly, valuing the dimensions of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and generation;

(c) To build mechanisms for monitoring the content transmitted in the media and for regulating the Internet, ensuring the active, ongoing participation of society in order to eliminate sexist and discriminatory content;

(d) To promote and ensure access of women, especially indigenous and Afro-descendent women, to the mass media through plans that incorporate their languages and cultural identities into community radio and audiovisual slots;

(e) To promote women’s access to science, technology and innovation, encouraging the interest of girls and young women in scientific and technological fields.

6. Promote the conditions for the integral health of women and for their sexual and reproductive rights

(a) To guarantee the conditions and resources for the protection and exercise of women’s sexual and reproductive rights throughout the lifecycle and across population groups, free of all forms of discrimination, based on the integrated approach promoted in the programme of action of the International Conference on Population and Development;

(b) Include in national and subnational budgets sufficient resources to broaden the public supply of high-quality comprehensive health services for women in all their diversity, particularly chronic and non-communicable diseases;

(c) To foster the regulation and implementation of legislation enacted in relation to gender equality, including laws concerning physical autonomy, and promote women’s access to and continuity in the labour market;

(d) To ensure access to sexual education, by implementing culturally relevant comprehensive sexual education programmes with a gender focus;

(e) To ensure also universal access by women in their diversity to comprehensive, high-quality sexual and reproductive health care, including care for human immuno-deficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), its prevention, diagnosis and free treatment, and especially, to carry out campaigns to promote the use of the male and female condoms;

(f) To review laws that punish women who have undergone abortions, as recommended by the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, including the further initiatives and actions identified for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, as well as the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the general observations of the Committee against Torture of the United Nations, and ensure that abortions are performed safely where authorized by the law;

(g) To strengthen and broaden plans and programmes that promote healthy maternity and prevent maternal mortality by ensuring universal access to health-care services, especially for indigenous and Afro-descendent adolescent girls and women;

(h) To promote the reduction of adolescent pregnancies, through education, information and access to sexual and reproductive health care, including access to all contraceptive methods;

(i) To promote also access by indigenous and Afro-descendent women to culturally and linguistically relevant health-care services, incorporating and valuing the knowledge and practices of ancestral and traditional medicine, especially those practiced by women;

(j) To recommend that, at the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals, which will be held in September 2010, particular attention should be paid to target 5B concerning universal access to reproductive health.

7. Carry out training and activities for exchanging and disseminating experiences with a view to the formulation of public policies based on the data collected by the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean

(a) To request the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to carry out training and capacity-building activities for exchanging and disseminating experiences, including those with a political impact, aimed at public policymakers and political operators. These activities would be aimed at compiling the practices employed in the countries and making progress in formulating public policies using the data of the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, and providing a general source of know-how and a complement to the Observatory.

8. Promote international and regional cooperation for gender equality

(a) Encourage regional, subregional and multilateral cooperation programmes, taking advantage of the processes of integration for socio-economic development under way in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly actions that promote gender equality;

(b) Strengthen South-South cooperation in order to achieve gender equality and women’s advancement;

(c) Urge donors to meet their official development assistance commitments, as an essential element for the promotion of gender equality.

9. Welcome the offer extended by the Government of the Dominican Republic to host the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, and accept this invitation with pleasure

[1] Taken from the report of the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/L.3309).

[2] The Brasilia Consensus was not adopted by the United States (see annex 3 of the report of the the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/L.3309)).

SANTO DOMINGO CONSENSUS (2013)

Santo Domingo Consensus adopted at the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Santo Domingo, 2013)[1]

The delegations of the member States of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean participating at the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, gathered in Santo Domingo from 15 to 18 October 2013,

Reaffirming:

1. The commitments States have assumed under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, the Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the Programme of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001), the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo, 2000) and the protocols thereto, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

2. The agreed conclusions of the fifty-fifth session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on access and participation of women and girls in education, training and science and technology, including for the promotion of women’s equal access to full employment and decent work;

3. The valuable contribution to policies and programmes made by the regional consensuses adopted at previous sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and, in particular, the continued relevance of the Brasilia Consensus adopted at the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2010;

4. The commitments undertaken at the fourth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Montevideo in April 2013 with the support of the second phase of the Alliance for the Information Society programme (@LIS2);

5. The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development adopted at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Montevideo in August 2013, and the commitment to other instruments and resolutions on gender equality, empowerment and the advancement of women;

Considering:

6. The opportunity represented by the debate that is taking place in different forums, in particular on the new development agenda beyond 2015, the search for new forms and models of development, and the strengthening of democracy and increasing acceptance of equality as an imperative, which offers new opportunities for the application of gender policies;

7. That the digital economy, innovation projects and access to and use of information and communications technologies present an array of opportunities and challenges in connection with achieving women’s economic, physical and political autonomy, which compel the use of these tools to drive the processes of building equality and prevent these technologies from opening a gap that deepens the inequalities in the information and knowledge society, especially for rural, indigenous, Afro-descendent, displaced and migrant women, young women, older women, women living with HIV/AIDS and women with disabilities;

8. That women’s autonomy is essential to guaranteeing the exercise of their human rights in a context of full equality and, in particular, that control over their own bodies, comprehensive health and the right to live a life free from violence (physical autonomy), access to land and the ability to generate their own income and resources (economic autonomy) and full participation in decisions that affect their lives and their community (autonomy in decision-making) constitute three mutually supportive pillars that are fundamental to achieving greater gender equality and promoting women’s access to information and communications technologies;

9. That the freedom, capacity and right to take informed decisions empower women to develop their potential and participate fully in the economic and social spheres;

10. That a secular State and the implementation of participatory forms of government are guarantees for the effective exercise of human rights and the consolidation of democracy, transparency and governance;

11. The negative impact of unilateral coercive economic measures on access to new technologies by the countries targeted by such measures;

12. The impact of information and communications technologies on society and the economy;

13. The widening gap between developed and developing countries in access to information and communications technologies, and the new dimensions of the digital divide, which undermine women’s autonomy and limit their full development;

14. The outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio de Janeiro, 2012), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Cancun Agreements adopted at the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Cancun, 2010);

Bearing in mind:

15. That every country has the sovereign right to apply the recommendations contained herein in accordance with its national laws and development priorities and in a manner consistent with internationally recognized universal human rights;

16. The imminent deadlines for implementing the main international agendas that have helped to further the advancement of women, such as the Millennium Development Goals, the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development;

17. The need to assess the implementation status of these international agendas and the progress made towards achieving the goal of real and effective gender equality and women’s autonomy in the region;

18. The need to include gender equality in the development agenda beyond 2015 and to define the outlook and priorities for the future, in relation to both a stand-alone goal on equality and the mainstreaming of gender across the entire set of goals to be adopted under the new sustainable development agenda with a view to ensuring a rights-based approach to development;

19. The centrality of gender equality in the development debate, which entails taking account of both productive and reproductive work and changing the division of labour, since inequities in the sphere of reproduction have created a disproportionate burden on women and structural gender inequalities that perpetuate the cycle of poverty, marginalization and inequality;

20. That the sustainable development agenda should incorporate and reaffirm the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, in general, and sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular, as a fundamental part of that right, recognizing gender equality as a prerequisite for its fulfilment;

21. That gender equality must be the central thread running through all action taken by the State, given that it is a key factor in consolidating democracy and moving towards a more participatory and inclusive development model;

22. States’ responsibility to focus efforts and make the investments needed to ensure that information and communications technologies are accessible and contribute to enhancing women’s initiatives and their economic, political and physical empowerment, preventing the creation of new gaps owing to the living conditions or cultural diversity in the region;

23. That to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges offered by information and communications technologies for the advancement of women, it is necessary to overcome existing constraints and gender gaps in relation to education, health, the exercise of power, the economy and sociocultural spheres;

24. The need to facilitate access to information and communications technologies by women of all ages such that they can fully exercise their right to freedom of expression through networking, advocacy and exchange of information, educational activities and the specialized use of these technologies in economic activities;

25. That information and communications technologies have transformed information into one of the most valued and sought-after market resources;

26. That public policies must be adopted and implemented to tackle racism and ethnocentrism and their harmful consequences;

27. That rural women’s access to land, natural resources and public resources in support of production —such as technical and technological assistance, education and credit— is still subject to various constraints;

28. The need to support the sustainability of women’s and feminist organizations and movements, recognizing them as essential agents in transforming and mobilizing society and in informing, educating and communicating for social, economic, political and cultural change grounded in the democratic principles of autonomy, equality of rights and women’s empowerment;

29. That the justice system is important for the promotion of human rights and recognizing that justice delayed is often justice denied;

30. That the adoption of a human-rights-based approach in policies and programmes calls for the detailed planning of specific actions that can bring about real changes in all stages of women’s life cycle, particularly for young women, rural women, women with disabilities, indigenous women, Afro-descendent women, displaced women, migrant women, other women who live in particularly vulnerable or marginalized circumstances and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, transvestite and intersex (LGBTTI) persons;

Agree to:

A. GENDER EQUALITY, EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AND INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

31. Adopt public policies aimed at resolving the problems that affect our peoples, in particular women, and use information and communications technologies as a means of implementing those policies;

32. Work together with all stakeholders to ensure that the information and knowledge society fosters the empowerment of women and their full and equal participation in all spheres of society and in all decision-making processes;

33. Design measures to build a new technological, scientific and digital culture for girls and women to bring them closer to and allow them to become familiar with new technologies and integrate them in their daily lives, and facilitate the strategic use of these technologies in their different spheres of development and participation, and encourage the implementation of national projects and programmes to promote and strengthen the pursuit of scientific and technological vocations by women;

34. Strengthen the mainstreaming of gender across all areas of public policy in connection with information and communications technologies, ensuring full access to these technologies and their use by women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities on an equal and equitable basis for the social appropriation of knowledge, bearing in mind the associated regulations, costs and coverage issues and with respect for cultural and linguistic diversity;

35. Adopt public policies that include affirmative action to promote the lowering of barriers to access, a better grasp of the use of information and communications technologies and the local-language adaptation of applications and content related to these technologies, and that foster the engagement of women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women and women with disabilities in vocational training in the sciences, including mathematics, engineering, environmental technologies and information and communications technologies, and in all areas of scientific research and knowledge production;

36. Encourage the creation of networks for communication and exchange in all spheres of science, leveraging the experience gained by women in the region, as well as public policies that incentivize the use and promotion of appropriate technologies and related legislation, and open-source software as a means of achieving the democratization of knowledge, free access and autonomy;

37. Promote improvements in women’s access to decent employment, redistributing care work between the State, market and society, and between men and women, facilitating training and the use of technology, self-employment and business creation in the science and technology sector, and increase the proportion of women in areas where they are underrepresented, for example, in academia and the fields of science and technology, including information and communications technologies;

38. Ensure that the education system, at all levels and with respect to all forms of teaching, provides timely information to women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities on the benefits, applications and availability of vocational training opportunities in science and technology that could contribute to their personal, economic, social and political autonomy;

39. Promote, conduct and disseminate studies and research on women in science, including mathematics, technology and engineering, as well as science fairs and congresses, in order to showcase the skills, innovation and contributions of women, girls, adolescent girls and young women in these fields;

40. Ensure that businesswomen and female entrepreneurs, including rural, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, have access to marketing mechanisms and to credit for acquiring technological equipment and instruments that enable them to innovate and expand their business opportunities and their participation in development-oriented production processes and self-managed enterprises;

41. Promote gender equity and equality in strategic and high-level managerial and decision-making positions in firms and public and private institutions, including in the information and communications technologies sector;

42. Promote also knowledge and analysis of risks for women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities in relation to cybersafety, sexual exploitation, trafficking in persons, child pornography, cyberbullying and bullying by other technological means, and define related offences and appropriate sanctions, considering their impact on the human rights of these groups, and enact corresponding legislation;

43. Give impetus to policies that encourage the proactive participation of educators of children and adolescents, both in the home and at school, in ensuring the safe use of information and communications technologies;

44. Support the generation, creation and dissemination of content and knowledge defined, produced and developed by women;

45. Strengthen e-government policies from a gender perspective, including through the production and dissemination of sex-disaggregated information, administrative records and statistics on government and public service administration, to promote a culture of accountability using technology tools and contribute to strengthening mechanisms of citizen participation;

46. Advocate legislative and educational measures by the State and the private sector to eradicate and punish sexist, stereotypical, discriminatory and racist content in the media and in software and electronic games, promote the use of positive images, appreciating women’s contributions to society, and encourage, also at the State level and in the private sector, egalitarian relations and responsibilities between women and men in the field of science and technology;

47. Advocate also legislative measures and policies, by the State and the private sector, to guarantee adequate conditions of work and health and to protect women against exploitation in these areas and especially in telemarketing and informal jobs;

48. Adopt policy measures to control highly toxic electronic waste which causes serious health problems and risk of death and illness with an impact on women and children from poor families and environmental damage;

49. Take measures to ensure personal data confidentiality and protection at all stages of data collection and processing, and to avoid espionage;

50. Seek ways to bring sciences and the new technologies closer to the specific situations of women, appreciating the dimensions of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and age, with a view to helping to eradicate poverty in areas with the worst social exclusion, promote development and democratize education;

51. Eliminate sexism and gender stereotypes in education systems, books and teaching materials, and eradicate biases in teachers’ perception of boys’ and girls’ performance in sciences, including mathematics and technology, broadening the training of educators for equality and promoting teaching practices free from prejudices and stereotypes;

52. Reaffirm and develop policies and plans of action to realize the commitments and targets of the World Summit on the Information Society and the Plan of Action for the Information and Knowledge Society in Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC2015), strengthening the working group on gender with the active participation of women’s organizations;

B. GENDER EQUALITY AND THE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN

53. Urge States to accede to and ratify the International Labour Organization conventions relating to gender equality, such as those on decent work for female and male domestic workers;

54. Recognize the value of unpaid domestic work and adopt the necessary measures, including legislative measures, and public policies that recognize the social and economic value of domestic work;

55. Define and establish instruments for the periodic measurement of the unpaid work done by women and ensure that public budgets allocate the funds required by the machineries responsible for compiling and systematizing the information for conducting national time-use surveys in order to facilitate the design of appropriate and fair public policies;

56. Urge States to establish satellite accounts for unpaid domestic work in the countries of the region;

57. Recognize care as a right and, therefore, as a responsibility that must be shared by men and women of all sectors of society, and by families, private companies and the State, and adopt measures, policies and programmes on care and on promoting the joint responsibility of women and men in family, working and social life in order to free up women’s time so that they can engage in employment, studies and politics and enjoy their autonomy to the full;

58. Achieve the consolidation of public protection and social security systems with universal, comprehensive and efficient access and coverage by means of solidary, standard, participatory financing, based on the principle of solidarity and linked to a broad spectrum of public policies that guarantee well-being, quality of life and a decent retirement and enhance the full exercise of citizenship by women, including those who have devoted their lives to productive as well as reproductive work, both paid and unpaid, female domestic workers, rural women, female informal and contract workers and, above all, women directly or indirectly affected by illness, disability, unemployment, underemployment or widowhood at any stage in their life cycle;

59. Draft and promote legislative initiatives for reinforcing the empowerment of women in terms of their right to ownership of land and other natural resources, as well as their participation on an equal basis in managing these resources with respect to decision-making, access to and control of capital, access to good-quality services and producer goods, technology, markets and market information, inheritance and capital assets;

60. Prioritize and intensify initiatives aimed at women’s economic empowerment at the community level through means such as business education and business incubators to improve their situation and thus reduce their vulnerability to violence;

61. Prioritize also the design and implementation of public policies and programmes designed to reduce poverty among women, on the basis of sustainable development, economic growth, technical and financial support for productive activities launched by women living in poverty, training and skills-building for employment, access to decent work and optimum use of information and communications technologies, from the perspective of equality;

62. Develop and implement active labour-market and productive employment policies to ensure decent work for all women, combating the precarious and informal conditions that affect mainly the female workforce and guaranteeing equal pay for work of equal value, an egalitarian participation rate, appointment without discrimination to positions of power and decision-making and the elimination of occupational segregation, with particular attention to rural women, Afro-descendent women, indigenous women, women with disabilities and young women;

63. Promote and enforce legislation on equality in employment to eliminate discrimination relating to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation and other types of discrimination in access to and security in the labour market, establishing mechanisms for filing complaints to bodies clearly identified and mandated for that purpose and determining sanctions for bullying, sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women in the workplace;

64. Take measures to formalize employment, ensuring social protection and health, as well as to boost the economic and financial autonomy of women through access to working capital, including credit facilities, as well as technical advice and state-of-the-art technology, and foster entrepreneurship, cooperative movements and other forms of partnership, including self-managed enterprises;

65. Adopt measures to ensure that gender equity and equality criteria are applied in relation to the implementation of fiscal policies and that affirmative action is taken to prevent fiscal reforms from exacerbating poverty levels among women;

66. Implement measures, including legislative measures, to ensure access by women on an equal basis to formal financial services such as savings, credit, insurance and transfers, without any type of barrier based on discrimination;

67. Acknowledge the increase in women’s participation in teleworking, promote the establishment of specific public policies on teleworking in accordance with the conventions and other provisions of the International Labour Organization, and prevent conditions in the sector from becoming more precarious;

68. Urge the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, through the Division for Gender Affairs, to carry forward action to promote production development and women’s economic autonomy by raising the profile of women engaged in production activities and designing and implementing an integrated, inter-agency and intersectoral approach for the support of women entrepreneurs, women producers and businesswomen within value chains;

C. GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S SEXUAL HEALTH AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

69. Promote, protect and guarantee the complete fulfilment of the sexual rights and reproductive rights of women of all population groups throughout the life cycle by implementing laws, policies, rules, regulations and programmes incorporated into national and subnational budgets, insofar as physical autonomy is a fundamental dimension of women’s empowerment and their participation in the information and knowledge society on an equal basis;

70. Ensure, within the framework of strengthened health systems —endowed with budgetary, monitoring, evaluation and accountability mechanisms— universal access to expanded sexual health and reproductive health services of better quality and wider coverage, which must include information and timely, specific and comprehensive education and the provision of free contraceptives, and must be integrated into health-care services and geared particularly to women in the poorest sectors and subject to the worst forms of social exclusion and young persons and adolescents of both sexes;

71. Coordinate action with the private sector, civil society and other types of social organization, from a gender perspective and with due regard for the life cycle and cultural relevance, to improve access to information and education and, through greater participation of individuals and the community, increase the efficacy of sexual health and reproductive health services;

72. Ensure that the financial resources for HIV/AIDS prevention are allocated to specific measures grounded in scientific evidence that reflects the particular characteristics of the epidemic in each country, with special attention to geographical location, social networks and populations that are vulnerable to HIV infection, with a view to ensuring that those resources are employed as effectively as possible;

73. Ensure comprehensive care for persons affected by HIV/AIDS, in particular women, girls, adolescents, young persons, orphans and vulnerable children, migrants and people in humanitarian emergencies, detained women, indigenous populations, Afro-descendants and women with disabilities, as appropriate in the local context;

74. Implement gender-sensitive measures to guarantee access to good-quality health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, during and after disasters and in cases of emergency and for displaced persons and refugees in order to prevent mortality and morbidity, particularly among women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women and women with disabilities in these circumstances;

75. Strengthen statistical information systems in relation to the age range for determining pregnancy rates among girls and adolescent girls and include analysis of the associated factors in order to demonstrate their impact and implement measures and public policies to reduce the incidence of pregnancy in these age groups in the region;

76. Take measures to ensure that health policies encompass information and communications technologies, in order to achieve greater efficiency and quality in health services, knowledge management (including research), follow-up of medical history, referrals and counter-referrals and related information, guaranteeing confidentiality of all data;

77. Implement comprehensive, good-quality and timely sexual and reproductive health programmes and policies for adolescents and young people, including youth-friendly, sexual health and reproductive health services with a gender, human-rights-based, intergenerational and intercultural perspective, such that they can exercise, in safe conditions, the right to take free, informed, voluntary and responsible decisions on their sexuality, sex life and sexual orientation;

78. Ensure, in cases where abortion is legal or decriminalized in national legislation, the existence of safe, good-quality abortion services for women with unwanted and unaccepted pregnancies;

79. Ensure also effective implementation and institutionalization of comprehensive education on sexuality in education systems, as a means of preventing adolescent pregnancy and maternal mortality, and to prevent unwanted pregnancies in general and guarantee women and adolescent girls the full exercise of their sexual rights and reproductive rights such that they can take free, informed and responsible decisions in relation to their sexuality, sex life and sexual orientation, including the right to motherhood of women with HIV/AIDS;

D. GENDER EQUALITY AND THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

80. Enforce national and local policies and adopt preventive, punitive, protection and care measures to eliminate all forms of violence and stigma against women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities, and include the effective use of information and communications technologies with an intercultural approach in order to achieve greater inclusion and equality for all women;

81. Enforce also national laws and policies to combat violence against women and girls in the media and in the use of information and communications technologies, considering the nature of these spheres and the risks they involve, and the greater vulnerability of women in all their diversity;

82. Ensure that women are not subject to violence during the provision of health services, in particular the type of violence inflicted during childbirth known as obstetric violence;

83. Create coordination forums to further the joint commitment of public and private institutions involved along the critical path towards preventing, addressing and punishing all forms of violence against women, girls, adolescent girls, young women and older women;

84. Adopt new strategies that guarantee effective institutional responses to bring about rapid and significant changes in the structural factors that influence violence against women and the sociocultural and symbolic norms that perpetuate it, strengthening mechanisms for prevention, prosecution, punishment and redress, and include the effective use of information and communications technologies in the protection measures afforded by the competent judicial authorities;

85. Support the development and use of information and communications technologies and social networks as resources for the empowerment of women and girls, including access to information on the prevention of and response to violence against women and girls;

86. Develop mechanisms, including legislation, and sanctions to combat the use of information and communications technologies and social networks to perpetrate violent acts against women and girls, in particular the criminal misuse of such technologies for sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, child pornography and trafficking in women and girls, and new forms of violence, such as cyberbullying and intimidation and privacy violations that compromise the safety of women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous women, Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities;

87. Guarantee effective access to justice and free, good-quality legal aid for women who are subjected to violence, and provide training and public awareness sessions on gender issues to those authorized to dispense justice, as well as the police and other security bodies;

88. Promote the reform of legal systems and the amendment of laws which cause exclusion and harm, and ensure the removal of all systemic barriers to the effective delivery of justice;

89. Ensure that public security policies include specific measures to prevent, investigate, punish, penalize and eradicate femicide/feminicide and violence against women, girls, adolescent girls young women and older women, with the goal of securing them a life free from violence, and promote the adoption of regional protocols and the removal of legal obstacles to justice and redress;

90. Adopt the necessary measures, including legislation, to prevent, punish and eradicate all forms of trafficking and human smuggling in women, adolescent girls, young women and children, for sexual or labour exploitation or any other purpose, stepping up efforts in education, training and public awareness-raising in order to discourage the demand that fosters exploitation, offering adequate protection and care for the identified victims of trafficking, including shelter, rehabilitation and social integration services, witness protection, vocational training, legal aid, confidential medical care and repatriation or assistance with the regularization of migratory status, with the informed consent of the victim, regardless of their participation in court proceedings;

91. Promote respect for the comprehensive human rights of migrant women, regardless of their migratory status, and establish cooperation agreements between countries of origin, transit and destination in order to respond to the challenges posed by undocumented migration in the region, including access to justice, and to provide measures that guarantee migrant women’s access to identity and citizenship documents in order to improve their labour situation and facilitate their social inclusion, in both the country of origin and the country of destination;

92. Integrate a focus on gender-based violence into all programmes and services relating to sexual health and reproductive health, maternal and child health, family planning and services related to women living with HIV/AIDS, including treatment for opportunistic infections and other HIV-related diseases, in order to expand the coverage of support services in institutions and enterprises, and to guarantee the right to work and to a decent life as part of a coordinated, multisectoral response;

93. Define and develop public policies to combat discrimination and foster affirmative action on the basis of an intersectional approach that includes tackling sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, homophobia and lesbophobia;

94. Advocate the creation of integrated national and regional statistical systems on violence against women, including cybercrime, so that data on this scourge can be collected, compiled and analysed, with particular emphasis on thorough, complete and timely administrative records, with a view to designing and strengthening public policies and programmes to prevent, address and punish gender-based violence;

95. Guarantee that all victims and survivors of violence against women (including the victims’ children and dependants, if any) have immediate access to comprehensive care services, psychosocial and mental health support, treatment of injuries, shelter, and care following instances of rape or sexual assault, and access to emergency contraception, prophylaxis for sexually transmitted infections and safe abortion services in cases of rape;

96. Design a model for an emergency network, based on interactions from the local level, in order to protect human life, infrastructure and the operations of security and relief services and networks, so as to contribute to the prevention of violence, the safe care and recovery of female survivors of assault, and responses to emergencies and natural or anthropogenic disasters;

97. Define policies to tackle gender vulnerability factors in addressing the risks inherent to natural and anthropogenic disasters and emergencies, and design gender-sensitive prevention and response strategies to ensure the protection of women and girls;

98. Elicit a commitment, through the creation of strategic networks, from the media and media professionals’ associations, to project a positive image of women, banishing the stereotypes and the violent content that perpetuate discrimination and violence against women, girls, adolescent girls, young women, older women, indigenous women, Afro-descendent women, rural women, LGBTTI persons and women with disabilities;

99. Consolidate a proposal to eliminate structural sexist discrimination in the rural environment, ensuring economic, political and social equality between men and women, and take immediate action to fulfil the right of rural women to live a life free from violence and racism;

100. Eradicate gender violence, considering the need for an integrated approach on several fronts, ranging from education to the transformation of cultural patterns and the strengthening of women’s movements, with a view to consolidating the foundations for increasing rural women’s bargaining capacity in power relations;

E. GENDER EQUALITY AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN FOR POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND DECISION-MAKING

101. Ensure that women have equal access to decision-making positions in all branches of government and in local governments, through legislative and electoral initiatives and measures that guarantee parity of representation in all political spheres and a commitment to strategic agendas to achieve parity in political participation and gender parity as a State policy;

102. Strengthen women’s participation on an equal footing to men, adopting and applying laws that guarantee parity in decision-making forums, promoting affirmative action to include women in political parties and other democratic institutions, in the public and the private spheres, and setting up mechanisms to punish non-compliance with such laws;

103. Recognize and support machineries for the participation and organization of the feminist and women’s movements;

104. Strengthen electoral observation and monitoring mechanisms with a gender perspective as instruments that ensure respect for women’s rights to political representation;

105. Enact and implement legislation to prevent, punish and eradicate political and administrative violence against or harassment of women who reach decision-making positions of all levels, via electoral means or by appointment;

106. Use specific economic and technical measures to strengthen regional gender machineries for political training and education in support of women’s leadership, and promote the participation of the region’s women in such mechanisms, especially young, rural, indigenous and Afro-descendent women, and LGBTTI persons;

107. Encourage the media to commit to the objectives of equality and parity between men and women, through agreements to carry out media actions linked to equality and women’s rights in all spheres, including gender parity in participation in political processes and in running for office, and which cover the various forms of women’s political participation and the issues that affect them;

108. Promote, motivate and arrange arenas for debate, forums, workshops and campaigns in the media in favour of women’s human rights in a culture of peace, avoiding the perpetuation of stereotypes that are detrimental to women’s dignity;

109. Design and promote research on the gender perspective in the mass media;

F. GENDER EQUALITY AND MECHANISMS FOR WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

110. Harmonize national regulatory frameworks, in accordance with international agreements on gender and women’s human rights, with a view to enacting legislation aimed at achieving equality and to repealing discriminatory laws that stand in the way of the full exercise of women’s rights;

111. Strengthen institutions advocating public policies on gender equality, such as gender machineries and offices for women’s empowerment, by means of legislation and guaranteed, non-transferrable and irreducible budgets and by setting up decision-making bodies at the highest level, and build up their capacity to provide policy guidance on gender equality and women’s empowerment by endowing them with the necessary human and financial resources for a cross-cutting impact on public policies and the structure of the State with a view to devising and implementing de jure and de facto strategies for promoting women’s autonomy and gender equality;

112. Ensure gender mainstreaming and a focus on rights in all plans, programmes, projects and public policies, as well as the necessary coordination between State powers and social stakeholders to achieve gender equality, thus enshrining this concept as a pillar of sustainable development;

113. Adopt budgets with gender as a cross-cutting factor in the allocation of public funds and ensure that sufficient, protected funding is provided in all policy areas to fulfil all the commitments made by States to achieve the goals of equality and social and economic justice for women;

114. Strengthen, by means of training, exchanges of experiences and awareness-raising, regional and national instruments to monitor women’s empowerment, particularly gender observatories, ensuring that the information and data supplied are compiled using a common methodology for the purposes of comparison and analysis of the different variables at the regional level, thus ensuring that the results obtained serve as basic input material for public policies on equality in the region;

115. Advocate an evaluation of the implementation of the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women using objective, effective tools and indicators which can ascertain the effect of the measures adopted and the actions carried out on the lives of women in the region;

116. Promote gender parity in regional integration mechanisms and in regional and national parliaments, and ensure the mainstreaming of equality as a cross-cutting consideration in regional policies and programmes;

117. Strengthen the effective implementation of systems for the production of statistical information for designing policies with a gender focus, affording particular attention to methods for collecting, classifying and processing sex-disaggregated national and regional data, including gender indicators in all areas, on the basis of a common methodology implemented by all the countries of the region, with a view to promoting women’s empowerment and decision-making;

118. Promote the establishment, at the municipal and local level, of entities such as gender affairs bureaux or offices for the advancement of women, endowing them with sufficient human and financial resources and the specialist expertise to empower women, provide comprehensive care and prevent violence at the local level;

119. Strengthen regional gender machineries for women’s empowerment with a view to ensuring the mainstreaming of gender equality and equity in the development agendas advocated as part of the processes of integration in the region;

120. Study the possibility of establishing a regional fund for gender equality and intercultural dialogue, funded by contributions from different types of donors, encouraging public-private partnerships;

G. OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

121. Urge developed countries to fulfil their commitments on official development assistance, especially with the aim of moving forward on equality and gender equity in the region and on access to and use of information and communications technologies, respecting the self-determination of countries, and encourage those developing countries that are in a position to do so to support other countries in the region through South-South and triangular cooperation, tapping the integration processes taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean;

122. Strengthen gender mainstreaming in the processes of integration aimed at socioeconomic development under way in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly those in which major efforts are being made to include actions to promote gender equality, with the engagement of the feminist and women’s movements;

123. Intensify exchanges and technical, scientific and financial cooperation, including South-South cooperation, between countries of the region on gender equality matters, particularly in relation to best practices, with emphasis on those digital agendas and national strategies for information and communications technologies that originate in civil society organizations, are in keeping with the Plan of Action for the Information and Knowledge Society in Latin America and the Caribbean (eLAC2015), and apply a transformative and innovative approach in pursuit of equality;

124. Support the inclusion of the issue of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the post-2015 development agenda;

125. Urge national gender machineries and offices for women’s empowerment to participate in the next ministerial conference on the information society in Latin America and the Caribbean;

126. Promote the endorsement of the Santo Domingo Consensus in the agreed conclusions of the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, and its reflection in the follow-up processes associated with the Millennium Development Goals, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo+20) and the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, in the preparation of the development agenda beyond 2015 and the sustainable development objectives, in the World Summit on the Information Society and in the outcomes of major summits and conferences in general;

127. Urge the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, in fulfilment of its mandate, to encourage cooperation agencies to prioritize national agendas in their cooperation efforts, taking an integrative approach and creating the necessary inter-agency coordination and strengthening national and regional machineries for the advancement of women;

128. Recognize the work carried out by the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Division for Gender Affairs of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, for its contribution to training and capacity-building, to the exchange and dissemination of information and experiences and to drawing attention to the status of women in the region, and support that work and reinforce it with concrete measures, particularly with sex-disaggregated economic indicators for evaluating women’s progress in the economy;

129. Recognize the contribution of the women’s and feminist movements in the region to deepening democracy, building gender equality, developing an institutional structure and formulating and implementing public policies for equality;

130. Thank the United Nations, in particular the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, for the support shown to the delegations participating in the present meeting;

131. Thank also the Government, especially the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and the people of the Dominican Republic for their generous hospitality and efficient organization of the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean;

132. Welcome the offer of the Government of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay to host the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will be held in 2016.

[1] Taken from the report of the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/L.3789).

MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY (2016)

Thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Montevideo, 2016)

MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REGIONAL GENDER AGENDA WITHIN THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK BY 2030

INTRODUCTION

Since the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Santo Domingo, 2013), the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean, under the leadership of their ministers of women’s affairs and officials from the machineries for the advancement of women, have expressed their determination and the need to establish a regional strategy to implement the Santo Domingo Consensus (paragraph 9 of the agreements adopted by the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women at their fiftieth meeting) and other regional agreements.

At the fifty-second meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Santo Domingo from 30 to 31 July 2015, governments discussed the idea of developing a strategy for the effective implementation of the different regional agreements on women. At the fifty-third meeting of the Presiding Officers, held in Santiago from 26 to 28 January 2016, the countries agreed to devise a strategy for the implementation of commitments undertaken by governments as part of the Regional Gender Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean, in keeping with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted at the seventieth session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015.

The Regional Gender Agenda encompasses commitments made by the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean on women’s rights and autonomy, and gender equality, at the sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, from the first Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Havana, 1977) to date, on the terms under which the governments of the region adopted them, as reflected in 40 years of the Regional Gender Agenda,[1] and in accordance with their domestic legislation.

As part of the process of drawing up the Montevideo Strategy, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as the technical secretariat of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, undertook a systematic review of the language used over the last 40 years in the agreements that comprise the Regional Gender Agenda. That review took into account the socioeconomic context and discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals with the governments of the region and civil society, and led to the identification of the agreements linked to different implementation pillars. In this regard, the measures of the Montevideo Strategy under each implementation pillar build on existing agreements and make progress towards operationalizing and giving full effect to the Regional Gender Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030.

The methodology for devising the Montevideo Strategy was shared with and approved by governments at the three subregional preparatory meetings for the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: the meeting with Mexico and the Central American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries (Mexico City, 2 and 3 June 2016); the meeting with the South American countries (Santiago, 4 and 5 July 2016); and the meeting with the English-speaking and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries (Port of Spain, 26 and 27 July 2016).

Following an extensive consultation process, the different contributions of government officials, representatives of civil society organizations and United Nations system bodies were compiled. ECLAC prepared a first draft of the Montevideo Strategy, which was sent in August 2016 to States members of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean with the request that they submit new comments in writing. To further strengthen the participatory process of drafting the Montevideo Strategy, a meeting was held at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, on 23 and 24 August 2016, with specialists from the women’s movement and academic institutions, at which the first draft of the Montevideo Strategy was shared and discussed, and suggestions and comments were noted.

ECLAC used the contributions received to prepare an updated version of the document, to be considered by the States of the region at the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean as the basis for negotiations, with a view to adopting the Montevideo Strategy.

A. THE REGIONAL GENDER AGENDA AND ITS SYNERGY WITH THE 2030 AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Latin America and the Caribbean is the only region in the world where, for the past four decades without fail, countries have been holding regular meetings to discuss and make a political commitment to eradicating discrimination against women and girls and gender inequality, and advancing towards the guarantee of full enjoyment of women’s and girls’ autonomy and human rights. The Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States, established in Havana in 1928, and the first World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City in 1975, are important precedents that helped to create the conditions at the regional level in which an agenda of rights and non-discrimination could be developed and intergovernmental bodies specializing in women’s human rights and gender equality could be established.

At the first Regional Conference on the Integration of Women into the Economic and Social Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (Havana, 1977), the member States gave ECLAC a mandate to convene a Regional Conference on Women at regular intervals of no more than three years. Since then, 12 sessions of the Regional Conference have been held: Havana, 1977; Macuto, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 1979; Mexico City, 1983; Guatemala City, 1988; Curaçao, 1991; Mar del Plata, Argentina, 1994; Santiago, 1997; Lima, 2000; Mexico City, 2004; Quito, 2007; Brasilia, 2010; and Santo Domingo, 2013.

The Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean has been the main forum for the negotiation of an ambitious, broad and comprehensive Regional Gender Agenda. This agenda comprises the commitments made by Latin American and Caribbean governments on women’s rights and autonomy and gender equality that were adopted at sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. These commitments are reflected in the Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development (1977), the Regional Programme of Action for the Women of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1995-2001 (1994), the Santiago Consensus (1997), the Lima Consensus (2000), the Mexico City Consensus (2004), the Quito Consensus (2007), the Brasilia Consensus (2010) and the Santo Domingo Consensus (2013).

The Regional Gender Agenda is the result of the political will and coordinated efforts of member States and the active contribution of the women’s and feminist movements, as well as the support of the United Nations system and the inter-American human rights system. Synergies have been built and the agenda has been strengthened and enhanced by the obligations assumed by States upon ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and its optional protocol, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and its optional protocols, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo, 2000) and two of its protocols (the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), the conventions of the International Labour Organization, in particular Nos. 100, 111, 156, 169, 183 and 189, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Belém do Pará, 1994), the Inter-American Convention against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Related Forms of Intolerance (2013), the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons (2015) and other relevant treaties, covenants and conventions, which establish an international legal framework to protect, respect and guarantee all the human rights of women and girls in all their diversity, as well as the principle of non-discrimination, and to achieve gender equality.

Similarly, the Regional Gender Agenda reaffirms the commitment of governments to the Declaration and Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001), the programme of activities for the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), the International Conferences on Financing for Development (Monterrey, 2001; Doha, 2008; and Addis Ababa, 2015), and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), and the outcomes of the corresponding review processes. The Regional Gender Agenda converged, in 2015, with the commitments of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, then, in 2016, with those of the New Urban Agenda of the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) and resolution 71/1 of the United Nations General Assembly, entitled “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants”.

The Regional Gender Agenda also dovetails with agreements made by other subsidiary bodies of ECLAC, in particular the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development adopted by the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean at its first session, and the agreements adopted by the Statistical Conference of the Americas of ECLAC, the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies, the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee.

The Regional Gender Agenda is open to the future and to incorporating new commitments in a dynamic manner as they are undertaken by the member States of ECLAC. In addition to being progressive, it is cumulative, as each document recognizes the political and programmatic value of preceding agreements and complements them, taking into account new socioeconomic and political situations at the regional and global levels. On the basis of the analysis of the agreed language, the commitments undertaken over the past 40 years can be grouped into three categories: (a) approaches that guide public policies; (b) critical dimensions for gender equality and women’s autonomy, recognized as rights; (c) and implementation pillars, which are described below.

(a) The five approaches or perspectives that guide public policies and objectives linked to women’s autonomy and rights are: (i) gender equality; (ii) women’s human rights; (iii) intersectionality and interculturality; (iv) parity-based, representative and participatory democracy, and secularism; and (v) sustainable and inclusive development. These interrelated approaches also guide the measures of the Montevideo Strategy.

(b) The Regional Gender Agenda comprises agreements on gender equality and women’s autonomy that address multiple issues that can be grouped together under certain critical dimensions that are integral to human rights, thereby recognizing women as rights-holders and States as the guarantors of those rights, while reaffirming that those rights are universal, indivisible, inalienable and interdependent:

(i)Right to a life free of all forms of violence and discrimination: violence against women in its various manifestations (private, public, symbolic, institutional, cyber, economic, obstetric, political, in armed conflicts, in natural disasters, deprivation of liberty, harassment in the workplace, sexual harassment, sexual abuse and exploitation, migrant smuggling, trafficking in women, forced prostitution, rape, femicide); forced marriage and cohabitation imposed on girls and adolescents; public safety and cities; legislation and access to justice; educational content and the media; stereotypes, sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia and discrimination.

(ii)Sexual and reproductive rights with respect to: comprehensive sexual education and information; safe, good-quality abortion services, in those cases where abortion is legal or decriminalized under the relevant national legislation; contraception; integrated social health-care services; maternal mortality; sexual orientation and gender identity; universal and accessible services; disability and old age; eradication of child pregnancy; prevention of adolescent pregnancy and motherhood; sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS; health emergencies; healthy maternity; technological development; different forms of family.

(iii)Economic, social and cultural rights with respect to: income, employment and integration into the labour force; work and control of resources; land rights; sexual division of labour; unpaid and care work; social protection and security; education, science and communications technologies; transformation of cultural norms; intergenerational transmission of poverty; female heads of household and well-being, time use and allocation; fiscal and macroeconomic policies; social policies; public investment; rural areas; paid domestic work and informality; companies and business ventures; credit; technology and innovation; territory and production models.

(iv)Civil and political rights with respect to: political participation and leadership; political parties and electoral systems; representation and parity; women’s and feminist organizations and movements; migration; conflicts and peace processes; e-government.

(v)Collective and environmental rights with respect to: land and territory; water and forests; ancestral knowledge; natural disasters and extreme weather events; climate change; rural and urban areas; risk management and mitigation; right to development; international cooperation.

(c) The Regional Gender Agenda includes agreements on the tools and means to advance effective guarantees of women’s rights and autonomy under the principles of equality and non-discrimination, which are the foundations for the Montevideo Strategy implementation pillars and measures: (1) normative framework; (2) institutional architecture; (3) participation; (4) capacity-building and -strengthening; (5) financing; (6) communication; (7) technology; (8) cooperation; (9) information systems; and (10) monitoring, evaluation and accountability. These 10 pillars are considered to be interconnected priorities that create the conditions and means for the full and effective implementation of public policies aimed at eliminating inequality and ensuring that women in all their diversity can enjoy all human rights.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is in synergy with the Regional Gender Agenda. The Declaration contained in the 2030 Agenda affirms that it is the responsibility of States to respect, protect and promote human rights (paras. 10, 19, 35), and recognizes that realizing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls will make a crucial contribution to progress across all the Goals and targets, and, to that end, the systematic mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the Agenda is crucial (para. 20). It also states that there are different approaches, visions, models and tools available to each country to achieve sustainable development (para. 59) and that each government will decide how these global targets should be incorporated into national planning processes, policies and strategies (para. 55). Thus, in order to address the structural challenges and priorities of Latin America and the Caribbean, the existing commitments in the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda should be seen as complementary and the actions taken to achieve them should be linked to commitments arising from both agendas.

At the thirty-sixth session of ECLAC, held in Mexico City from 23 to 27 May 2016, the governments of the region established the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development. This Forum, which will be the regional mechanism for follow-up and review of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, will receive annual reports from the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (resolution 700(XXXVI) of ECLAC) on progress made in the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda and the Goals, targets and means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda from a gender perspective. In turn, the conclusions and recommendations agreed at the intergovernmental level in the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development will inform the global process in the framework of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development.

Against this backdrop, the Montevideo Strategy will serve as a road map for the effective implementation of regional and global commitments on women’s human rights and autonomy, and carrying out the actions and measures detailed under its 10 implementation pillars will help to put gender equality at the centre of sustainable development by 2030.

B. THE MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY: A POLITICAL COMMITMENT TO ACHIEVING GENDER EQUALITY IN THE REGION BY 2030

The Montevideo Strategy is a regional political commitment that will guide the full implementation of the agreements adopted by the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (the Regional Gender Agenda), and make these agreements the road map for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the regional level from the perspective of gender equality and women’s autonomy and human rights. Thus, the Montevideo Strategy is a political and technical instrument that will support a qualitative leap towards the implementation and strengthening of multidimensional and comprehensive public policies that ensure the fulfilment of human rights and women’s autonomy and the achievement of gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean. It draws on the lessons learned and issues outstanding after 20 years of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the 15 years of implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, and proposes measures to overcome the main obstacles to institutionalizing gender equality and women’s rights in State structures. These measures will guide sectoral and cross-cutting public policies aimed at eliminating gender inequalities and fostering sustainable development.

The Montevideo Strategy redefines the role of the State in equality policies, by ensuring fulfilment of women’s human rights and autonomy as a central pillar of medium- and long-term national sustainable development strategies. It is therefore an instrument whose scope encompasses the entire State structure and that recognizes the leadership of machineries for the advancement of women. The measures set forth in the Strategy require the commitment and active participation of sectoral ministries, planning and budgeting departments, decentralized agencies, parliaments and the judiciary, among other government stakeholders.

The success of the Montevideo Strategy at the regional level, as well as its adaptation at the national and subnational levels, requires active engagement by civil society in all its diversity in public policy monitoring and evaluation and follow-up of commitments, especially by women’s and feminist movements and organizations, and those representing young, indigenous, Afro-descendent and rural women, migrant women, older women, women with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons, as well as academia, trade unions and human rights defenders. The private sector must also be involved, especially the business sector, which must act in conformity with women’s human rights and with labour, environmental, taxation and transparency standards, and promote gender equality and women’s autonomy and empowerment.

The Montevideo Strategy recognizes the region’s heterogeneity, the special needs and particular challenges facing landlocked developing countries, small island developing States, middle-income countries, highly indebted and vulnerable Caribbean countries, least developed countries, countries in situations of conflict, post-conflict countries and those affected by unilateral measures contrary to international law. It is directed towards all those who face gender discrimination in Latin America and the Caribbean and its implementation will benefit all women, regardless of age, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, territory of residence, migratory status, race or ethnic origin, or physical or mental capacity.

There are multiple points of intersection between the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the pillars of implementation of the Montevideo Strategy. Sustainable Development Goal 17 of the 2030 Agenda is aimed at strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development the other 16 Goals have specific implementation targets.

The Montevideo Strategy is also consistent with the agreed conclusions of the sixtieth session of Commission on the Status of Women (New York, 14-24 March 2016). At that session, the Commission addressed women’s empowerment and its link to sustainable development, by means of commitments to strengthening normative, legal and policy frameworks, financing, women’s leadership and participation, information systems and review processes, and national institutional arrangements for gender equality.

1. Overcoming the structural challenges to the achievement of gender equality by 2030

The Montevideo Strategy is aimed at closing the gap between de jure and de facto equality by strengthening public policies to ensure the autonomy and full exercise of the human rights of all women and girls, ending discrimination, prejudice and all forms of resistance. In order to achieve gender equality, it is necessary to overcome certain structural challenges entrenched in the current unequal power relations in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is also necessary to consider the trends and contextual factors now crystallizing into new challenges: slowing economic growth, rising poverty, a resurgence of conservatism, demographic changes and shifts in family structure and composition, and the demise of the prevailing development pattern, which has brought rising inequality and environmental crisis.

The structural challenges to be overcome include: (i) socioeconomic inequality and the persistence of poverty; (ii) discriminatory, violent and patriarchal cultural patterns and the predominance of a culture of privilege; (iii) the sexual division of labour and the unfair social organization of care; and (iv) the concentration of power and hierarchical relations in the public sphere. These challenges exacerbate each other and generate complex socioeconomic, cultural and belief systems that hinder and reduce the scope of policies on gender equality and women’s autonomy. The Montevideo Strategy seeks to dismantle these structural challenges, which are described below, in order to make progress towards substantive equality.

(a) Socioeconomic inequality and the persistence of poverty in the framework of exclusionary growth

Latin America and the Caribbean continues to be the world’s most unequal region. The reduction in income inequality in recent years, which was driven by steady economic growth and bolder social policies, did not bring a more balanced distribution between capital and labour. At the same time, in several countries, even as income inequality declined, the femininity index of poverty in households rose. This is consistent with the persistence of gender gaps in the labour market, wages, employment quality and access to social protection and security, as well as a social organization that assigns unpaid domestic work and care to women, together with policies and care services that are inadequate to ensure co-responsibility between men and women, the State, the market, families and the community. Barriers also remain with respect to women’s access to production resources, such as credit, land, water, training, technologies and time. All this speaks to the structural nature of gender inequality.

The limitations of existing development policies, especially macroeconomic policies, the systemic regressiveness of fiscal policy and the loss of money through tax evasion and avoidance in the region are exacerbated by the low tax burden on the highest-income individuals and corporations, overreliance on indirect taxes with gender biases and the increasing adoption of fiscal austerity measures and cuts in social investment budgets. All these are major obstacles to overcome in order to mobilize sufficient public resources to achieve gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights.

Although, historically speaking, the Latin America and the Caribbean region has contributed less than other parts of the world to climate change, it is extremely vulnerable to the impacts. Among other reasons, this is because of its geographical location, its biodiversity and its patterns of production specialization, which are mostly intensive in natural resources and fossil fuels, but not in knowledge, technologies and quality employment creation, especially for women.

This situation is compounded by adverse economic conditions. There are worrying projections of increasing income poverty, as a result of slower economic growth, rising unemployment, mounting inflationary pressures and increased tax evasion. In contexts of slowdown and adjustment, it is important to take active measures to prevent macroeconomic policies and fiscal reforms from deepening women’s poverty, increasing the unpaid work and care burden and limiting —or reducing outright— financing and budgets for equality policies and machineries for the advancement of women, especially their work to prevent and eliminate gender-based violence.

Given the demise of the prevailing development pattern, it is time to make the transition towards sustainable production and consumption patterns that incorporate policies on the redistribution of wealth, income and time. Overcoming poverty and narrowing equality gaps are essential to achieving substantive equality. It is also necessary to work for an international order conducive to the exercise of full citizenship and all human rights, including the right to development, which will benefit all women and girls and society as a whole.

(b) Discriminatory, violent and patriarchal cultural patterns and the predominance of a culture of privilege

Regional progress in access by girls, female adolescents, young and adult women, in all their diversity, to the education system, and by young and adult women to the labour market and decision-making and their increased participation in these spheres —as well as the involvement of some men in care work— does not belie the persistence of discriminatory, sexist and racist sociocultural patterns that continue to reproduce inequality and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The past few years have seen a resurgence in discriminatory and violent patriarchal practices, discourses and cultural patterns based in the culture of privilege that restrict the full exercise of sexual and reproductive rights, and the recognition of different forms of family, sexual diversity and gender identity. The discrimination and violence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons face by reason of their sexual orientation and gender identity are evident in the obstacles they encounter in access to health care, good-quality employment, legal forms of union and family composition, and identity registration. This resurgence is a warning signal of the need for governments to take action to prevent backsliding in the guarantee the rights of all persons and the autonomy of women.

There also persist certain patriarchal cultural patterns that exclude and obscure the identity and knowledge of women —especially rural, indigenous, Afro-descendent and migrant women— thereby denying the pluricultural and multilingual nature of the Latin American and Caribbean region. These patterns, together with neoconservatism, make up systems of discrimination and privilege that are driven, as well, by the intersections of gender and other types of inequality in society linked to socioeconomic status, race or ethnic origin, age, place of residence and physical and mental capacities.

Patriarchal cultural patterns also underlie the wage gap, vocational orientation, the social organization of care and the violence perpetrated against women and girls. With sights set on 2030 and sustainable development, it is time to move from a culture of privilege to one of rights and equality, dismantling the androcentric understanding of the human being and its expression in public policies, and including boys, young men and men as agents and beneficiaries of this change. It is necessary, therefore, to eliminate all types of sex-based distinction, exclusion or restriction aimed at or resulting in the denial of effective enjoyment of human rights in the political, economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres. Substantive equality will be possible only when all people are acknowledged as equals in dignity and treated and recognized as bearers of rights.

(c) Sexual division of labour and unfair social organization of care

A number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made advances in conducting time-use surveys in order to account for time spent on unpaid work, and in recognizing care as a need and a right, which has led to the implementation of specific polices. Yet, despite this progress, the region still shows a rigid sexual division of labour based on unequal power relations, which prevents the reduction of this burden on women. This is evident in the fact that women’s increasing participation in the labour market and in the public sphere has not been accompanied by greater participation of men in unpaid domestic and care work, and in the fact that children and adolescents continue to be socialized under these patriarchal patterns. At the same time, market-based care work is performed mainly by women in three sectors of the economy: paid domestic work, health and education.

The social organization of care continues to be unfair and unbalanced, with heavy implications in terms of the equality gap between men and women, between women of different socioeconomic levels and between countries and territories. Many Latin American and Caribbean women form part of global care chains in which, given the lack of engagement by men, care work is transferred from one woman to another, on the basis of power relations structured by sex, class and place of origin. In the coming decade, an accelerating process of population ageing in the region will increase the burden of caring for older persons, the chronically ill and persons with some kind of disability, and the costs of health care and pension systems will rise. At the same time, although fertility rates are expected to fall by 2030, this decline will continue to be stratified by socioeconomic level and by race and ethnic origin.

All these elements will continue to prevent women from exercising economic autonomy unless they are tackled now by means of public policies to address the care demands of persons with some degree of dependence. Such policies must explicitly consider the rights of caregivers, whether paid or unpaid, to ensure that their opportunities to participate in decision-making processes and their labour and production options are not curtailed. Programmes and projects must be designed bearing in mind that the social organization of care is a responsibility that must be shared by men and women and redistributed between the various forms of family, social and community organizations, businesses and the State.

The sexual division of labour and the dominant cultural patterns have an impact on environmental problems and on the consequences of climate change for the day-to-day life of households. Rural, indigenous and campesino women are guardians of biodiversity but, under conditions of significant fragility and exploitation, they have less access to and control over land and production resources, and they shoulder the main responsibility for providing food for their families, collecting water and firewood, and tending vegetable plots and animals. Their responsibilities and disempowerment thus worsen their vulnerability and prevent them from developing adaptation and response capacities. Mitigation of climate change requires taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and analysing how the gender order relates to the prevailing cultural patterns of production, consumption, energy use and technology. In this context, it is important to consider women’s contribution to mitigation as producers, workers and consumers, as well as researchers in the areas of clean, safe technology and energy, and public policymakers.

The challenges of eliminating poverty and inequality, care needs and demands, and the environmental crisis all demand that the existing sexual division of labour be overcome; this is essential to achieving equality by 2030.

(d) Concentration of power and hierarchical relations in the public sphere

Over the past few decades, despite the steady process of democratization, in Latin America and the Caribbean institutional, social and cultural structures have remained in place that restrict women’s access to power and to decision-making processes, as well as to justice and enforceability of rights.

In addition, in some countries of the region, there is a tendency towards the concentration of political and economic power, a resurgence of antidemocratic positions, and cultures of authority and tutelage over women’s bodies, which limit both women’s autonomy and the development of society overall. It is especially worrying to see that, at the same time as channels are opening up for the participation of civil society in public life, women human rights defenders and social protest are being criminalized in contexts of socioenvironmental conflicts, and in a framework of impunity. In addition, there is insufficient recognition of the contribution made by women’s and feminist movements and organizations and those representing Afro-descendent, indigenous and young women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons to democracy, cultural change and peaceful coexistence based on public policies for equality.

In order to achieve gender equality by 2030, it is essential to progress in interrelated processes: the deepening and fine-tuning of democracies and the democratization of political, socioeconomic and cultural regimes. Both are conditional upon achieving parity in the distribution of power. Parity democracy —as a quantitative and qualitative criterion— is thus central to the process of generating the conditions for women’s full exercise of human rights and citizenship.

In short, ending inequality and poverty, transforming discriminatory and violent patriarchal cultural patterns and the culture of privilege, dismantling the sexual division of labour, and consolidating parity democracy are four interrelated drivers, four substantive highways towards gender equality and development patterns based on human rights, women’s autonomy and sustainability. These four drivers cut across all the measures under the implementation pillars of the Montevideo Strategy and provide the political orientation for public policies aimed at transforming gender relations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

C. THE MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY: PILLARS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE REGIONAL GENDER AGENDA WITHIN THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK BY 2030

The Montevideo Strategy is aimed at giving effect to the pillars for the implementation of public policies that will help to eliminate gender inequalities and to guarantee the human rights and autonomy of women in all their diversity. The Strategy’s implementation pillars are: (1) normative framework; (2) institutions; (3) participation; (4) capacity-building and -strengthening; (5) financing; (6) communication; (7) technology; (8) cooperation; (9) information systems; and (10) monitoring, evaluation and accountability. These pillars are interrelated and putting them into effect will help to establish sustainable sectoral and cross-cutting policies aimed at eliminating gender inequalities and guaranteeing the effective enjoyment of human rights by all women, without discrimination.

These pillars are closely associated with the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The targets on finance and systemic issues under Sustainable Development Goal 17 are taken up in implementation pillars 5 and 8 of the Montevideo Strategy (financing and cooperation). The technology targets of Sustainable Development Goal 17 and target 5.b (Sustainable Development Goal 5) are covered by implementation pillar 7 (technology). Capacity-building is incorporated in implementation pillars 2 and 4 (institutional architecture, and capacity-building and -strengthening). The targets on data, monitoring and accountability under Sustainable Development Goal 17 are covered by implementation pillars 9 and 10 (information systems, and monitoring, evaluation and accountability). The means of implementation, target 5.c (Sustainable Development Goal 5), to adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels, are considered in implementation pillar 1 (normative framework). In addition, the implementation pillars of the Montevideo Strategy go further in highlighting two fundamental means for the full and effective implementation of public policies on equality in Latin America and the Caribbean in pillars 3 and 6, namely participation and communication.

The Montevideo Strategy sets out 74 measures for the 10 implementation pillars that have been agreed at the regional level by the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean. These measures can be adapted to the priorities and needs of individual countries and included in sustainable development plans for application at different levels (national, subnational, local, regional and international). This multi-scale approach seeks to reduce inequality within and among countries. The level at which measures are implemented will depend on the political and administrative structure of each country, while regional and international measures will be carried out jointly by intergovernmental bodies at those levels.

1. Normative framework: equality and the rule of law

The normative framework comprises the statutory, legal and political basis for women’s rights and gender equality. It includes all the laws, policies, equality plans, planning tools, programmes, standards, regulations and intervention protocols, as well as binding and non-binding international instruments that define the scope of public policy. The normative framework is developed by various State actors from the executive, legislative and judicial branches at different territorial levels.

Measures:

1.a Incorporate the commitments undertaken by governments in the Regional Gender Agenda of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, into national, subnational and local policies, plans and programmes on equality, women’s rights and sustainable development.

1.b Ratify and enforce human rights treaties; review laws, policies, plans, programmes and protocols periodically, and modify them if necessary, to bring them into line with international standards on women’s human rights, gender equality and non-discrimination; and ensure that all women’s rights are respected, protected and guaranteed and prevent setbacks.

1.c Modify or adapt the national legal framework by incorporating the principle of equality and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex as set out in articles 1 and 2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

1.d Adopt comprehensive and specific laws and regulations on gender equality and women’s human rights, including legislation on the right to a life free of all forms of gender-based violence, and ensure their full and effective implementation.

1.e Design and execute plans on gender equality, depatriarchalization and women’s rights with non-transferable, progressive and sufficient budgets and targets engaging different levels of government.

1.f Mainstream gender equality and women’s rights in national development plans and planning instruments.

1.g Establish mandatory periodic reviews of the implementation of gender equality plans and modify policies and programmes by incorporating recommendations to overcome any obstacles.

1.h Design and implement comprehensive and intersectoral intervention protocols, with an intersectional, intercultural, gender and human-rights-based approach, that establish quality standards to ensure non-discrimination on the basis of gender and the adaptability of programmes and services, which should have sufficient, non-transferable allocations of financial resources and be applied at different levels of the State.

1.i Remove all legal and institutional barriers to women’s effective and equal access to justice, without discrimination, by ensuring participation, transparency, independence and high-quality, timely assistance from specialized personnel, and access to comprehensive remedies for damages in the event of rights violations in order to end impunity.

1.j Ensure that laws, regulations and protocols include mechanisms and procedures to ensure the enforceability of women’s rights.

1.k Adopt laws and norms to ensure women’s equal access to political power, by fostering gender parity in participation throughout the public sphere.

1.l Endeavour to ensure that the position of Latin American and Caribbean countries in international discussions on macroeconomic policy, and trade, investment and financial agreements, incorporates the commitments of the Regional Gender Agenda and their link with Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular that the position on sustainable development be transmitted to the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development by the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development.

1.m Promote measures, policies and programmes for the full engagement of boys, young men and men as strategic allies in achieving gender equality, promoting and guaranteeing women’s rights and eliminating all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls.

2. Institutional architecture: multidimensional and comprehensive gender equality policies

Gender institutional architecture is the outcome of political and technical processes and constitutes the organizational structure that oversees public policies on women’s rights and gender equality in all branches and at all levels of the State. The design and modalities of national institutions are heterogeneous and comprise machineries for the advancement of women, gender equality entities in sectoral ministries, the legislative branch, the judiciary, decentralized agencies and intersectoral and inter-institutional coordination bodies.

Measures:

2.a Afford machineries for the advancement of women the highest level in the institutional hierarchy, supported by the normative framework, so that, in executing their functions, they can fulfil their role as the governing and managing bodies of policies on gender equality and women’s rights and autonomy, and ensure that gender equality is mainstreamed throughout the State structure.

2.b Strengthen machineries for the advancement of women by providing sufficient technical, human, political, administrative and financial resources and guarantee their sustainability over time, with a particular focus on the subnational and local levels.

2.c Promote the establishment and consolidation of gender equality and women’s rights bodies in sectoral ministries (including ministries of public administration, where they exist), decentralized agencies, subnational, municipal and local governments, and the legislative and judicial branches, by providing them with human, technical and political resources and a specific budget.

2.d Establish permanent government mechanisms, with specific mandates, division of duties, resource allocations and work plans, for intersectoral and inter-institutional coordination, especially between machineries for the advancement of women and central planning and budgeting units, to participate in the preparation and implementation of development plans and public budgets, mainstreaming the gender perspective in planning and budgeting at the national, subnational and local levels.

2.e Ensure ongoing coordination, facilitated by the technical secretariat of the Conference, among the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the other subsidiary bodies of ECLAC and the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, in order to ensure coordinated follow-up to the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in accordance with their respective mandates.

3. Popular and citizen participation: democratization of policy and society

Popular and citizen participation, and in particular that of women’s and feminist organizations and movements, in the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda refers to their contribution to the design, application and follow-up of policies at the national and international levels. To achieve active and substantive participation, a safe and enabling environment must be created by strengthening organization processes, building capacities, facilitating access to information and justice, and establishing channels for dialogue with the general public, including over the Internet, and parity-based participation mechanisms that are effective, institutionalized, permanent and representative of the diversity in women’s and feminist movements and organizations and those representing young, indigenous, Afro-descendent and rural women, older women, migrant women, women from diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds, women living with HIV/AIDS, internally displaced women, women living in poverty, women deprived of liberty, women with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons.

Measures:

3.a Support women’s leadership in social and political organizations, promoting parity-based participation in democracy, institution-building and the advocacy capacities of civil society organizations, women’s and feminist movements, and, in particular, leadership among adolescents, young women, indigenous women, Afro-descendent women, rural women, migrant women, women living with HIV/AIDS, women with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) persons, respecting their organizational expressions.

3.b Establish mechanisms that guarantee participation on a parity basis by women in all their diversity in the public sphere, in elected and designated positions encompassing all functions and at all levels of the State.

3.c Create and maintain a safe and supportive environment for the full and effective participation of civil society through an enabling policy framework, a human rights protection system that safeguards freedoms and ensures effective access to justice, timely public information and citizen participation channels, including mechanisms for the free, prior and informed consent of rural and campesino communities and different indigenous peoples and ethnic groups.

3.d Establish or strengthen effective, institutionalized and permanent citizen participation mechanisms that are representative of the diversity in civil society organizations, to ensure their contribution to the design, implementation, follow-up and evaluation of public policies on gender equality and women’s human rights, especially macroeconomic, production and sustainable development policies and policies on the mitigation of and response to extreme weather events, risk management and resilience-building at the regional, national, subnational and local levels.

3.e Foster the development of online participation and consultation platforms to involve all citizens, individuals and groups in decision-making, particularly young people and women of all ages, Afro-descendent women and those who live in rural, ethnic or indigenous communities or far from decision-making structures, ensuring equal access to information and broad-based consultations.

3.f Allocate sufficient budgets for the functioning of social oversight and accountability mechanisms, observatories and other instruments, and for the participation of civil society organizations, particularly feminist movements and organizations of women of all ages.

3.g Promote spaces for the participation of civil society, especially women’s and feminist movements, in the framework of regional integration bodies and regional and global intergovernmental bodies, such as the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean and other subsidiary bodies of ECLAC, the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Commission on Population and Development, the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up.

3.h Work towards the creation of a regional fund in support of women’s and feminist movements and organizations, taking into consideration the input of civil society.

4. State capacity-building and -strengthening: public administration based on equality and non-discrimination

Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda will require the development and strengthening of the capacities of institutions and of the human resources involved in designing and executing policies at all levels of State. Institutional capacities are strengthened through policy planning, management and monitoring, ensuring coherence between gender equality policies and development policies. Tools for strengthening human resources include training, the exchange of experiences, knowledge transfers and technical assistance at the national, regional and international levels.

Measures:

4.a Design and implement plans for training and ongoing education, in partnership with academic centres, feminist organizations and international organizations, on gender equality, women’s rights, intersectionality and interculturality in all public institutions, particularly the justice system, security forces and the health and education sectors, in order to have human resources skilled in the design and implementation of sectoral and cross-cutting gender policies nationwide.

4.b Incorporate continuing training on gender equality and women’s rights, intersectionality and interculturality into civil service training programmes, and attach importance to this training as part of civil servants’ development and career advancement.

4.c Design, and implement continuing training, management and evaluation strategies to build an organizational culture open to gender, intersectional and intercultural policies.

4.d Design specific training processes to build the leadership capacities of women of all ages in order to achieve parity-based participation in decision-making roles and, in particular, in senior management, executive and technical positions.

4.e Implement regional training, capacity-building and experience-exchange programmes (online and in-person) on the Regional Gender Agenda, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goal indicators and development planning, with the support of ECLAC.

5. Financing: mobilizing sufficient and sustainable resources for gender equality

Financing the Regional Gender Agenda includes national and international public funding sources. Both available and potential sources are considered in order to mobilize the maximum available resources to guarantee the fulfilment of women’s rights and gender equality. Financing refers to the amount, level and composition of resource allocations and revenue sources that increase funding progressively and in line with equality priorities.

Measures:

5.a Design, implement and evaluate macroeconomic policies, particularly fiscal policies (income, spending and investment), from a gender equality and human rights perspective to safeguard the progress made and mobilize the maximum available resources.

5.b Assess, using costing exercises with a gender perspective, the budgetary needs of various State institutions linked to achieving the Regional Gender Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, and identify available and potential sources of public financing that respond to the economic and social needs of each country.

5.c Promote and adopt progressive fiscal policies and allocate budgets with a gender perspective to ensure sufficient, non-transferable, sustainable resources that cover all levels and areas of public policy aimed at reversing gender inequalities and guaranteeing women’s rights.

5.d Ensure that fiscal adjustment measures or budget cuts aimed at addressing economic slowdowns are in line with the principles of human rights and non-discrimination, bearing in mind that these measures should be temporary and used exceptionally for the duration of the crisis, and should avoid worsening women’s poverty rates, increasing their burden of unpaid and care work, and reducing financing and budgets for equality policies and machineries for the advancement of women.

5.e Monitor changes in the amount, level, composition and disbursement of budget allocations for policies aimed at reducing gender inequalities and guaranteeing women’s rights, and disseminate that information.

5.f Ensure that the private sector, particularly the corporate sector, contributes effectively to the financing of women’s entrepreneurship, public services and social protection by paying progressive taxes, and that the State avoids the granting of tax privileges.

5.g Carry out gender impact assessments of fiscal policies before and after implementation, to ensure that these policies do not have a negative effect, explicit or implicit, on gender equality, women’s rights or autonomy, for example, increasing the unpaid and care workload or women’s poverty rates.

5.h Strengthen regional cooperation to combat tax evasion and avoidance and illicit financial flows, and improve tax collection from the wealthiest and highest-income groups by introducing corporate income, wealth and property taxes, among others, in order to have greater resources for gender equality policies.

5.i Urge the agencies of the United Nations and the inter-American system to ensure that their gender machineries have sufficient resources for the full implementation of policies on gender equality and women’s rights.

5.j Allocate sufficient financial resources for human resource and institutional capacity-building and -strengthening, in particular in small, highly indebted Caribbean countries for the full and effective implementation of women’s human rights and gender equality policies.

6. Communication: access to information and cultural change

Communication of the Regional Gender Agenda refers to the plans, campaigns and actions undertaken to raise awareness on gender-related normative frameworks, institutional architecture, statistics and information, as well as campaigns for cultural change towards equality and to fulfil women’s and girls’ human rights, in particular sexual and reproductive rights.

Measures:

6.a Design and implement communications plans, with earmarked resources and impact measurement, aimed at the civil service, civil society, the academic sector, the media and society as a whole, to systematically disseminate the agreements, commitments and obligations of the Latin American and Caribbean States relating to women’s and girls’ human rights and gender equality, and their linkages with global, national, subnational and local priorities.

6.b Establish, using information and communications technologies (ICTs), communication plans for different specific audiences in order to ensure the continuous dissemination of legislation and regulatory policies to eliminate gender inequality and guarantee women’s human rights.

6.c Conduct continuous communication campaigns based on quantitative and qualitative studies, with the aim of producing cultural change for gender equality in all areas.

7. Technology: towards e-government and innovative and inclusive economies

Technology, as an implementation pillar of the Regional Gender Agenda, involves mechanisms for the development, transfer and dissemination of technology, as well as equal access and use. It entails technology transfer under favourable, concessional and preferential conditions for Latin American and Caribbean countries, including preferential terms, to ensure that technologies are socially appropriate, safe and environmentally sustainable, and help eliminate gender inequality. Emphasis is also placed on information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a means of advancing towards e-government policies taking into consideration women’s needs and the exercise of their citizenship and rights.

Measures:

7.a Design and carry out periodical ex ante and ex post assessments of the effects of technologies with respect to gender equality in such areas as women’s employment, health, the protection of the ancestral knowledge of women of different indigenous, ethnic and racial groups, harassment and violence through technological means, natural resources and production methods.

7.b Formulate and implement e-government policies, with a gender equality, intersectional and intercultural perspective, thereby enhancing the efficiency and quality of public services, access to information, transparency, use of open data, public participation and accountability, as well as ensuring data confidentiality and protection of users.

7.c Incorporate gender equality, intersectional, intercultural and intergenerational perspectives into the design and application of digital agendas and national strategies for innovation and ICTs.

7.d Design and execute specific programmes to close the gender gaps in access, use and skills in science, technology and innovation, and encourage the parity-based participation of women in this area.

7.e Encourage, in the framework of the United Nations Technology Facilitation Mechanism, commitments regarding access to and the exchange, transfer and dissemination of technology under favourable, concessional and preferential conditions, and promote multidimensional evaluation to ensure that technology transfers are safe, socially appropriate, environmentally sustainable, and in keeping with commitments relating to women’s rights and gender equality.

8. Cooperation: towards democratic multilateral governance

Latin American and Caribbean countries and the international community are called upon to cooperate and provide assistance, according to their capacities and resources, to support efforts to achieve gender equality and guarantee women’s rights. Cooperation agreements to fulfil the Regional Gender Agenda may be technical, scientific or financial in nature, or involve the transfer of technology or skills. Regional, South-South and triangular cooperation complement —but do not replace— North-South cooperation, and are based on the principles of horizontality, non-conditionality and mutual benefit.

Measures:

8.a Harmonize regional norms consistent with women’s human rights, and evaluate the extraterritorial effects of the legislation and policies adopted, with respect to transnational issues such as migration, trafficking of women and girls, smuggling of migrants, international organized crime, drug smuggling, forced displacement and the situation of refugees, global value chains and global care chains, financial volatility, wealth concentration, climate change, portability of pensions and the rights of Afro-descendent women and women of different indigenous and ethnic groups.

8.b Implement development cooperation agreements between countries and subregions, particularly to address extreme natural events or other critical situations, in the technical, scientific and financial fields and in relation to labour standards and the social, economic, cultural and environmental rights of women.

8.c Increase resources and technical support to build resilience in small island developing and coastal States that are susceptible to the impacts of climate change, disasters and extreme weather events.

8.d Strengthen the coordination between the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and the gender machineries of the inter-American system and the regional and subregional integration blocs in order to ensure synergies in the implementation and follow-up of the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

8.e Urge developed countries to meet their official development assistance commitments, particularly by devoting 0.7% of gross national income to this purpose, and contributing 0.15%-0.20% to the least developed countries.

8.f Promote cooperation and support for middle-income countries, particularly highly indebted and vulnerable Caribbean countries, by defining comprehensive methodologies for classifying countries based on structural development gaps in order to evaluate levels of development and gender inequality more accurately and comprehensively.

8.g Urge developed countries to increase non-conditional official development assistance planned, in a concerted manner, with sufficient resources to fund gender equality policies and mainstreaming of the Sustainable Development Goals.

8.h Promote the representation of Latin American and Caribbean countries, with delegations composed on the basis of parity, in global economic governance institutions that design and implement international norms on finance, trade and debt, and ensure that these norms are consistent with women’s human rights.

8.i Explore debt relief options for highly indebted and vulnerable Caribbean countries, promote solutions to address the debt overhang and guarantee the necessary resources for the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda and the achievement of sustainable development.

9. Information systems: transforming data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into political decisions

Gender information systems involve the processes of selecting, compiling, integrating, processing, analysing and disseminating information on gender inequalities, as well as on the progress made and challenges that remain in ensuring fulfilment of women’s rights. Qualitative and quantitative gender statistics and indicators may come from various sources, mainly from the data-producing agencies that make up the national statistical system.

Measures:

9.a Establish and strengthen national statistical systems with a gender perspective, which requires improving the coverage, quality and periodicity of sociodemographic and economic statistics through surveys, censuses and administrative records, using common classifications that ensure comparability.

9.b Ensure the disaggregation and dissemination of data by sex, age, race and ethnic origin, socioeconomic status and area of residence, in order to improve analyses to reflect the diversity of women’s situations.

9.c Develop and strengthen instruments to measure gender inequalities, such as surveys on time use, violence against women, sexual and reproductive health and use of public spaces, and ensure their funding and periodicity.

9.d Design and incorporate into public information systems indicators to measure the level of commitment to and guarantee of women’s human rights, differentiating structural, process and outcome indicators, and signs of qualitative progress.

9.e Build or strengthen inter-institutional partnerships between bodies that produce and use information, particularly between machineries for the advancement of women, national statistical offices, academic institutions and national human rights institutions.

9.f Publish and disseminate, through open-access digital means, good-quality, timely and free information on legislative discussions, approved and executed budgets and judicial decisions.

9.g Strengthen the statistical capacities of machineries for the advancement of women in Latin America and the Caribbean to mainstream the gender perspective in all statistical generation or integration projects.

9.h Promote the production of information for follow-up on the commitments assumed under the Regional Gender Agenda, seeking complementarity with the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals and the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development.

9.i Intensify coordination between the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Statistical Conference of the Americas of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and encourage cooperation between countries and participation in the sessions of the United Nations Statistical Commission.

10. Monitoring, evaluation and accountability: guaranteeing rights and transparency

The monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda and accountability are part of the cycle of planning and implementing policies on gender equality and women’s rights, and permit an analysis of the obstacles and advances in the fulfilment of commitments adopted by States. Accountability implies the use of mechanisms to disseminate relevant, sufficient, timely and reliable information, and the provision of forums for dialogue with civil society, which performs a citizen oversight function. Coordination between the different accountability instruments reduces overlap, promotes positive synergies and transparency, and helps to consolidate open governments.

Measures:

10.a Create or strengthen monitoring systems, according to agreed criteria, that comprehensively and periodically evaluate the level of implementation of laws, norms, policies, plans and programmes on gender equality and women’s rights at the regional, national and subnational levels.

10.b Take into consideration the information compiled from monitoring and evaluation to create or strengthen accountability mechanisms relating to advances concerning and fulfilment of the Regional Gender Agenda, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and, particularly, allocated budgets at all levels of public administration.

10.c Promote inter-institutional coordination among machineries for the advancement of women, national human rights institutions and the Follow-up Mechanism to the Convention of Belém do Pará (MESECVI) and the Protocol of San Salvador, to ensure complementarity and avoid overlap in the monitoring and evaluation of policies on gender equality and women’s rights.

10.d Ensure that the reports presented by countries to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women are broader and more detailed, and that they are submitted in accordance with the schedule set out by the United Nations, that civil society is consulted in the follow-up and evaluation of the policies to which the reports refer, and that legislative changes made are consistent with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

10.e Report to the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development on the fulfilment of the agreements and commitments undertaken under the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

10.f Report on the regional advances and obstacles concerning the full and effective implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda and its synergies with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women.

10.g Ensure that civil society organizations enjoy effective access to public information so that they can fulfil their role of monitoring policies on equality and women’s rights.

D. FOLLOW-UP TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY BY 2030

The Montevideo Strategy is a regional agreement that ECLAC member States will adapt to their priorities, plans for gender equality and rights, sustainable development plans and national policies and budgets.

States are responsible for systematically assessing the progress made in the implementation of the Montevideo Strategy through an open and participatory follow-up framework that includes regional accountability mechanisms and the active participation of civil society organizations.

From the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016 until 2030, governments will be able to report voluntarily on their progress in the application and adaptation of the Montevideo Strategy at one of the two annual meetings of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, in accordance with a timetable for reporting on implementation pillars in specific areas of interest to be agreed on by the governments of the region.

Moreover, each year, pursuant to resolution 700(XXXVI) of the thirty-sixth session of ECLAC, the Chair of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the support of the secretariat, will report to the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development on the progress made in the implementation of the Montevideo Strategy. These reports will contribute to the global process in the framework of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up.

These reports will also be included in the region’s contribution to the sessions of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and the special regional consultations organized by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), as a regional input to the global discussion on gender equality and women’s rights, and the follow-up to the Sustainable Development Goals.

ECLAC has a mandate to convene the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean at intervals of no more than three years (Regional Plan of Action for the Integration of Women into Latin American Economic and Social Development, 1977, paragraph 88.1). Hence, four sessions of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to be held between now and 2030 (2019, 2022, 2025 and 2028), one every three years. At each of these sessions, a progress report will be presented on the execution of the Montevideo Strategy and on fulfilment of the goals on gender equality and women’s autonomy included in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Regional Gender Agenda.

The aim of the follow-up to the implementation of the Montevideo Strategy by 2030 is to monitor States’ efforts to fully and effectively implement the Regional Gender Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a view to guaranteeing women’s human rights and autonomy and moving towards more equal and sustainable development patterns.

[1] LC/G.2682.

RESERVATIONS AND DECLARATIONS

REGIONAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION MAR DEL PLATA (1994)

RESERVATIONS OF THE DELEGATIONS OF ARGENTINA, ECUADOR, GUATEMALA AND THE UNITED STATES

The United States delegation entered a reservation with respect to paragraph 4 (Background) and Paragraph 70 (strategic guideline 111). The delegations of Argentina, Ecuador and Guatemala entered reservations with respect to paragraphs 63 and 64 (strategic actions 11.5.b and c). In that connection, the Argentine delegation stated that it accepted the concept of reproductive rights as expressed in article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of AII Forms of Discrimination against Women, and in paragraph 41 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993). In addition, the Ecuadorian delegation entered a reservation with respect to paragraphs 105 h) and 117 a).

MEXICO CITY CONSENSUS (2004)

RESERVATION OF THE DELEGATION OF EL SALVADOR

Mindful that our country joined the consensus of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, subject to its respective reservations, which we reaffirm on this opportunity together with those made at other conferences,

Whereas El Salvador is consistent with its democratic background, it joins the Mexico City consensus on the basis of its conviction that this document will be useful for the promotion and advancement of women. In this regard, we reaffirm our will to promote the content of the present Consensus subject to the following reservation:

In the case of the Mexico City Consensus, we reiterate our reservation concerning subparagraph 6 (xi) of the present declaration, specifically the sentence referring to “Review and implement legislation...” given that its wording is not compatible with the terms of article 1 of our Constitution relating to the human person, which “recognizes every human being as a human person from the moment of conception”.

In view of the foregoing, we request that the present reservation be incorporated in the document of the Mexico City Consensus.

We also request that this reservation be incorporated as a footnote of that document.

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

While the United States has joined consensus on the “Mexico City Consensus,” the United States Government wishes to make the following Explanation of Position.

There is much in the Platform of Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing) and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo) that the United States supports. This support is not just theoretical. The United States is a leader in providing assistance to achieve many of the objectives of both Beijing and Cairo. In Fiscal Year 2003, the U.S. Government provided about $1.82 billion for health programs. Besides family planning and reproductive health, most of this went to HIV/AIDS, child survival, and maternal health. As you know, President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS relief is being implemented. That plan will provide $15 billion over five years to expand prevention and treatment programs. Of this, $9 billion will be new money. Funding for family planning and reproductive health has amounted to between $424 million and $446 million over the last four years, a substantial increase over the four preceding years. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States also provided nearly $474 million for education and training programs in developing countries, mostly for children’s basic education and literacy. These and other programs demonstrate the U.S. Government’s clear and action-oriented commitment to many of the objectives of Beijing and Cairo.

The United States wishes to associate itself with the numerous delegations that made reservations or statements of interpretation on both the Fourth World Conference on Women and the International Conference on Population and Development, as well as other major UN conferences, as regards the terms “reproductive rights,” “sexual rights,” “reproductive health,” “reproductive health care and services,” “family planning services,” and “sexual health.” The United States understands that the word “reaffirming” in reference to the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, or any other reference to the UN conference documents does not constitute a reaffirmation of any language in those documents that could be interpreted as promoting abortion or the use of abortifacients, nor is it a denial of the United States’ firm support for the rights of conscientious objection for health care workers whose personal beliefs might dictate their refusal to perform or be involved in abortion or abortion-related services. The United States does, however, support the treatment of women who suffer injuries or illnesses caused by legal or illegal abortion, including for example, post-abortion care, and does not place such treatment among abortion services.

The United States fully supports the principle of voluntary choice with regard to family planning. Couples should be able to choose which family planning method to use, but also whether to use any method at all. In order to ensure such choices are truly voluntary, couples should be fully informed of the mechanisms, risks, and benefits of the full range of contraceptive methods prior to making choices regarding family planning methods. In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning. Women who have had recourse to abortion should in all cases be given human treatment and counseling.

With regard to “services for HIV/AIDS prevention,” the United States fully supports a balanced approach, such as the ABC model: Abstinence, Be Faithful, and, when necessary, appropriate and safe use of Condoms. Based on a growing body of evidence from a number of developing countries, the United States supports the ABC approach because it can target and balance A, B, and C interventions according to the needs of different at-risk populations and the specific circumstances of a particular country confronting the epidemic.

The United States interprets the reaffirmation of commitments to the objectives and targets set out in the Plan of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001) as only applying to objectives and targets related to women, as the intended and proper scope of this particular declaration. Moreover, the United States Government made no commitments at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance which it can reaffirm.

With regard to the reference the call to “eliminate measures contrary to international law and the charter of the United Nations,” in Operative Paragraph 6 (xv) on violence against and sexual exploitation of women, the United States interprets it to apply to the Cuban Government’s policy of promoting sex tourism, prostitution, and sexual exploitation especially of Cuban women and girls. Such “unilateral measures” by Cuba, a matter of Cuban state policy defended publicly by its Maximum Leader, have the effect of promoting exploitation of women and a state-run industry to attract foreign tourists who systematically degrade women and girls, and are contrary to international law.

Finally, the United States requests the Secretariat of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to include a summary of this Explanation of Position and a clear reference to this Explanation of Position in the official record of this meeting, and to circulate the Explanation of Position as an official document of the Ninth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The United States also requests that the Consensus Declaration include the following footnote:

“The delegation of the United States understands that the terms reproductive and sexual rights and/or services should not be interpreted as endorsing or promoting abortion or the use of abortifacients.”

RESERVATION OF THE DELEGATION OF NICARAGUA

The delegation of the Government of Nicaragua:

1. Welcomes and endorses the Mexico City Consensus.

2. Welcomes with satisfaction the working document “Roads towards gender equity in Latin America and the Caribbean.

3. Reaffirms its commitment to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) and the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995).

4. Reaffirms the commitments and maintains the reservations as established at each of the Conferences referred to in the foregoing paragraph.

Request for footnote: With reference to the terms contained on page 2, paragraph 3 and page 4, paragraph 6, subparagraph (xi), Nicaragua accepts the terms provided that they do not affect its reservations.

REPLY OF THE DELEGATION OF CUBA

A declaration such as the one I have just heard can only stem from the most blatant disregard for truth and from a sense of impotence at the failure, these 45 years, of the economic, financial and trade embargo, of terrorist aggression of all types, of actions to break the unswerving will of the women, of the people of Cuba, to defend their freedom, their independence, their sovereignty, their self-determination and their socialism.

Out of respect for the delegations gathered here today, I cannot allow the calumnies expressed here to go unanswered.

To say that the Cuban Government promotes sex tourism or prostitution is yet another slur systematically thrown out to the world to distort the true picture.

The achievements of Cuban women and the role they occupy in society are a resounding demonstration of the reality in our country. The Revolution has ennobled Cuban women and those present here today are well aware of that fact.

It is really ludicrous and contradictory to hear the representative of the United States Government speak of the status of women, when the whole world has been appalled by news of the violations and tortures in Iraq, when Iraqi women have been defiled by the United States occupying forces. That is how they promote respect for women.

The embargo against Cuba is not a bilateral issue; it is applied extraterritorially and is used to impose United States laws on the rest of the world. The United States threatens Governments, imposes sanctions and pursues at the level of the entire globe those who wish to invest in, or negotiate with, Cuba. Laws such as the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act are used to establish and enforce such measures.

On 6 May, the President of the United States announced a new package of measures designed to interfere in our affairs, to try to destroy our people, our women.

I categorically reject the lies expressed by the United States delegation. This has been yet another demonstration of their policy of aggression.

Madam Chair,

I request that this statement be incorporated in full in the records of this ninth session of theRegional Conference as an annex to the Mexico City Consensus.

QUITO CONSENSUS (2007)

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF CHILE

With respect to the following preambular paragraph of the Quito Consensus:

“Recognizing that strengthening the lay State contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and guarantees the exercise of their human rights,”

We wish to state as follows:

Chile has been a secular State for over a century. Chile shares the spirit of this preambular paragraph and agrees on its adoption; however, we do not consider that the wording is the most appropriate and we therefore request that the following Explanation of Position after the Vote be incorporated as appropriate.

It is the position of Chile that on no account should this preambular paragraph be construed as implying any criticism of religious beliefs or any disregard for the role that they have played and will continue to play in the defence of human rights, poverty eradication and democracy.

Laura Albornoz Pollmann

Minister

National Women’s Service

Head of the Chilean delegation

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF COLOMBIA

Colombia has joined the Quito Consensus, but wishes to make the following explanation of position regarding the agreement adopted relating to “political harassment”, which states as follows:

“To adopt legislative measures and institutional reforms to prevent, punish and eradicate political and administrative harassment of women who reach decision-making positions through electoral means or by appointment at national and local levels, as well as in political parties and movements.

To recognize that women of our region face various obstacles to their participation in politics and to access to decision-making bodies, a situation that affects women’s ability to participate on an equal basis with men in our democracies.”

The Government of Colombia wishes to state that it has adopted the necessary policies and measures to achieve equality between women and men and to guarantee the participation of women and men in competitive elections.

The Government is carrying forward campaigns at the national level with a view to guaranteeing electoral transparency so that both women voters and women candidates can carry out their activities freely.

In this context, in addition to the legislative measures, a nationwide campaign referred to as the “clean vote” drive is being conducted. The purpose is to ensure that the forthcoming elections take place with “clean votes,” that is, without interference by criminal organizations or any type of pressure that undermines women citizens’ free and voluntary choice to exercise their fundamental right to suffrage in terms of the opportunity to elect or be elected.

The campaign consists in the signing of best practice agreements by political party leaders, governors, mayors, candidates and citizens in general.

Currently, the agreement has been signed by the 32 governors, the leaders of 14 political parties and 503 mayors.

During the implementation of these policies and measures no evidence has emerged, nor are there any statistics that suggest the existence of what could be described as “political harassment” or behaviour that violates electoral standards or the provisions of civil, penal, commercial or administrative law codes and which might justify the application of political, economic, penal or administrative sanctions.

The Government of Colombia expresses its willingness to study and investigate the matter in greater depth to establish whether this phenomenon does exist in our country and to be able, in the future, to define this type of situation conceptually, legally and politically.

Martha Lucia Vásquez Z.

Adviser to the President on

Equity for Women

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF COSTA RICA

With respect to the Quito Consensus, specifically the preambular paragraphs adopted by the Governments of the countries participating in the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, represented at the highest level by ministers or national mechanisms for the advancement of women, gathered in Quito, Ecuador, from 6 to 9 August 2007, we wish to state the following.

The Government of Costa Rica requests the Presiding Officers of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean to take note of the following reservation relating to preambular paragraph 6, which reads as follows:

Recognizing that the lay character of States contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and guarantees the exercise of their human rights.

In this regard and in my capacity as head of the delegation of Costa Rica to this session of the Conference, I wish to express my country’s reservation concerning the preambular paragraph quoted above, since article 75 of the Constitution of Costa Rica states that “the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Religion is the religion of the State, which contributes to its maintenance, without preventing the free exercise in the Republic of other forms of worship.”

The State of Costa Rica reaffirms its commitment and constant efforts to eliminate discrimination against women in all its various forms and to guarantee respect for their human rights pursuant to international legal instruments ratified by Costa Rica and in accordance with national legislation.

Thanking you on behalf of my country,

Jeannette Carrillo Madrigal

Official Head of Delegation

Costa Rica

C/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Costa Rica

DECLARATION OF EL SALVADOR ON THE QUITO CONSENSUS

The delegation of El Salvador, when it joined the consensus of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), expressed a number of reservations which are still in force.

Whereas El Salvador is consistent with its democratic vocation, it has joined the consensus of the Quito Declaration, in the belief that this document will be useful for the promotion and advancement of women. We reaffirm our will to promote the content of the present Consensus, subject to the

following reservations:

El Salvador reiterates its reservation to paragraph 8 of the Declaration, particularly to the phrase referring to “the lay character of States,” whose wording is incompatible with the provisions of our Constitution, article 85 of which recognizes that the State is “republican, democratic and representative.”

We reiterate our reservation to the phrase in article 17 of the Consensus which refers to “diverse types of family.” This wording is incompatible with our domestic legislation, as we mentioned in our reservations to the Cairo Programme of Action, “in referring to the family in diverse forms, we can in no circumstances change the origin and foundation of the family, which is a union of a man and a woman, and from which children are born.”

We state our reservation to the phrase in article 23 of the Consensus which refers to “sexual rights”. El Salvador recognizes the existence of reproductive rights only in the framework of the right to health.

We state our reservation in relation with the phrase “due, among other factors, to unsafe abortions.” Article 1 of our Constitution, which relates to the human person, states that “Every human being is recognized as a human person from the moment of conception.” Thus, abortion may not be promoted as a family planning method or as a health service.

We reiterate our reservation to article 1 (xxiv) of the Consensus, which also mentions sexual rights as human rights, and El Salvador recognizes the existence of reproductive rights only in the framework of the right to health.

We also reiterate our reservation to article 1 (xxv) inasmuch as it refers to “access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.” While El Salvador supports actions to promote the sexual and reproductive health of men and women, as previously mentioned, abortion may never be included in these concepts as a service or a method for regulating fertility.

For the above reasons, we request that the aforementioned reservations be included as an integral part of the report of the session and of the text of the Quito Consensus.

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

The delegation of the Dominican Republic supports and endorses the Quito Consensus adopted by the Governments of the countries participating in the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, represented at the highest level by ministers or machineries for the advancement of women, gathered in Quito, Ecuador, from 6 to 9 August 2007, but states the following:

The delegation of the Dominican Republic requests the Presiding Officers of the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean to take into account the following reservation with respect to preambular paragraph 6, which states as follows:

“Recognizing that the lay character of States contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and guarantees the exercise of their human rights,”

The above reservation is made bearing in mind that the Dominican Republic has a signed concordat with the Holy See, by virtue of which the relations between the Dominican State and the Catholic Church have been strengthened in such a way that in our country study of the Catholic religion is a compulsory subject in the current school curriculum.

Flavia García

Secretary of State for Women

BRASILIA CONSENSUS (2010)

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF CHILE

The Chilean delegation requested the Presiding Officers of the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean to enter on its behalf the following reservation:

Brasilia, 16 July 2010

The Delegation of Chile to the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, in accordance with the Political Constitution of the Republic of Chile, which protects life before birth, subscribes to the Brasilia Consensus on the understanding that this does not imply an endorsement of abortion.

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF COSTA RICA

The Government of Costa Rica requests the Presiding Officers of the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean permission to express the following reservations:

16 July 2010

Ms. Alicia Bárcena

Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission

for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)

Dear Madam,

I have the honour to address you in connection with the Brasilia Consensus, which was signed on 16 July 2010. The Republic of Costa Rica, as a country with a democratic tradition that is already a hundred years old and a commitment to respect for human rights and the promotion of tolerance, endorses the Brasilia Consensus with the firm conviction that it will be a valuable instrument for furthering and advancing the status of women in the region.

For this reason, Costa Rica has adopted, signed and ratified all the instruments that promote equal rights and opportunities for women and men and has been bringing its national legislation in line with these instruments, in particular with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Thus, we reaffirm our willingness to endorse the content of this Consensus, but wish to place on record in the report the following reservations of the Government of the Republic of Costa Rica:

1. We reiterate our reservation concerning preambular paragraph 9 of the Brasilia Consensus, which reads as follows: “Reaffirming that the secular character of States contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women and helps to ensure the full exercise of their human rights”.

Freedom of worship is enshrined in the Political Constitution of Costa Rica and the advances achieved for the benefit of women in all spheres of their political, economic, social and cultural development have been gained under the existing Constitution, which contemplates a confessional State and absolute freedom of worship. The inclusion of this point in the preambular section is not a fundamental issue for achieving the objectives pursued in the women’s struggle.

2. We reiterate our reservation in respect of measure (f) under the heading: Promote the conditions for the integral health of women and for their sexual and reproductive rights, which reads as follows: “To review laws that punish women who have undergone abortions, as recommended by the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, including the further initiatives and actions identified for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, as well as the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the general observations of the Committee against Torture of the United Nations, and ensure that abortions are performed safely where authorized by the law.

The Constitutional Chamber of the Republic of Costa Rica has repeatedly affirmed that “a person is a person from the moment of conception, and we are dealing with a living being, with the right to protection under the legal system” (Exp: 01-003721-0007-CO Res: 2001-06685), in accordance with the juridical norms and Political Constitution in force in Costa Rica.

3. Costa Rica wishes to place on record that it understands sexual and reproductive rights to mean the capacity of women and men to achieve and maintain sexual and reproductive health within the framework of relationships of equality and mutual respect. Furthermore, physical autonomy implies the exercise of power and control over one’s own body, one’s sexuality and fertility, as well as the right to a life free of sexual, physical and psychological violence, with respect for the existing national regulatory framework.

Accept , dear Madam, the assurances of my highest consideration,

Maureen Clarke Clarke

Executive President

National Institute of Women (INAMU)

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Government of the United States of America wishes to have recorded the following explanation of position:

The Government of the United States of America strongly supports action in the hemisphere to promote and ensure the equal rights of women, including actions to prevent violence against women and to enhance women’s economic empowerment. However, the Government of the United States of America does not agree with and objects to many of the provisions in the document entitled “Brasilia Consensus”. Therefore, it is not among the participants in the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean that decided to adopt this document.

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF NICARAGUA

New York, 20 August 2010

Ms. Alicia Bárcena

Executive Secretary

Economic Commission for

Latin America and the Caribbean

Dear Ms. Bárcena,

The Government of the Republic of Nicaragua has set as one of its priorities the restitution of the rights of Nicaraguan women in all walks of society. We have undertaken a firm commitment in this regard, expressed in effective public policies which underpin progress towards gender equity and women’s empowerment by shifting from rhetoric to practice. Our women have conquered areas of power in decision-making and in the country’s economic, social and cultural life. Women have also been provided with the basic means for their advancement, such as health care and free education, access to the means of production, and so forth.

Owing to circumstances of force majeure, the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua was unable to be represented at the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Brasilia from 13 to 16 July 2010. However, the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua considers that the outcome document of that Conference, the Brasilia Consensus, is an excellent tool for the protection and promotion of women’s rights in our region and is consistent with our country’s public policies.

For these reasons, the Government of the Republic of Nicaragua upholds the Brasilia Consensus adopted by the governments of countries participating in the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, on the understanding that this does not imply an endorsement of abortion.

The Government of Nicaragua, in accordance with its Constitution and laws, reaffirms that every person has the fundamental and inalienable right to life, and that this right starts from the moment of conception.

Abortion or the interruption of pregnancy may not, under any circumstance, be considered a means of fertility regulation or of birth control; all internal legislation governing this matter falls under the sovereignty of the nation of Nicaragua.

I request that this general reservation be included in the report of the eleventh session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Accept, Madam, the assurances of my highest consideration.

H.E. Maria Rubiales de Chamorro

Permanent Representative of Nicaragua

to the United Nations and

Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs

SANTO DOMINGO CONSENSUS (2013)

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF COSTA RICA

TRANSLATION BY THE SECRETARIAT OF NOTE VERBALE FROM THE EMBASSY OF COSTA RICA

Embassy of Costa Rica in Chile

ECRCL136-13

The Embassy of Costa Rica presents its compliments to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and has the honour to inform the Commission that the Government of Costa Rica is submitting the following reservation, which it requests to have included in the relevant report, with respect to the Santo Domingo Consensus adopted at the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 14 to 18 October 2013:

“Costa Rica supports the Santo Domingo Consensus in accordance with our policy of gender equality and equity and the country’s efforts to foster equality and women’s human rights. However, it maintains a reservation with respect to paragraph 95,* specifically with reference to abortion following instances of rape and emergency contraception as these are not permitted under national legislation.”

The Embassy of Costa Rica takes this opportunity to convey to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean the renewed assurances of its highest consideration.

Santiago, 4 November 2013

* Translator’s note: This corresponds to paragraph 65 in the final edited version of the Consensus.

EXPLANATION OF POSITION OF GUATEMALA

TRANSLATION BY THE SECRETARIAT OF NOTE FROM THE DELEGATION OF GUATEMALA

Reservations presented by the delegation of Guatemala with respect to the Santo Domingo Consensus

The representative of Guatemala submits the following written statement:

My delegation wishes to state that, for reasons of national interest, Guatemala is submitting the following declaration of reservation with respect to the Santo Domingo Consensus for inclusion in the final report on the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean:

(a) Guatemala has the sovereign right to apply the recommendations contained in the agreement (Santo Domingo Consensus) adopted at the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 15 to 18 October 2013, subject to its Constitution and national legislation, therefore none of the provisions or recommendations of the meeting can or should be interpreted in such a way as to contravene those legal instruments. The recommendations shall be adopted or applied in accordance with the development priorities of our country and with full respect for its diverse ethical and cultural values, as well as the philosophical convictions of our multi-ethnic, multilingual and pluricultural people and in a manner consistent with universally recognized human rights;

(b) Guatemala submits its reservations in particular with respect to the issues, terms, conditions and provisions contained in the agreement in relation to:

•Abortion: chapter I, article 3, of the Constitution states that “the State guarantees and protects human life from the moment of conception”, and as such the Criminal Code sanctions those who cause abortion;

•Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, transvestite and intersex (LGBTTI) persons: article 4 of the Constitution states that “in Guatemala all human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights. Men and women, irrespective of their marital status, possess equal opportunities and responsibilities.”

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 18 October 2013.

MONTEVIDEO STRATEGY (2016)

EXPLANATION OF POSITION BY THE REPUBLIC OF NICARAGUA

TRANSLATION OF THE SPANISH BY THE SECRETARIAT

REPUBLIC OF NICARAGUA CENTRAL AMERICA

MINISTRY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Managua, Nicaragua

MRE/DGOCI/00859-E-2/10/2016

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua has the honour to write to the esteemed Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and to the Chair of the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in order to submit the general explanation of position of Nicaragua regarding the document “Montevideo Strategy for implementation of the regional gender agenda within the sustainable development framework by 2030”.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua, on behalf of the Government of Reconciliation and National Unity of Nicaragua, wishes to reiterate its position of principle, by which our Government, in accordance with its constitution and laws and as a signatory of the American Convention on Human Rights, affirms that every person has a right to life, this being a fundamental and inalienable right, and that this right begins at the moment of conception. Abortion or the termination of a pregnancy can under no circumstances be considered means of regulating fertility or birth control as was stated at the International Conference on Population and Development. All domestic legislation on this issue is a sovereign matter to be decided by the people of Nicaragua.

Therefore, our Government wishes to express its reservation regarding all mention of sexual and reproductive rights in the document “Montevideo Strategy for implementation of the regional gender agenda within the sustainable development framework by 2030”, which will be adopted at the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Montevideo, from 25 to 28 October 2016.

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Nicaragua requests the withdrawal of its previous note No. MRE/DGOCI/00859-E/10/2016 and avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the esteemed Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and to the Chair of the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean the assurances of its highest consideration.

Managua, 27 October 2016

The Honourable Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

H.E. the Chair of the thirteenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

(Signed)

Department of International Organizations and Conferences

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Republic of Nicaragua, Central America

Table of Contents

Maintitle

Copyrights

Contents

Foreword

Regional Plan of Action La Habana (1977)

Regional Programme of Action Mar del Plata (1994)

Santiago Consensus (1997)

Lima Consensus (2000)

Brasilia Consensus (2010)

Santo Domingo Consensus (2013)

Montevideo Strategy (2016)

Reservations and Declarations