• by IPS Correspondents (amman)
• Sunday, November 13, 1994
• Inter Press Service

Amman, Nov 13 (IPS) - There is absolutely no doubt that the Arab Regional Preparatory Meeting, designed to smooth the ground for next year's United Nations Fourth International Women's Conference in Beijing, is the most important conference on the advancement of women staged here in the Middle East.

Women from 22 Arab states have been at it hammer and tongs over the past week in the Jordanian capital debating the contents of two main working papers to be used as the frame of reference for the debates come next September in the Chinese capital.

"The principal working paper is an assessment of the situation of Arab women in the light of the implementation of the Nairobi Forward Looking strategies of 1985.

"The other main thrust of the meeting is a regional Plan of Action for the advancement of Arab women which has come out of the various national plans of action which have been discussed at the Arab Preparatory Meeting this week," said Vera Azar, information officer for the organisers the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

The other joint organisers are The League of Arab Nations and the Centre for Arab Women for Training and Research. The preparatory meeting has lasted for a week and was hosted by Princess Basma Bint Talal of Jordan and Getrude Mongella, the U.N.designated Secretary-General of the Beijing International Conference next September.

"What has come out of this preparatory meeting will be forwarded to the U.N. secretariat to be used as input for the final global Plan of Action to be presented to the conference in Beijing," explained Azar.

Dr Fatima Sbaity Kassem, a Lebanese political economist from ESCWA, said her organisation had made a regional assessment of the situation of women in the Arab world and had as a result formulated a a 'Regional Plan of Action' for the advancement of Arab women.

"Through this plan we hope to present the problems of women to the United Nations which will then be forwarded to the Beijing conference," she said. "We are not seeking equality in the narrowest sense but rather an equality of opportunity and access to all services and the labour market. This is the new image, the gender, rather than the feminist approach. We don't want to say that women are weaklings. We want the new generation to be involved - we want women to be counted and to count.

"What the Regional Plan approach will embrace is integrating women in the socio-economic and political hierarchy which will afford us a more systematic approach to development." (MORE)

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