World Conference on Women

Dear Delegates,

Welcome to the World Conference on Women at Harvard National Model United Nations 2010! I hope that you come to Boston in February excited to attend a Model United Nations conference that will enable you to both debate controversial topics and meet other college students from across the globe!

My name is Courtney Fiske and I am a junior at Harvard concentrating in Social Studies, with a focus in human rights and international development, and a secondary field in History of Art and Architecture. In addition to Model UN, I write a column about women’s issues for the editorial page of Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson; work as an editor for Let’s Go, a budget student travel guide company run entirely by Harvard students; and am heavily involved in the Harvard College Human Rights Advocates. In my free time, I also enjoy traveling, shopping, listening to music, visiting art museums, and spending time with friends. Last year, I directed the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee at HNMUN; the year prior, I was a member of Harvard’s traveling MUN team, as well as an Assistant Director in the Vichy France simulation at HNMUN. As a result, I have experienced MUN from all sides, whether in the crisis room, behind the dais, or as a delegate in committee session. As chair of this committee, I look forward to channeling the energy, enthusiasm, and diversity of perspectives inherent in such a large group of my peers. I am extremely excited about the conference that awaits us.

For this conference, I have chosen two topics that are near and dear to my heart: women and violence, and the feminization of poverty. In light of the wholesale failure of governments to fulfill the promises made at the last World Conference on Women in Beijing, and given the worsening situation of women worldwide due to a backlash against feminist rhetoric and an upsurge in religious fundamentalism, the time is ripe to address these issue. The global upsurge in domestic and gender-based violence, such as honor killings, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking, forced marriages, and gynocide, and the disturbing use of systemic acts of rape as tactics of war and genocide, make the first topic one that is imperative to discuss. With the growing recognition of the role that female empowerment plays in lifting societies out of poverty, the second topic has recently come to the attention of the United Nations, but a cohesive approach to the problem of the disproportionate structural effect of poverty on women has yet to be proffered. The attainment of an effective solution to either of these topics will require the contributions and cooperation of all of the member-states in this body. Despite the broad scope and myriad implications of these two topics, I hope that you, as delegates, will come prepared with creative and original solutions to the difficulties that they pose.

Both topics will surely engender a stimulating and provocative debate, with many opportunities for collaboration with fellow delegates. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best of luck with your fall semesters, and see you in February!

Sincerely,

Courtney Fiske
Director, World Conference on Women
Harvard National Model United Nations 2010

In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women convened in Beijing. The 12-day conference resulted in the formulation of the Beijing Platform for Action (1995). Drawing on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), this platform stated twelve critical areas of concern for the situation of women worldwide, including the disproportionate and systemic burden of poverty on women; lack of respect for and inadequate promotion of the human rights of women; and forms of violence against women. Yet, since 1995, the situation of women in the world has been made worse, due to a global backlash against feminist rhetoric and women’s rights movements fueled by a rise in religious fundamentalism. The governments who have fulfilled the promises which they made in Beijing are few and far between. Poor implementation, compounded by a lack of political will, have prevented the provisions of the Beijing Declaration from truly coming into force and effecting change in the status of women in society.

When reviewing the Platform for Action in 2000, the General Assembly decided to review the implementation of the Platform of Action again in 2005 at a so-called “Beijing 10” meeting. No world conference was called at this time, however, and the review session was merely a technical discussion within the Commission of the Status of Women: a fact which represented an unacceptable demotion of the significance of the discussion. The fact that the worldwide situation of women has been recently de-prioritized by the UN; the fact that the Beijing Platform has proved insufficient to secure tangible change for women worldwide; and the fact that the status of women has precipitously deteriorated in recent years makes the calling of another World Conference on Women imperative.

This Fifth World Conference on Women will endeavor to continue the success and ameliorate the failures of the previous World Conference in Beijing by addressing two critical issues: women and violence, and the feminization of poverty.

Topic Area A: Women and Violence

Violence against women is a universal problem, which constitutes a fundamental violation of the human rights of women. Each year, thousands of women are murdered by their families due their perceived infidelity to their husbands, their refusal to accept an arranged marriage, their flirtations with other men, or, disturbingly, for “allowing themselves” to be raped. In armed conflicts worldwide, sexual violence against women, specifically in the form of rape, is employed as a weapon of war. The consequences of such strategies for victims are numerous and severe, and include: psychological damage, life-threatening diseases such as HIV/AIDs, forced pregnancies, and stigmatization and rejection by family members and communities. Sex trafficking and the coercion of women into forms of sexual slavery, as well as female genital mutilation and gynocide, pose further challenges to the realization of the basic human rights of women. This conference will seek to tackle the issue of violence against women, engrained in the cultural fabric of numerous societies, and will attempt to arrive at implementable solutions.

Topic Area B: The Feminization of Poverty

The term “feminization of poverty” refers to the increased levels of poverty among women as opposed to men. Most basically, it is a recognition that gender inequalities and pervasive systems of gender-based structural violence within societies serve as major determinants of poverty. In recent decades, neoliberal economic policies have come under sharp criticism for exacerbating the feminization of poverty: indeed, their poverty-inducing effects have been empirically shown to be particularly harsh on women. With an understanding that poverty violates human rights, the pervasive, and growing, poverty among the world’s women must be addressed not merely as an economic problem, but as an issue of human rights as well. Through debating this topic, the committee will explore ways in which macroeconomic policies and development strategies can be reviewed, adopted, and maintained in ways that address the needs of women in poverty, as well as ways in which structural inequalities within societies can be ameliorated to ensure women’s equal rights and access to economic resources. More generally, it will seek to address the manner in which economic factors, the rigidity of socially-ordained gender roles, and the limited access to women to power, education, and training collude to place women disproportionately in situations of extreme poverty, and how these factors can be addressed through strategies of political and socioeconomic empowerment.