Canada and the Beijing Conference on Women: Governmental Politics and NGO Participation

Margaret Conrad is Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at
the University of New Brunswick. She is the author of Atlantic Canada: A
Region in the Making, and co-author of Intimate Relations: Family and
Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–

The 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women received considerable
media attention, much of it focused on the logistical difficulties of
housing the official and unofficial delegates to the largest UN
conference ever convened. In this book readers are treated to a
scholarly examination of the processes by which Canadian policies were
developed for the conference and an assessment of Canada’s role in
shaping the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, which
received the unanimous support of 189 countries and made significant
advances on issues relating to war crimes, violence against women, and
sexual and reproductive rights. This detailed discussion of the meetings
held in the run-up to the conference and in Beijing, and of the tensions
between federal bureaucrats and NGOs, serves as a useful guide to the
way Canadian diplomacy works and makes fascinating reading.

A political scientist with expertise in foreign policy, Elizabeth
Riddell-Dixon is particularly concerned with the relative weight of the
internal and external factors that shaped Canada’s approach and the
extent to which government officials were able to democratize
participation in this major foreign policy effort. While she gives
federal officials high marks for their efficiency under difficult
circumstances and their effectiveness as helpful fixers in the
diplomatic arena, the author concludes that democratic processes were
honored more in theory than in practice. Federal goals were given
priority in everything from delegate selection to policy thrust, giving
NGOs little opportunity to exert influence over the direction or
substance of Canada’s positions. Strong voices of dissent, such as
those of the National Action Committee and REAL Women, were summarily
relegated to the sidelines.

Critics of the Ottawa-centred approach will no doubt argue that more
attention should also have been given in this study to the views of the
dissenters but, overall, it offers a balanced assessment of the Beijing
process. Given that six years have elapsed since the conference was
held, more might have been said about the short-term impact of Beijing
conference on the status of women and about where the UN conference
process is likely to lead in the 21st century.