Women make gains globally.

The good news is that women are finally taking a giant step forward on a global scale.

I think I actually experienced the beginning of this step when I attended the World Congress of Women for a Healthy Planet in Miami, Florida, in November 1991. Bella Abzug, who is co-convenor of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), had invited women from around the world to come together to work out a women's agenda for the United Nations Earth Summit, which was coming up in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At this Florida gathering, a remarkable document was produced with the input of 1,500 inter, national women. This women's agenda made an impact on the Earth Summit in Rio, although the Vatican delegation threw all kinds of roadblocks in the way and actually was successful in keeping the matter of "population" from being brought up as having any relationship to the environment. In spite of this, women's voices began to be heard. There were those who were ready to listen.

It happened again in Costa Rica in January 1993, when I attended an International Interdisciplinary Women's Conference. The women at this conference were working on a women's agenda to take to the Second United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, to be held in june of that year in Vienna, Austria.

One organization - the Global Campaign for Women's Human Rights - had been working for over two years to find ways to put women's concerns on the international human, rights agenda at the Vienna conference. This effort was spear, headed by Charlotte Bunch, who holds a chair in women's studies at Rutgers University. Her group had been networking and strategizing and collecting signatures on a global petition that would be carried to the Vienna conference. The petitions, when finally presented to the conference, had thousands of signatures, representing women from 124 countries. I did my own share of collecting signatures, as did other women. The petition asked that women be included in all aspects of the human-rights conference and specifically demanded that "violence against women" be recognized as a human-rights violation.

A coalition of over 800 international women's organizations was in place by June, and 14,000 women arrived in Vienna for the conference. Women everywhere were finding that they were united by the universal problems of rape, incest, and battery, as well as economic and sexual exploitation. And these women were determined to have women's rights accepted as human rights.

The women immediately ran into opposition from the Vatican delegation, which didn't want "reproductive rights" included. Opposition also came from many Third World countries, led by China, which were pushing hard to water down the original Universal Declaration of Human Rights created in 1948. These Third World countries wanted the interpretation of human rights to be left up to the individual countries tries. They insisted that different societies should be able to interpret human rights according to their particular religions, traditions, and culture. In other words, suttee (widow-burning and dowry deaths), female genital mutilation, and rape and family violence should be considered acceptable if it was already a practice in that country.

Needless to say, the women at the conference responded with a unified and resounding "NO!" And they were heard. The women had arranged for a Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Rights to take place just prior to the official conference. At the tribunal, 33 women from 25 countries testified publicly about the human-rights violations each of them had experienced. These violations ranged from domestic violence to political persecution to violation of economic rights. The tribunal captured world attention and was responsible for a dramatic rethinking of "women's rights as human rights"

Women from many different cultures spoke out. They argued that religion, tradition, and culture are used constantly to justify the subordination of women and to rob them of human-rights protections. They argued that the right not to be raped, tortured, mutilated, sexually coerced, or killed cannot be dependent upon culture or religion; it must be made universal.

The result of these organized efforts was the inclusion in the conference's official document - the Vienna Declaration - of a section called: "The Equal Status and Human Fights of Women," which stated unequivocally: "Public and private violence against women is recognized as an abuse of human rights."

The Vienna Declaration also called for the appointment of a special rapporteur to monitor violence against women, including its causes and consequences. So in March 1994, the Commission on Human Rights appointed Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan lawyer and activist, to a three-year term. Her mandate is to be carried out "within the framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all international human rights instruments" including the women's convention.

At its December 1993 meeting, the U.N. General Assembly, adopted a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which defined violence as "any act of gender, based violence that results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty whether occurring in public or in private life."

The U.N. General Assembly also renewed its call for universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which was introduced in 1979. More than 139 countries have now ratified the convention. Ironically, however, the United States has not: in 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed it and presented it to the U.S. Senate for ratification, but it remained on the shelf of the Foreign Relations Committee, gathering dust. The Clinton administration was persuaded to push for hearings and ratification before the fourth U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. However, no action was taken before last November's elections, and now Jesse Helms is chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has no intention of moving on this issue.

It is clear that the Vienna conference was a major break, through for women on the international scene. By the sheer strength of their efforts, they succeeded in placing women on the international human-rights agenda for the first time. And they were beginning to have an influence on the United Nations' policymaking process.

The momentum created carried women on to the UN. Conference on Population and Development, which took place in Cairo, Egypt, in September 1994. Once again, the main struggle was with the Vatican delegation and the pope's position on women's reproductive rights. The women again prevailed and were able to reframe the debate on population in terms of human rights - especially women's rights. The resulting document - the Cairo Program of Action on Population and Development - stressed such goals as universal access to family planning, elevating the status of women, and alleviating illiteracy as well as child and maternal mortality. Delegates affirmed that population growth will only be brought under control when women are empowered by their societies. Calls to end poverty and support women's rights dominated the agenda.

Progress was once again achieved in March 1995 when the United Nations World Summit on Social Development was held in Copenhagen, Sweden. Of the 185 nations participating, only five delegations - Ecuador, Argentina, Malta, Sudan, and the Vatican - expressed reservations on references to reproducti health. The final document of the Copenhagen summit includes the Cairo Program of Action, which the delegates endorsed for inclusion.

I'll close now with the best news yet! The legitimacy of the Vatican's extraordinary status at the United Nations is being called into question! The Holy See delegation is the only religion permitted permanent observer status during United Nations proceedings. From this vantage point, the Vatican not only has the unique privilege of sitting in on closed-door meetings of the U.N. Conference Committee; its delegation is allowed to participate in all the deliberations. And although the Vatican delegation does not have an official vote, it does have the next best thing: opportunities to influence the proceedings through "insider" lobbying, including blocking actions, offering amendments, and filibustering to prevent consensus - all of which it does consistently.

For instance, during the final preparatory committee meeting prior to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the Vatican delegation used its influence to delete all references to family planning from the deliberations. This prevented the Rio conference declaration from being able to recommend an obvious - and significant - long-term remedy for alleviating environmental deterioration: universal access to modem pregnancy-prevention information, education, and methods.

Before the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, the Vatican was less successful but still managed to tie up the proceedings, virtually to the eleventh hour, with its objection to the inclusion in the Program of Action of a host of terms, including family planning, reproductive health, fertility regulation, and even safe motherhood.

Six months later - in March 1995 - the Vatican sent a 15-member delegation to the Copenhagen summit. Its purpose once again was to promote its own agenda and prevent conferees from adopting language disapproved of by the Vatican.

The unfairness of this becomes very clear. Under present arrangements, nongovernmental organizations which oppose the Vatican's position on family planning and women's rights are unable to participate in conference debates at preparatory committee meetings or at official conference meetings and are thus helpless to present their counterarguments. This happened in Rio, in Vienna, in Cairo, and in Copenhagen - and I expect it will be the case at the Beijing Conference on Women, too. in talking recently to Fran Hosken of Women International Net, work News, I was told that, at a preparatory meeting that she attended at the United Nations, the place was crawling with men in priest robes "

Of course, religious leaders have every right to present their dogma to their own flock, but attempting to impose that dogma on others in a secular forum is venturing into dangerous territory. And when that secular forum is the United Nations, such behavior violates the Vatican's unique position of trust and is morally wrong and reprehensible.

Needless to say, I was delighted to receive the issue of WIN News which contained a "Petition to Withdraw U.N. Observer Status from the Holy See." The petition is being put forth by Dr. Stephen Mumford of the Center for Research on Population and Security. I called Dr. Mumford to ask him more about the petition, and he informed me that the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy has recently published a report that considers the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church's participation in the United Nations. He sent me a copy of the report and copies of the petition (the latter, presented below).

If you believe, as I do, that the special status the Vatican holds in the United Nations is inappropriate and should be terminated as soon as possible, please sign the petition.

In closing, let me say that the most visible achievement of the women's movement for equal rights has been an increased awareness of women and women's issues. The pursuit of gender equity is crucial if the quality of life is be truly enhanced. The status of women, in the final analysis, indicates the real status of a country and a society.

Petition to

Withdraw

U.N.

Observer

Status

From the

Holy See

An information coalition is forming to help combat the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to desperately needed national and international family-planning and population-growth-control programs. The signers of this petition will become part of this broad coalition.

With its history of service to humanity, its extraordinary organization and its wealth, the Roman Catholic Church could have contributed greatly to containment and solution of the current crisis of world population growth. Instead, because of its intransigent opposition to modern methods of family limitation, based upon the 1968 papal encyclical Humane Vitae banning birth control, its role has been just the opposite: it has contributed greatly to the overpopulation dilemma itself - and thus also to continuation of the servile status of women in many countries, to failure of efforts to improve the health of women and their infants, to the spread of hunger and serious malnutrition, to depletion of our planet's natural resources and destruction of the environment.

We are convinced that the position of the pope and his church is quite simply immoral and wrong and will continue to cripple national and international programs designed to bring humanity's population growth under control. We say this is the context of our own deep beliefs and espousal of family values.

We believe the billions of couples the world around who want to limit their family size by safe, effective, and humane means hold the high moral ground in this dispute. We also resent and will mobilize to resist the undemocratic means by which papal power has harassed and intimidated governments at all levels in their efforts to provide family-planning services.

The church's dogma of papal infallibility has precluded any effective efforts to rescind or modify the ban on contraception imposed by Humanae Vitae. (World population has increased by 1,00,000,000 since the encyclical was released just 27 years ago). One recent liberalizing effort within the church - an effort that naturally failed - was the recommendation of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences urging limits of family size to avert "insoluble problems" caused by runaway growth. The academy recommended that family size be limited to about two children per couple.

Demands of the Vatican that the edicts of Humanae Vitae be followed are made ensure survival of the principle of infallibility and the institution of the papacy. The price of these demands in human terms - in suffering, illness, and premature death - is so great as to make such demands immoral.

On these grounds, we believe the "nonmember state permanent observer status" of the Holy See in the United Nations, as well as its similar relationships with specialized agencies in the U.N. system, is inappropriate and should be terminated as soon as possible.

Rosemary Matson is a humanist and eco-feminist as well as a life-long activist in the struggle for civil liberties, women's rights, and world peace. As a pioneer in citizen diplomacy, she has worked to better Soviet-American relations for over a decade. She is a California representative of the National Women's Political Caucus and has led workshops on women and religion at the 1980 and 1985 U.N. Decade for Women conferences. This article is adapted from the acceptance speech she delivered this past May upon being named the 1995 Humanist Heroine by the American Humanist Association's Feminist Caucus.