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"You don't have to be special to make a differerence"

How old we are and our political ideas will shape our perceptions of the United Nations. Whether it's Eleanor Roosevelt pleading the case for humanity's last best hope after the world's industrial powers, several of them possessed of the moral sensibilities of the ancient Assyrians, fought a globalized conflict that left more than 50 million people dead; or the Truman administration pulling a fast one on the boycotting Soviets and getting the Security Council's imprimateur on US intervention in a war between ruthless Korean dictators; or Nikita Khrushchev banging on a desk with his shoe; or the practical end of Taiwan's pretense of representing mainland China; or a combination of political deadlock and bureaucratic scandals, the UN that dominates the news is actually a small part, and in many ways the less effective part, of the world organization. On April 29 at Exedra Books Jennifer Wolcott de Heinrichs, a US - Panamanian dual citizen spoke about some of the other aspects of the UN that don't get much press coverage.

For more than two years Wolcott has been a member of the Anglican denomination's non-governmental delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. It is one of hundreds of organizations accredited to participate in UN conferences. When it comes time to vote, only governments have a say on which positions the commission will adopt, but the members of the officially accredited non-governmental organizations quite frequently write parts of the documents on which the governmental delegates vote.

When the United Nations Charter was adopted, many of the countries represented didn't allow women to vote. However, under the strong urging of US ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt women's rights were mentioned in the charter, and later, in June of 1946, the former first lady chaired the initial meeting of the UN's Commission of the Status of Women.

In 1952 the commission promoted the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which makes female suffrage and the right of women to hold public office a matter of international law rather than just the internal affairs of a given country. Countries like Saudi Arabia have never accepted the convention and the conventional argument would say that it therefore does not apply to them. However, the treaty's widespread adoption, plus the de facto application of its terms by a few governments that haven't ratified it, lead some international lawyers to argue that by now women's suffrage and right to hold office are customary international law and apply universally. The politics of oil, on the other hand, have kept many of the treaty's original proponents from making an issue of it with the Saudis.

The commission also began a series of periodic World Wide Women's Conferences, with commission sessions in between dedicated to specific issues. The one in which Wolcott was involved, the 52d, was about financing for gender equality. The one before that was about violence directed at girls and the next one will be about sharing responsibilities for men and women, including the care of people with AIDS.

Probably the greatest accomplishment of the UN Commission on the Status of Women was the 1979 adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This treaty has been adopted by all but eight member nations, the exceptions being the United States, Iran, Somalia, the Sudan, Qatar, Nauru, Palau and Tonga.

(The problem in the United States is that by US Senate rules a treaty can only be submitted for ratification one time and by the provisions of the US Constitution it takes a two-thirds Senate vote to ratify. Since CEDAW was promulgated by the UN there has always been a strong minority in the Senate, primarily driven by the religious right but also financed by insurance companies and other interests that see some potential pecuniary loss to themselves in the treaty, with enough votes to either block ratification or put the matter in doubt. For years, Wolcott said, Senator Joseph Biden has been counting votes and looking for a time when a certain two-thirds super-majority can be mustered. Until then, supporters of women's rights are keeping the treaty off of the agenda because there's no second chance on a treaty that's rejected.)

The argument among Americans about women's rights, often portrayed by its opponents in terms of abortion, demonstrates a profound disconnection with realities in many places beyond US shores. Panama is by most measures one of the more progessive places, Wolcott noted, observing that 60 percent of girls don't get primary educations, accounting for 90 percent of all children who don't get this basic schooling; that some 1.2 million girls are trafficked as if commodities; that in parts of the world a woman's risk of death during childbirth is one in 12; that in Asia there are some 60 million girls "missing" from population statistics --- mostly either due to female infanticide or sex-selection abortions; and that, in the United States as in the rest of the world, "poverty is female-majority."

While the United Nation's political limitations are notorious, Wolcott noted that in certain other areas its organizations have had notable successes. UNICEF has saved or improved the lives of a lot of children, the World Health Organization has made progress against many a disease and so on. The UN is also pretty good at compiling statistics, which can then serve as guides to things that need improvement. She noted in particular that the UN has adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs in the jargon of international organizations) which, if they are accomplished, would lift half a billion people out of poverty.

"Development" is one of those general concepts of which almost everyone approves, but Wolcott noted that in many cases it means jobs in the city that leave women behind tending poverty-stricken subsistence farms in the countryside. But the Millennium Development Goals are by and large human-oriented rather than financial and industrial production figures on paper. For example, they include access to clean drinking water in the home, something that a lot of people in a lot of places don't have, with the tasks of carrying and purification of water usually assigned to women.

Wolcott noted that much of the change in the world's concept of "development" has been driven by the World Bank, which in about 1990 began to change its emphasis from grandiose mega-projects to improvements that people without bank accounts or political influence are more likely to see.

With the UN very much influenced by the MDGs --- even if the chances of them being fully realized are slim --- there has been an opening for the Commission on the Status of Women to assert many of the economic issues of great importance on the distaff side. That's where gender budgeting, and Jennifer Wolcott's contribution, have come in.

In gender budgeting, Wolcott said, "you have to disaggregate the budget as to men, women and children." That is, a UN budget for a particular program wouldn't be only broken down as to which countries get how much, but it would also have to be shown in terms of how much goes to men and how much to women, how much to adults and how much to children.

And then came a climate change resolution. And who died disproportionately in the great tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean in Indonesia and elsewhere? It was women and children who couldn't run to high ground so fast, and weren't so good at climbing trees. And who has to walk those extra miles to fetch water if the aquifer dries up and with it the local well? Usually the women.

In the NGO discussions on the climate change resolution, Wolcott wrote a provision requiring gender budgeting for climate change programs. There were changes due mainly to the ways that people talk and write in UN circles, but the provision was accepted by the NGOs, recommended to key people and ultimately adopted by the governmental representatives who decide. Now, when addressing climate change UN officials are going to have to at least look at gender issues.

Similar provisions are being inserted, or suggested, for a wide range of other things that the UN does. Wolcott noted that when the UN holds a world economic conference in Doha, Qatar this coming December, women's concerns will have been written into the agenda.

And how did Wolcott get involved in all of this? Her church was looking for people to participate in its NGO delegation to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and she had the time and resources and interest to get involved so applied to be a member of it. Once involved, she enountered a world of different cultures and social mores, with people from most of these backgrounds working for fairly similar things in their own particular contexts. She found a system of conferences at which the conclusions are published before the meetings start, in which the NGOs do their drafting and lobbying in advance and are most effective when working not with the ephemeral political appointees in a given country's official delegation but with the old hands who know all the bureaucratic nooks and crannies and which buttons to push. She found a way of doing business by which her Anglican delegation avoided talking with, let along screaming at, the Bush administration's delegates about their birth control and abortion imperatives and instead addressed issues on which they might agree, such as a ban on child marriages. "We had a pretty good relationship with them," she said, "mainly because we didn't bring up what they were interested in."

It's not particularly hard to get involved in some phase of the United Nations' work through an non-governmental organization, Wolcott noted. "You don't have to be special to make a differerence."