Non-governmental organizations will play an influential role at the upcoming United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, three panelists said last night in a discussion before about 90 people in the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences.
Despite being housed at an auxiliary gathering in the Chinese city of Huairou, 32 miles away from the main conference, such organizations are already having a large impact as lobbyists, Montgomery Fellow Dottie Lamm said.
"There's a lot feeding into this," said Lamm, who will go to Beijing as part of the official United States delegation when the conference begins Sept. 4.
"There's a lot of expectations. There's a lot of hope. But also if you've been reading the papers, there's also a lot of problems," she added.
Elaine Babcock, who will attend the NGO meeting as an independent participant, and Ricki Kantrowitz, a member of the World Federation of Mental Health, also discussed the conference, explaining how it works and answering audience questions.
Lamm and the panel, called "Anticipating Beijing '95," focused on the problem of having a large distance separating NGOs from international representatives.
But Lamm, Babcock and Kantrowitz all said NGOs can still play a major role by lobbying in advance and by making sure governments follow through on the commitments made at the conference.
"In many cases, because NGOs are not affiliated with governments, because they're working independently, they have ways of going in and getting the information that government agencies do not," Kantrowitz said.
"They have a powerful place in bringing up issues," she added.
Babcock cited her experience founding the Upper Valley based organization Women's Informational Services, which provides a wide-range of services and counseling to women.
She suggested WISE's community-oriented efforts to combat the abuse of women could be emulated internationally.
"Most of this community programming would not have existed if local women had not persisted," Babcock said, "which is why I say it is a community issue on which we all need to work together."
Lamm said many of the ideas brought up by women like Babcock and NGOs like Kantrowitz's were already included in drafts of the "Platform for Action," a document outlining recommendations for policies toward women and population control.
