Drive Toward Women’s Equality Gets Boost From U.N. Meeting

Five years after a landmark U.N. conference set women’s equality as an achievable goal, more than 180 nations agreed Saturday on new measures to accelerate the international campaign to reach it.

But women’s rights activists and several countries--including the United States, South Africa and Norway--said the new initiatives didn’t go far enough to speed implementation of the 150-page platform adopted in Beijing in 1995.

Despite fears that delegates would chip away at the Beijing platform, the weeklong U.N. Women’s Conference ended Saturday with no backtracking.

Delegates approved the new plan to implement the Beijing platform, as well as an accompanying political declaration, after all-night negotiations that delayed the wrap-up of the conference by a day.

The action document includes tougher measures to combat domestic violence and sex trafficking, and to tackle the impact of HIV, AIDS and globalization on women.

“We have a very strong document that not only reaffirms Beijing and other relevant conferences on human rights and social development but also moves forward,” U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Angela King said.

The conference brought together about 4,300 delegates, who held dozens of panel discussions.

The battle lines for the conference mirrored those at Beijing: The Vatican and a handful of Islamic and Roman Catholic countries against the West and hundreds of women’s rights activists.