Beyond Beijing Committee (BBC)
 
Beyond Beijing Committee (BBC) is an independent national organization of major leading women's rights and gender justice related organizations working in the area of advancement of women's status since the preparatory process for the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. BBC was formed soon after the convening of the Beijing Conference in September 1995. With an aim to legalize the committee and its activities, the organization is formally registered at the District Administration Office, Kathmandu in 1998. The main aim of BBC is to carry out a wide range of activities for the effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) and its Outcome Document, and CEDAW at domestic level and lobby local/national issues at national and international level. BBC members include well-experienced women leaders working in the field of women's rights, social justice, political empowerment, media, and law and community development.

As a follow-up process for Beijing, we also conducted National Consultation in five regional workshops during the months of June and July 1999 covering all five development regions. The workshops were held in Silgadhi-Doti, Nepalgunj, Pokhara, Hetauda and Dharan and discussed the implementation of CEDAW and the PFA. Each regional workshop discussed the four cross cutting themes, and the response from the government on the questionnaire prepared by the UN Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW).

The situation analysis and the recommendations from each region were presented at a one-day national consultation held in Lalitpur. Soon after the national consultation The Beyond Beijing Mid-Decade Meet in South Asia was held on 11-14 August 1999 served as a milestone in exploring the best ways and means to effectively implement the Beijing PFA in South Asia. There is an immense need to widely disseminate the essence and context of Beijing PFA through education, training, advocacy, campaigns, and other appropriate means at grassroots level. The Beijing+5 review provided a common avenue to share sub-regional concerns to frame a regional lobbying document and formulated appropriate sub-regional strategies for the Asia-Pacific Regional Symposium to be held in Bangkok and the meting on women 2000: Gender Equality, Peace and Development to be held in New York. The conference brought together various activists from the SAARC region working in the Beyond Beijing process to forge unified regional action. Altogether 224 participants joined the historical event.

Our prime mission is to create an extensive network of women's organization all over Nepal to collectively enhance a movement for women’s empowerment. We have already created regional level set-up, district networks are in rapid formation, and VDC networks are yet to be constituted. We have about two hundred members in out network. Amongst the network members, each one of them has demanded a formal guideline for them to work in the spirit of BBC mission. We have provided National ToT based on BPFA, its Outcome Document, CEDAW, CRC to core regional members from all five development regions of Nepal and similarly, to members in one district and a VDC.

BBC maintains formal working relationship as well as membership with various networks at South Asia, Asia Pacific, and international level. Thus, we are now formally linked from grassroots to international level. One of our major focuses will be to consolidate activities to sustain this network as well as to mobilize them in their own context for women's rights and gender justice in Nepal.

In Nepal, we have a history of non-compliance of state with international human rights treaties and non-adherence to the outcomes of international forums. The disrespected status of the plans of action developed by the UN conferences in Rio, Vienna, Cairo and Copenhagen reveals that there exists no mechanism, concrete plan or strategy to fulfill these international promises. This is primarily due to a lack of strong political commitment on the part of the government and concerned functionaries.

General Objectives

The general objective of this project is to enhance empowerment of women at the grassroots to the national levels through effective dissemination of the Twelve Critical Areas of Concern of the Beijing Platform for Action, and its outcome document the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The aim is to enhance women's access to policy making and ensure effective implementation of the above instruments by:

• Empowering women as true catalyst for change at every spheres for more equitable and just society dealing with structural violence, good governance and peace;
  
• Enhancing women's active participation at policy-making level under all 12 Critical Areas of Concern;
  
• Preparing a host of resource persons on BPFA and CEDAW and MDC.
  
• Initiating an in-depth/extensive national/sub-regional and regional preparation for the forthcoming global event; and
  
• Ensure inclusively of diversity in all over process as and programs indigenous, ethnicity, dalit adolecents, professionally, geographically, religions.

Achievements Accumulated in Nutshell

The major challenge ahead is to provide continuity to the spirit and activism developed through the long process of preparation for the Beijing Conference and follow-up programs. We are steadfast in our belief that the international commitment for the implementation of the BPFA must not vanish. In this connection, we would like to highlight some of the achievements that we have gained so far in the recent years.

1. BBC is proud to set a trend since 1994 to consult with all five-development regions of Nepal to get a true picture of the status of women, their concerns, and priorities and mainstream it at national and international level. Not only did we influence the GO reporting system our sensitive massive consultation became instrumental in making our report the best in Asia Pacific Region. We have heard and seen major impacts in our participants through the entire processes. Now we need to study and evaluate the impacts for further strategies to replicate. We have taken BPFA/CEDAW/CRC to grassroots level to raise awareness on the accountability implication of GO for implementation as well as to understands rights, equality and equity development of women. At the same time, grassroots issues, concerns, and priorities are mainstreams to national and international level. Many of our languages have been adopted in the outcome document of BPFA. We have created a circular process of information dissemination, international documentation/information dissemination-grassroots-international level. Many of our participants/network members have been able to implement various parts of BPFA/CEDAW.
2. BBC has been integral parts of GO reporting on UNGASS/B+5 and lobbied for wider consultation through all five developing regions of Nepal. We set the trend for I/N/GOs for wider consultation on any processes. We created space for dialogue in our workshops, seminars, and conference for equal inheritance rights, and other discriminatory laws, which played direct/indirect role in amendment of the National Civil Code 1962. Major discriminatory legal provision has been amended.
3. BBC provided input to the initial GO/DAW report from all regions of Nepal, which was instrumental for wider participation and consultation in the final GO/UNGASS report and similarly, had consultation on the report in all five regions before finalizing it.
4. BBC has produced a first ever-comprehensive training manual on BPFA, CEDAW, CRC, Outcome Document, and NPA. The Training Manual consists of all 12 Critical Areas of Concern with contemporary illustrations, local case examples with simplest possible version. We hope that this document would be instrumental in imparting information, knowledge, and expertise among local women's rights activists and social mobilisers.
5. BBC has left visible impact in illuminating some of the pertaining issues relating to women. Those include: trafficking, impact of conflict, untouchability, indigenous and minorities, inheritance right. Gender mainstreaming of women's issues has taken off to some extent. Women cause has considerable space in the government National Human Rights Action Plan. Political participation of women has been heightened.
6. A separate National Women's Commission has been constituted with the efforts of various civil society organizations in which BBC also has played a key role.