By now, inter-governmental reviews have already been held in four regions: Western Asia (ESCWA), Europe (ECE), Asia Pacific (ESCAP), and Africa (ECA). Latin America and Caribbean countries under ECLAC will have the same review on 3-6 July 2010, which is rather late for the CSW review in March 2010, but just in time for the MDG high-level meeting in September 2010.

What’s with all the dates above? It’s a pre-conditioning technique to get you chronologically fit when we all go back to the age-old era of fifteen years ago, when I leaf you through a fifteen-year old document that is the BPA. Scared yet? Maybe no, so I’m changing track and tact. After all, age is not a scary thing!

It is being stuck in 1995 that’s scary.

AP NGO Forum for Beijing+15

At the Asia Pacific NGO Forum for Beijing+15 held on 22-24 October 2009 in Manila, APC WNSP co-organised a panel, two panels in fact, on reviewing the Section J of the BPA: Women and The Media. Part 1 was on “Media structure, practices and their evolution in representing ‘gender‘”. Part 2 was on “Re-interpreting Section J and Why Sections A to L need the information society lens”.

We took a more active role in Part 2 — as our work, especially on VAW and ICTs, really takes on media, and in particular, information and communication technologies (ICTs), as a cross-cutting issue not simply confined to Section J of the BPA. It goes to say that ICTs have impacted on all 12 critical areas of concern of the BPA, including education and training, violence against women, the media, the girl child, and even women in situations of armed conflict, among others.

Underscoring the decisive roles of ICT

At the panel, APC WNSP underscored the decisive roles of ICTs and how they determined women’s status today. We have taken ICTs out of its traditional confines in Section J and, you may say, “liberated” it from what it was encased in – and scattered it onto all four corners and in all pages of an important women’s document.

At the NGO Forum itself, we have engaged the BPA review process with the recognition of rapidly changing contexts brought about by ICTs, and how these impacted on women and girls living in such a fast-paced information society. We encouraged a view of the BPA from a “digitised” perspective and an information society lens which enable us to see women in their online and offline status that somehow broadened the scope of the otherwise conventional review. Beijing reviews over the last ten years, almost always pertain to the offline status of women. Such a “digitised” perspective, perhaps never considered in the drafting of the BPA fifteen years ago, can change the contours of the review, the policy-making efforts, the BPA implementation, and the NGO advocacies in the future.

Indeed, ICTs have influenced, defined and changed the different contexts of women defined by the BPA fifteen years ago. At times ICTs are part of the problem, what with violence against women in digital spaces, but they are also part of the solutions, in the most repressive contexts women face, in serving as lifeline for women survivors of violence, for women in situations of armed conflict, among others.

At the panel, Chat Garcia Ramilo talked about “Communication rights are women’s rights: The potency of information communication technologies in ending VAW and in advancing sexual rights.”

That’s a mouthful for a title I know, but that’s how ICTs have taken hold of the fate of BPA implementation. Failure to see such role in all of the national, regional and international reviews of the BPA is a failure not just of the review process, but of the implementation of the BPA.

ESCAP’s High-level Intergovernmental Meeting (HLM) to review the regional implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

With the inputs from AP NGO Forum, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) convened a High-level Intergovernmental Meeting (HLM) for Beijing+15 on 16-18 November 2009 at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok.

At the end of the regional review, even ESCAP governments recognized the limited scope of Section J. Paragraph 61 of the Review of the Implementation of the BPA in the ESCAP Regionⁱⁱ states that:

61.It has become necessary to recast the original conceptualization of women and the media in the Beijing Platform for Action to encompass issues relating to the rapid changes taking place as the world evolves towards an information and digital society. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are transforming the way the world operates in fundamentally powerful ways and are becoming a central force in shaping the crucial power structures within and among countries, and among institutional, private sector and civil actors and infrastructures. Thus, it is crucial that women’s concerns and needs are integrated in emerging ICT regulatory policies.

I am almost impressed by the result of NGO lobbying on “re-casting” Section J, except for the last bit in the paragraph. That Section J needs re-casting tells us that governments are in tune to the advocacies of NGOs around this. That we can meet eye to eye at some levels feels just right, but while we’re stuck in such an eye-set on re-casting, let no one blink on the possibility that we are actually taking a few steps backward. Identifying ICTs as important areas in Section J is different from merely identifying regulatory policies. Somehow, there is always an instantaneous reaction of “regulation” as a spontaneous consequence of talking about ICTs. Thus the difficulty of moving the debate forward. Communication rights has a long way to go in this region that merely looks at regulatory policies.

Understanding 'media'

The document however is so much more progressive already, in terms of recognising the importance of ICTs per see, than the way media was understood at the plenary on “Regional campaign to end violence against women” led by Noeleen Heyzer, the Executive Secretary of ESCAP. The plenary was to organise the regional component of the Secretary-General’s global campaign, UniTE to End Violence Against Women. Other regions will be organised and yes, it is inter-governmental.

Among the resource speakers was a representative of Reuters Alertnet, who spoke about “Exploring communication strategies for a region-wide campaign.” It was my weakness that all I saw was red, so to speak, at her power point slides as she talked about needing media, to work together, with them, to find what makes media tick, to be knowledgeable about writing press releases and packaging them well to suit the media’s palate, to get media interested in the issues, what makes media tick, and lastly, what makes media tick.

I’ve heard these all before, 15 years ago, when I started with my first job at an NGO at a training on media work. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the presentation, even the snobbish attitude being impressed about media, obviously the corporate media. What is absolutely wrong is the reference to media, the corporate one, which used to be the media, and the only media, 15 years ago.

I walked up to the secretariat, next to the panel, to ask if I can make an intervention as an NGO from APC. She said yes, after the governments. For lack of time, the plenary just finished without a single intervention from the floor.

Ticking the media, ticking the mouse

Well, what did I want to say? I wanted to intervene that in the age of ICTs, you can be the media you want to be. You can air your views, blog, tweet, be part of social networking and be able to have as much a wider reach as any corporate media, or even more. This is why a less restrictive environment, within the ambit of lesser regulatory policies around freedom of expression, both online and offline, are very important.

I wanted to say that I wished we were spending more time with an activist media, or feminist media, or even a citizen media. Not with a corporate media that it all sounds to be. The era of being at the mercy of journalists just to get our content published, which sadly bred a culture of envelope journalism, is already being met decisively by being your own media. With ICTs, using and controlling it, established media entities brokering your freedom of expression, is but just an addition to the many creative ways to enjoy such freedom.

We all go different ways in publishing our content, and one of them is not necessarily about finding what makes media tick. Ticking the media is now also just about ticking the mouse. This tick may already be about taking back the technology in the hands of women, and by ticking technology it can help end violence against women.

When media entities make us guess and painstakingly tell us about what makes them tick, that is being stuck in the old times.

When the meeting was adjourned, I waited with the security personnel and gave Noeleen Heyzer the APC WNSP B+15 flyer: “It’s about our project that looks into violence against women in digital spaces.”

“Oh, that’s very important,” she replied.