CAIRO, March 5, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The US withdrew on Friday, March 4, a controversial amendment to the declaration of a UN women’s conference, after delegations and non-government organizations (NGOs) admitted that the right to abortion was not created by the Beijing women’s conference of 1995.

The 49th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is meeting to review and appraise governments’ efforts to implement the goals of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing ten years ago.

Reuters reported that after a week of closed-door negotiations at the conference, top US delegate Ellen Sauerbrey said the US point had been made and therefore Washington's amendment was no longer needed.

“We think we have really accomplished what we set out to do,” said Sauerbrey.

“We have heard from countries ... that our interpretation is their interpretation. So the amendment we recognize is really redundant, but it has accomplished its goals. We will be withdrawing the amendment.”

After withdrawing the unpopular amendment, the US joined in approving the declaration that reaffirmed a 150-page platform agreed in 1995 in Beijing.

Throughout the week pro-family NGOs had been lobbying to gain support for the amendment, which was supported only by the Vatican, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama, according to a newsletter e-mailed from the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) to IslamOnline.

In a phone conversation from New York on Saturday, March 5, Kamilia Helmi, a spokeswoman for the Coalition of Islamic Organizations (CIO), told IOL that the Arab countries were against abortion, but they had not supported the amendment because it would have opened the door to other amendments and there would have been no consensus.

At a meeting of US delegates with NGOs on Thursday, March 3, a representative of the Center for Health and Gender Equity stated that there was no need to discuss abortion in relation to Beijing because “the discussion is about something we all agree is not there to begin with,” according to C-Fam.

Other pro-abortion groups at the meeting applauded and reiterated that the Beijing documents do not create the right to abortion.

C-Fam also reported that France’s minister for parity and equality, Nicole Ameline, had stated at a news conference that the Beijing Platform did not advocate abortion.

The delegations of most other countries made similar statements to the media.

The International Women's Health Coalition went on record as saying that none of the language of the Beijing Platform could be construed as creating the right to abortion.

The executive director of Equality Now also said that the Beijing Platform “does not say there is an international right to abortion,” according to C-Fam.

Helmi told IOL that her coalition had not heard any of the statements from NGOs that C-Fam had reported.

Asked for her impression of what’s happening at the conference, Helmi said, “The UN doesn’t give up and it will keep on putting pressure on all developing countries who have reservations [about the Beijing documents] and this was our battle yesterday.”

“We were trying to tell them [Muslim countries] to reaffirm their previous reservations and demand that this reaffirmation is written in the final report. But they just didn’t.”

Helmi noted that there is still an attempt by the CSW to link the Beijing documents with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

CEDAW is obligatory, while Beijing is not, she explained.

The CIO and other pro-family organizations have repeatedly said that CEDAW is used to promote abortion.

The CSW conference runs until March 11.

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