World Summit on Sustainable Development

World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 - pushing the gender issue.

Workshops, Press-coverage, Plenary Presentation, Exhibition

WECF brought a delegation of twelve women from Eastern and Western Europe and the NIS to Johannesburg for the WSSD. WECF organised four workshops on women's view on problems of water privatisation, a workshop on gender and energy, and workshop on health and environmental security. The workshops included speeches by the South-African Minister for Energy and the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation. WECF's representative from Tajikistan spoke at the Women's Tent workshop on peace.

Furthermore, several women of the WECF delegation actively followed the negotiations and Muborak Sharipova of Tajikistan presented a statement from the women's caucus to the plenary where she explains why peace is a pre-requisite for sustainable development .

The WECF delegation helped the UK partner WEN-UK to fly hundreds of doves of hope over the entrance of the WSSD convention centre (see photo above). Women in Great Britain wrote their visions for a healthier planet on these doves. This action received a lot of press-coverage and made the front-page of South-Africa's largest newspaper.

The WECF delegation also participated in the action around paragraph 47 of the negotiation document, which did not sufficiently respect women's rights, and marched in the landless-peoples demonstration.

WECF and MAMA-86 Ukraine had an exhibition stand at the Waterdome with examples from their projects in Ukraine and Romania. The stand was well visited including a visit by the Tajik delegation who was particularly interested in WECF's compost-toilets and plant-soil waste-water treatment.

Finally, the WECF delegates met with several of the top-level politicians: the British and Dutch prime-ministers, the Irish environment Minister, the special WSSD advisor to Kofi Annan (Pronk), the Presidents of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, the government representatives of Tajikistan and Armenia and the EU commissioner for the Environment (Wallstroem) and presented WECF's report on the preparatory conference for WSSD, the "Why Women are Essential for Sustainable Development".

See more information about WECF publications on the United Nations website to the topic: Health and Persistant Organic Pollutants.