{{ Curly double brackets indicate proposed additions
< <Triangualar bracktes indicate proposed deletions

Statement of the Platform for Action Drafting Committee Dakar, November 15, 1994

The NGO Amendments to the Draft Platform for Action were prepared by a committee of 36 participants that met on November 14 and 15, 1994. The Committee was constituted to prepare a document indicating the changes to the ECA Draft Platform for Action recommended by participants in the NGO Forum at the African Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Fourth World Conference on Women.

The committee organized its work by dividing into nine working groups. The mandate of the working groups was to review specified sections of the Draft Platform for Action and make alterations, amendments and/or deletions to reflect concerns of the NGOs. In some cases the working groups were to create whole sections. A list of the working groups is attached.

The working groups worked in French and English. It was agreed that the NGO document would be produced in English as that was the document available to the working groups at the time of organisation. Translation into French was not possible at the time because the NGO Forum and the working groups did not have access to a translation team for the NGO document.

To ensure that the language developed by the working groups was not lost, contributions were to be drafted as relating to specific language in the ECA Draft Platform, indicating exactly where they should be inserted as possible amendments to the document. Contributions that did not indicate specific language changes were used as resource materials by the working groups. Recommendations provided by the NGO Forum Workshops also were used as resource materials. A Technical Committee was constituted as a subgroup of the Drafting Committee to produce the final NGO Document.

The Drafting Committee working groups were:

1. Poverty, Food Security, and Economic Development Environment and Sustainable Development Women in Agriculture

2. Education, Training, Science, and Technology

3. Culture, Religion, the Family and Socialisation

4. Health, Reproductive Rights, Family Planning and Population

5. Women in Armed Conflict Situations and in the Peace Process

6. Political Empowerment, Decision-Making and Equal Sharing of Power Legal and Human Rights Women with Special Needs

7. Mainstreaming of Sex- and Race-Disaggregated Data Communication, Information and the Arts

8. The Girl Child

9. Preamble Guiding Principles Global and Regional Perspectives Follow-up Mechanisms