FIRE: live coverage and media efforts in Beijing + 10
Why not create a women´s media pool?

January 20, 2004. San José, Costa Rica. RIF/FIRE.

Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) will be doing live multimedia coverage of the Beijing + 10 process by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) between February 28 and March 11, 2004. The webcasts will include a full day broadcast on March 8, 2005 – International Women´s Day.

FIRE is also calling on media practitioners and organizations to jointly create a Women´s Media Pool that could contribute to share and articulate the media work that women communicators and their organizations will do in terms of promoting the assessment and appraisal of the full spectrum of the Platform for Action and the Declaration by way of press releases, electronic network reports, TV, community and commercial radio and internet during the Beijing +10 process.

Such initiative has as background and reference the Women´s Alternative Media and Service Center organized by many of us during the IV World Conference on Women 1995 and the Women Action initiative during Beijing + 5 in New York in 2000.

We are calling on organizations and communicators to write to us about your interest in creating such an initiative. Following reception of e-mails about such interest, FIRE will convene a chat room meeting to begin designing the actions and strategies for the initiative. The Women´s Media Pool will also be open to the participation of women communicators and organizations that will not be present in New York, but can collaborate in distributing features and news to their local media and in their own networks.

The review and appraisal process will take place in the session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in its forty-ninth session from
February 28 to March 11, 2005  al the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

For this purpose, the Commission will consider two themes: (1) "Review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly"; and  (2) "Current challenges and forward-looking strategies for the advancement and empowerment of women and girls"

The process will focus on implementation at national level and identify achievements, gaps and challenges, and provide an indication of areas where actions and initiatives, within the framework of the Platform for Action and the outcome of the special session (Beijing+5), are most urgent to further implementation.

Women´s Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are expecting no less than further commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. For this purpose, women´s Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have organized locally, regionally and globally to make sure that Governments deepen their commitments to the full spectrum of the Platform and the Declaration adopted at the IV WCW. They are also bringing to the process their own assessment about what needs to be done to further those commitments.

The NGO Committee of the United Nations will also conduct its annual consultation the day before the CSW session begins, Sunday, 27 February, 8:30 A.M. – 6:00 P.M at Barnard College in Manhattan.

For more information or to join the creation of a Women´s Media Pool write to FIRE: femmediapool@yahoo.com