Taking on the World’s Repressive Regimes: The Ford Foundation’s International Human Rights Policies and Practices pp 229-248 | Cite as
From Nairobi to Beijing
Abstract
The UN Nairobi conference was by no means seen as the end of the women’s rights decade. At the foundation’s Women’s Program Forum, held on September 29, 1986, a year after Nairobi, a leading Third World activist emphasized that the Nairobi conference should be viewed as the beginning of an effort to improve women’s lives.1 This point was vigorously made by Sandra Kebir, speaking on behalf of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. It was a point that the foundation took seriously, as the Forum’s very perception of its role was the “need to rely on local initiatives.” At the heart of the foundation’s Third World program was the thesis that, in pinpointing “critical issues,” it was essential “to maintain the pluralism that [had] been the source of creativity for the women’s movement.”2 Such a perception underscored the foundation’s philosophy for not imposing Western values upon the cultures of the Third World.
Keywords
Reproductive Health Chinese Woman Ford Foundation Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee Intergovernmental ConferencePreview
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Notes
- 1.Charlotte Bunch, “Growth of Women’s Movements in the U.S. and Third World,” in The Changing Context for Movements, to Improve Women’s Lives: Proceedings of the Ford Foundation’s Women’s Program Forum (New York: Ford Foundation, September 29, 1986), 18Google Scholar
- 3.Judith Evans, George Lamb, Nirmula Murthy, and Frederic Shorter, Women and Children in Poverty: Reproduction Health and Child Survival (New York: Ford Foundation, 1987)Google Scholar
- 14.See Franklin Thomas, Preface to Reproductive Health: A Strategy for the 1990s (New York: Ford Foundation, 1991), v–viGoogle Scholar
- 27.See William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 278–302, 387–92Google Scholar
- 30.Charlotte Bunch, “The Intolerable Status Quo: Violence Against Women and Girls,” in The Progress of Nations (New York: UNICEF, July 1997), 41–49Google Scholar
- 34.Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, NGO Newsletter, no. 4 (July 1993)Google Scholar
- 49.Hillary Rodham Clinton, Remarks for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, September 5, 1995, 4–5Google Scholar
- 51.Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 306Google Scholar