Deadlock on women's UN rights manifesto

European Union countries were last night locked in a struggle with the Vatican and Islamic states over the content of the Peking Declaration, an international manifesto on women's rights to equality that is due to be adopted tomorrow by the United Nations World Conference on Women.

With the deadline for agreement looming both for the summary declaration and the main 130-page conference document, the "Platform for Action", the most contentious issues were still not resolved last night. The EU was fighting for the declaration to include specific commitments already agreed in the the platform, in particular a far-reaching definition of women's sexual rights and rights to reproductive health. Some Western delegates said they might refuse to sign the declaration if this was not settled.

The Vatican, supported by staunchly Catholic governments like Argentina and Guatemala, and the hard-line Islamic nations of Sudan and Yemen, wants no such reference in the declaration. These and other states plan to lodge reservations against the paragraphs which deal with sexual rights, a concept not previously addressed in a UN document. Neither of the documents is binding.

Despite the last-minute row, Gertrude Mongella, secretary-general of the conference, remained upbeat: "Take my word, the declaration will come out," she said last night. The tabling of reservations to the "Platform for Action" was "normal practice," she added.

As negotiators worked through the night, battle-lines were drawn between liberal countries and religious conservatives. No agreement could be reached on the term "sexual orientation", which appears four times in the draft, each time in brackets, indicating that it is in dispute. In one instance, governments are called on to "consider what legal safeguards may be required to prevent discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or lifestyle".

In the first address to a UN conference by an open lesbian, Palesa Beverley Ditsie, a South African lobbyist for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, urged the conference to use the term. "If the World Conference on Women is to address the concerns of all women, it must similarly recognise that discrimination based on sexual orientation is a violation of basic human rights," she said.

Another argument is over whether the agreed platform text on sexual rights, which appears in the health section, can appear also in the human- rights section. Conservative countries do not want the subject to gain currency.

For their part, Western liberal states are contesting paragraphs which suggest that human rights must be considered relative to cultural and traditional differences. They fear that to call for strategic action "with full respect for religious and ethical values, cultural backgrounds and philosophical convictions" is to offer many countries a loophole through which they can evade the spirit of the consensus document.

Yesterday also brought agreements on the thorny issues of inheritance rights of women, and the question of what money would fund implementation of the Platform for Action.

On inheritance, a subject which had concerned some Islamic countries where sons are favoured over daughters, especially in the distribution of land, a compromise was reached. The statement "guarantees equal rights to succession and ensures equal rights to inherit regardless of the sex of the child". Mrs Mongella said this did not cover what proportion a girl child would inherit. "What we are saying is that the girl must have a right to inherit ... There should be no limitation by culture or by law that a woman cannot inherit."

On money, the disagreement was ended by a fudge that did not settle the division between Southern nations, which insisted on additional resources and the North, asserting that there would be no new cash for aid budgets. It was agreed that the platform would require "adequate mobilisation of resources at the national and international levels as well as new and additional resources to the developing countries from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources".