With the U.N. agenda from the recent Beijing conference on women’s issues now being quickly mainstreamed into the world’s culture, the U.N. bureaucracy has turned its attention to yet another conference — this one with the goal of creating “gendered cities.” Next stop: Istanbul.
Habitat II: the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (UNCHS) will be held 3-14 June 1996 in Istanbul. The agenda is now being formulated and final national plans of action are due by 1 December. The third and final meeting of the Preparatory Committee for Habitat II will be held 12-23 February 1996 in New York. (The first preparatory committee meeting was held in April 1994 in Switzerland; the second a year later in Kenya.)
While the exact language of the conference’s draft document is still being worked out, advance literature for the event makes it clear that environmentalism, population control, and “gender feminism” (again!) are slated to be woven into the proposed plan of action. The conference’s purported goal is to provide housing for the poor, particularly for poor women.
The lead article “Reclaiming the power of civil society,” in the June 1995 issue of Countdown to Istanbul, published by the Habitat II secretariat at the U.N. spelled out the scope of the conference’s concerns: “The U.N.-sponsored global conferences of the past two decades have helped focus attention on many of the important social and environmental crises that have emerged as legacies of the excesses of the twentieth century. Environmental breakdown, human rights violations, runaway population growth, homelessness, poverty, joblessness, and social disintegration count among these legacies? (Emphasis added.)
‘Recreating human societies’
The language used in the pre-Habitat II publications is disturbing. For instance, the above-cited article says “Habitat II is poised to begin the global dialogue toward recreating human societies for the new era.” Another article, “The new paradigms,” by Habitat II’s Deputy Secretary-General Jorge Wilheim of Brazil, states that “… the game that is starting to be played in cities is not just the usual housing and infrastructure game. The game is called building up a new society. In cities, humanity has to learn to reshape and reorient society toward a new renaissance in which ethical values will overcome greed and social segregation, in which solidarity will substitute for the intolerance of the present transitional period.”
Obviously, the scope of the conference extends far beyond the carpentry and construction involved in providing housing. Wedged into the structure of new housing will be nothing less than the plans for the structure of a new society! At first glance, the idea of reshaping society through housing programs might seem far-fetched. But on further reflection it is clear that housing is central to who and what we are as human beings. Indeed, home and family are often mentioned in the same breath. The control of housing affords the means to control a population’s activities, especially those related to work and even those related to reproduction.
In Beijing, as in other cities that have been under Communist domination, one is struck by the large number of high-rise tenement buildings, towering slums divided into small cubicles, many lacking the most basic elements of privacy. People forced to live in such cracker boxes are hardly likely to want to raise families of any size, small or large. Indeed any child is a severe burden under such housing circumstances and a large family is all but impossible. The housing environment itself is being used as a prime method of population control.
Welcome to Gender City
Habitat Secretary-General Dr. Wally N’Dow has proposed the theme of “a gendered city” — a place free of fear, crime and need; a place where women’s perspectives are especially considered; a place where non-traditional families can flourish. Catalina Hinchey Trujillo, coordinator of the Women in Human Settlements Development Programme at UNCHS, expanded upon the concept of a “gendered city” in the September 1995 Habitat II magazine:
A widespread belief… is that the ‘family’ is the ‘core’ or nucleus of any society and that as long as ‘families’ benefit from development, then everyone benefits. This is not always true because ‘development’ is open geared to the roles and needs of men only.
Moreover; the ‘typical’ family is no longer com-posed of husband/father (head of the family) who is responsible for productive activities, wife/mother (subordinate to husband) who is responsible for reproductive activities such as caring for children and the elderly, cooking, fetching water, and so on, and children (dependants [sic]). For instance, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, many families are ‘extended’, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins; in Europe and North America, the phenomenon of one- person households or households including people (female and male) with no direct blood relationship is becoming more common . [Emphasis added]
Who decides which form of family is more conducive to human, equitable growth and development? Who can prove that a policy which focuses on the ‘family’ truly benefits all people… if the world we know today is to become the world we dream of then we have to begin to look at reality face-to-face, pat our utopian ideas into practice, and support people in their chosen family style .… This is what moving towards o ‘gendered’ city is all about.
Self is at the center of town
Children, the traditional family, and the elderly obviously will fare ill in these gendered cities. At this point, provision for the needs of the elderly, such as retirement homes and nursing facilities have been given scant attention in the pre-Habitat II papers. Indeed, the only oblique reference to the needs of the elderly is in the context that women should be freed from their traditional role as primary care-providers for the sick and elderly. Nobility, self-sacrifice, humble servitude, and love of neighbor apparently will not be part of the ambiance in Gender City.
For substantive information relating to Habitat II and its NGO-related activities, contact: Habitat New York Office United Nations Room DC2-943 New York, NY 10017 USA Phone: 212- 963-4200 Fax: 212-963-8721 E-mail: Habitat.ny@together.org
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) PO. Box 30030 Nairobi, Kenya Phone: 254-2-62-30-33 Fax: 254-2- 62-30-80 E-mail: Habitat2@unep.no.
For general public information, contact: United Nations Department of Public Information Room S-1040 New York, NY 10017 USA Phone: 212-963-1786 or 0353 Fax: 212-963-1186 E- mail: Vasic@un.org
