[asia-apec 1158] NZ: MEDIA RELEASES FROM APEC MONITORING GROUP

[Gatt Watchdog]

AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP
PO Box 1905 Christchurch and PO Box 106 233 Auckland
Email: notoapec at clear.net.nz

MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE
18 June 1999

Women Can Think For Themselves About APEC Agenda - Beware the "Miss-Leaders"! 

Organisers of this weekend's Women's Conference against APEC which begins
tomorrow in Wellington say that the official APEC Women Leaders Network
Meeting (WLN) is a vain attempt to give the 21-country-grouping and its
women-last profits-first agenda a human face.  And they say that documents
obtained from the Ministry of Womens Affairs under the Official
Information Act show that the government aims to manage the outputs of the
official women's meeting.

"The talk about integrating "gender perspectives" into APEC through this
meeting is laughable," says Leigh Cookson, of the APEC Monitoring Group.

The WLN meeting has been dubbed the "Miss-Leaders" Meeting by its opponents.

"The government hopes to sell the APEC "brand image" to the public and avoid
any genuine debate about the free market, free trade and investment economic
model of development which APEC promotes. It believes that it can tell us what
to think".

"Yet it is women who bear the brunt of the economic reforms, and market-driven
policies which underpin APEC's goals. While a tiny handful of women may have
benefitted from the extremist free trade, open investment regime of successive
governments, the rights of women have been eroded even further," she says.

"Documents released by the Ministry of Women's Affairs in the lead-up to the
APEC WLN meeting, which begins on Sunday, prove that women's issues and
concerns only have a place within APEC if they can be redefined in
market-friendly terms.  And the fact that the overwhelming emphasis of the
APEC WLN meeting is on women in business and women's contribution to "economic
growth" is consistent with the fact that APEC has always been shaped and
influenced by business interests, not people's needs, not environmental
concerns, not the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination."

"The Women Leaders Network meeting will operate within the parameters set by
APEC's deregulation, privatisation, free trade and investment agenda. That
agenda has been tried, tested and failed in New Zealand for the past 15 years.

A Ministry of Women's Affairs report on the 1998 APEC Women Leaders Network
Meeting in Kuala Lumpur states:

"It also became apparent that many of the meeting participants did not know
what APEC was and how it operated. At the 1999 meeting we will wish to ensure
that specialist APEC advice is "on hand" to workshop participants so that
workshop recommendations are couched in APEC language and directed to the
appropriate APEC processes and working groups."

A Ministry of Women's Affairs report on preparatory meetings for the 1998 APEC
women's ministerial meeting states:

"It was acknowledged that issues for women had to be linked to the mainstream
concerns of APEC leaders and presented in APEC language, i.e. language that
Ministers understand in the APEC context."

"Given all this,  says Ms Cookson, "the gender language in APEC is quite
clearly cosmetic windowdressing.  Even the women selected to attend the
official meetings will be carefully managed to make sure that they toe the
line on APEC."

"The APEC WLN is supposed to be a showpiece of how "sensitive" APEC is towards
women's issues.  But the WLN is really about attempting to integrate women
into a preset market agenda which has benefitted global capital at the expense
of the region's peoples."

For further comment: Please contact Leigh Cookson or Maxine Gay at
021 217 3039