The 49th session of the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) opened in its New York Headquarters on 28th February and will last until 11th March. One of the issues which has been reviewed is the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, a landmark declaration which was first proposed at the 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing which lists twelve specific areas that need to be improved if the status of women will rise. This includes poverty, education, health, violence and the environment.

"The review provides an opportunity to confront the major obstacles that are preventing women from advancing in the economic, political, and social spheres," said Rachel Majanja, the top advisor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the advancement of women. "It is time to recommit to the promises made to women 10 years ago in Beijing and make gender equality a reality."

Ten years ago, the platform had backed abortion and claimed that it is a way to gain women's rights. At the time, referring to abortion as a sexual right was dropped in a heated debate and was treated as a public health issue instead.

Now an international dispute over women's rights has risen from a move by the US. It will now lobby the UN to make a final declaration stating that women are not guaranteed the right to have an abortion. They have accused advocacy groups of trying to define the term "reproductive health services" in the Beijing declaration as guaranteeing a right to abortion.

Last Friday, an amendment had been proposed by the US to the draft declaration that would reaffirm the Beijing platform and declaration. The amendment clarified that the US would accept the platform only "while reaffirming that they do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion".

"There is no fundamental right to abortion," said Ellen Sauerbrey, the US delegate to the UNCSW. "And yet it keeps coming up largely driven by NGOs (non-governmental groups) trying to hijack the term and trying to make it into a definition."

Gathering under the theme "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century", over 100 government delegations, 80 ministers from Afghanistan to Peru, and around 6,000 advocates of women's rights, were called to review the current controversy over women's rights, including abortion.

"It's not a human rights convention," said Kyung-wha Kang, who chairs the commission. "It's a policy document. In that sense, I personally as chair do not think it should be seen as creating any new human rights."

Since the 1994 UN population conference in Cairo, Abortion has been recognised as an issue that governments must deal with when debates occur over public health issues in society.

This had been reaffirmed by delegates in Beijing the following year, and governments were asked to review laws that punish women for having abortions. However, this proposal had been denied and for the first time, the Beijing platform stated that women have the right to "decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality ... free of coercion, discrimination and violence."

Hundreds of women's rights activists in Europe and Latin America have supported this reference to abortions. However, strong opposition comes from the Vatican, Islamic and Catholic countries.