The Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) prepared "Beijing + 10 Review: A Feminist Strategy for 2004-05 (A Working Paper for NGOs on How to Move Forward)*. This document emerged from various activities sponsored by the CWGL to contribute to efforts towards making women's participation more decisive in the UN review of the Beijing Platform for Action BPFA and the Millennium Declaration and Development Goals (MDG). In March 2005, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women will conduct the 10 year Review of the BPFA (B+10). In the same year, the UN review of the MDGs will take place. Women's organizations are preparing for the year 2005 as another major international political moment to further advance the women's agenda in national and global dialogues on poverty, peace, development and human rights.

Strongly underscored in the paper is the need to use the diverse discussions and preparatory activities on various levels in 2004-2005 towards "build(ing) momentum for the repoliticization of gender equality work and change". Concretely, it calls on women's NGOs to elevate their discussions towards (1) defining new forms of "more pro-active" engagements and critical dialogue with government, multilateral institutions like the UN, the WTO; (2) strategies for repositioning the feminist perspective and the women's agenda in national and global discourses, decision-making and policy-making processes; (3) seriously assessing the gains, as well as the obstacles to the advancement of women's human rights and, more importantly, determining accountability in terms of resource generation and interventions needed for the full implementation of the BPFA.

According to the paper, the participation of the women NGO community must go beyond defending the gains from the implementation of the BPFA; it must seize these opportunities to further advance the feminist perspective and women's political agenda in the local, national and global arena.

In the wake of political shifts in the global scene, especially after September 11, the working paper also calls for discussions on the effects of globalization, militarism, racism on women, and issues of peace and security. Discussion should also be expanded to issues not substantially covered by the BPFA back in 1995, such as HIV/AIDS, migration, racism, disability, genocide, etc.

Key to the working paper is a Critical Framework for Engagement which identifies neoliberal globalization, imperialism, fundamentalism/extremism, militarism, patriarchy and all forms of discrimination as key obstacles to the BPFA implementation. At the same time, the framework reminds us the that direction of women's participation in these dialogues should not only be to critique current development framework and policies, but to promote and work toward an alternative vision for social transformation - economic and social justice, peace and democracy, human rights and equality, open secular and spiritual spaces.