Original Material
The Baikal Forum
by Irina Sharova
The world is changing, rapidly and irreversibly. In a single decade, the Internet has destroyed frontiers and distances. People are closer to each other now, having suddenly discovered that the planet isn ’t so big after all. And that you don’t have to reside in Paris, Washington, or Moscow in order to feel that you are living in a center of civilization.
When Angara, the Baikal Area Union of Women, announced in 1996 that an international Forum called Women for the Survival of the Planet was going to be held in Irkutsk, many not only doubted that it would come off but were even exasperated by the overweening arrogance of those women. In Irkutsk, if you please! And taking on the whole planet, yet! What’s the deal with all these upstart backwater towns, anyway?
They stared the organizers hard in the eyes. How many millions did you get from the state budget? “None!” Then who’s backing you? “No one.” The women smiled, remembering the old political joke. “Unlike the members of the Politburo, we get about under our own steam, on our own two feet...” The questioners just whirled an expressive finger at about temple height...
But the Forum did happen, despite the skeptical predictions. It had 350 attendees from Irkutsk Region, from other parts of Russia, and from within and outside the CIS (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Finland, Spain, Germany, and the United States). There were eight sections and three round tables.
The second International Women for the Survival of the Planet Forum took place as planned two years later, in 1998. The attendees numbered 607 and included guests from numerous areas of Russia and elsewhere (the United States, Germany, Ukraine, and France). It included 14 sections, three round tables, two seminars, and a leadership development institute.
The third Forum, sponsored by the United Nations’ Development Program, was held in 2000, and this time there were 20 sections and 1020 attendees, both male and female. Delegates came from England, Poland, and Belarus for the first time. Another first was the presence of women from various villages and settlements. Here, on the shores of Lake Baikal, a Protector of Baikal award was announced, to be conferred on two female representatives from Irkutsk Region and the Republic of Buryatiya at this and each succeeding Forum.
The 2002 Forum, held on 7-12 July in Irkutsk and by Baikal, brought together 815 participants, including, for the first time, delegates from a whole raft of UN agencies operating in the CIS and Europe, representatives from the Russian government and the Siberia Federal District, and State Duma deputies.
This Forum was most likely a groundbreaker in that it left the women of Siberia in no doubt whatsoever that the problems they were facing—poverty, unemployment, social inequality, drug addiction, domestic violence, sex discrimination, etc.—were equally familiar to the world community and to such authoritative organizations as the UN and UNESCO.
That was why the Forum was run in the spirit of the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration, which was adopted in New York in 2000 and through which world leaders and representatives from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and other organizations resolved and committed themselves to achieve the following objectives by 2015: —To cut hunger and poverty by 50% (at the present time, about 1.2 billion people on earth are forced to live on $1 a day or even less)x
—To introduce universal elementary education.
—To develop gender equality
—To reduce the mortality of children under the age of five by two-thirds —To halt the spread of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis —To bring about ecological stability —To secure global partnership, humanitarian aid, mutually beneficial trade, and the reduction of the debt burden of developing countries.
Lofty challenges indeed, but attainable. Estimates indicate that to reach the Millennial goals on a global level will require the commitment of an additional $50 billion per year. A huge amount, you say? But it is a mere 0.2% of the donor countries’ income. As things currently stand, the poorer countries are spending over half their budgets on servicing foreign debt while their own people are dying of hunger and disease, which in turn causes those governments to take on more loans. A vicious circle has been formed. At the same time, the countries of the European Union are spending more than $300 billion [should it be million instead of billion? - editor] every year on domestic agricultural subsidies, thus creating additional obstacles for the debtor countries in marketing their products. With the market so out of balance, both poor and rich countries incur losses amounting to many tens of billions of dollars a year.
And this is only the economic component of the global problem-set, which also includes political, national, religious, social, educational, cultural, ecological, and other aspects. As was strongly underscored at the Irkutsk Forum, however, gender equality must be in place before any of the goals can be achieved. Women should be encouraged to participate in problem-solving processes on all levels of power. Female expertise should be sought on decisions to be taken and laws to be adopted. If this is not done, social tasks will once again be put on the back burner by a “male majority” concerned only with flexing an ever-larger set of “official muscles.” The Millennial goals cannot be left exclusively to governments and institutions. The need is to unify all human forces, and this is a task in which women and men should share equally.
The clearly formulated goal of the Baikal Forum was to demonstrate that the gender component is essential if all areas of Russia are to enjoy stable development and ongoing prosperity. It must be part of all development programs and must be present when a policy of action is being defined. The Forum set itself the task of drawing up a program of gender development for the Siberia Federal District that could serve as a model for similar programs elsewhere in Russia and the CIS, and the program’s basic parameters were indeed defined and formulated before the Forum wound up.
Proposals on the shaping of a gender strategy for Russian development were also submitted to President Putin. As Albina Shirobokova, President of the Angara Union, put it, it was time to move beyond talking about problems and to start advising the government on mechanisms for solving those problems. The time had come for partnership.
While all these goals and tasks were, so to speak, committed to paper, the core challenge was never tackled head-on, although the organizers did recognize its paramount significance. That challenge is, of course, the education of women, professional development, the acquisition of on-the-job experience at the highest international level.
Here is what some Forum participants said about the lessons they learned there.
Natasha Remneva -- Altai Territorial Women’s Council
This is my first time in Irkutsk and my first Forum. I wanted to see how developed the women’s movement is in Irkutsk Region. And I am now satisfied that some new and quite positive women’s organizations, among which I include Angara, have sprung up here over the past 10 years. And I will be joining Angara, like it or not, because we have created a council to coordinate efforts throughout the entire Federal District. I was involved in compiling the message to the President, which included a statement on the need for the expert gender-specific study of draft legislation, on the creation of an institute of plenipotentiaries for equal rights and equal opportunities. All in all, the links have been forged, and now we will set to work.
Svetlana Svistunova -- Association of Journalists
This is my third Forum already, and I am seeing a colossal shift in consciousness, first and foremost in the understanding of how women should develop if they are to achieve self-actualization. The stereotype of the woman as a feeble creature, nothing more than a mother and keeper of hearth and home, is coming apart. Active people, whether male or female, who actualize their talents and potential are all the more interesting for that. Most of the participants are people of that caliber, and it could not be any other way: we grow when we see what others have done, we learn, we realize that we are not alone.
Olga Savostyanova -- Komi Republic Women’s Management Center United Nations Development Program
This is my first visit to Baikal, which is a traditional venue for gatherings, and a very apt one, too. What interests me is the actual formulation of the problem, because, although we are united across the whole of Russia, we have no gender strategy. Efforts to create one at the Federal District level, while fraught with difficulty, are of great interest.
I am convinced that many of our problems are not being solved because there is no civic society in place today. And without that it is absolutely impossible to go anywhere. Here I have seen a plethora of organizations—for real, not on paper—that have concrete achievements to their credit. And, of course, the international entities that have been in attendance... It is as if we have suddenly grown in stature, have become more sure of our strength, and are now able to cast a critical eye on what has been done to date, in the light of global experience.
Elena Mashkova --Head of the Femina Group Republic of Tatarstan
I have been working in the Social Partnership to Eradicate Violence group. That is a very complex, hot-button issue. The Irkutsk team and I ultimately laid out a process of social partnership, a detailed, step by step process that operates on three levels: the legislative level, the level of what can be called the law enforcement culture, and the level of day-to-day public outreach. We finished ahead of time and the results were splendid. I hope to stay in touch with the Irkutsk team, which contains some outstanding professionals.
Zoya Khotkina -- Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow Center for Gender Studies
What a gathering of movers and shakers! When faced with a decision to make, even presidents call in these same women, these leaders, who are here today. What will in future be called a civic society is being created right here, right now, by these women. In the section on the economy, which was my assignment, there were female entrepreneurs from Ust’-Ilimsk to whom the government’s District Employment Service turns for advice and forecasts. That’s the kind of participants we have! They all realize that a society without women, a society with only a male leg to stand on will not go very far or very fast. When we have both feet on the ground, then we will be able to set a good pace, as those prosperous Scandinavians have already done.
Elena Kochkina -- Director, Soros Fund Network Women’s Program Consultant on gender issues to the World Bank’s Washington Office
It is evident that the decision-making system presently defers to the interests of financial and industrial groups, while all the socially significant programs have begun to lose political support. That is what has happened in electoral reform; that is what has happened in the system of power-building. Take, for instance, the Irkutsk Regional Legislative Assembly: among the 45 deputies, there are 24 company executives plus seven mayors and... one woman. It stands to reason that the issues of social development in the area will become secondary to financial and industrial interests. And the presence of that lone woman in the local parliament is no reason to stop categorizing it as a body that discriminates against women...
We want Baikal to stay clean. For that to happen, we have to work with the citizenry, to ensure that the choices they make will be responsible ones. The Forum offers the public and women’s organizations the opportunity to formulate their position on the situation as it currently stands, to create a new intellectual product and new strategies. That is very important.
B. Rudykh -- Forum participant, Slyudyanka (Siberia)
The hospitable management of Irkutsk State Technical University flung open the doors of its auditoriums, its museums, and its libraries to representatives of the women’s movement and guests from Russia’s Baikal area and from within and outside the CIS. Attendees were welcomed with a program of music and poetry performed by the Musical Theater of Irkutsk and entitled “I Am a Woman, And That Can’t Be Wrong.” And opening day was also the first day of an exhibition of Forum history, which displayed materials on the work done at the three preceding Forums and on women’s initiatives.
In the auditorium foyer, the participants had a brief encounter with the creative work of women’s souls and hands, in the form of a show arranged by the Panorama of Art gallery. There was also a poster session entitled “Working to Prevent Violence,” an exhibition of literature and methodological materials supplied by the Irkutsk Crisis Center, and examples of the work done by the consultancy, poster presentations of various projects, and other materials designed to help with the exchange of experience.
The opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Forum were held that evening. For two hours the stage was filled with welcoming speeches, messages of congratulation, and performances by solo singers and vocal groups, by musicians and dancers. And, as always, the opening ceremonies ended when the attendees joined hands in a circle and each one expressed a personal wish.
The next day began with the screening of a film called “The History of the Women’s Movement in Russia.” And then Professor Shirobokova gave a talk on “The International Women for the Survival of the Planet Forum as an Initiative of the Women of the Baikal Area (Current Outcomes and Future Prospects).” ...
Most of the time was given over to the 18 sections. There were four of us representing Slyudyansk district, and we wanted to be everywhere at once!
I was fortunate enough to find a place in the Women and the Economy section, which examined the gender-specific aspects of the campaign against poverty, and in the Tourist Industry subsection, since tourism is the main source of employment for women in the Baikal area.
Two of my colleagues opted to join the World Culture section and two subsections entitled “World Culture in the Interests of Children” and “The Problem of Juvenile Homelessness and Neglect,” while the third selected the Woman’s Health, Family Health section. Each section had a range of issues to discuss and certain goals and challenges to meet. The work took various forms: conferences, round tables, specialized training, discussion groups, seminars, etc.
Each day of the Forum involved eight to nine hours of work and an hour or two of evening entertainment. ... It enjoyed the support and participation of members of the executive and legislative branches at the regional and federal levels.
These few brief notes can at best be only a very selective overview. For most of it, you just had to be there. And I have great hopes that the group from my district that attends the Fifth International Forum will be five times larger than ours was. The Forum, after all, is an excellent place to recharge with new food for thought, to meet new people, to renew acquaintances, and to learn of new ideas and initiatives.