Nairobi Conference Research Articles

The Impact of the Women's Decade on Policies, Programs and Empowerment of Women in Kenya

The 1985 Nairobi Conference to close the United Nations decade dedicated to women of the world caught Kenyan women (and men) by storm. Indeed, the majority of Kenyan women did not know, until the eve of this conference, that there had been an entire decade dedicated to them, and committed to the achievement of Equality, Development, and Peace. However, the Kenyan policy makers and the enlightened among Kenyan women, especially leaders of women's organizations, were not only fully aware of the decade's developments, but had in various ways participated and contributed to it. On its part, the Kenya government by the end of the decade, had adopted a Women in Development (WID) policy position and created and/or promoted national machineries to develop and coordinate programs for women.

The Impact of the Women's Decade on Policies, Programs and Empowerment of Women in Kenya

The 1985 Nairobi Conference to close the United Nations decade dedicated to women of the world caught Kenyan women (and men) by storm. Indeed, the majority of Kenyan women did not know, until the eve of this conference, that there had been an entire decade dedicated to them, and committed to the achievement of Equality, Development, and Peace. However, the Kenyan policy makers and the enlightened among Kenyan women, especially leaders of women's organizations, were not only fully aware of the decade's developments, but had in various ways participated and contributed to it. On its part, the Kenya government by the end of the decade, had adopted a Women in Development (WID) policy position and created and/or promoted national machineries to develop and coordinate programs for women.

Fourteen Thousand Women Meet: Report from Nairobi, July 1985

In 1975, International Women's Year, the United Nations (UN) held a world conference in New Mexico whereby 1975-85 was inaugurated as Women's Decade. This was followed by a mid-decade conference held in Copenhagen in 1980 and f1nally, in 1985, End of Women's Decade was marked by an ofElcial conference and a Non-governmental Organizations (NGO) Forum. Fourteen thousand women from 151 countries attended the NGO Forum, while 6,000 delegates from world governments attended the conference in Nairobi in July 1985. The NGO Forum covered over l,000 workshops, numerous panel discussions, press conferences, films and videos and masses of information from all over the world. Attendance at the Forum was open to all non-governmental organizations and with prior arrangements women, and even men, could use some space for their workshops or other activities. In many instances, however, adequate rooms were not allocated to some groups; for example, SWAPO women were allocated a tiny room for their workshop which about 300 women attended. Many groups found themselves without space or facilities for distribution of their literature and publicity for their activities. For example, the Migrant, Immigrant and Refugee Women's delegation from Britain, of which I was part, had to hold their workshop in the open space and publicize it themselves. As the UN was the organizer of the Forum, UN-supported organizations and 'unoff1cial' delegates supported by their governments were guaranteed adequate space and resources. In theory the NGO Forum was for non-governmental organizations and their representativese There were, however, a large number of delegates who claimed to be 'unofElcial' but who were, in fact, official delegates since they represented the one and only legal political party or women's organization in their country and were heavily financed and supported by their government. The participation of Iranian women delegates from the only legal women's organization in Iran, called Hezballahi (Party of God), put the safety of exiled Iranian women at risk. For example, a woman vvas attacked by one of the male

Cataloguing Policies and Problems in Kenyan Libraries

What is presented here is not based on field research as would ideally have been the case but is based on personal observations supplemented with what is in the literature.Discussion will be related to the basic role of library and information services for national development in recognition of the fact that these services are central to national development, particularly in the non-industrialised countries otherwise generally referred to as developing countries. This was the central theme of the 1984 IFLA Conference in Nairobi The paper discusses two aspects of a practice in library and information services, a practice that enhances the effectiveness of the services in question. In the context of this paper, cataloguing is described as the process through which sources of information in a collection are described in order to facilitate their recall.

Nairobi conference:Letter to Pamela in India

Nairobi conference:<i>Letter to Pamela in India</i>

Nairobi conference:The end of a decade

Nairobi conference:<i>The end of a decade</i>

United Nations International Women's Conference in Nairobi, Kenya

"United Nations International Women's Conference in Nairobi, Kenya." The Black Scholar, 16(2), pp. 2–3

Nairobi Conference on Tropical Apiculture

Nairobi Conference on Tropical Apiculture

Agricultural raw materials under the UN Integrated Programme for Commodities

Abstract At the Fourth UNCTAD Conference in Nairobi in 1976 an Integrated Programme for Commodities (IPC) was adopted. It can be seen as a recognition of the need for an overall approach to commodity problems, in contrast with earlier fragmentary efforts, which had failed to yield any significant results. Kabir-Ur-Rahman Khan gives a background to the adoption of the IPC, asses the results achieved so far, and the prospects and need for an improved negotiating machinery.

The changing nature of the ITU Plenipotentiary

The Plenipotentiary Conference is the supreme organ of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Since the Nairobi Plenipotentiary in 1982, there has been much debate about the role of the Plenipotentiary and even the future of the ITU in the continuing telecommunications revolution. This article explores the major attributes of the Plenipotentiary by comparing the Nairobi Conference with the five post-second world war Plenipotentiaries that preceded it. Criticisms are evaluated and suggestions for improvement are made.

The politics of relevance and the ITU

Ruben Näslund has done the telecommunications community a service by stimulating debate on the issues facing the ITU in the wake of the Nairobi Plenipotentiary Conference. The Nairobi Conference was important for both what was said and resolved and what was unsaid and unresolved. When sovereign nations meet for six weeks there is an interplay of emotions and perceptions which imperceptibly mould policy formulation well after the event. A Plenipotentiary Conference is a political event, however much the engineers, technicians and PTT administrators of the telecommunications community prefer or pretend that is not. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the outstanding ITU issues in light of certain basic facts which structure the interests of member countries.

ITU conference in Nairobi: Confrontation or mutual understanding?

This article discusses decisions taken at the Nairobi Plenipotentiary Conference on the technical cooperation activities of the International Telecommunication Union, and relates them to other important ITU activities. Proposals for a new regulatory framework for telecommunication services to be considered at the forthcoming World Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference are also examined.

Hunger: A Polemical Review*

Introduction The global food crisis of the early 1970s led to intensified research and writing on the hunger problem. Coming on the heels of a major international attempt to revolutionize food crop production in certain regions of the Third World the food crisis j o l t 4 both scientists and development planners. The optimism of the 1960s cvaporated and new ideas were put forward in an attempt to explain why 15 to 25 percent of the world’s population remained chronically malnourished. This paper critically reviews some recent attempts to understand the world food situation. We believe that such a thing as “food scarcity” or “hunger” must be investigated historically and materially, that is, concretely in terms of the dynamics of power and control in the production and reproduction cycles at the local level. We reject the crisis orientation common in attemps to understand various Third World problems. In the periphery, the crisis presents itself as “the environmental crisis,” “the urban crisis,” “the population crisis.” Each of these so called “crises” has had its U.N. Conference (in Stockholm, Vancouver, Budapest, Rome and Nairobi respectively). At each, a group of dissenters has tried to focus attention on the need to contextualize the “crisis” in question. The message has been consistent: issues of people’s power and control over productive resources underlie all manifestations of “crisis” in the periphery (Rome Declaration Group, 1979). On occasions, national delegations to such “crisis” conferences have made the same point, beginning with China’s well-known assertion in Stockholm in 1972 that issues of economic development were primary, those of “environment” secondary (Peking Review, 1972). We recognize that in some ways the food situation in [he 1980s is more critical than in any year since the “crisis” of the early 1970s. This is because of the necessity of feeding large numbers of refugees and displaced persons in addition to the burden of poor harvests, continued high costs of petroleum-based farm inputs, accelerating urbanization, continued population growth,

More Bad News Than Good: International News Reporting

In response to the increasingly critical clamour of debate about international information imbalance and bias in international news reporting, at the UNESCO conference in Nairobi in 1976 it was decided to undertake a systematic study of images of foreign countries as presented in various national news media systems. Although there exists a plethora of other sources of foreign information and imagery - travel and personal contacts, advertising, women's magazines and children's comics, imported soap operas and Royal wedding coverage, to name but a few - the 'regularity, ubiquity and perseverance' of the news media make them good candidates as the central determinants of international imagery.

UN Energy Conference in Nairobi

UN Energy Conference in Nairobi

Drought and Desertification in Africa: Lessons from the Nairobi Conference

Publicity arising from the Sahel drought of 1968-73 provided the stimulus for the United Nations Conference on Desertification held in Nairobi in 1977. This paper is a personal assessment of what might be learnt from the Conference and what might be done in the future to combat drought and prevent desertification in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa. Although droughts are natural in origin all evidence suggests that desertification results from the removal of the vegetational cover by man and his livestock: there is no evidence for long-term climatic change, but climatic variations dating back 500 years are well-documented. From the point of view of human exploitation the arid regions of Africa must be regarded as highly marginal; however over the centuries pastoralists and cultivators have accumulated a vast fund of knowledge, much of it ecological, which is put to good effect. The emergence of modern Africa into politically and economically fragmented nations and the introduction of technological innovation have helped precipitate desertification in formerly productive areas, as has the increase in numbers of people and livestock to levels beyond sustainable carrying capacities which itself is partly the result of introduced technology. Future research and development projects aimed at stopping desertification and coping with drought must (1) accept, understand, and incorporate the fund of knowledge possessed by pastoralists and cultivators who live in risky regions, (2) make no pretence that existing life-styles are unalterable they are already changing fast, and (3) provide a proper means of evaluation which will prevent mistakes and failures from being repeated. Certain kinds of fashionable biological research (examples are laboratory-based investigations on locusts and tsetse flies) may no longer be necessary. What is wanted now is a more integrated community ecology approach, the aim of which should be to determine maximum and (especially) sustainable carrying capacities which minimize the effects of drought and halt desertification.

Taxing the Brain Drain

There is a way to compensate for the brain drain from the less developed countries (LDCs) to the developed countries (DCs). A supplementary income tax can be imposed on immigrants' earnings in the developed countries; the funds raised in this manner can then be routed to the less developed countries for development spending. I first put forth this proposal in Daedalus in 1972. Since then, it has attracted attention in both LDCs and DCs, as well as in the work of international agencies. Two important conferences have been held this year, in which documentation by the Secretariats for intergovernmental deliberations included an extended discussion of this tax proposal. These are the Nairobi Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) Conference on World Employment. The international conference at Bellagio in February 1974, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, dealt with the feasibility and optimal format of such a tax, from the viewpoint of constitutionality, compatibility with human rights, and revenue possibilities in developed countries receiving the most immigrants. Distinguished lawyers, economists, and social scientists interested in problems of world order contributed to that discussion. (The proceedings, plus legal and economic conclusions, are published in Bhagwati and Partington, eds., Taxing the Brain Drain: A Proposal Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1976.*) Pakistan even paid the proposal the compliment of

Reflections on a chemistry conference. The teaching of chemistry in English-speaking African universities

Describes a conference in Nairobi on the Teaching of Chemistry in English-Speaking African Universities.

Manuscripts and archives relating to Africa

A most useful introduction to archive and manuscript collections in Europe and America as well as in Africa was contributed by P. Duignan to the Nairobi conference in 1967 and is published in The Bibliography of Africa, ed. Pearson and Jones, pp. 194—213.The series of ‘Guides to materials for West African history in European archives’ being produced by the University of London Institute of Historical Research numbers four volumes up to the time of writing:Materials for West African history in the archives of Belgium and Holland, by Patricia Carson. London, 1962.Materials for West African history in Portuguese archives, by A.F.C. Ryder. London, 1965.Materials for West African history in Italian archives, by Richard Gray and David Chambers. London, 1965.Materials for West African history in French archives, by Patricia Carson. London, 1968.

Nairobi Conference

Nairobi Conference