The world convenes again 10 years after the global meeting in Beijing in 1995 on women, peace and development, and 20 years after a similar meeting in Nairobi in 1985. This time, in New York, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will conduct its 10-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action. It will also commemorate the First UN World Conference on Women held in Mexico in 1975.

Twelve critical areas of concern are being evaluated on poverty, health, education, women’s rights, the environment, the girl child, etc. A worthy and noble effort indeed, that demands collective energy, investment, reflection and recommitment.

The regional and country reports will narrate a long list of achievements and key results, challenges and opportunities and future directions. For Africa, celebratory remarks will be made on the adoption of the Protocol on Women’s Rights in Africa (Maputo, 2003), affirmative action policies and the growing number of women in positions of power, such as in Rwanda where this has almost reached the 50 percent mark.

But Africa will also highlight the erosion of gains made as a result of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and conflict.

And so I wonder whether the women I have worked with for the last four years in the slums of Nairobi will have the opportunity to articulate their perspectives. I know the daily struggles poverty stricken women have to live with, and how lofty the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can seem from the perspective of a shack.

Yet women living on the margins of society in extreme insecurity and poverty are still full of hope and commitment for a better future. In July 2004, Mrs. Nane Annan witnessed this at first hand when she was invited by the Kenya Network of Women Living with AIDS (KENWA) to visit Nairobi’s sprawling Kiambiu slums. We had to negotiate our way by foot, often in single file, through filthy passageways flowing with water and muck to the grim abode of a family afflicted with HIV/AIDS.

We bent our way into a dark, windowless hut where a young widow of 35 lay in corner dying of AIDS. Such was the trauma on her face, that we could not bring ourselves to ask her about her five children. Yet hope was at hand in the form of Esther, a single parent in her 20s, herself infected, who had devoted her life to helping others. With her heart, bare hands and support from KENWA, she spends many hours in such gloomy huts, never losing hope that Africa, and the world will one day transcend this tragedy. On this day, Mrs. Annan herself embodied that hope.

African women, especially women caregivers, contribute immensely to the economy. Often they carry financial burdens that should be borne by the government. Women’s care work must be valued, resourced and supported. The world may not achieve the Millennium Development Goals, unless there is substantive action on the real issues affecting women.

Substantive resources must be prioritised for the social sector - for access to health care, education, easy access to clean water. But the voices of women have to be heard around the table where the decisions are made.

I wonder how women in the slums would rate the world’s performance in achievement of the Goals for gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment? What will they say, 20 years hence? What will they recommend towards achieving the MDGs by 2015?

Thus I await with bated breath our CSW review. I know deep down that the official final report may differ from that provided by the women in poor urban communities – the women I meet in the slums of Nairobi.

Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, a human rights lawyer active in HIV/AIDS care, is Regional Programme Director for UNIFEM in East Africa.