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The Nairobi meeting, convened to review the accomplishments of the previous ten years and develop strategies for action to the end of the century, was really two overlapping conferences. The U.N. conference involved delegations appointed by member governments, often led by spouses or relatives of heads of state and sometimes featuring diplomats like Alan Keyes, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council. The larger, unofficial gathering, called Forum '85, was attended by a loosely confederated group of about 150 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the World Council of Churches and Amnesty International. While more than 2,000 delegates convened for the U.N. conference, about 13,000 participants flocked to Kenya for the forum, including such well-known American feminists as Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug. Most of the women had high hopes for a sisterly exchange. As it turned out, however, neither assembly was free of overheated rhetoric or polemics.
In early speeches at the U.N. meeting, South Africa's policy of apartheid took a drubbing from almost all the participating countries. Delegates from Iran and Iraq traded gibes over their countries' five-year war. When Israel's chief delegate, Sarah Doron, rose to speak, representatives from Muslim, Third World and East bloc nations marched out of the hall shouting "Zionist terrorists, go home!" As Washington had expected, speakers from Third World and Soviet-aligned countries trooped to the rostrum to rebuke the U.S. for its support of Israel, its military buildup and its policy of "constructive engagement" in South Africa. The U.S. in turn proposed that the conference's final document include a paragraph condemning an unnamed "group of outlaw states" for aiding international terrorists. The proposal, which was defeated, sparked indignation among many delegates, who said the U.S. was guilty of doing exactly what it had asked other countries to avoid: saddling the conference with political conflicts unrelated to women's issues.
The U.S. delegation came under fire from many of the 2,000 Americans across town at the NGO forum, who charged that the U.N. group reflected only the Reagan Administration's conservative views on women's issues. American feminists who fought for the Equal Rights Amendment bristled when Maureen Reagan breezily asserted in her opening speech that "all legal barriers to political equality have long since been eliminated" in the U.S.