It has been criticized for becoming the third leg of the global neoliberal framework (along with the IMF and the World Bank), for being less than transparent and for serving the North's interests. The 1990s conferences catalysed the ability of women’s organizations to provide critiques of paradigms and policies and to propose alternatives, e.g., for the recognition of women's rights as human rights and violence against women as a violation of those human rights in Vienna, against population control and in support of SRHR in Cairo, and against structural adjustment policies and the neoliberal agenda in Copenhagen and Beijing. At the global level, the UN is the only plausible quasi-state body, essential to the setting of global norms and standards for, inter alia, gender equality, ensuring accountability for human rights and moving the development agenda towards achieving them.