12 March 2010

Clinton Calls for a Renewed Commitment to Advance Women’s Rights

 

Secretary Clinton, left, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon March 12 at U.N. Headquarters in New York for the Conference on Women

Secretary Clinton, left, with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon March 12 at U.N. Headquarters in New York for the Conference on Women

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer

Washington — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a renewal of the global commitment to advance women’s rights spurred by the U.N. World Conference on Women 15 years ago in Beijing, saying that women’s progress is progress for human rights.

Clinton, speaking at U.N. headquarters, praised efforts to improve the status of women and girls across the globe, saying much progress has been made.

“Fifteen years ago, delegates from 189 countries met in Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women,” Clinton said. “It was a call to action, a call to the global community to work for the laws, reforms and social changes necessary to ensure that women and girls everywhere finally have the opportunities they deserve to fulfill their own God-given potentials and contribute fully to the progress and prosperity of their societies.”

But she warned that the progress achieved so far is not the end, but only the beginning of the work to realize the dreams set down in Beijing. Clinton spoke at the conference in 1995 as the first lady when her husband Bill Clinton was president.

“Women are still the majority of the world’s poor, the uneducated, the unhealthy, [and] the unfed,” she added.

Improving the status of women, Clinton told delegates March 12 in New York, is a political, economic and social imperative. The paradox facing many women is they are the majority of the world’s farmers, but often are forbidden to own the land they farm.

“President Obama and I believe that the subjugation of women is a threat to the national security of the United States,” Clinton said. “It is also a threat to the common security of our world because the suffering and denial of the rights of women and the instability of nations go hand in hand.”

Clinton reminded delegates, in her address to the Commission on the Status of Women’s 54th session, that achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is the third of eight Millennium Development Goals, the anti-poverty targets world leaders have pledged to attain by 2015.

Development strategies must reflect the roles for women in society and the benefits they bring, Clinton said. She cited three major U.S. foreign policy initiatives to illustrate the American commitment:

• The Global Health Initiative, a $63 billion commitment to improve health and strengthen health systems worldwide.
• The U.S. global food security program, which is a $3.5 billion commitment to strengthen the world's food supply so farmers can earn enough to support their families and food can be available more broadly.
• The U.S. response to the challenge of climate change. In Copenhagen in December 2009, Clinton announced that the United States would work with other countries to mobilize $100 billion a year, by 2020, to address the climate needs of developing countries.

BAN CALLS FOR END TO GENDER VIOLENCE

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier called on the international community to urgently join forces to end one of the most brutal and entrenched forms of gender discrimination — violence against women.

“We all need to unite to demand accountability for the violations of rights of women and girls,” he said. “We must listen to and support the victims and, importantly, address the roots of violence by changing the mindsets that perpetuated it.”

Sexual abuse during conflict is just one of many ways women and girls are brutalized and denied their fundamental rights, he said. Whether domestic violence, sex trafficking or so-called honor crimes, violence against women and girls is horrific and it devastates individuals and societies alike.

Since adoption of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, international and regional human rights treaties, as well as United Nations resolutions had obliged nations to eliminate violence against women. The U.N. Security Council had adopted resolution 1325 in 2000 on women, peace and security, while other texts had established that sexual violence in conflict could be prosecuted as war crimes, crimes against humanity or acts of genocide.