HUMAN RIGHTS | Defending human dignity
29 February 2008
Trafficking, Health Top U.S. Agenda at Meeting on Women’s Status
State’s Patricia Brister outlines U.S. commitment for U.N. commission
Washington -- Trafficking and women’s health issues are among the priority items for the U.S. delegation at the 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
In her remarks at the opening of the session on February 25, Ambassador Patricia Brister, who is leading the U.S. delegation, emphasized the U.S. commitment to fighting human trafficking.
The United States, she said, has obligated more than $528 million to combat international trafficking in persons since fiscal year 2001. Another $79 million was committed in 2007 to fund 180 anti-trafficking programs in more than 90 countries.
Aware that trafficking is also a problem inside the United States, the U.S. government has spent $23 million in 2007 on domestic programs to fight trafficking. The Department of Justice continues to increase its anti-trafficking task forces: 42 such entities now operate in 25 states.
Although trafficking for sexual exploitation represents about two-thirds of transnational human trafficking, labor exploitation is another important component, Brister said. To help discourage this type of trafficking, the United States is devising strategies to deny access to markets for products made through forced labor.
In an interview with America.gov, Brister said the United States is not planning to introduce any new resolutions to the commission in 2008.
Brister, who has led the U.S. delegation to the Status of Women Commission meetings since 2003, said a major triumph came in 2005, when the commission adopted the U.S.-presented resolution “Eliminating Demand for Trafficked Women and Girls for All Forms of Exploitation.” The resolution calls for governments to take appropriate measures to eliminate demand for trafficked women and girls, criminalize human trafficking and address the root factors of trafficking, including poverty and gender inequality.
“Passing resolutions here is not easy,” Brister told America.gov in a phone interview from the U.S. United Nations Mission in New York City. “I thought that [the 2005 resolution] was a monumental resolution.”
HEALTH AND GENDER EQUALITY
Access to adequate health care is vital if women are to achieve gender equality Brister told America.gov.
“Generally women have more care responsibilities for family members,” she said. “Consequently, anything we do to help that situation certainly helps women.”
Of health care issues facing women, obstetric fistula is among the most devastating. The result of prolonged or obstructed labor, a fistula is a tear between a woman’s vagina and/or bladder that allows urine or feces to pass uncontrolled into the vagina. The condition is considered a disgrace in many countries, leading to social isolation; and some husbands will desert wives who suffer from the condition.
Brister said the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently announced a new $70 million, five-year program to prevent and treat obstetric fistula in developing countries. The program also will promote increased community understanding of the condition.
NEW EMPHASIS ON STOPPING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
On the first day of the CSW session, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon kicked off a 15-year global campaign to end violence against women, saying “at least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.”
Violence against women impedes economic and social growth, Ban said. The campaign, he said, recognizes that women and girls “have the right to live free of violence. ... It is a campaign to stop the untold cost that violence against women inflicts on all humankind.”
Established in 1946, the Commission on the Status of Women is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, dedicated exclusively to gender equality and the advancement of women.
Forty-five member states of the United Nations serve as members of the commission at any one time. Members are elected for a term of four years and represent an equitable geographical distribution.
Every year, the commission members gather at U.N. headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide. The 2008 session is being held February 25 through March 7.
For additional information, see the Web site of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and USAID’s Web site for Maternal and Child Health.
