Women 2000/Beijing+5

What progress has been made toward gender equality around the world?

How are countries safeguarding women's reproductive rights?

Do young women have access to reproductive health care and services worldwide?

Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st Century United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY UN Sessions June 5-9, 2000; NGO Events begin May 30 RealPlayer 7 Video highlights are now available! Click Here.

These and other issues were addressed during Women 2000 - also known as Beijing+5 - which brought together more than 150 governments and over 1200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for a United Nations General Assembly Special Session assessing progress since the Fourth World Conference on Women held in 1995 in Beijing.

In many places, women are living longer, having healthier families and enjoying more opportunities than they had 25 years ago when the first world conference on the status of women was held. However, girls and women worldwide are still much more likely than men to be poor, malnourished and illiterate, and to have less access than men to medical care, education and employment. Where women are poor, uneducated and have little participation in the wider society, family size tends to be large and the population growth rate high, with correspondingly high maternal and infant mortality rates.

The Beijing Platform for Action addresses 12 "Critical Areas of Concern," including Women and Health, Human Rights of Women and The Girl Child that highlight the need for increased access to international family planning services that enable women to plan their family size and raise healthier children.

For more information:

• Go to www.women2000newsroom.org to learn about media events and read facts about women and health, violence against women, and the other critical areas of concern. Or, access the United Nations Department of Public Information press kit here.

• Review official United Nations documents that were debated during Women 2000 here. Or, read the full Beijing Platform for Action.

• Find out from the State Department how the U.S. is advancing the Platform for Action at home and abroad.

• Read how the world has integrated gender equality and the empowerment of women into population and development programs from the United Nations Population Fund.

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