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Women’s Leaders Welcome U.S. Decision To Rejoin Global Consensus for Women’s Human Rights
NEW YORK, March 4, 2005 – Leaders of prominent women’s and human rights organizations today welcomed the U.S. decision to withdraw all its demands for controversial changes to a new United Nations declaration affirming women’s human rights. They called for a new focus on advancing women’s health, development and rights worldwide.
The controversy erupted at a UN gathering of government delegations here to revisit women’s progress since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women met in Beijing in 1995. The U.S. delegation stalled consensus on reaffirming the 1995 Platform for Action by offering language specifying that the Platform conferred no new international rights, including no right to abortion.
But today the United States backed down. The head of the U.S. delegation to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), Ellen Sauerbrey, told reporters the delegation would withdraw its proposed amendment. She said she was “pleased that other countries agreed” with the U.S. position and the amendment was therefore not needed.
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June Zeitlin,Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
Cell: 917-921-1932
june@wedo.org
Charlotte Bunch, Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL)
Cell: 732-407-8497
Office: 732-932-8782
cbunch@igc.org
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"They are declaring victory and going home, as in Vietnam,” said Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. “The reality is that they heard loud and clear the voices of 6,000 women here saying ‘No,’ echoing millions of other women worldwide.”
She added that the U.S. language “was completely unnecessary, an effort to inject U.S. politics into a broad international consensus. It distracted everyone here from the real issues. We hope they will now join us in pressing to make sure that women’s rights are recognized as human rights everywhere and that the Beijing platform is a critical step to realize those rights.”
June Zeitlin, executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) expressed hope that the CSW review of changes in women’s status since the 1995 Beijing conference would now focus on renewing the drive to implement the Platform for Action. “We are hoping soon to pour the champagne in celebration that the United States is returning to leadership on women’s rights,” she said. “Our real crisis is that the promises of Beijing have not yet been fulfilled. We need a major escalation in political will for that to happen, and Washington could provide that, if it wants to.”
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