Governments Commit to Advance Women’s Human Rights

Victory Celebrated by Women’s Leaders at UN Review

NEW YORK, March 11, 2005 – Thousands of women’s leaders today celebrated the successful outcome to a United Nations review of women’s status at which governments recommitted to furthering women’s human rights worldwide.

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A contentious two-week session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which coincided with International Women’s Day on March 8, ended in a consensus forged by pressure from thousands of women’s leaders that joined governments at the meeting. Their united stance against divisive proposals from the Bush administration resulted in the gathering’s unconditional reaffirmation of commitments made a decade ago at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing.

It was at the Beijing Women’s conference that governments agreed to address 12 areas of concern in the lives of women in their countries, including promoting universal education for girls, ending violence against women, and ensuring access to lifesaving reproductive health care.

“It is an important victory that governments worldwide reaffirmed that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ as a central message of the Beijing Platform for Action,” said Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. “But these commitments will only be empty promises unless governments turn them into concrete actions aimed at improving the daily lives of women.”

Controversies here, as in several previous UN conferences, centered around U.S. efforts to weaken international obligations to human rights and to insert divisive language intended to play to domestic political audiences. Though the United States was a leading architect of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, at the ten-year review the U.S. delegation stated it would not reaffirm unless language was inserted that specified the Platform conferred no new international human rights, including no right to abortion. Faced with near-total rejection from other official delegations and women’s leaders in attendance here, the U.S. delegation withdrew its proposals and finally joined the global consensus.

“What we proved here is that the United States can’t bully the world when it comes to women’s human rights,” said June Zeitlin, executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. “While we are pleased that the United States ultimately rejoined the global consensus on women’s rights at this meeting, we will continue to monitor their actions to implement a women’s human rights agenda. We must be vigilant about any future attempts to roll back women’s rights at home and abroad.”

The final declaration adopted at the UN Commission on the Status of Women will become part of the UN’s High-Level Millennium Review gathering in September. Governments and women’s leaders alike emphasized that without forceful action on implementing the Beijing Platform, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can never be attained.

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