Charting further gains in the status and rights of women - Fourth World Conference on Women in China - U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Madeleine K. Albright speech - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, August 7, 1995

Good morning. I am pleased to be here. I may be prejudiced, but I think the Center for National Policy is a great organization, and I appreciate its willingness to sponsor this timely event.

The Fourth World Conference on Women will convene in China in 33 days and, let there be no doubt, the United States will be there. We will be there because this conference is a rare opportunity to chart further gains in the status and rights of more than half the people on earth.

As leader of the American delegation, I am confident that U.S. goals will have strong support. These include:

* Promoting and protecting the human rights of women and ending violence against women;

* Expanding the participation of women in political and economic decisionmaking;

* Assuring equal access for women to education and health care throughout their lives;

* Strengthening families through efforts to balance the work and family responsibilities of both women and men; and

* Recognizing the increased role of non-governmental organizations-Ngos-in building strong communities at the local, national, and international levels.

The conference in Beijing will be the fourth in a series begun 20 years ago in Mexico City. These gatherings have spurred legal, social, and political reforms that have enhanced the lives of women and girls around the globe. Our goal now is to build on past gains and to hasten the removal of continuing obstacles to the full and equal participation of women in society.

As someone whose family was driven from its home twice when I was a child-first by Hitler, then by Stalin--I believe it is the responsibility of every free person to do what he or she can to advance the freedom of others. I also intend to see that the U.S. delegation to the Women's Conference serves as an unabashed advocate for freedom and human rights.

Unfortunately, today, in countries around the world, appalling abuses are being committed against women. These include coerced abortions and sterilizations, children sold into prostitution, ritual mutilations, dowry murders, and official indifference to violence.

The Clinton Administration will use the conference in Beijing to underline the truth that violence against women is no one's prerogative; it is not a cultural choice; it is not an inevitable consequence of biology-it is a crime that we all have a responsibility to condemn, prevent, punish, and stop.

Now there are those who say that we should withdraw from the Women's Conference because of the human rights policies of the host country; those suggestions are well-motivated, but they miss the main point. American withdrawal would not stop the conference or cause it to be moved; it would lead, instead, to a conference in which 130 million American women would be unrepresented and in which American influence and leadership would not be felt. It just does not make sense-in the name of human rights-to boycott a conference that has, as a primary purpose, the promotion of human rights.

The way to help women in China and elsewhere is not to abandon the field to others, but rather to attend this conference, to debate head-on the differences of philosophy and ideology that exist, to lay out before the world the abuses we want to halt and the obstacles to progress we want to remove, and to gain commitments to change from the societies most in need of change. That is what leadership and a commitment to free and open discussion are all about.

With respect to Harry Wu, our position is clear: He should be released immediately and unharmed. His case is a top priority for the United States. I can understand why some would want to tie conference participation to Mr. Wu's release, but that falsely assumes that our attendance would be some sort of favor to Beijing. We have no cause to believe that our approach to the conference will have any impact on China's decisions concerning Mr. Wu. We do have reason, however, to hope that the conference will have a positive effect on the status of women in China.

Conference preparations already have contributed to a heightened awareness within China of women's issues. There is public discussion of previously taboo subjects, including violence against women. Chinese returning from the preparatory meetings have described their heightened sensitivity to the treatment of women in the media and to the economic exploitation of women. It matters a great deal that more than 5,000 Chinese women will participate in the NGO forum and will take their impressions back to their communities.

Given the nature of China's human rights record, I do not mean to exaggerate the impact of this one conference. But as a former board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, I know that one of the best ways to promote democratic thinking is to expose people to new ideas on matters that relate directly to their own lives.

Exposure to such thinking matters to us not only in China, but around the world, because countries in which women have a fair share of power tend to be more stable, democratic, prosperous, and just than those in which women are marginalized and repressed.