The Women’s Rights are Human Rights

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I would like to thank the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting me to be part of the
Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration – It is also a coming together…
Our goals for this Conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take
greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments – here and
around the world – accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human
rights.

The international community has long acknowledged that both women and men are entitled to a
range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to
determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear.

No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse or
torture. Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated.
Even in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed
conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. When women are
excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse.

I believe that it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to
hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.
These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of
silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. The voices of this
conference must be heard loud and clear: It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied
food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.
It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.
It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to
death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when
thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.
It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to
44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that
includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.
If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s
rights – and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to
speak freely – and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we
want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.
Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It
means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means
not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them
their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

Now it is time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of
women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too.
As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace around the world – as long as girls
and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to
violence in and out of their homes – the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous
world will not be realized.

Let this Conference be our – and the world’s – call to action.
And let us heed the call so that we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect
and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a
strong and stable future. God’s blessings on you, your work and all who will benefit from it.
Thank you very much.