{"id":15216,"date":"2015-09-28T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/un-pledges-support-for-womens-equality\/"},"modified":"2015-09-28T08:00:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T15:00:33","slug":"un-pledges-support-for-womens-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/un-pledges-support-for-womens-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"UN pledges support for women’s equality"},"content":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS \u2014<\/strong> World leaders pledged money and political clout to achieve equality for women by 2030 at a U.N. meeting Sunday co-chaired by China\u2019s President Xi Jinping, who has faced strong criticism for cracking down on women\u2019s rights activists.<\/p>\n

Among the Chinese leader\u2019s strongest critics was Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who tweeted: \u201cXi hosting a meeting on women\u2019s rights at the UN while persecuting feminists? Shameless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaders from about 80 countries and dozens of diplomats attended the meeting to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.N. women\u2019s conference in Beijing and press for implementation of its 150-page action plan for gender equality \u2014 which remains one of the 17 new development goals adopted by world leaders on Friday.<\/p>\n

As U.S. first lady, Clinton galvanized the 1995 Beijing conference with a rousing speech that included words that have become a mantra for the global women\u2019s movement: \u201chuman rights are women\u2019s rights \u2014 and women\u2019s rights are human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xi partly echoed her words, telling Sunday\u2019s meeting that \u201cwomen\u2019s rights and interests are basic human rights. They must be protected by laws and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he did not mention any of the women activists targeted by the Chinese government, women such as 71-year-old journalist Gao Yu, arrested in 2014 and sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of \u201cleaking state secrets overseas,\u201d or human rights lawyer Wang Yu, a campaigner against sexual harassment of school girls and defender of women\u2019s rights activists who was arrested in July and is being held at a secret location on suspicion of \u201cinciting subversion of state power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor did he mention the five women who spent 37 days in detention this year because they planned to advocate against sexual harassment on public transportation. In a letter Thursday to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Women, the \u201cChina Feminist Five\u201d expressed hope that Xi would announce concrete plans and measurements to promote gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment, and that their wrongful cases would be dropped soon. He did not.<\/p>\n

Xi did draw loud applause when he announced a $10 million donation to UN Women, the agency promoting women\u2019s rights, to accelerate implementation of the Beijing platform \u2014 and again when he announced that in the next five years China will help developing countries produce 100 \u201chealth projects\u201d for women and children, finance 100 programs to send poor girls to school, train 30,000 women from developing countries in China, and provide training opportunities for 100,000 women in other developing countries.<\/p>\n

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power attended the meeting after putting up the 20th photo in the window of the U.S. Mission across the street from U.N. headquarters of a woman rights activist who should have been at Sunday\u2019s meeting instead of in jail. The photos include China\u2019s Gao, Wang, and Liu Xia who has been under house arrest since the October 2010 announcement that her husband, Liu Xiaobo, received the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

While progress on women\u2019s rights over the past 20 years has been striking, Power said at the photo ceremony that \u201cmany governments continue to suppress women\u2019s basic rights \u2014 including by locking them up for speaking out about injustice and fundamental freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Switzerland exceeded China\u2019s donation to UN Women. President Simonetta Sommaruga said it will increase its contribution to almost $50 million for the 2015 to 2017 period, but most other commitments from more than 45 countries were in promised actions rather than money.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan\u2019s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah pledged to \u201cspare no effort\u201d to implement a law ending violence against women. Austrian President Heinz Fischer made a commitment \u201cto further tackling gender stereotyping.\u201d<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government will launch an initiative to improve the professional qualifications of women in developing countries and promote \u201cthe entrepreneurial power of women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mozambique\u2019s President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi committed \u201cto combatting harmful gender practices that violate human rights since as early marriage, sexual abuse and trafficking of children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liberia\u2019s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told the meeting that \u201cfor women and girls throughout the world, my election is commitment to women\u2019s equality.\u201d But she said much more remains to be done including ensuring that a bill to prevent domestic violence is passed by the legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS \u2014 World leaders pledged money and political clout to achieve equality for women by 2030 at a U.N. meeting Sunday co-chaired by China\u2019s President Xi Jinping, who has faced strong criticism for cracking down on women\u2019s rights activists. Among the Chinese leader\u2019s strongest critics was Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who tweeted: \u201cXi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15216"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}