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This speech was delivered by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Former First Lady of the United States at the plenary session of the fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, Sept. 5. 1993.
Mrs. Mongella, Undersecretary Kittani, distinguished delegates and guests: I would like to thank the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting me to be part of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration – a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life; in the home, on the job, in their communities, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens and leaders.
It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country.
By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in the lives of women and their families; access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and participate fully in the political life of their countries.
There are some who question the reason for this conference.
Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.
There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe.
Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou – the homemakers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, policymakers, and women who run their own businesses.
It is conferences like this that compel governments and people everywhere to listen, look and face the world’s most pressing problems.
Wasn’t it after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?
Organization forum, where government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working on ways to address the health problems of women and girls.
Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local – and highly successful – programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.
What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.
That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place here.
The great challenge of this Conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.
We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Each woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.
We also must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.
We also must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.
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 – and recently affirmed at Vienna – 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 believed that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for use 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 and of the women at Huairou 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 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 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.
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.
Let this Conference be our – and the world’s – call to action.
And let us beed 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 hop of a strong and stable future.
Thank you very much.
God’s blessings on you, your work and all who will benefit from it.
