SECRETARY-GENERAL CALLS FOR REDEDICATION TO ELIMINATING DISCRIMINATION AND DISADVANTAGE TO WHICH WOMEN ARE STILL SUBJECTED
Press Release
SG/SM/6907
WOM/1099
SECRETARY-GENERAL CALLS FOR REDEDICATION TO ELIMINATING DISCRIMINATION AND DISADVANTAGE TO WHICH WOMEN ARE STILL SUBJECTED
19990226 Following is the text of a message by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the occasion of International Women's Day, observed on 8 March:Today, we celebrate the last International Women's Day of the twentieth century. It gives us an occasion to take stock of the progress made in the struggle for equal rights for women and for women's full participation in the development process. It presents us with an obligation to face the road we have yet to travel.
We can look with some pride at the remarkable achievements made so far. We entered a century where women had the right to vote in a mere handful of countries; we leave one where the vast majority of countries have universal suffrage. We entered a century where women were practically excluded from decision-making; we leave one where the participation of women at senior levels of leadership, national and international, is no longer questioned.
In many countries, provisions guaranteeing the enjoyment of human rights without discrimination on the basis of sex have been included in constitutions or integrated into legislative reforms. Discriminatory legal provisions have been repealed and legal literacy and other measures introduced to alert women to their rights and ensure their access to those rights. The world community has identified violence against women in its various forms as a clear violation of women's rights. Strong actions have been put in place, at the international, regional and national levels, to confront what should always have been considered unconscionable.
Yet much remains to be done. As we stand on the threshold of the new millenium, we are confronted by challenges both new and old. At the forefront is the impact on women of globalization, liberalization, economic restructuring and privatization. Poverty among women -- especially heads of households and older women -- appears to be deepening. Women are over-represented among the unemployed and underemployed. If employed, they are more likely than men to be found in poorly paid, part-time employment or temporary and insecure jobs.
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Women continue to pay with their lives for inadequate provision of health care. Preventable diseases and unequal access to health care still affect women and girls, especially those in the rural sector. To our shame, maternal and infant mortality remain high in several countries, both as a result of inadequate antenatal and maternity care, and of limitations in family planning programmes. HIV infection among women continues to increase, and countries still lack programmes targeted to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment among women and girls.
Next year, five years will have passed since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action -- the world's first truly comprehensive plan in the areas of critical concern to women's advancement. Let us recommit ourselves to its full implementation. The ideal of gender equality, to which we have so long aspired, is still far from a reality. High on our agenda must be the completion of the structure of international legal protection. I urge those governments that have not yet done so to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In December this year we will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention, which sets out steps required to eliminate discrimination against women in all spheres of life, including in the family. The completion of the legal framework for equality must be complemented by the creation of an enabling environment to secure de facto equality for women.
On this last International Women's Day before the new millennium, let us rededicate ourselves to eliminating the discrimination and disadvantage to which women are still subjected -- whether in the world of work, in access to health care services, in the provision of social services and social safety nets, in peace-building and reconstruction or, perhaps most importantly, in the home. Let us enter the new millennium with the prospect of gender equality in sight for women everywhere.
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