PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND

Members of the United States Congress held a press conference at Headquarters this afternoon to discuss the significance of a national poll that indicates that a strong majority of women are concerned about United States foreign policy and believe that global problems make it necessary for the country to work closely with other States through institutions like the United Nations.

The press conference, which was held in connection with the twenty-third special Assembly session on follow-up to the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, was attended by three members of the United States House of Representatives -- Representative Joseph Crowley, Representative Barbara Lee and Representative Carolyn Maloney. Joan Dunlop, Executive Director of Women's Lens on Global Issues, and Nancy Belden, of Belden, Russonello & Stewart, also attended the press conference, which was moderated by Stirling Scruggs of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Ms. Dunlop said the poll had been commissioned after the Beijing Conference when she returned home and realized "there was no coherent and focused voice in this country that could be addressed to our government". The poll, which had examined the attitudes and views of women and men, found that 80 per cent of women and 73 per cent of men viewed the United Nations positively.

As for the role of the United States in the world, she said that given the choices of "banker", "bully", "teacher", "good neighbor", "relief worker" or "policeman", 54 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women said they preferred the role of "good neighbor", while only 4 per cent of women and 5 per cent of men said they wanted to see the United States as a "global policeman".

In deciding the priorities for programmes for the United States to try to improve conditions around the world, women chose preventing childhood diseases in poor countries and promoting equal education for girls in developing countries as among their highest priorities, she said.

Ms. Belden, whose firm had conducted the poll, titled "Connecting Women in the United States and Global Issues”, explained that in the treatment of the data, the survey had identified and grouped women into five segments based on their attitudes on certain key issues. One third of women fell into two groups that were considered excellent targets for building interest in United States participation in global issues.

Ms. Maloney, who is Co-Chair of the Congressional Women's Caucus, said "If we can mobilize the support around the United States that this survey shows is there -- that we know is there -- then we can indeed win. The women attending this week's United Nations conference are depending on us".

Ms. Maloney said she had sponsored a bill to restore UNFPA funding to 1995 levels "without any global gag rule". She had had to explain that the funds were critical, because 600,000 women a year die from complications of

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childbearing. The links to the environment, to women's education and to the economy had also had to be explained. The poll proved that a strong third of American women were ready, willing and able to support those programmes and become active.

Unfortunately, she continued, for the past two years the issues related to women and foreign policy had been back-room deals, and women had too often been cut out in the final hours of the United States budget debate. In the case of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, one senator had been able to block a vote on the Convention ever coming to the floor. She said that President William Clinton and United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke had assured her that "women will not be on the table to be traded away during the next budget battle".

Mr. Crowley, who is sponsoring a congressional bill -– “Global Health Act 2000” -- on the health of women and children, including AIDS prevention, first spoke of a recent official trip to Malawi, which he said was the ninth poorest country in the world. Less than 4 per cent of the population had electricity and one in four persons was infected with or had full-blown AIDS. The life expectancy there was 36 years, and the story was similar in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He quoted President Clinton as saying that AIDS threatened United States national security.

His district -- the Bronx and Queens -- was probably the most diverse in the United States, and because of that the people there exhibited a great interest in the AIDS threat and believed that the United States should be more involved globally. "When we heard last year of the West Nile encephalitis virus, which first broke out in my district, they started to get the picture that the ocean that once was the boundary and prevented many diseases from getting here no longer serves as that barrier." The poll indicated that the United States needed to be involved globally "if for no other reason than our own self-preservation and our own health".

The United States spent less than 10 per cent of 1 per cent of its entire budget on foreign assistance. "That's something that needs to be made clear to the American people because the perception is we spend far more than that and we don't", he said.

Ms. Lee, who is a key sponsor of congressional AIDS legislation, said the results of the poll showing a strong engagement and interest by African-American women in the global issues of poverty, health and disease did not surprise her as those were often the same issues that African-Americans dealt with in their own communities. African-American women were becoming politically empowered and more politically involved. She was optimistic that the results of the study would help energize and mobilize women around the country on United States foreign policy and international relations, so that the "powers-that-be in Washington, D.C., begin to understand that they must not only do the right thing, but it is also the politically correct thing to do". Women, particularly African-American women, wanted to see more United States engagement in international affairs.

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It was important to be organized politically to make sure that the voices of women were heard in the development of United States foreign policy, she said. Often Congress only responded when the public demanded it. She hoped that the results of the survey would be used for grass roots organizing and said the survey would be an effective tool in Washington for generating more support for increases in foreign aid.

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