Fri 02 October 2020:
United States condemned China and the world body for “the murder of millions of baby girls”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday against a recent pushback on gender equality and women’s rights and urged people to fight back.
More than 170 countries promised during a virtual UN summit held on Thursday, October 1 to step up their efforts to advance women’s rights. The meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, marked the 25th anniversary of the seminal 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing.
During the meet, the United States came down heavily on China for its claims of leadership on the women issue.
President Xi Jinping in his pre-recorded video said in the coming five years, China will donate another $10 million to UN Women and proposed another world meeting on gender equality for 2025.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has led a push at the UN against promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights for women because it sees that as code for abortion, and has opposed such language in UN resolutions.
Trump told world leaders at the UN General Assembly last week that his administration is advancing “opportunity for women” and “protecting unborn children”.
Even there, women were noticeable by their absence, with only nine women among the speakers from some 190 countries.
US Secretary of Education lambasts China over women rights
Meanwhile, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in her own pre-recorded address condemned the treatment of women in Venezuela, Cuba and Iran and saved her harshest criticism for Beijing. She said the worst violator of all in both scope and scale is the host of the conference.
Castigating the China further she said since 1995, the Chinese Communist Party has been responsible for the murder of millions of baby girls through brutal population controls on an industrial scale which was unfortunately done with the support (of) UN agencies.
She specifically took aim at Beijing’s operations in the Xinjiang region, which some rights groups and lawmakers in Washington have said could amount to genocide. DeVos further called out practices of sterilization, abortion and birth control she said have been forced on Uighur Muslim women.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said gender equality was fundamentally a question of power, so it starts with the equal representation of women in leadership positions.
He bemoaned the circumstances that lead to one in three women experiencing violence and 12 million girls marrying under the age of 18 every year.
Even at the UN General Assembly, there were only a handful of women speakers among the representatives for 170 countries.
