On Thursday, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a recent pushback against gender equality and women’s rights and urged people to fight back as the United States slammed China and the world body for the murder of millions of baby girls.
World leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, took part in a virtual UN General Assembly meeting on Thursday on a landmark 1995 women’s conference in Beijing, where then-US first lady Hillary Clinton declared that “women’s rights are human rights.”
While Guterres did not specify who was wary of women’s rights, he said: “Now is the time to push back against the pushback… Women’s full human rights and freedoms are fundamental to peace and prosperity on a healthy planet.”
At the 1995 conference in Beijing 189 countries agreed to make a priority the full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex.
Merkel said: “Twenty-five years after the Beijing Declaration, equality should be a given. But we still have a long way to go. Get on board. Let’s work together to really target the Beijing goals. The faster the better.”
In a video statement due to be broadcast at Thursday’s meeting, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called out Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and China for their treatment of women.
“Since 1995 the Chinese Communist Party has been responsible for the murder of millions of baby girls through brutal population controls on industrial scale. Unfortunately, with the support from U.N. agencies,” DeVos said. “We call on the UN to stop ignoring and enabling these atrocities.”
The United Nations and China’s UN mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the US statement.
