Whereas human rights violations against women occur around
the world and are not limited to times of war, and have been committed for
political gain, personal advantage, ethnic hatred, and in the name of deities
and fundamentalist religious zeal;
Whereas in many parts of the world, there is a culture of
violence and discrimination which denies women rights equal to those of men and
which legitimizes the exploitation of women for personal gratification,
political purposes, and financial gain;
Whereas despite the fact that in 1998, the United Nations
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda set a precedent in international law
by establishing and prosecuting rape and sexual violence in times of violent
conflict as war crimes and crimes against humanity, the rape of women continues
to be used as an instrument of armed conflict in the 21st century;
Whereas former Bangladeshi Prime-Minister Sheikh Hasina
acknowledged that every year in Bangladesh up to 200 women are horribly
disfigured by acid attacks by their spurned husbands or suitors, leaving many
of them blind, deaf, or dead;
Whereas according to Amnesty International, 6,000 women
are subjected to genital mutilation each day in North Africa, and 135,000,000
women, in at least 46 other countries, have undergone female genital mutilation
worldwide;
Whereas Time Magazine reports that about 25,000 women in
India each year are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death
because their marriage dowries are deemed too small, and four out of five of
these attacks are not reported to or recorded by law enforcement
agencies;
Whereas in many societies baby girls are denied food,
drowned, suffocated, abandoned, or their spines are broken simply because they
are born girls;
Whereas in China, where the male child is traditionally
prized above the female, the one-child
state policy has
multiplied the rate of abandonment, sex-selective and forced abortion and
female infanticide, and yielded a skewed population demographic;
Whereas Chinese demographics have exacerbated the
abduction, trafficking, and sale of Asian women and girls for the purposes of
sex slavery and forced marriage;
Whereas Amnesty International estimates that this year,
more than 15,000 women will be sold as sexual slaves in China;
Whereas according to World Bank figures, at least
one-in-five women and girls around the world has been beaten or sexually abused
in her lifetime;
Whereas the 2002 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe estimates that the leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14
through 44 is the violence to which they are subjected in their own homes, and
in the Russian Federation alone, every day 36,000 women are beaten by their
husbands or partners;
Whereas in the United States, every day four women die as
a result of domestic violence, every year more than half a million women are
battered, every year 4,000,000 women are physically abused by their husbands or
domestic partners, one-third of American women report physical or sexual abuse
by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, over 324,000 pregnant
women are victims of intimate partner violence annually, the majority of
welfare recipients have experienced domestic violence as adults, and domestic
violence causes 100,000 days of hospitalization, 30,000 emergency room visits,
and 40,000 visits to a doctor each year;
Whereas the theme for the 2007 United Nations
International Women’s Day was Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women
and Girls
;
Whereas UNAIDS asserts that the best way to prevent HIV is
to raise the status of women because a woman’s vulnerability to HIV infection
is in direct proportion to her lack of control over the risks of
infection;
Whereas the inequalities between women and men have
persisted and major obstacles remain, with serious consequences for the
well-being of all people;
Whereas the situation of women is exacerbated by the
extreme poverty that affects the lives of the majority of the world’s people,
in particular women and children;
Whereas families rely on mothers and wives for emotional
support, labor, and income needed to raise healthy children and care for other
relatives;
Whereas according to the United Nations, nearly 70 percent
of the people who live in abject poverty are women and women perform two-thirds
of the world’s work, earn less than five percent of its income, and own less
than one percent of its property;
Whereas democracy, political stability, and economic
development are linked to the welfare of women and children, yet the United
Nations estimates that three-of-every-four illiterate adults in the world are
women and two-thirds of children denied primary education are girls;
Whereas the exclusion of women from the political process
in many countries makes them even more vulnerable to abuse;
Whereas as long as women and girls are undervalued,
overworked, and subjected to violence in and out of their homes, the potential
of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be
realized; and
Whereas the leadership of women is strongly linked to
social justice, economic prosperity, political stability, peaceful relations,
and a healthy population: Now, therefore, be it
That—
(1)Congress—
(A)denounces the
barbaric practices of female genital mutilation, domestic violence,
honor
killings, acid burning, dowry deaths, and other
gender-based persecutions and crimes;
(B)asserts that women
are not chattel, should not be trafficked, exploited, or sold for services, and
should not be denied the right to education, to ownership of property, or to
participate in full, economic, social and political life;
(C)demands the
cessation of these barbaric practices and the dismantling of social and
institutional mechanisms which perpetuate systematic discrimination against
women and girls; and
(D)calls on all
governments to pass enforceable laws banning these practices, prosecute any
individuals who persecute or violate women and girls with these acts, and pass
measures to empower women and girls and afford them equal access to
educational, social, and economic opportunities;
(2)the President, in
conjunction with fellow donor countries, shall seek to promote the rights,
health, and empowerment of women in every aspect of their foreign assistance to
developing countries, and discourage continued acts of violence against women
and the impunity that often accompanies these acts; and
(3)it is the sense of
Congress that—
(A)participation,
protection, recognition, health, and equality of women and girls are crucial to
achieving a just, moral, and peaceful society; and
(B)regardless of
religion, geography, or form of government, women should not be denied their
human rights, and those rights must be defended and enforced when they are
abridged, challenged, or violated.