[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 117 (Wednesday, July 19, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1467-E1468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


               UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WOMEN

                                 ______


                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 19, 1995
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Subcommittee on 
International Operations and Human Rights, which I chair, held a 
hearing on the upcoming Fourth International Conference on Women, 
currently scheduled to be held in Beijing later this summer.
  Numerous eloquent witnesses called attention to certain features of 
the draft document that this conference will almost certainly adopt. 
While there is much that is positive in the document, there is also a 
systematic denigration of marriage, childrearing, and family. As was 
pointed out at our hearing by Cecilia Royals of the National Institute 
of Womanhood, the document disparages a central life experience of 90 
percent of the world's women, and attempts to turn women who emphasize 
family life into a new marginalized class.
  I would like to put before my colleagues the testimony of another 
witness: Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and 
Democracy, and cochair of the Ecumenical Coalition on Women and Society 
[ECWS] Beijing team. Ms. Knipper's testimony offers several reasons for 
doubting the draft document's effectiveness as a tool for promoting the 
human rights of women.
                     Testimony of Diane L. Knippers

       The adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights 
     in 1948 gave the world a powerful mechanism for holding 
     nations accountable for the basic rights of all persons. 
     Sadly, in recent years we have seen efforts to erode these 
     basic standards as authoritarian governments argue that human 
     rights are not universal, but are culturally relative. But 
     another form of erosion is more subtle, more insidious, and 
     more dangerous. It is the trend toward defining every 
     conceivable social goal as a human right--whether or not 
     these social goals are properly the responsibilities of 
     governments and whether or not they are even obtainable. The 
     result is obvious. When everything is considered a right, 
     finally nothing can be defended as a right.
       The Fourth World Conference on Women and its draft Platform 
     for Action offer prime examples of this erosion. The adoption 
     of this platform will undermine the pursuit of basic human 
     rights. Even more troubling, it will also sacrifice efforts 
     on behalf of women whose rights are the most repressed and 
     abused in favor of the controversial social goals of Western 
     gender feminists. This is a tragedy.
       Let me cite several examples of the human rights flaws in 
     the draft Platform for Action and the conference itself.
       A. The draft Platform's commitment to universality is 
     unsure.
       Every reference to universal human rights is bracketed. If 
     this document does not affirm universality it will mark a 
     serious regression in the progress toward human rigths within 
     the international community.
       B. The call to address the basic rights of women is blurred 
     and minimized in the draft Platform's context of social 
     engineering and expansive and questionable goals.
       Serious abuses of rights of women, even when mentioned in 
     the document, are diminished in the context of grandiose
      plans for re-engineering society. For example, achieving for 
     all women the basic right to vote and participate in 
     elections is a much more urgent task than working to 
     ensure equality of outcomes such as equal numbers of men 
     and women in all parliaments.
       Let me offer examples of abuses of women that are mentioned 
     in the draft Platform, but diminished by the larger context. 
     There is the urgent need to combat prostitution and 
     pornography, particularly involving children. A recent report 
     of a religious group which operates ministries in Thailand to 
     young women who have been forced into prostitution tells of 
     girls as young as 12 sold to brothels. One child said the 
     brothel owner would beat her to make her stop crying while 
     she was ``entertaining'' customers.
       Another example is slavery, which has not been eradicated 
     but is still practiced in nations such as Mauritania and 
     Sudan. A recent fact-finding team organized by Christian 
     Solidarity International reports that local officials 
     estimate that some 1,000 women and children have been taken 
     into slavery in the last five years from one Sudanese town 
     alone. Team members met a 14-year-old Sudanese girl who had 
     been kidnapped and sold into slavery when she was seven. Yet 
     the atrocity of human slavery gets only passing mention in 
     the 121-page Platform for Action.
       Such blatant and egregious human rights abuses are 
     trivialized in the context of a document that takes on the 
     grandiose aim to redefine gender roles in every society with 
     no reference to biological differences between men and women.
       C. The Platform will result in the expansion of the 
     coercive and intrusive powers of governments and 
     international agencies in the lives of individuals and 
     families.
       The goals of the draft Platform for Action--particularly 
     (1) defining equality as outcome rather than opportunity and 
     (2) obliterating any distinctive male or female roles--will 
     lead inexorably to the expansion of the coercive power of 
     governments. There is no question that this will contribute 
     to anti-democratic practices. It will also undermine the 
     rights of individuals and families (beginning with the rights 
     of parents to train their own children).
       D. Serious human rights abuses, such as religious 
     repression, are ignored.
       The most serious omission in the draft Platform is any 
     acknowledgement of freedom of conscience or of religion for 
     women. Throughout the document, religion is cited as a source 
     of repression of women. There is only one brief (and still 
     bracketed) acknowledgement of the spiritual needs of
      women. But nowhere in 121 pages does the document call for 
     religious freedom for women.
       Women should have the right to engage in religious 
     practice, to change their religion, and to propagate their 
     religious faith, particularly to their children. Women who 
     change their religion should be free of the threat of state-
     imposed divorce or the threat of having their children taken 
     from them. The irony is that this conference on women is 
     being held in a country which currently imprisons women for 
     practicing their faith.
       E. Holding the Fourth World Conference on Women in China 
     also serves to undermine international human rights 
     standards.
       The Ecumenical Coalition on Women and Society is calling 
     upon the U.S. government to boycott the Beijing women's 
     conference unless two conditions are met. The first is that 
     Harry Wu must be freed from prison. The second is that our 
     government must obtain assurances from the Peoples Republic 
     of China that U.S. citizens and other UN conference 
     participants will enjoy the basic rights of freedom of 
     conscience, freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of 
     peaceful assembly as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration 
     of Human Rights.
       Women in non-governmental organizations going to Beijing 
     are being told that they risk interrogation if they meet in 
     groups of more than five, that they cannot meet in hotel 
     rooms, they can't unfurl banners, they can't take in 
     religious literature, they can't engage in corporate prayer 
     outside a special tent, they can't take unregistered 
     computers or fax machines into hotel rooms. How can we begin 
     to discuss human rights in a climate in which those rights 
     are ignored and abused? It would be unconscionable for the 
     United States to participate in such a sham.


                               conclusion

       Women are brutally denied basic human rights in many parts 
     of the world. Women suffer denial of educational 
     opportunities and property rights, forced abortion and forced 
     sterilization, genital mutilation, prostitution, rape, female 
     infanticide, the threat of execution for apostasy or 
     blasphemy, slavery--the list goes on and on.
       The campaign to combat the truly horrible abuses of women 
     is undermined by linking women's rights with highly 
     questionable economic, social, and environmental theories. 

[[Page E 1468]]
     The Beijing agenda goes far beyond basic rights for women. The draft 
     Platform claims that peace and development cannot be achieved 
     unless women represent 50 percent of all national and 
     international political and economic agencies. How or why 
     women are uniquely capable of bringing in this utopia is 
     never explained.
       The danger of the Beijing women's conference is that it 
     attempts sweeping and unnecessary social change--change that 
     will undermine rather than enhance the rights of women. The 
     draft Platform for Action equals or surpasses the Marxist-
     Leninist experiment in its ambition. The draft Platform for 
     Action calls for the most intrusive, arrogant, and radical 
     restructuring of the social order in human history--all on 
     the baseless assumption that this will produce a just, 
     prosperous, and peaceful world. I'm convinced of the 
     opposite. It is the road to tyranny and oppression for women 
     and for men.
     

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