Thousands brave rain to hear Hillary's speech
By Santi WE Soekanto and Carla Bianpoen
HUAIROU, China (JP): An estimated 40,000 activists, coming from non-governmental organizations all over the world, braved the rain yesterday, spending hours waiting in line for the chance to hear the United States' First Lady Hillary Clinton's address to the NGO Forum in Huairou.
Activists scuffled with security in order to get access to the Huairou International Convention Center, while most of the journalists covering the United Nations' Conference on Women were barred from the compound.
Some of the activists walked some distance from where buses had unloaded them and queued to enter the center from as early as 6:30 a.m. to hear the speech that Clinton delivered at about 10:30 o'clock. Eventually, about 1,500 people were able to get inside, while the remaining stood in the rain outside.
"The security is super-tight," an Indonesian journalist complained. "This is more like a fair, a bazaar, and there are even Indonesian delegates who came all the way here to sell things."
Hillary Clinton, who was tightly guarded, drew warm applause, the way she did when she addressed the official conference on Tuesday and said that women's rights are human rights.
In her speech, she emphasized the significance of NGOs in getting programs for women's advancement in society to move ahead. "NGOs are key players in proving whether this gathering will move beyond rhetorics," she said.
Once an NGO member herself, Hillary Clinton reiterated that her country recognizes the important role of NGOs in society.
Outside the plenary hall, rain, which had started very early on in the day, failed to dampen the spirit of women activists from all over the world. One group, for instance, staged a demonstration criticizing G-7 member countries for the devastating effects of their development policies on women.
Another demonstration was held for the rights of women migrant workers. An Indonesian woman spoke out in the demonstration, describing how when she was working in Saudi Arabia her money was taken and she was raped by her employer.
A cultural performance was also held in the compound, featuring two mixed-race American dancers. Through their dances, Sarah Crowell and Erica Smith expressed the pain of never having been accepted as "white people", despite the fact that they "talk and eat like whites".
In contrast to what has been going on for days since the NGO Forum opened on Aug. 30, there was no demonstration yesterday against Indonesian policy on East Timor.
Meanwhile, in the Beijing International Convention Center, where the UN official meeting is currently taking place, Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) Carol Bellamy gave a moving account on the discrimination inflicted on women since infancy.
"Discrimination against women is so routine and pervasive that it's invisible," Bellamy said, pointing out that more than one million children die each year simply because they are born female.
Bellamy recounted the story of a Pakistani woman who, when told she didn't have sufficient breast milk for both her babies, chose, in keeping with cultural biases favoring males, to breast-feed her son.
Bellamy displayed a picture of the mother holding her emaciated baby daughter, who is feeding from a bottle, and her healthy baby son, who is breast-feeding. Receiving an inadequate substitute, with a fraction of the essential nutrients needed for her growth, the baby girl died the day after the photograph was taken, Bellamy said.
"This conference should be a conference of commitments," Bellamy said. "Surely a world that spends US$800 billion a year on weapons can find the $13 billion needed to get every child basic health care and nutrition."
Bellamy said her agency will, in the coming several years, double its resources for its campaign for more access to basic education, with an emphasis on the need of girls.
Earlier in the day, James Gustave Speth, administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), said in the plenary session that "poverty increasingly has a woman's face".
He cited the UNDP's Poverty Clock that was first "activated" on March 3 during the Social Summit in Copenhagen. Since then, he said, "over 12 million babies have been born into poverty".
"Many of them are girls, who will grow up more disadvantaged than their brothers, simply because they were born female," he said. "It's important to remember that of the 1.3 billion people living in abject poverty, 70 percent are women."
"Our overriding priority is the Copenhagen objective of poverty elimination," he said. "Women must, therefore, be at the center of all our work."