Mr. Chairman:

It is both an honor and a burden to address this important body on behalf of the U.S. government and comment on the state of women's human rights. For while there is much progress to report, it will be difficult to provide adequate treatment of the challenges women face in just ten minutes. I hope that this attempt, however inadequate, will stimulate some thinking on the issues relating to the human rights of women.

As a public member of the U.S. delegation to the Commission, I bring an activist's perspective to these deliberations. The NGO community is usually on the front lines of human rights in the United States, and internationally, as well. While we do not always agree with our government, and it does not always agree with us, the nature of our interaction has clearly benefited both. That's the way it should be in a democracy.

I am a staff member at The Carter Center in Atlanta and an advisor to former President Jimmy Carter on human rights. Many nations here have active partnerships with the Center, among them China, Indonesia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, and the nations of the Great Lakes region. Under the leadership of the Carters, my organization has combined a fierce dedication to peace, human rights, and the promotion of democracy with a keen interest in alleviating human suffering through our assistance programs to increase crop production and eradicate preventable diseases. The Center also has worked to address some of the most difficult problems in our inner cities among the economically disadvantaged.

The international community has long been actively involved in strengthening the United Nation's human rights machinery. The creation of the Office of the High Commissioner was an important step forward. But more is needed. The United States believes that better fact-finding and reporting mechanisms would enable her office and the international community to address human rights violations more quickly. Clearly early attention to violations can prevent violent conflicts and the massive human rights failures that still frequently plague our planet.

To build on the improvements the High Commissioner has already made, however, will require concerted action by governments and NGOs alike. While budget considerations must be kept in mind, many believe that a greater share of the U.N. budget should be allocated to the investigators in the Special Mechanisms and Treaty Bodies, for they are often best-situated to identify impending crises before they burst in flames.

These matters are important to women everywhere, because their specific needs are often neglected in times of conflict and human rights abuse. In fact, women and children make up some 80 percent of the world's 30 million refugees. For this reason, the U.S. has long supported greater mainstreaming of women's human rights perspectives into the U.N.'s fact-finding work.

One lesson we have learned is that protecting women's human rights must be a central goal of human rights advocacy. Similarly, there is a greater need for nations to adopt comprehensive, gender-based approaches to development and to do their utmost to encourage women's full participation in every aspect of national life.

The international community first acknowledged this formally at the Rio de Janeiro Conference in 1992, and then reconfirmed it at Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing and Istanbul. At each of these, the nations of the world acknowledged that the promotion and protection of women's human rights must be a central concern of international attention in order to confront the vast problems that confront all humanity.

Unfortunately, in many countries progress has been slow. Women in virtually every society face discrimination, violence, and abuse. But in countries where women have won some battles and begun to gain positions of influence in society, there the laws and customs of their countries begin to change. Thus democracy is essential to the realization of women's universal human rights, just as the realization of these rights depends on true democracy.

And that, Mr. Chairman, is the path we all must walk down. Every country benefits when women's human rights are respected. And every country loses when women are denied the right to vote, own property, or participate fully in decisions that affect their very lives and livelihoods.

There are few places where women have as little control over their lives as Afghanistan. As Secretary Albright has said of the Taliban: "the only female rights they seem to recognize are the rights to remain silent and invisible, uneducated and unemployed."

Although some small improvements have been made, most Afghan women are still prevented working outside the home. Girls remain officially bared from most types of education. The United States strongly condemns these violations of women's fundamental human rights. It is difficult for us to imagine the horror that the women of Afghanistan must feel, when they see their opportunities to participate in public life and their personal and professional independence stripped away.

Afghanistan has suffered horribly over the past 21 years, but even with peace, the country will never achieve its potential if half the country is kept in chains.

Another major challenge that faces us all is how to stop harmful traditional practices that target women. One of the worst of these is female genital mutilation, or FGM. Between 115 and 130 million women worldwide have been subjected to this awful practice and some two million more are at risk every single year. We must help women in affected countries put an end to this. We who care about women's rights must support local NGOs spread the word to the far reaches of the remotest lands. It is vital to provide educational resources on the harmful health effects of FGM and empower women where it is practiced, for only when they are masters of their own lives and bodies will they be free from it.

Another reprehensible practice is "honor killing" -- when women are killed by relatives who accuse them of bringing shame to their families. Tragically, many such incidents escape prosecution. There is no honor in killing, Mr. Chairman. Governments must not look the other way, but accept their responsibility and recognize these murders for what they are.

We activists and governments must also work together to halt the loathsome practice of trafficking in persons, especially women and children. I doubt if anyone in this room condones this horrible human traffic, yet few countries are free from it. While education is absolutely vital to controlling this contemporary form of human bondage, governments, too, must do their part. Serious efforts must be undertaken in each country to crack down on this crime, and progress must be made on the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Crime and the protocol on trafficking of persons.

At the same time, the movement to implement women's right to vote and enable them to participate fully in public life keeps growing. My country was certainly pleased when Qatar acknowledged women's right to vote and stand for office during the municipal council elections in March 1999. And we were we encouraged when the issue was proposed in neighboring Kuwait. That this effort failed was a disappointment, but we look forward to the day when women there, too, will have their voice. The United States has close and friendly ties with other countries in the Gulf, and it is within that context that we urge Saudi Arabia to ease its restrictions on women. The benefits of doing so are very clear.

I would like to conclude by highlighting some of the programs my government has sponsored recently to help women overcome the obstacles they face and achieve the full measure of the universal human rights that every individual deserves. One of the most important of these is the Vital Voices Initiative, a program that brings women together all over the world and helps them learn the skills they need to empower themselves, their communities and the countries they live in.

Another is President Clinton's Directive on Steps to Combat Violence Against Women and Trafficking in Women and Girls. This commits the U.S. to combat trafficking both domestically and internationally through a three-tiered strategy of prevention, protection and prosecution. We are also actively strengthening our domestic violence laws at the local, state and federal level and funding multi-disciplinary programs that address these issues in the former Soviet Union, Central Europe, and South Asia. Other U.S. programs support locally-initiated women's health projects that address FGM awareness in a number of countries where it is practiced.

Elsewhere, we have increased our funding for health and education programs for Afghan women and girls in refugee camps in Pakistan. Indeed, a significant percentage of our refugee and development programs are devoted to reproductive health care, combating trafficking, protecting women from domestic violence, and providing educational opportunities for women as well as stimulating their own efforts to become active politically and economically. Together these efforts represent a wide-ranging approach to the many problems women face throughout the world, an approach we in the NGO community thoroughly support.

We are engaged, in my own country, in a nationwide effort to protect women from acts of domestic violence. Until recently, our laws and enforcement agencies paid little attention to such violence, but now the tide has turned. The change surely stems from the fact that women's rights advocates have become a force in our courts and legislatures.

Of course, deeply entrenched attitudes are difficult to change. But those who care about women's human rights will not back down. We have come too far to leave the field of battle now. Everywhere we are breaking down barriers, battering down the ancient walls of prejudice and fear. For people do fear change, Mr. Chairman, but change is inevitable even in those places where freedom is still a dream. Women have fought for their human rights and won many of the words that grant them. The struggle now is to advance from words to deeds. This will be no easy struggle. But if we work together -- individuals, NGOs, and governments -- we can fight this war and win.

Thank you.