Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-15-Speech-3-168"
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"en.19991215.7.3-168"2
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"Madam President, it is regrettable that the EU’s Conference is only taking place after the regional conferences in Europe, especially when it was unfortunately decided at these conferences to only discuss four of the twelve themes included in the Beijing Action Platform. The four themes were violence, economics, decision making and institutional mechanisms, and this means that one of the most important themes, namely health, will only be discussed at the EU’s Conference. I therefore hope that, in its preparations for the conference, the Commission will focus strongly upon this subject, and especially upon the issue of reproductive health.
In the Beijing Action Platform, women’s health was singled out as an area in which there is cause for critical concern. Reproductive health was linked with human rights, while it was stated clearly that, for women, human rights include their right to have control over, and freely and responsibly make decisions about matters related to their sexuality, that is to say to their sexual and reproductive health, too. The statement from Beijing goes further than that which was employed in Cairo in connection with reproductive rights. There is a risk, moreover, that this hard-won victory may be jeopardised in the course of the “Beijing plus five” process, even if the pre-conference planning committee has given an assurance that the Beijing Action Platform is not open to renegotiation. We in the EU ought to be involved in ensuring that this is in fact the case.
The European Parliament’s representative group concerned with reproductive health has repeatedly called attention to the connections that exist between the fight against poverty, women’s equality and reproductive health. We have emphasised that reproductive health is in fact a prerequisite for the fight against poverty and is to be conceived holistically. It is also necessary to tackle the question of HIV/Aids. The proportion of HIV-infected women and, therefore, of the number of cases of the virus being passed from mother to child are steadily increasing.
I therefore hope that the Commission can today assure me that reproductive health will be given a prominent place at the EU’s Conference and that, in one way or another, the European Parliament will be able to participate in the New York Conference, just as it did in the arrangements for the WTO negotiations where we were in fact represented."@en1
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