Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-166"
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"en.20000614.7.3-166"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to start by saying that I am pleased with the outcome of the Special UN Conference on ‘Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace’. In my opinion, all credit for this follow-on from Beijing +5, where the implementation of the action plans was discussed, should go to the NGOs, but also to the European Parliament, which was represented by five strong women, and naturally the European Commission, which, in the form of Mrs Diamontopoulou, was 100% committed to this conference. Progress has been made, that is for sure, as has already been mentioned by previous speakers. The distribution in care, actions against trafficking in women and empowerment of women are important issues to me. I am pleased that the participating countries still subscribe to the Beijing Declaration and the action plan. It is nonetheless unfortunate that only eight countries in the world have managed to meet the essential obligations which follow on from these with regard to equality in education, paid work and a minimum representation of 30% in national parliaments. It naturally gives me pleasure to be able to say that the Netherlands is one of them, although I am not entirely satisfied with its emancipation policy, or rather, the lack of it, and that Germany, the Scandinavian countries and South Africa too belong to the eight.
But back to Europe. In my opinion, it is downright alarming that it is precisely the candidate countries which have shown a decline in the number of female employees and the number of girls registered in education. This development merits particular attention from us in the European Parliament. Not only is education the best way to obtain gender equality, it is also the quickest way and the only way if we want to ensure that our children and grandchildren will not still be grappling with these issues.
We should point out to the acceding countries that they need to improve this situation. The other point I wanted to raise is the opposition from the Islamic and Asian countries with regard to women’s rights, in connection with which they refer to the sharia. I find it downright disgraceful that we women cannot join forces across the world. I would ask you to give attention to this. It is not just the Islamic and Asian countries to which this applies, but also Poland, for example.
Finally, I would like to ask you, as I do not have any hard facts at my disposal regarding the acceding countries, whether it would be possible to analyse the status quo in the candidate countries, ideally as soon as possible so that we can assess whether the situation there has improved. Finally, I would call for the NGOs, in particular, to be given a key role, because it is they who are promoting awareness, and this is something which needs to be done not only among women, but also among men. They need to be involved in this process.
At the end of the day, we are relying on the political will of society as a whole to commit itself to a cause which is related to democracy and human rights and which transcends all cultures and religions."@en1
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