“Today, world leaders are signaling their personal responsibility for gender equality and women empowerment, ” Secretary-General Moon said.
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Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China who opened the event said there is still a long way to go in achieving gender equality saying that the global community should reaffirm the spirit of the Beijing Conference with renewed commitment and pledge greater efforts to promote gender equality and women’s all-around development.
On Sunday, Xi echoed her words, telling the conference: “Women’s rights and interests are basic human rights”.
China was criticised internationally for detaining five women who were taken into custody on the weekend of March 8, worldwide Women’s Day, after they planned to demonstrate against sexual harassment on public transport.
But, like the rest of Jinping’s visit which has been shadowed by concerns about his country engaging in cyber-theft and building artificial islands in the South China Sea, the Chinese leader’s stewardship of a meeting dedicated to women’s empowerment was also controversial given China’s poor record on human rights and recent arrests of several women activists.
“Someone in another country is biased on the relevant issue”, Hong said in response to a question about Clinton’s tweet.
Clinton’s tweet included a hashtag reference to the “FreeThe20” campaign, launched by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power this month to focus attention on 20 female political prisoners around the world, including three in China – activist lawyer Wang Yu, veteran journalist Gao Yu, and Liu Xia, the wife of imprisoned Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Trump has accused China of stealing U.S. jobs and called for a state dinner for Xi to be cancelled after a drop in China’s stock markets and its currency devaluation led to a tumble in USA stocks.
President Obama added in his own statement before the conference: “In too many places – from China to Egypt, from Russian Federation to Venezuela – women have been swept up in repressive crackdowns on civil society, and deprived of their universal rights and fundamental freedoms”.
Responding to Clinton’s tweet, the Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times published a strong editorial Monday comparing Clinton to “the demagogue” Donald Trump. Second, the United Nations summit marks the 20 anniversary of a historic conference on women’s rights that Clinton attended in 1995.
And finally, we are also going to contribute 800,000 pounds to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law survey which tracks and measures those sorts of economic laws and regulations that make it harder for women to work. “Despite her political acumen as former secretary of state and senator, she is using the language of Trump to cast herself in the role of a rabble-rouser”, said an editorial. But how much progress has been made to close the wage gap and empower women financially?CCTV’s Rachelle Akuffo explored how far women have come.
Rights groups and foreign administrations have urged Chinese authorities to drop the investigations against the women. They were later released under judicial supervision.
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The gender equality meeting was convened during abroader United Nations gathering toeradicate poverty, challenge inequality and dealwith climate issues over the next 15 years.
