25th Anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. In 1995, the United States, along with UN member states, took bold action to empower women worldwide and to promote women’s equality. The United States is proud of the progress we have made as a society in the past 25 years, and I am proud of the Trump administration’s continued leadership in empowering women at home and abroad.

In direct contrast, the leaders of the Conference’s host country have squandered the past 25 years. As part of its campaign against Uyghurs and members of other minority groups, women are reportedly subjected to forced abortion, forced sterilization, and involuntary implantation of birth control devices. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to use censorship and arbitrary detentions to crackdown on the freedoms of expression and association of China’s women’s rights advocates. The CCP’s actions speak louder than its quarter-century old rhetoric.

On this anniversary, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the economic, political, and social empowerment of all women. We call on the international community to condemn the egregious and ongoing abuses against women perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China’s one-party-state, and call on UN members states to rebuke Beijing’s attempts to utilize multilateral fora to advance and legitimize their own narrow interests, rather than to further democratic values, human rights, women’s empowerment, and peace and security.