Hillary Clinton on women empowerment

More on the UN: on March 12 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a speech at the U.N. in New York  about the pivotal role of women in securing global peace and security.

(Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday the United Nations needs more women in top positions as it strives to raise the profile of women’s issues and fights gender-based violence.

She identified equality for the world’s women and girls as the central challenge that will determine the peace and progress of the 21st century.

Among others she mentioned Wangari Maathai (see my post) and she spoke of the importance of empowering girls (see my post on Betty Makoni).

See the whole transcript of the speech.

Here are some passages of Hillary Clinton’s UN speech on March 12:

So as we meet here in New York, women worldwide are working hard to do their part to improve the status of women and girls. And in so doing, they are also improving the status of families, communities, and countries. They are running domestic violence shelters and fighting human trafficking. They are rescuing girls from brothels in Cambodia and campaigning for public office in Kuwait. They are healing women injured in childbirth in Ethiopia, providing legal aid to women in China, and running schools for refugees from Burma. They are rebuilding homes and re-stitching communities in the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. And they are literally leaving their marks on the world. For example, thanks to the environmental movement started by Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, 45 million trees are now standing tall across Kenya, most of them planted by women. (Applause.)

Betty Makoni, fighting against a silent genocide

The true worth of a nation must be measured by the empowerment of its girls!

Hazviperi Betty Makoni is a beautiful radiant woman with powerful eyes, which can be full of compassion and fierce with indignation and determination.I meet her two weeks ago on Thursday April 8^th at the Soka Gakkai Culture Center in New York at a lecture where she spoke about her life and she presented the organization, the Girl Child Network, started in 1998, of which she is the director and founder. On Sunday April 10^th she held a meeting with women at the same location, that I had the privilege to attend and I appreciated even more her amazing energy, compassion and intelligence.

See her in a video, appropriately called Tapestry of Hope:

Betty Makoni is from Zimbabwe, a country where human rights are systematically violated and aids is rampant.  Betty pointed out the disturbing belief that the blood of a virgin prevents and cures aids, which is sadly diffused in sub-Saharan Africa, and is responsible for infant rape. In addition sexual terror is a common practice in the Mugabe’s regime.

Betty herself was raped by a local shopkeeper when she was six. At the age of nine, she saw her mother beaten to death by her father at nine.

It was not only my mother or I who suffered, but virtually every girl and woman who saw abuse perpetrated against her swept under the carpet. It was the norm.

Betty earned a university degree and became a secondary school teacher. She could see the relentless abuse young girls went through and experienced the frustration of seeing her students drop out of school every new season. In 1998 she organized a girls’ club to share stories, ideas, and to find solace and solution to their problems.

Today, there are 500 girls’ clubs in 49 of Zimbabwe’s 58 districts and a full-blown Girl Child Network (GCN) that serves 30,000 girls, raises community awareness and lobbies government to protect girls. Our goal is to dismantle the link between culture and violence against the girls and enable them to take charge of their own destiny.

Ten girls per day report rape cases. Most of the time they also get infected with hiv. Betty has helped thousands of girls and taught them to believe in themselves. She wants them all to become future leaders.

Girls coming together in solidarity to build the spaces where they can be valued… this is how we transform victims into survivors.

See the site of GCN

After having been arrested several times in Zimbabwe, Betty now lives in exile in London, with her husband and three sons (“I don’t hate men any more”, she joked). She has received numerous prizes for her activity, and she is indefatigable in her work to protect girls and children and to help them feel valuable and become future leaders.

So each time a girl smiles I actually score a point emotionally myself and I tell myself that it is getting better so I also heal through the girls and I enjoy doing it.