SECRETARY BLINKEN: Properly, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the State Division and welcome to the second Summit for Democracy.
Jen, to you in your outstanding management on the White Home Gender Coverage Council; to Kat, for yours right here on the State Division on World Ladies’s Points: We couldn’t have a greater crew, a extra dynamic duo, main our efforts. And I’m grateful to every of you each day. Thanks. (Applause.)
So we’re joined in-person and just about by authorities leaders from around the globe, in addition to companions from throughout america Authorities, multilateral organizations, civil society. Thanks. Thanks for all of the work that you just’ve doing each single day to advance girls’s equality and thereby advance democracy. These two issues are inexorably linked, as you’ve already heard.
The President has lengthy believed that democracies are strengthened by the lively participation of all residents, notably girls and women. And since day one, he’s made advancing girls’s and women’ civic and political engagement a prime precedence of this administration. And that’s why we’re kicking off this session as one of many summit’s first occasions – as a result of the standing of girls is certainly the standing of democracy.
Everyone knows on this room and everybody who’s listening within the rights of girls in lots of components of the world are beneath risk and beneath assault. Repressive governments are passing focused legal guidelines to limit girls’s basic freedoms, together with the correct to free speech and meeting. Extremist actors are disproportionately focusing on girls and women, particularly these from traditionally marginalized identities like LGBTQI+ folks, girls from racial, ethnic, and non secular communities.
However it’s not simply in autocracies that ladies are being denied their full and equal rights. In far too many components of the world, girls and women nonetheless don’t have equal alternatives to check and work. Ladies journalists, advocates, politicians, and others are topic to persistent on-line harassment and abuse. Ladies who’re victims of violence usually don’t have equal entry to justice. Ladies are topic to discrimination that usually places them at a drawback – whether or not by means of double requirements they face within the office, in entry to reproductive rights, or in nationality legal guidelines, which can lead to limitations to accessing schooling, well being care, and property for themselves and for his or her households.
However, within the face of those forces, girls and women are main the cost for his or her rights and for human rights and democracy around the globe. And so they’re demonstrating the significance of getting girls on the decision-making desk.
In Afghanistan – within the face of the Taliban’s every day efforts to erase them from every day life – girls are nonetheless protesting. They’re nonetheless discovering methods to doc human rights abuses. They’re nonetheless combating for a brighter future for his or her nation.
In Iran, brave girls are marching within the streets, beneath nice risk to themselves, to name for “girl, life, and freedom.”
America stands in solidarity with these girls and all who’re working for ladies’s full, free, and equal participation around the globe. By our diplomacy, we’re dedicated to supporting them and advancing gender equality worldwide.
On the final Summit for Democracy, america launched our “Help Her Empowerment – Ladies’s Inclusion in New Safety,” or “SHE WINS,” because the acronym appropriately has it. This initiative, which helps native girls and women-led civil society organizations – we’re working to extend girls’s political and civic participation in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
In partnership with Denmark, we’ve additionally been main the World Partnership for Motion on Gender-Based mostly On-line Harassment and Abuse, a coalition of 12 nations centered on countering technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
Quickly, you’ll be listening to from leaders like Poomzeelay Van Damme, a former parliamentarian in South Africa who shared her experiences as a goal of on-line harassment – and who now works to fight this scourge, together with as a part of the Advisory Group to the World Partnership.
We’re heartened by the World Partnership’s preliminary progress over the previous yr. We’ve seen some member nations improve sources to combatting this concern at dwelling, together with by offering extra trainings for these within the authorized and justice programs, in addition to for advocates working with survivors of on-line harassment. And it’s so vitally vital that their voices be heard and absolutely inform our efforts. Others are starting to gather information to raised measure on-line abuse and its results. And as a complete, the World Partnership has labored to construct consensus on shared rules to raised determine, stop, and fight this pressing concern at venues from the G7 to the United Nations.
So as we speak we’ve a possibility to acknowledge a few of these successes, but additionally – additionally – to recommit to the work that lies forward in advancing gender equality.
Once we succeed, we not solely do the correct factor, however we additionally do the sensible and essential factor to make our nations extra affluent, to make them safer, to make them slightly bit extra filled with alternative for all of our folks. With the group that’s assembled right here, we’ve obtained the whole lot we have to proceed making progress towards what’s for us a completely important purpose.
So to every of you who’s right here as we speak, to every of you who’s listening in, thanks once more for what you’re doing each single day to advance this agenda. And thanks for serving to us kick off the Summit for Democracy. Once more, what we’re doing right here as we speak, what we’ll be doing for the subsequent few days, these are absolutely joined. And I can consider no extra acceptable, no extra vital means, to kick off the summit than with all of you right here as we speak.
So welcome to the State Division. I’m wanting ahead to some nice discussions. Thanks, everybody. Thanks. (Applause.)
