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ASSEMBLY OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION OF WOMEN BEGINS HIGHLIGHTING THE ACHIEVMENTS OF WOMEN IN POLITICS

The Seventh Special Assembly of Delegates of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) began in Washington, highlighting the growing role that women are carrying out in the political processes of the hemisphere.

“It is a fortunate coincidence that we inaugurate this Seventh Assembly a few days after Argentina democratically elected Cristina Fernandez as its next President,” said the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza.

“The election of a woman to a country’s highest political office is an occurrence that should be highlighted. It transcends from being just a democratic event, and ratifies a hemispheric tendency towards the equality of opportunities in the political arena. This is unprecedented in our region, which for the first time will have two female presidents in two neighboring nations,” he said.

The Chair of the OAS Permanent Council, Argentine Ambassador Rodolfo Gil, also noted the triumph of his country’s President-Elect in an “exemplary election” in which she received 45 percent of the votes. “But I also want to highlight that the second place, with 22 percent of the votes, went to another woman, Elisa Carrió. In other words, two women took 67 percent of the electorate preferences of the Argentine Republic,” he said.

“I do not consider this to be accidental,” the Argentine diplomat emphasized. “If we look around a little bit at the political geography of our America, and fundamentally South America, we will see that there is a female presidential pre-candidate in Paraguay, and also in Brazil. This reveals that feminine leadership is flourishing in Latin America.”

The Seventh Special Assembly of the CIM will discuss the Draft Declaration of San Salvador: Gender, Violence, and HIV, which study began during the Assembly held in El Salvador in November, 2006.

The debate, which began during the last Assembly, has been fruitful beyond the Commission. The CIM decided that in order to address this issue in its full magnitude, they should go beyond the health aspect and have a multidimensional approach to the HIV issue, said the President of the Commission and Labor Minister, Public Administration and Empowerment with Responsibility for Gender Issues of Antigua and Barbuda, Jacqui Quinn-Leandro.

The OAS Secretary General encouraged the Organization’s Member States to include the gender perspective in the drafting of public budgets, in order to prevent the continuation of discrimination against women due to the lack of a specific response to the problems affecting them, especially those living in poverty.

“Another issue that must be addressed to advance towards equity and equality of all is the lack of complete integration of women in the economy. We know that unemployment and underemployment affect women disproportionately—mostly they have access to precarious employments and in informal sectors of low productivity. This, regardless of the significant progress achieved in the area of education, where women already surpass men in primary and secondary school enrollment,” said Insulza.

The CIM Assembly, which will take place until the afternoon of Tuesday 6, will also discuss a proposal to amend the Legal Instruments of the Inter-American Commission of Women, aimed at creating a more dynamic, functional and modern body.

Reference: E-277/07