By Sarah Brooks, China Director at Amnesty International
Thirty years after the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, promised to advance women’s rights and empowerment worldwide, governments are once again gathering in Beijing to mark the special anniversary.
For China, the U.N. summit on October 13-14 is the final, triumphant act of a yearlong show of force from its diplomatic and media mouthpieces seeking to center its “historic achievements in women’s development” and position China as a global model for women’s rights protection.
Yet as officials trumpet their “30 years of progress” to assembled dignitaries, the voices of the country’s own feminists will be conspicuously absent.
That’s because many are in prison, while others face threats and harassment intended to keep them silent – whether they still live in China, or have had to flee abroad.
China’s self-congratulatory narrative on women’s rights has been pushed not just at home, but also abroad: from the halls of the United Nations to the pages of local embassies and media markets in, for example, South Africa, Tanzania, Liberia, Ghana and Grenada. Last month, state-run press even published two compilations of Xi Jinping’s speeches in English for the explicit purpose of “help[ing] international readers gain a deeper understanding of Xi’s views” on women’s rights and much more ahead of the U.N. meeting in Beijing.
But far from partaking in a glorious march toward gender equality, many of the Chinese women we have spoken to see their roles in society increasingly constrained, with support for conservative “family values” rising and women’s choices sidelined in the face of a pro-economic growth, pro-natalist push.
Read the full article on The Diplomat
The post A UN conference can’t hide China’s discomfort with women’s rights appeared first on Amnesty International.