It is both an appropriate commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and a clear demonstration of our continuing support for, and progress toward, their overall objectives. We look forward to further strides in the years ahead.
Achieving global respect for women is a U.S. foreign policy imperative.
President Bush emphasized in his first State of the Union Address, and on numerous occasions since, that "respect for women" is one of the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity."
In the international arena, the United States has aided efforts that have garnered substantial progress for women around the world. Some of this progress is historic. In Afghanistan, for example, millions of Afghan women cast their ballots in their country's first-ever free presidential election in October 2004. The United States provided political and advocacy training for Afghan women and funds to support voter registration and the election process. One Afghan widow casting her ballot said: "When you see women here lined up to vote, this is something profound. I never dreamed that this day would come."
More broadly, the United States provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year for concrete projects benefiting women everywhere: education and literacy training; assistance to public-private partnerships for business development; microcredit loans for aspiring women entrepreneurs; maternal and child health care programs; HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment centers; anti-trafficking projects; leadership, political, and advocacy training; and more. And there is a human reality behind each of these efforts: millions of individual women who are now able, with our support, to read and write; keep their families healthy; start new businesses; vote in free elections; and even serve their countries as government ministers, judges, journalists, and in many other ways — often for the very first time in their lives.
At home, the American people support the further advancement of women in social, political, and economic life, as documented in the pages that follow. We also realize that more can and must be done to enhance women's equality of opportunity. That is why, as this publication also makes clear, the United States maintains a wide array of programs toward this end.
Our work will not be complete until full participation is possible for every woman — in the United States and elsewhere.
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