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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN


Fourth World Conference on Women,
4-15 September 1995, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT
SOCIETIES,
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND,
DELIVERED BY GEORGE WEBER, SECRETARY GENERAL


Madame Chairperson,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The mission of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies and its 163 member national societies is to improve the
situation of the world's most vulnerable people. Women and their
dependents constitute the majority of the vulnerable and victims
everywhere in the world.

In its Strategic Work Plan for the Nineties, the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red crescent Societies is focusing on issues of
vulnerability through three major goals. We seek enhanced respect for
human dignity and humanitarian values. We seek improved ability to cope
with crisis. And we seek strengthened capacity of vulnerable people in
their daily lives. Currently, the International Federation helps to
prevent and alleviate suffering of some 15 to 20 million people annually.
Our wide range of activities to this end includes disaster preparedness,
emergency response, health services, programmes for refugees and
displaced persons, psychosocial support activities, family planning and
reproductive health services, blood programmes and capacity-building
development programmes for national Red Cross/Red Crescent societies that
include particular attention to women and youth development needs. In
these activities, women are targeted both as participants and
beneficiaries.

Despite progress since the 1985 Nairobi World Conference on Women,
significant disparities still exist for millions of women. Up to 80
percent of refugee and displaced populations worldwide are women. Two-
thirds of the world's illiterate people are female. Many single heads of
households -- the most poverty- stricken category of people in virtually
all nations -are women. More than half a million women die each year from
preventable childbirth-related causes.

Madame Chairperson, we in the Red Cross and Red Crescent are especially
concerned about the great numbers of women and their dependents who are
among the estimated 100 million international economic migrants, more
than 16 million refugees and more than 29 million people displaced within
their own countries. This vast tide of humankind daily experiences
violence, deprivation, environmental degradation and economic hardship.
In Red Cross-Red Crescent disaster relief operations alone, a third of
those who come to us for help are people fleeing their homes or already
far from them because of conflict or economic pressures; helping these
migrants, refugees and displaced persons accounts for 70 percent of
disaster relief expenditures.

Where female workers are moving in large numbers internationally to
improve their own economic condition as well as that of their families,
they often find instead exposure to prostitution, risk of AIDS and other
sexually-transmitted diseases, drugs, human rights abuses and violence.
Women have been made specific targets of violence in conflict situations,
and rape and sexual abuse has brought enduring trauma into the lives of
uncounted women in conflict areas such as ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda. They
have been made direct victims or caretakers of victims of land mines in
places such as Afghanistan and Cambodia. Other women are having to cope
with new burdens resulting from the impact of sanctions such as in the
cases of Iraq and Haiti.

Deterioration of women's and children's health in some large areas of the
world -- particularly in central Europe and the former Soviet Union -- is
an emerging social disaster.

Another issue of concern to us is the growing magnitude of HIV/AIDS
infection. By the year 2000, over 13 million women will have been
affected by HIV and 4 million of these will have died. Young women are
increasingly vulnerable.

Madame Chairperson, we believe the plan of action to emerge from this
conference should pay special attention to the following areas:

Ensure access to a comprehensive range of health services for women
universally, including family planning and reproductive health.

Promote sustainable income-generating activities for women through
vocational training as well as business and employment opportunity.

Call for the development of and access to adequate and safe blood
supplies, with particular attention to needs in countries experiencing
high rates of childbirth-related blood needs, anemia and abortions.

Encourage and support the training of women in disaster preparedness,
first aid and community-based health care so that women may assist their
communities in time of emergency need and give leadership in those
endeavors to the fullness of their individual capacities.

Speak strongly to the conquest of illiteracy and urge on all states the
informing of communities, including women, about their human and legal
rights as well as their commitment to the application of these rights.

The conference's plan of action should also promote the prevention and
reduction of violence against women and comprehensive assistance to
victims.

Most especially, we hope the plan of action emerging from this conference
will be more than a just a plan to be celebrated in the usual news
releases and otherwise not much heard of until the Fifth World Conference
on Women. We hope this conference's plan of action will see determined
commitment to carry it out and diligent carrying of that commitment into
action by all nations and organisations.

The international community, and in particular governments, must
undertake additional supportive measures -- both in legislation and in
practice -- to eliminate the root causes of poverty and violence,
including disregard or abuse of human rights. Indeed, the actual
enjoyment of their rights by women should be a key indicator of the level
of social and economic development reached.

For ourselves, Madame Chairperson, we in the Red Cross-Red Crescent
pledge to continue in all our activities the promotion of women's skills,
protection and opportunity: And the specific issue of the impacts of
conflict on women will be taken up at the International Conference of the
Red Cross and Red Crescent later this year.

Thank you for your attention.