DISCURSO DE LA

ABOGADA GLADIS CABALLERO de AREVALO

VICEPRESIDENTA DE LA REPUBLICA DE HONDURAS

VIGESIMO TERCER PERIODO

EXTRAORDINARIO DE SESIONES DE

LA ASAMBLEA GENERAL DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS

LA MUJER EN EL ANO 2000: IGUALDAD ENTRE LOS

GENEROS, DESARROLLO Y PAZ PARA EL SIGLO XXI.

NUEVA YORK

8 de junio, 2000

Mr. President

Honorable Delegates

On behalf of the Government of Honduras, presided by His Excellency Carlos Roberto Flores, I am honored to participate alongside such distinguished delegations in this important session dedicated to the evaluation of the implementation of the Global Action Platform, approved during the Fourth Global Conference on Women.

The celebration- of this special session coincides with the year 2000, a moment which instinctively has motivated human beings to reflect on our future. At the beginning of a new millenium, I am pleased to note that humanity recognizes the catalytic role of women in development and consequently in international peace.

Conscious of the importance of women, the Government of Honduras, during the past five years, has achieved important benchmarks in the establishment of a new judicial framework favoring women's rights. Among these, one can highlight the Political Constitution of the Republic which establishes rights to liberty and health, as well as equality without distinction of gender, race, religion and social status; the Law Against Domestic Violence; the Children's and Adolescents Code; the Law Creating the National Institute for Women; the Law on HIV-AIDS; the recently approved Law on Equality of Opportunities; and the reforms to the Law of Agricultural Modernization, reforms which establish the obligation to title land parcels on behalf of couples and women heads of households.

Other achievements in the field of public policies include the elaboration and execution of the Policy on Equality in Agriculture, the Policy on Equality in Natural Resources and the Policy on Sexual and Reproductive Health by which we have been able to increase the use of contraceptive methods, which translates into a slow yet sustained reduction in the birth rate.

Similarly, we have advanced through the creation of the National Institute for Women, which is considered a State Secretariat; the creation of the Attorney General for Women; and the Family Council which under the Health Secretariat brings prevention, assistance and protection to victims of domestic violence.

Since a primary interest of the Government of Honduras is to promote the participation of women in decision-making at all levels, currently the State Cabinet benefits from a women serving Vice-president, one as President of the Central Bank, and five as Secretaries of State in the departments of security, finance, labor, tourism, and natural resources and environment. Women also play important comptroller and prosecutor roles within the State.

Mr. President

Despite the above mentioned accomplishments, Honduras, as a developing nation, has suffered from the negative consequences of globalization, which present obstacles to the consolidation of the achieved objectives and to the advancement of those goals, which will benefit 2.5 million women and girls in our country.

The majority of the Honduran population suffers the adverse effects of structural poverty, which according to data from the World Bank reaches more than half of all families. The application of Structural Adjustment Policies has had a negative impact on the most vulnerable social groups, particularly on poor women. There exists in Honduras limited access to paid and stable work that provides social security, a fact which is linked to the absence of educational and training opportunities for women.

These challenges to development in Honduras were aggravated by the devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch, which left more that 5,600 dead, 8,000 disappeared, 12,000 injured and approximately 2 million affected. With regard to material losses it is estimated that 70% of agricultural production and 80,000 homes were destroyed.

Mr. President

We recognize that it is our responsibility to overcome obstacles, which hinder the achievement of objectives proposed in the Global Action Platform. For instance, we must improve policies oriented toward homes with women as head of households, which in Honduras reach 30%. Similarly, we are deeply concerned by increased maternal death associated with immunological diseases, especially HIV-AIDS. We must also solidify politics that attend to the concerns of adolescents, including sexual education, which assures responsible sexual conduct. Likewise, we will continue fighting domestic violence against women in its psychological and physical manifestations.

Our government reiterates the compromise assumed in Beijing of advancing in the execution of the Global Action Platform, retaking the consensus reached by Latin America and the Caribbean in the meetings of Santiago de Chile and Lima, granting special emphasis to the following:

• Advance in the elaboration and application of the plan to fight poverty, which places at the center of concern the needs and demands of women as agents of development.

• Make reproductive health a priority for the development of our society through the National Policy for Sexual and Reproductive Health, including the application of integral strategies to accelerate the reduction of maternal mortality, which despite its decrease remains inadmissible high: Another area of interest is to attend to the need of adolescents in the area of health, from a systematic and integral focus.

• Advance in public policies and its mechanisms for the prevention and sanction of violence against women in all its manifestation.

• Retake efforts in educational policies conducive to increasing the coverage and revision of content to guarantee on-sexist education.

• Strengthen the National Institute for Women at the political, institutional, and financial level, as well as other mechanisms created in the State to promote the advancement of women.

• Energize dialogue with civil society and in particular with women's organizations to unify efforts in the implementation of the Global Action Platform.

In the globalized world in which we currently live, it is impossible to isolate one topic from others. Without a doubt, the three topics of development, gender equality, and peace are intimately interconnected, one of these important objectives cannot be obtained without the others. Conscious of this reality and united to the objective of making the 21st Century one where globalization is a positive force for the development of all human beings, especially women, I am honored, on behalf of the people and Government of Honduras, to reaffirm our commitment to take the necessary measures to assure that women dispose of the requisite means to fulfill their catalytic and transcendental role in global development.

Thank you very much.