Americas

In October, WLP traveled to Lima, Peru for the World Movement for Democracy (WMD) seventh Global Assembly, Democracy for All: Ensuring Political, Social, and Economic Inclusion. The conference brought together WLP Partners and more than 500 democracy activists, practitioners, and scholars, providing an important opportunity for learning, exchange, and networking with civil society actors from across the world.

On January 1, 2011 Jacqueline Pitanguy retires after four years as Chair of WLP's Board of Directors. A sociologist and political scientist and native of Brazil, she will remain a WLP board member as she focuses on the non-governmental organization she founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1990, CEPIA (Cidadania, Estudo, Pesquisa, Informaco e Acao – Citizenship, Studies, Oversight, Information and Action). CEPIA promotes human and citizenship rights on health, sexual and reproductive rights, violence, poverty, employment and access to justice.

CEDAW is the only international convention that is oriented towards women, more than half of the humanity who still faces, in all countries, independently of culture, religion, race, ethnicity, the burden of a universal cultural heritage of gender inequality reflected, in some countries, in laws, in others still present in cultural patterns in spite of advancements in the legal frame. Violence against women, widespread and brutal, is still present in all countries, and only in 1993 it was recognized as a human rights violation at the UN Human Rights Conference on Human Rights.

The United States could be an historical leader in defending human rights around the world. Now, after 31 years of CEDAW’s existence, the U.S has an opportunity to lead the way to equality, accompanied by numerous international activists, who have fought endlessly to create a world, equal for everyone. The advances we have seen in the matter of human rights for Woman are impressive, but they are not fast enough. The U.S ratification of CEDAW will represent a milestone and will encourage the promotion and protection of human rights for all.