Political Quotes

“along with Senator Mikulski, I offer the following sense of the Senate amendment with respect to condemning violence against women. It states that the United States should continue to: condemn violence against women and should urge states to refrain from invoking any custom, tradition or practice in the name of religion or culture as a means to avoid obligations regarding the elimination of violence against women referred to in Article IV of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. In this year's session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, the United States sided with Iran, Pakistan and Sudan in opposing the above language in the final report of the Commission's session. We ought to wonder why. The language was important, critical to support, on its merits and furthermore, it was hardly groundbreaking. The United States supported it in the 1993 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and in the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action. This year, the U.S. delegate justified the position of not supporting the language on customs and religious practices by claiming that the United States was seeking consensus in the commission, because some other nations perceived the language as casting religion in a negative light. This is absurd. Violence against women is an outrage. It happens every day, in America and around the world.…”