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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
Middle East Online SHUNEH, Jordan - Women leaders, including Jordan's Queen Rania and former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, pledged Sunday to mobilise for their sisters and children across the world.
"We are no longer supplicants, hoping for a moment of the world's attention," Albright told the inaugural session of a three-day conference to stem maternal and child mortality and bolster education for girls.
"We are here to serve notice that women and children have been dying needlessly for too long, that every life matters, and that a global network is coming together determined to defend children and save women's lives."
The conference aims to launch a "Global Women's Action Network for Children".
The network will be "a new international advocacy group led by prominent women from around the world dedicated to identifying, funding and supporting programs to help women, girls, and infants," organisers said.
The conference is being hosted jointly by Jordan's semi-official National Council for Family Affairs and the US-based Children's Defence Fund (CDF), a private non-profit organisation.
"Women and children should not have to depend on luck for their shot at a future. Life is not a game," said Queen Rania, 35, the world's youngest queen and mother of four.
"By building bridges between powerful leaders and organisations for women and children, our action network aims to chart a path of progress that all can follow," she added.
Organisers gave grim statistics on the living conditions of women and children.
"Every minute somewhere in the world a mother dies during pregnancy or childbirth; every hour 450 newborn babies die; and every three seconds a child under five dies," they said in a statement.
"Added together, that's more than 11 million women and children dying each year from mostly preventable causes."
In addition, more than 100 million children across the globe, most of them girls, do not attend school.
"These facts are not acts of God. They are human choices. They can and they must be changed and it is women working together who must lead the way," said CDF founder Marian Wright Edelman.
Albright pledged that the network will "turn the world's agenda right side up", inviting world governments to help the initiative succeed.
"We caution every government that you cannot stop us," she said. "Our message this morning is that we have had enough of dreaming. We are doers. We demand results."
Women Nobel peace laureates, including Iran's Shirin Ebadi, Jody Williams of the United States and Kenyan Wangari Muta Maathai, are also attending the conference along with former Irish president Mary Robinson.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was unable to attend but delivered a brief speech via satellite link, hoping the initiative will help return dignity to her country's children abused by years of conflict.
Williams, who won the Nobel prize in 1997 for her efforts to ban landmines, said she will urge the conference that "sharing power is in order to bring about change".
"If you really want to bring about change you have to empower every single member of your coalition and let them act," otherwise "it is just a play for power", the veteran activist said.
"Leadership is shown by example. Every leader from our land mine campaign emerged because of the work they did not because they were famous or from a powerful organisation," Williams added.
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