February 28, 2005: Headlines: Directors - Bellamy: Unicef: United Nations: Women's Issues: Reuters: UNICEF chief defends "feminism" in aiding children
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February 28, 2005: Headlines: Directors - Bellamy: Unicef: United Nations: Women's Issues: Reuters: UNICEF chief defends "feminism" in aiding children
UNICEF chief defends "feminism" in aiding children
UNICEF chief defends "feminism" in aiding children
UNICEF chief defends "feminism" in aiding children
01 Mar 2005 02:38:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The outgoing director of the U.N. Children's Fund fired back on Monday at critics accusing her of "radical feminism," saying if women were not strong, their children would be in jeopardy.
Carol Bellamy, a lawyer and former Peace Corps director under the Clinton administration, has been attacked by conservatives for furthering sex education for young people and endorsing access to emergency contraceptives for refugees.
Even the British medical journal, The Lancet, has criticized her for allegedly sacrificing UNICEF campaigns for child survival to a radical rights-based agenda.
"Women are central to UNICEF's mission in that their well-being directly impacts families and children," Bellamy told a news conference during a 10-year review session of the landmark world conference on women in Beijing.
"If women are not strong, then families are not strong. If families are not strong, children are in jeopardy," she said.
"For this I have on occasion been called a radical feminist. I have been accused of singling out girls and women for preferential treatment," Bellamy said.
Bellamy leaves UNICEF, which has a term limit, after 10 years as executive director and will be replaced this spring by Ann Veneman, the former U.S. agriculture secretary. The agency has 7,000 staff in 150 countries.
Bellamy emphasized her advocacy on behalf of women and girls in war zones, saying the trauma of rape received far too little attention.
Since 1990, women and children constitute most of the deaths in war zones. Boys were brutalized and forced to become soldiers, while too many women and girls were too ashamed to complain, she said.
"In situations of armed conflict, girls and women are routinely raped, trafficked, used in prostitution, held by armed groups in sexual slavery, mutilated and forced to carry pregnancies," she said.
"And we have barely begun to talk about it."
"When labels like 'radical feminism' are tossed about disparagingly, the end result is that people become reluctant to speak out against discrimination for fear of being accused of promoting special interests," Bellamy said.
She said that during her travels in Congo, Eastern Europe and Sudan, she listened to girls and women express fear in talking about rape.
"It is time that we stopped being afraid of talking about the realities of what it means to be a woman or a girl caught up in armed conflict today," Bellamy said.
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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| March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
| Coates Redmon, Peace Corps Chronicler Coates Redmon, a staffer in Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps, died February 22 in Washington, DC. Her book "Come as You Are" is considered to be one of the finest (and most entertaining) recountings of the birth of the Peace Corps and how it was literally thrown together in a matter of weeks. If you want to know what it felt like to be young and idealistic in the 1960's, get an out-of-print copy. We honor her memory. |
| Make a call for the Peace Corps PCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week. |
| Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot? Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments. |
| WWII participants became RPCVs Read about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service. |
| Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace Corps The White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress. |
| RPCVs mobilize support for Countries of Service RPCV Groups mobilize to support their Countries of Service. Over 200 RPCVS have already applied to the Crisis Corps to provide Tsunami Recovery aid, RPCVs have written a letter urging President Bush and Congress to aid Democracy in Ukraine, and RPCVs are writing NBC about a recent episode of the "West Wing" and asking them to get their facts right about Turkey. |
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Story Source: Reuters
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Directors - Bellamy; Unicef; United Nations; Women's Issues
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