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Global Women Leaders Flex Security Muscles
This special newsletter edition concerns a
potentially historic security conference.
Over 70 women leaders-current and former
heads of state and government, influential
ministers, and leaders of inter-governmental
and non-governmental organizations-were
invited to the first International Women
Leaders Global Security Summit at the
Jumeirah Essex House Hotel in New York City.
Co-hosts were Her Excellency Mary Robinson,
President of Ireland (1990-1997) and The
Right Honourable Kim Campbell, Prime Minister
of Canada (1992).
The stated goal was to provide women leaders
a forum to discuss, evaluate, and endorse
meaningful strategies for global security.
For reasons explained in the book Women,
Power, and the Biology of Peace (J.L. Hand,
2003), the creation and maintenance of social
stability is a priority of special importance
to women, and we have arrived at a moment in
history where many women have sufficient
influence and power to begin to address
security issues with authority. Perhaps we
have reached an historical "tipping point."
"Human security cannot be separated from
human dignity, and it is our duty to speak up
for those women across the globe who lack
their own platform to do so," said U.S.
Secretary of State, Madeleine K.
Albright."Women
leaders have been pushed aside over
the years. Some say it's cultural, that
there's nothing we can do. I say it's
criminal, and we all have an obligation to
stop it, and to demand the economic, social,
and political justice necessary to prevent
it."
The official participants centered their
concerns around four topics:
- The economics of insecurity
- The requirement to produce effective
responses to terrorism
- How to mitigate the harmful effects of
climate changes which will increase risks of
social collapse and war
- How to fulfill the Responsibility to
Protect (R2P) provisions of the United
Nations with respect to genocide and crimes
against humanity.
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