►► »I want to thank President Xi Jinping for being an advocate for the women’s cause, » said President of the Commonwealth of Dominica Sylvanie Burton.
ROSEAU-Convening the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women on the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action provides an opportunity to reflect on the progress achieved in promoting women’s development, Burton told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Preparing to attend the upcoming event in China, Burton said she looks forward to exploring how people can enhance the development of the women’s causes worldwide, and what has been done in China to raise the living standard for women and their families.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted at the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, has had a very transformative influence on the international arena, Burton said. After that, the world started to look at the empowerment and equality of women in a more positive way.
« For us here in Dominica, » she said, « after the Beijing Declaration and the Platform of Action, we saw that the government of Dominica ensured that in every budgetary allocation we had to show that we would be empowering women or would be creating some avenues for gender equality. »
« We can look at what was done, what needs to be done, and where we go from there, » she said. « When you empower women, you empower families, you empower children, you empower young people, so the work that he continues to do is significant. »
China has made concrete efforts to promote women’s development by putting in the required and available funding for the grassroots and the most vulnerable women, Burton noted. So they can develop themselves, bring up their standards of living, and provide them with proper housing and education, she said.
By Xinhua
