UN Authority Figures

UN Women Executive Board: China

Blind activist Chen exposed the systematic use of forced abortion in implementing China's One Child Policy. For this, he served a four year, three month jail sentence, was tortured and denied medical treatment, and is now languishing under house arrest. No one had heard from him since September until yesterday, when he released this video. (China Forced Abortion Opponent Chen Beaten Over New Video, February 11, 2011)

Mission of the UN Women:
"The main roles of UN Women are: To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms; To help Member States to implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society; To hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress." (UN Women web-site)

China's Term of office: 2010-2013

China's Record on women's rights:
"The country's birth limitation policies retained harshly coercive elements in law and practice...The law states that family-planning bureaus will conduct pregnancy tests on married women and provide them with unspecified "follow-up" services. Some provinces fined women who did not undergo periodic pregnancy tests...Female infanticide, sex-selective abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the coercive birth limitation policy...The law does not recognize expressly or exclude spousal rape...Migrant female workers were particularly vulnerable to sexual violence...Violence against women remained a significant problem...Because of the judicial standard of ruling out "all unreasonable doubt," even if a judge was certain that domestic violence was occurring, he or she could not rule against the abuser without the abuser's confession." (US State Department's Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2009, China)