WHEREAS, International Women's Day, celebrated throughout the world on March 8, is a time to: reflect on the status of women in the United States and around the world; assess progress made and remaining challenges; and recommit to women's human rights and the full empowerment of the world's women as the basis for truly sustainable social, economic, and political development of nations and communities; and

WHEREAS, 228,000,000 women are in need of effective contraceptive methods; and

WHEREAS, a woman dies every minute as a result of pregnancy and childbirth-related causes (approximately five hundred thousand women a year) and for every woman who dies, thirty other women are injured or disabled; and

WHEREAS, between seven hundred thousand and four million people--mainly women and children--are trafficked annually across international borders for sexual exploitation and forced labor; and

WHEREAS, fifty thousand to one hundred thousand women and girls are trafficked annually for sexual exploitation into the United States; and

WHEREAS, HIV/AIDS is a women's epidemic worldwide--with 19,200,000 women worldwide currently living with HIV/AIDS and 1,200,000 women dying of AIDS in 2002; and

WHEREAS, for the last several years, HIV/AIDS has been the fifth leading cause of death for women ages twenty-five to forty-four in the United States and the third leading cause of death for African American women in this same age group; and

WHEREAS, gender-based violence against women--including prenatal sex selection, female infanticide, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, school and workplace sexual harassment, sexual trafficking and exploitation, prostitution, dowry-killings, domestic violence, battering, and marital rape--causes more death and disability among women in the fifteen to forty-four age group than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and even war; and

WHEREAS, approximately 4,800,000 rapes and physical assaults are perpetrated annually against women in the United States; and

WHEREAS, women in many countries lack rights to own land and inherit property, obtain credit, attend and stay in school, earn income, work free from job discrimination, and have access to services that meet their sexual and reproductive health needs; and

WHEREAS, 2,100,000,000 women around the globe live on less than two dollars a day, and women in the United States earn seventy-three cents on average for every dollar earned by men; and

WHEREAS, two-thirds of the 960,000,000 illiterate adults in the world are women and two-thirds of the 130,000,000 children not enrolled in primary school are girls; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2003, that this body urges the United States Senate to demonstrate our nation's commitment to human rights by ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, joining one hundred seventy other nations in endorsing the most comprehensive treaty ensuring the fundamental human rights and equality of women; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States Congress is urged to affirm women's fundamental right to reproductive health, including the ability to choose the number of children they will have and the timing of their births, by funding high quality, voluntary family planning and reproductive health services that enable women to exercise this right; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Report Title:

International Women's Day; Ratify Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women.