RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, International Women's Day, celebrated throughout the world on March 8th, is a time to:

WHEREAS, two hundred twenty-eight million 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 over nineteen million women worldwide currently living with HIV/AIDS and over one million 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 years 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-year age group than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and even war; and

WHEREAS, approximately four million eight hundred thousand rapes and physical assaults are perpetrated annually against women in the United States; and

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

WHEREAS, over two billion women around the globe live on less than $2 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 nine hundred sixty million illiterate adults in the world are women and two-thirds of the one hundred thirty million children not enrolled in primary school are girls; and

WHEREAS, in 1972, Hawaii became the first state to ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment, which would have amended the United States Constitution by adding a guarantee of equal rights for women; and

WHEREAS, in 2003, the Hawaii State House of Representatives adopted House Resolution No. 59, which: supported International Women's Day; urged the United States Senate to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; and further urged the United States Congress to fund high quality, voluntary family planning and reproductive health services; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2006, the Senate concurring, that the United States Senate is requested to demonstrate our nation's commitment to human rights by ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and 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 every woman'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 Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and the members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Report Title:

International Women's Day