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Embassy of Jordan- Washington, DC
Information Bureau
Global Women's Action Network
to give voice for those who can't be heard
"To the world, each of us may be one woman, but to
one woman, we may be the world." – Queen Rania
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
(Office of Her Majesty, Press Department – Dead Sea)
At the closing ceremony of the Global Women's Action
Network for Children Conference, on Tuesday, Her Majesty
Queen Rania Al-Abdullah promised that "by speaking for
those who whom the world cannot hear, we will echo their
stories in the halls of power and bring about change."
"By strengthening partnerships from grassroots
communities to NGOs to corporations and governments, we
will nurture the most basic partnership of all –a mother
and her baby," said the Queen.
The delegates and conveners outlined the networks'
mission and formulated some strategies through the
plenary sessions and dialogue, but Queen Rania said in
her remarks that "the real measure of our success will
not be what we have accomplished here, but what we will
do when we leave".
"There are millions of women who are off course, through
no fault of their own. Women who are lost to the world
every day. Professor Amartya Sen has called them 'the
missing women'… Women who did not have access to
professional care during child birth… girls who are
doing housework rather than homework… babies who died
for want of a knit cap," said the Queen, "We need to
find them. And I have the confidence we can."
The premise of this unique network, convened by five
women from across the world, is based on action and
throughout the three day conference, delegates proposed
various action plans for the network.
The delegates were careful not to duplicate other
successful originations. "We will not compete with
existing originations, we will complement them," said
one of the delegates.
Before Her Majesty's closing remarks, Marian Wright
Edelman said, "I hope this… conference will spark a
bold, aggressive, focused and combined advocacy voice
that will carry the morally obscene and unnecessary
suffering and illiteracy of powerless mothers and
children into the halls of power and keep them there
until they become visible and urgent global imperatives
that must be acted upon."
The network plans to do this in a number of ways,
according to Edelman. She said, "we know from this
conference the hope we can bring, the dreams we can
salvage, the knowledge we can share, the successful
policies and practices we can scale up, the power we can
multiply and the wills we can build by uniting our
demands for justice for the voiceless through
collaborative action steps and a strategic, long term
action plan that will include... developing and mounting
a powerful, sustained, strategic multimedia public
awareness campaign… establishing a Global Women's Action
Network for Children interactive website… and targeting
[within 90 days] two or three nations to accelerate the
rate of progress on our two goals through a range of
advocacy, leadership and community capacity building
strategies and infrastructure development."
At the opening ceremony of the conference, Her Majesty
referred to a "'reverse domino effect' where every woman
lifts another up and passes the gift of strength on."
And it was a consensus among most of the women that such
an effect can be achieved through inspiring other women.
Queen Rania, on Tuesday, spoke of the story of Maha, a
young woman from Yemen who she met at the conference.
Maha overcame drastic odds to get an education. "Maha…
your story, your spirit, and your stamina have really
inspired me," said the Queen.
This network's success will be evident when women like
Maha will be able to lift up other women, and those
women will lift up others until the women of the world
will no longer be confronted with maternal and childhood
mortality and lack of education on a daily basis.
"As you head home, let us remember that to the world,
each of us may be just one woman, but to one woman, we
may be the world," said Her Majesty.
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