Mr. Speaker, the clarion call of the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993 was that “women's rights are human rights” and that there are no human rights without the rights of women. Sadly, on this International Women's Day 20 years later, violence against women remains an overriding global problem.
Human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry, condemning millions of women and girls to exploitation and servitude. Gendercide, the systematic abandonment and killing of baby girls, is responsible for 200 million missing women and girls, and 140 million women and girls live with the consequences of female genital mutilation. Women suffer extreme violence and sexual abuse in armed conflict. Forty thousand women in Canada were subjected to domestic violence in 2009 alone, and over 600 aboriginal women have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada in recent decades.
Countries will only succeed when women's voices are heard, when their fundamental rights are affirmed, when their dignity is respected and when their lives are secure.