“The Courage to Lead: A Human Rights Summit for Women Leaders”
8-10 December 2009, Geneva, Switzerland
Suba Parthiban, Programme Officer, Soroptimist International of Europe
It was fascinating to be part of a conference where women leaders demonstrated the courage to lead. This Summit was organized by Vital Voices and the Eleanor Roosevelt project.
The Summit was divided into three areas:
· Community and Economic Development: Ensuring Access to Food, Shelter and Wages
· Education and Political Empowerment: Ensuring Access to Education and the Government
· Protection from Violence against Women and Human Trafficking
Every panel featured experts in the field, including UN Special Rapporteurs, lawyers, prosecutors, professors, and activists. The emphasis on education and empowerment was overwhelming as it was said that education allows women to dream and articulate as well as helps them to be strong citizens. Knowledge is power! The lack of political will on the part of the government was often considered the main obstacle to achieve full rights for women.
As you can imagine, this was an incredible opportunity for networking and making contacts. We were around 40 women from 27 different countries and many of them showed interest in Soroptimist work. 5 of them would like to become Soroptimists: Ukraine, Kenya, Nigeria, US, and Albania.
Now the most interesting part: Vital Voices, the US based organization that organized all of this has a major mentoring programme. They have a conference coming up in March in DC for their mentors and mentees. They were fascinated to hear that we are a network of professional women.
At the end of the conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined the summit via satellite (first time in history they said). This was an interesting experience to have an interactive dialogue with her.
The content of the meeting was really rich and I was even more convinced that Soroptimists can give women and girls the courage to lead!!!
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