NEW YORK, March 7, 2005 – A United Nations conference on women’s status turned this week to concrete ways of promoting women’s rights after unconditionally reaffirming a 1995 agreement that women’s rights are human rights.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) action Friday closed a week in which 6,000 women from around the world successfully pressed the U.S. delegation to withdraw a divisive amendment that would have injected U.S. domestic abortion politics into a Declaration of Policy. Participants today began negotiating sessions on resolutions calling for specific actions to promote women’s economic empowerment, end sex trafficking and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The goal, leaders said, is to spur countries to carry out the promise they made in the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which took place in Beijing in 1995.

“We are hoping soon to pour the champagne in celebration that the United States is returning to world leadership on women’s rights,” said June Zeitlin, executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). “Our real crisis is that the promises of Beijing have not been fulfilled.” She called for “a major escalation of political will” worldwide to make the Platform for Action a reality. “Washington could provide that, if it wants to.”