The First Lady's International Rallying Cry from Beijing: "Women's Rights are Human Rights!"

On December 16, 1991, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly charged the Commission on the Status of Women to select a site for the Fourth World Conference on Women. The Commission had launched the conference series in 1975, with Mexico City as its first locale and had held subsequent conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985).

The UN stipulated that the next site could not be held in the same region as previous conferences. Austria and China offered to hold the 1995 conference. Seeking an Asian locale, the Commission accepted China’s offer to host in Beijing from September 4th to 15th. China viewed the women’s conference as a valuable opportunity to repair their international image after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

On December 16, 1991, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly charged the Commission on the Status of Women to select a site for the Fourth World Conference on Women. The Commission had launched the conference series in 1975, with Mexico City as its first locale and had held subsequent conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985).

The UN stipulated that the next site could not be held in the same region as previous conferences. Austria and China offered to hold the 1995 conference. Seeking an Asian locale, the Commission accepted China’s offer to host in Beijing from September 4th to 15th. China viewed the women’s conference as a valuable opportunity to repair their international image after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The conference would build upon the political agreements achieved at the three previous world conferences, as well as consolidate 50 years of legal advances for women’s equality. The UN asked member states to form delegations to send to the conference. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, chaired the U.S. delegation, with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed as honorary chair.

Briefing book cover includes a modified copy of the artwork created for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. The image of a woman was created by artist, Coco Masuda. This artwork was widely printed as posters to publicize the conference. Records of the White House Office for Women's Initiative and Outreach. Series: General Files. U.S. Delegation Briefing Book - U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women - Beijing, China [binder] [1].

Letter from the Association for Women in Science urges President Clinton to appoint the First Lady to head the U.S. delegation to the conference. June 27, 1994. Records of the White House Office of Records Management. Series Subject Files on Foreign Affairs. FO006. 069865.

The choice of China as the host nation for the conference sparked intense criticism. Critics noted the incongruity of advocating for women in a country with widespread human rights abuses, including its one-child policy that forced abortions and sterilizations. Foreign relations between China and the United States were also at a very low point, triggered not only by human rights violations but disagreements over Taiwan and nuclear proliferation.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton viewed the conference as a potentially potent platform for placing women’s issues at center stage. She considered her attendance critical as First Lady of the United States to attract international press attention to women’s issues worldwide. Writing in her autobiography, she reflected:

Although women in our own country had made gains economically and politically, the same could not be said for the vast majority of women in the world. Yet virtually no one who could attract media attention was speaking on their behalf.

Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton, pg. 299.

Email from Jennifer M. O'Connor to Janice A. Enright. Subject: Memo for Harold on Beijing Conference. April 4, 1995. This internal email notes controversies of the conference. Presidential Electronic Mail from the Automated Records Management System (ARMS). Series: Automated Records Management System (ARMS) Email from the White House Office (WHO) Bucket. [03/05/1995 - 08/04/1995] [Fourth World Conference on Women]

Letter from Michigan Representative Barbara-Rose Collins, dated June 30, 1994, emphasizes importance of conference to President Clinton. Records of the White House Office of Records Management. Subject Files on Foreign Affairs. FO006. 072007

The conference’s topics aligned with her concerns on rights for women and children. Women’s rights were treated as an issue outside basic human rights. International conventions protecting human rights too often ignored female civilians and children, treating their rights as an aside. The First Lady sought to inextricably tie human rights to women’s rights.

In the United States, her attendance was hotly debated. Those on the right labeled the conference as “anti-family” and “anti-American,” and those on the left cited concerns over human rights violations. Some members of Congress threatened to block funding for the delegation’s visit.

Representative Bob Barr wrote a letter to President Clinton, criticizing his support for the First Lady’s attendance at the conference. President Clinton directly responded to his letter, rebutting his claims and emphasizing the importance of her attendance.

Letter from Georgia representative Bob Barr dated August 25, 1995. Barr expresses in the letter that he is against the First Lady’s attendance at the Fourth World Conference on Women. Records of the White House Office of Records Management. Series: Subject Files on Foreign Affairs. FO006. 131365.

Letter from President Clinton to Bob Barr, dated October 18, 1995. The letter is in response to Barr's letter sent earlier that summer. President Clinton dispels some of Barr's false narratives concerning the Fourth World Conference on Women. Records of the White House Office of Records Management. Series: Subject Files on Foreign Affairs. FO006. 13797SS.

A native of China, Harry Wu was a well-known activist committed to exposing China’s human rights violations. In 1960, Wu was imprisoned in a Chinese labor camp for 19 years, where he was starved, beaten, and witnessed the deaths of his fellow prisoners. After his release, he eventually immigrated to the United States for a visiting scholar position at the University of California at Berkeley.

Wu’s life became public when he exposed his firsthand experience of atrocities in Chinese labor camps to several U.S. media outlets. Throughout the 1990s, he routinely returned to China to covertly collect evidence of the brutal torture prisoners endured.

On June 19th, 1995, Wu was arrested for espionage and stealing secret documents after entering China from Kazakhstan. His arrest was not made public until July 8th, then it instantly broke into an international story.

A public outcry for his release ensued. Renewed opposition mounted to the First Lady’s attendance at the conference, and public opinion remained divided. Doubts escalated within the executive branch on whether she should attend.

Page 2 of a declassified email from Eric P. Schwartz to Stanley O. Roth and Robert Suettinger sent August 18, 1995. Internally, the National Security Council assesses the pros and cons of the First Lady’s trip to Beijing, China. Records of the National Security Council. Series: Emails. [08/03/1995 - 12/05/1995] [Beijing Women's Conference].

Letter from Mary Ann Willis to Hillary Rodham Clinton dated August 18, 1995. Willis writes to President Clinton and the First Lady, urging her to go despite Harry Wu’s arrest. Records of the Office of Speechwriting. Series: Alison (Lissa) Muscatine's Files. Letters to HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] re: Women's Conference.

Conference Director Gertrude Mongella introduced First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to an audience of an estimated 1,500 delegates from around the world. After untold hours preparing for this moment, the First Lady described one aspect that she was unprepared for: stony silence.

That was a curveball that I hadn’t anticipated: as I spoke, there was no response to my words, and I found it difficult to get into a rhythm or gauge the crowd’s reaction because the pauses in my English sentences and paragraphs didn’t coincide with those in the dozens of other languages the delegates were hearing.

Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton, pg. 304.

Sitting in the audience, Verveer reiterated: “It's not like an American audience, where you get applause if they like it and some grunts if they don't--just nothing. I remember Lissa [Muscatine] saying to me something like, ‘She's not delivering this right.’ It was just so tense.”

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses the keynote speech at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, China, September 5, 1995, Photographer: Sharon Farmer.

The First Lady then reached the core of her speech:

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed -- and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.

Hillary Clinton, Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, September 5, 1995.

Her concise litany of injustices against women broke the crowd’s silence. Applause and cheers reverberated throughout the hall. While China was not directly named, it was clear which violations she cited were a direct condemnation of its government. The Chinese government immediately cut her speech from the closed-circuit television in the conference hall and censored it nationwide.

2006-0198-F Segment 4: This collection consists of records regarding conferences and events attended and hosted by the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The key events in this collection consist of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Vital Voices, Beijing +5, and the Early Childhood Development Conference. A majority of the records consist of planning materials, speech drafts, travel arrangements, and budgets for the events.

2006-1301-F: This collection consists of records related to microcredit and microdevelopment, as well as correspondence between the Clinton White House and microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus. This collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, background materials on various microcredit institutions and initiatives, notes, clippings, articles, reports, publications, and lists. These records include correspondence between First Lady Hillary Clinton and Muhammad Yunus as well as correspondence between the Clinton White House and Yunus’ Grameen Bank. This collection has not yet been digitized. Please view the finding aid.

2012-0094-F: This collection consists of records related to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Development, Equality, and Peace (FWCW) held in Beijing, China on September 5 – 14, 1995. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton led the United States’ Delegation, and gave a speech on September 5th entitled “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.” This collection consists of background papers, memoranda, speech drafts, correspondence, email, cables, newspaper articles, and publications. The collection consists of records regarding individuals who should be selected to represent the United States, the First Lady’s attendance, and the Administration’s Position concerning sending a U.S. Delegation to the Beijing Conference. The majority of the records in this collection request consist of National Security Council (NSC) cables. These communications, contain read-outs of meetings with the ECOSOC and preparatory committees in advance of the Conference, information about other countries’ delegations, discussion of the logistical issues, press materials, reports on Platform for Action implementation, and materials for the Beijing Plus Five meeting.

2012-0181-F: The collection consists of records from WHORM (White House Office of Records Management) Subject File HU, Human Rights. The Subject File is a primary category containing information pertaining to human rights and civil rights, citizenship, segregation, ideologies and voting rights, and includes communications from the public expressing views about such matters. Subdivisions within the Subject File include genocide, civil disturbances, ideologies, equality for women, and equality in education and employment. There are also subdivisions for ethnic origin groups, such as Arab-American, Asian-American, African-American, Eastern European-American, Hungarian-American, Greek-American, Irish-American, and others. The records in this collection include memoranda, correspondence, reports, articles, and publications. Six diskettes were processed electronically and included in a single disk at the end of the collection.

2015-0352-F: This collection consists of early drafts of the First Lady’s remarks to the World Health Organization Forum on Women and Health Security in Beijing, China on September 5, 1995. The collection contains materials used for researching, writing, and scheduling this speech. These materials include draft remarks and background materials such as correspondence, notes, position papers, press releases, publications, previous remarks, reports, and talking points.

Bibliographic Resources

• Clinton, Hillary Rodham. Living History. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
• Clinton, Hillary Rodham. “Power Shortage.” The Atlantic, 24 Sept. 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/hillary-clinton-womens-rights/615463/
• Henry, Sarah. “Harry's War.” Los Angeles Times, 17 Nov. 1996, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-11-17-tm-65412-story.html
• “Melanne Verveer Oral History.” Miller Center for Public Affairs, 16 Sept. 2004, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/melanne-verveer-oral-history
• Suettinger, Robert. Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000. Brookings Institution Press, 2004. 
• “World Conferences on Women.” UN Women – Headquarters, UN Women, https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women

Students should review the “Women's Rights are Human Rights” exhibit before completing any of the following assignments. Students may work in groups or individually.

Option 1

Government officials and members of the public opposed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton being part of the delegation to the United Nations Fourth Conference for a variety of reasons. Each student or team will be assigned one of three positions: opposing her attendance, due to concerns over human rights violations by the Chinese government; opposing her attendance, due to perceptions that the conference agenda was “anti-family” and “anti-American;” or supporting her attendance.

All students should analyze the following documents found within the exhibit: letter from Representative Barr to President Clinton; letter from a member of the public; and an internal memo from Eric Schwartz to Anthony Lake then present oral arguments in favor of their assigned position.

Following the presentations, students should vote on whether or not the First Lady should attend the conference by a show of hands, paper ballots, an online ballot or poll, or a four corners exercise with the fourth corner being for undecided voters. After the vote, students should review the memo sent by Anthony Lake to President Clinton requesting approval for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to attend the conference.

Extension Activity/Informed Action Component:

Using the documents from the exercise as examples, students should write a letter or memo to the current President or another federal government official related to international relations.

Option Two

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that “women’s rights are human rights” in her 1995 address to the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women. She mentioned “the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage” in the United States and that it “took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle before that happened, on the part of many courageous women and men.”

The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention is considered to be the start of the women’s suffrage movement. Attendees affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Sentiments, a document that included rhetoric inspired by the Declaration of Independence. It stated that “all men and women are created equal” and demanded women “have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

In December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly. It set out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt played an instrumental role in drafting the document and served as the first Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights. (For more information about her role, visit the Roosevelt Presidential Library.)

Each student or team should review one of these three key declarations, identify rights that are guaranteed, and compare these to the rights First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton called for in her speech. The class can then create a Venn diagram to illustrate the overlap of the four documents.

Extension Activity/Informed Action Component:

Students should create a Declaration of Student Rights for their classroom or school.