International Women's Day Around the World

posted on: Mar 6, 2015

“It’s that time of year when activists, envoys, politicians, and their aides are putting final touches to their International Women’s Day events. March 8 may be just another day for most Americans, but in some parts it’s a very big deal. Presidents and prime ministers will soon be affirming that equality for women means progress for all. Speeches are being polished, mission statements are making the rounds, and draft documents are being examined in excruciating detail.

This year also happens to be “Beijing+20” — or 20 years since the watershed U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. So, anyone who’s anything in the women’s movement wants everything to be bigger, better, brighter. At the United Nations’ New York headquarters, a high-level international women’s conference will bring together officials and activists from across the world for a two-week extravaganza that will include marches and celebratory events featuring, I’ve been told, the likes of Hillary Clinton, Bill de Blasio, Michelle Obama, and “top musical artists.”

By the time the international news teams descend on Manhattan, journalists will have exhausted everything they have to say about the three missing London schoolgirls who are believed to have crossed the Turkey-Syria border into the self-declared Islamic State “caliphate” — which, in case you were wondering, will not be represented at the U.N. conference. Kadiza Sultana, 16, Shamima Begum, 15, and Amira Abase, 15, boarded a London-Istanbul flight on Feb. 17, joining a wave of women and girls heading for the Syria-Iraq badlands controlled by the Islamic State.

But who knows, something miraculous could happen to the three teenage girls who dominated the British headlines for several days. They may be found; they may realize that the jihadi El Dorado is actually Hell on Earth; they may miss their mummies. Until then, we can only wring our hands and hope and pray.

Source: foreignpolicy.com