| By Evelyn
Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The world is beginning to
understand that integrating women and girls into the life of a nation is
the surest path to economic growth and development, a top U.N. official
told an annual meeting that analyzes the global status of women.
Louise Frechette, the deputy secretary-general, spoke on Monday at
the opening of the Commission on the Status of Women, which coincided with
an exhibit honoring 1,000 women activists from around the world, who have
been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"The world is starting to grasp that there is no tool for
development more effective than the empowerment of women and girls,"
Frechette said.
"Study after study has taught us that no policy is as likely to
raise economic productivity or to reduce infant and maternal mortality,"
Frechette told the gathering, expected to be attended by some 1,000
activists and government officials.
In a building across the street from the United Nations, the
pictures and biographies of 1,000 women activists from around the globe
fluttered from strips of rope.
The names of the 1,000 women were gathered over two years by Swiss
parliamentarian Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, who proposed last year that a
Nobel Prize should be bestowed upon women contributing to world peace.
Only a dozen women have been given the peace prize in Nobel's 100-year
history.
"Young women today desperately need role models," said Cora Weiss,
president of the Hague Appeal for Peace, who organized the event, which
included Nane Annan, the lawyer-artist wife of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan.
"These are women from 150 countries who represent all kinds of
disciplines: environmentalists, social workers, nurses, grass roots
organizers."
Among the women activists honored were Devaki Jain, an Indian
economist and social worker; Noleen Heyzer of Singapore, executive
director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women; Mama Loite Doumbia of
Mali, a human rights campaigner and trade union leader; and Bogaletch
Gebre of Ethiopia, a scientist who set up a center on women's livelihood,
education and health and the dangers of female circumcision.
Also honored were Americans Betty Reardon, founder of the Peace
Education Center at Columbia University; and Chris Norwood, who organizes
low-income people in the south Bronx to train their neighbors in health
education.
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