The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued—not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.
此时此刻，就在我们坐在这里时，世界各地的妇女正在生孩子、抚养孩子、做饭、洗衣服、打扫房间、种植作物、在流水线上工作、经营公司和管理国家。妇女也同样正在遭受本来可以预防或治疗的疾病所带来的死亡。她们眼看着自己的孩子因贫困和经济匮乏而死于营养不良。她们被自己的父亲和兄弟剥夺了上学的权利。她们被迫卖淫，她们被禁止在银行贷款办事处和投票箱之外。
At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.
我们当中有机会在这里的人有责任为那些没有机会的人说话。作为一个美国人，我想为我自己国家的那些妇女——用最低的薪水抚养孩子的妇女，负担不起医疗保健或幼儿保健的妇女，遭受暴力（包括在她们自己家中的暴力）威胁的妇女发言。
Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own country, women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.
我想为这些母亲发言，为争取好学校、安全社区、清洁空气和干净天空（没有电磁波）而斗争的妇女；为在养育了她们的家庭后发现自己的技能和生活经历不被市场重视的老年妇女（其中一些是寡妇）；为整夜做护理、酒店职员或者快餐厨师工作，以便她们能够白天在家与自己的孩子在一起的妇女；以及为世界各地每一个每天根本没有时间去做完其尽其所能的事情的妇女。
I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air, and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who find that, after raising their families, their skills and life experiences are not valued in the marketplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, or fast food chefs so that they can be at home during the day with their children; and for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each and every day.
今天和你们说话，我为她们发言，就像我们每个人为世界各地，仅仅因为她们是女人就没有机会上学，或者看病，或者有财产，或者决定自己生活方向的女性而呐喊。事实上，大多数的妇女通常都是因不得已才在家里家外地工作。
Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.
我们必须理解，没有一个固定模式能够回答妇女到底该如何过我们的生活。这就是为什么我们必须尊重每个妇女对于她自己和她的家庭所做的选择。每个女性都应该有机会去实现自己的天赋。但是，我们必须认识到除非她们的人权受到保护和尊重，否则女性永远不会获得充分的尊重。
We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.
我们这次会议的目标是，通过赋予女性足够控制她们自己命运的权利来加强家庭和社会。实现这个目标除非世界各国政府承担起他们保护和提升国际公认的人权的责任，否则不能够充分实现。国际社会长期以来一直承认，并且最近在维也纳重申妇女和男子享有同等的保护和个人自由，从个人安全的权利到自由决定生孩子的数量和间隔。任何人都不应该因对宗教的或政治的迫害、逮捕、虐待或酷刑的恐惧而被迫保持沉默。
Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments—here and around the world—accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights. The international community has long acknowledged and recently reaffirmed at Vienna that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one—No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture.
可悲的是，妇女们往往是人权被侵犯的群体。即便是现在，在20世纪末，强奸妇女仍然被继续作为军事冲突的工具。妇女和儿童是世界上难民的绝大组成部分。并且，当妇女被排斥在政治过程之外时，她们更加容易遭受虐待。在新千年到来之际，我认为是打破沉默的时候了。在北京，我们是时候发言给世界听了，就是把妇女权利的讨论排除在人权讨论之外不再被接受了。
Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now, in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse. I believe that now, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.
这种虐待长久以来都在继续，因为妇女的历史一直都是沉默的历史。即使在今天，仍然存在试图使我们的话语沉默的人。但是，这次在怀柔参加会议的妇女的声音必须大声地和清楚地被听到：
These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly:
当仅仅因为她们是女婴时，就被绝食，或被溺死，或被窒息死，或被折断脊椎，这是对人权的侵犯。
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.
