IV 118TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION H. RES. 209 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the impor- tance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade, diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability mechanisms. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MARCH 8, 2023 Ms. LOIS FRANKEL of Florida (for herself, Ms. LEE of California, Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE, Ms. BARRAGA´N, Ms. BONAMICI, Mr. BOWMAN, Mr. CA´RDENAS, Mr. CASTRO of Texas, Mrs. CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK, Ms. CHU, Mr. CICILLINE, Ms. CLARKE of New York, Ms. CROCKETT, Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania, Ms. ESHOO, Mr. GARCI´A of Illinois, Mr. GRI- JALVA, Ms. JACKSON LEE, Ms. JAYAPAL, Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia, Mr. KEATING, Mr. KHANNA, Ms. KUSTER, Ms. MCCOLLUM, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. MENG, Mr. NADLER, Ms. NORTON, Ms. OMAR, Ms. PORTER, Ms. PRESSLEY, Ms. SA´NCHEZ, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. SHERMAN, Ms. STE- VENS, Ms. TITUS, Ms. TLAIB, Ms. TOKUDA, Mrs. TORRES of California, Mr. VARGAS, Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN, and Ms. WILLIAMS of Georgia) submitted the following resolu- tion; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regard- ing the importance of taking a feminist approach to all aspects of foreign policy, including foreign assistance and humanitarian response, trade, diplomacy, defense, immigration, funding, and accountability mechanisms. Whereas a feminist approach to public policy requires mean- ingful analysis of and proactive challenges to power VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 2 •HRES 209 IH structures and inequalities based on intersecting systems of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, age, language, socioeconomic status, physical or mental ability, sex, including gender identity or expres- sion and sexual orientation, indigenous identity, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, and nationality or migrant status; Whereas foreign policy reflects how a government defines and prioritizes peace and security, structures international trade, provides humanitarian aid and development assist- ance, and works with other nations and non-state actors; Whereas feminist foreign policy is the policy of a State that defines its interactions with other States, as well as movements and other non-state actors, in a manner that— (1) prioritizes peace, gender equality, and environ- mental integrity; (2) enshrines, promotes, and protects the human rights of all; (3) seeks to disrupt colonial, racist, patriarchal, and male-dominated power structures; and (4) allocates significant resources, including re- search, to achieve that vision; Whereas feminist foreign policy is coherent in its approach across its levers of influence, anchored by the exercise of those values at home and cocreated with feminist organi- zations, movements, and stakeholders, at home and abroad; Whereas women’s rights are human rights and foreign policy in the United States should be representative, inclusive, responsive, and accountable to stakeholders, and should take an intersectional approach, utilizing a power-based VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 3 •HRES 209 IH analysis that reveals, acknowledges, and seeks to correct for inequalities; Whereas feminist foreign policy includes a focus on key the- matic priorities of bodily autonomy, peace, environmental integrity, and justice, which are often left behind in for- eign policy development and discourse; Whereas, although women and girls make up approximately half of the world’s population, they face considerable dis- parities relative to men and boys in their access to rights, resources, and agency around the world, and— (1) as of 2022, women had on average three-quar- ters of the legal rights as men worldwide; (2) the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report for 2022 estimates that at the current rate of change, it will take 132 years for there to be gender parity across the four dimensions it examines: health and survival, economic participation and opportunity, edu- cational attainment, and political empowerment; (3) there are 1,800,000,000 young people in the world and approximately half of them, 900,000,000, are adolescent girls and young women; (4) as early as age 6, girls’ levels of ambition and self-confidence in their abilities are impacted by gender discrimination and harmful stereotypes, and girls aged 12 to 17 are more at risk of dropping out of school than boys around the world; (5) in 2022, around the world women held only 22.9 percent of parliamentary seats and 16.1 percent of min- isterial positions; (6) approximately one-third of women globally have experienced gender-based violence, which increases in set- tings of crisis, conflict, and humanitarian emergencies; VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 4 •HRES 209 IH (7) in 2021, 81,000 women and girls were killed worldwide, 45,000 of them by an intimate partner or family member; (8) in 2021, only 5.8 percent of military contingents and 14.4 percent of uniformed police units in United Na- tions peacekeeping missions were women; (9) in low- and middle-income countries, 218,000,000 women want to delay or prevent pregnancy and have an unmet need for family planning services and supplies, which can lead to unintended pregnancies and health complications, and limit women’s and girls’ oppor- tunities to pursue education, economic, and civic engage- ment; (10) women face more constraints than men do in accessing foreign markets; (11) immigration law itself tends to marginalize women, relying on outmoded models of family, migration patterns, and economic mobility that often fail to account for the reality of women’s lives when migrating; (12) women and girls face increased risks in crisis; and (13) in the past decade, women provided over 43 percent of the agricultural labor in low- and middle-in- come countries, yet comprised more than 60 percent of the world’s chronically hungry people; Whereas in a world in which there is gender equality and women can fully participate in all spheres of life— (1) global gross domestic product could increase by $28,000,000,000,000 over 10 years; (2) the percentage of hungry people could be re- duced by 12 to 17 percent if women had equal access to agricultural resources; and VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 5 •HRES 209 IH (3) peace agreements are 35 percent more likely to last over 15 years when women are at the negotiating table; Whereas as foreign assistance by the United States helps tens of millions of people each year, often providing life- saving aid while accounting for approximately 1 percent of the United States Federal budget, a smaller amount supports gender equality, and— (1) about 3 percent of assistance in 2020 was re- ported as specifically for gender equality programs; (2) only about 19 percent of assistance in 2020 was reported as including key components to address gender equality issues within projects that have a primary focus other than gender equality across all sectors; and (3) an even smaller amount of aid funding finds its way to local, women-led and feminist organizations and grassroots gender equality movements, and in 2020, the United States only disbursed $1,000,000 to women’s rights organizations and institutions, and as of 2021, in the past 10 years has not disbursed more than $10,000,000 in a year; Whereas a feminist foreign assistance policy in the United States would promote gender equality and focus on the experience of women and people who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as gender- based violence, lack of access to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice, lack of access to education, and the burden of unpaid care responsibilities; Whereas the long-lasting impacts of the COVID–19 pandemic highlighted the need to take a feminist approach to for- eign policy with many impacts disproportionately affect- ing women and girls, including— VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 6 •HRES 209 IH (1) the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) finds that over 90 per- cent of students were affected by pandemic-related school closures, that approximately 1,500,000,000 students had their learning disrupted, and that approximately 11,000,000 girls were put at risk for permanently drop- ping out of school by the pandemic; (2) the economic impact of the pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on women, and the 780,000,000 women who rely on informal employment lost on average 60 percent of their prepandemic income in the first month of the pandemic; (3) on average, the ratio of women’s employment to population dropped more than that of men due to the COVID–19 pandemic according to the International Labour Organization; (4) UN Women, the United Nations Development Programme, and the University of Pardee Center for International Futures estimated that the COVID–19 pandemic put 388,000,000 women and girls at risk of falling into extreme poverty in 2022, compared to 372,000,000 men and boys, worsening the already exist- ing gender-poverty gap; (5) worldwide, women have shouldered the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work resulting from the pan- demic, and even prior to the pandemic, women on aver- age performed more than three times the amount of un- paid work relative to men; (6) the COVID–19 pandemic disrupted efforts to end child marriage, and could result in an additional 13,000,000 child marriages taking place between 2020 and 2030 that would otherwise have been averted; VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 7 •HRES 209 IH (7) nearly 12,000,000 women lost access to family planning services and 1,400,000 unintended pregnancies in low- and middle-income countries occurred in just the first year of the pandemic; (8) an estimated 243,000,000 women worldwide were subjected to sexual or physical violence by an inti- mate partner between April 2019 and April 2020, and 45 percent of women have been exposed to at least one form of violence against women either directly or indirectly since the start of the pandemic; and (9) due to the disruption of programs to prevent fe- male genital mutilation in response to COVID–19, an ad- ditional 2,000,000 female genital mutilation cases will need to be averted to eradicate the practice by 2030; Whereas, in mid-2022, over 100,000,000 people were dis- placed from their homes due to violence, disaster, con- flict, and persecution, more than 339,000,000 people will be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2023, and tools and initiatives to center women, girls, and people of all gender identities in humanitarian responses, such as Safe from the Start and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action, should be used to respond; Whereas trade is a necessary and vital component of a na- tion’s economic success and growth and a key part of its engagement with other nations, and— (1) in 2022, United States exports and imports to- taled approximately $3,009,700,000,000 and $3,957,800,000,000, respectively; and (2) a feminist trade policy would promote women’s rights and equitable and dignified labor practices throughout the value chain, as well as reduce and miti- VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 8 •HRES 209 IH gate the harmful impacts of climate change associated with trade; Whereas feminist diplomacy fosters increased collaboration and cooperation among State and non-state actors, in- cluding championing equality and supporting the institu- tions and mechanisms that facilitate cooperation, non- military conflict resolution, and peaceful competition, and that mitigate the effects of climate change; Whereas a total of 13 governments have implemented or an- nounced an intention to implement feminist foreign poli- cies and the G7 has recognized ‘‘feminist development, foreign and trade policies’’ and has committed to strengthen the rights, resources, and opportunities for women and girls in all their diversity in every sphere; Whereas defense efforts support the goal of a more peaceful, equitable, and healthy planet, with peace as the ultimate aim of defense, and a military policy that prevents and responds to gender-based violence in conflict and that meaningfully includes women and those who face dis- crimination in security forces, peace negotiations, and postconflict rebuilding, in accordance with United States commitments to the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017 (P.L. 115–68) and its necessary implementation; Whereas migration remains a global and growing phe- nomenon, and— (1) the number of international migrants reached an estimated 281,000,000 persons in 2020; (2) women constitute nearly half of global migrant flows; (3) the United States is the leading country of des- tination, hosting 50,632,836 foreign-born people, includ- VerDate Sep 11 2014 01:34 Mar 09, 2023 Jkt 039200 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HR209.IH HR209 kjohnson on DSK79L0C42PROD with BILLS 9 •HRES 209 IH ing over 613,700 naturalized citizens in fiscal year 2022; and (4) a feminist approach to immigration would inte- grate an analysis of the impact of immigration policy on women, children, people of all gender identities, and in- digenous people; and Whereas strong transparency and accountability are critical to ensuring that promises to advance a feminist approach are honored through full funding and include the develop- ment of participatory approaches to policy formulation and implementation, the setting and reaching of specific, time-bound and measurable goals that do no harm and are desired by and beneficial to those impacted, and transparent reporting on the progress toward goals: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 1 (1) supports the goals of a feminist foreign pol- 2 icy; 3 (2) supports the adoption of policies that pro- 4 mote gender equity an [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]