The United States will spend $100 million over the next 10 years to improve women's education in poorer countries, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton told a world poverty summit Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a dozen women demanding debt relief and an end to poverty began a hunger strike in the blue-carpeted central hall of the convention center where the summit is being held.The United States wants to increase by 20 percent both women's literacy and the number of girls finishing primary school in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Hillary Clinton said.
"The goals of this initiative are ambitious," she said. "I am proud of us taking such an important step . . . and I respectfully urge other governments to join the United States in creating or expanding the opportunities for all women world-wide."
The first year of the 10-year program, which is to be administered by the United States Agency for International Development, will cost about $11.7 million.
The literacy initiative was the first concrete measure presented at the weeklong World Summit for Social Development, which has been overshadowed by disagreement over commitments to increase foreign aid and give debt relief to poorer countries.
In meetings Wednesday, delegates gave preliminary agreement to restricting demands on debt reduction to bilateral talks between governments, U.N. officials said.
U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his International Women's Day speech, said there was increasing recognition that "the problems faced by women worldwide lie at the heart of the global agenda."
He said the United Nations plans to increase its share of female employees to 35 percent by the end of the year.
"I have set . . . a target of complete gender equality by the year 2000," Boutros-Ghali said in a prepared statement.
Delegates already have initialed documents calling for equal rights for women, better education of girls, improved access to health care and more jobs for the rural poor.
The 12 hunger strikers spread out their backpacks and sat down in the convention center this morning as delegates strolled past.
"We sit here in the lap of luxury arguing about poverty," said 44-year-old Jocelyn Dow of Guyana. "We must bring poverty into the room."
Other protesters are from Canada, Nigeria, Kenya, Barbados and the Caribbean.
The women said they would remain on strike until Sunday, when world leaders are supposed to sign a final document calling for an end to poverty and unemployment.
A few miles from the conference center, police were searching the sea near Kastrup Airport, where a police officer fired toward three unidentified divers before dawn.