WOMEN LEADERS TO MEET IN MONTEVIDEO FOR 3-DAY CONFERENCE
USIA
16 September 1998
WOMEN LEADERS TO MEET IN MONTEVIDEO FOR 3-DAY CONFERENCE
(United States, IDB co-sponsoring "Vital Voices" event) (430)
By Berta Gomez
USIA Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- Prominent women from all parts of the Americas and
representing all sectors of society will gather in Montevideo,
Uruguay, in early October to discuss ways to expand the role of women
in strengthening democracy throughout the hemisphere.
An estimated 400 leaders from 34 countries plan to attend the October
1-3 "Vital Voices of the Americas: Women in Democracy" forum,
co-sponsored by the U.S. government and the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB).
Scheduled speakers include U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Uruguayan President Julio Maria Sanguinetti, and IDB President Enrique
Iglesias.
It will be the first hemisphere-wide conference on women and their
role in democracy since the Summit of the Americas process was
launched in Miami in 1994; its three broad themes -- public life,
legal and social issues, and business growth -- are drawn from the
Plan of Action approved at the close of the second Summit of the
Americas last April in Santiago, Chile.
The U.S.-IDB co-sponsorship of the Vital Voices conference represents
"a natural evolution of our common agenda," Theresa Loar, the senior
coordinator for women's issues at the U.S. Department of State, said
in a September 16 speech at the IDB.
President Iglesias' long-standing attention to the needs of women in
developing countries is indicative of "the depth of the Bank's
leadership" in this area, Loar said. For the United States, the
conference is part of an ongoing Clinton administration effort to
integrate women's issues into the mainstream foreign policy agenda,
she added.
Indeed, the Montevideo event will be the third Vital Voices
conference. The first was held in Vienna in July 1997, and brought
together women leaders from Eastern and Central Europe and former
Soviet states, with participants from the United States and European
Union countries. The second Vital Voices meeting was held August
31-September 2 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to lend support to the
peace process that produced the historic Good Friday agreement.
Loar said that in addition to bringing women together for discussion
and debate, the conferences -- by facilitating partnerships -- have
produced concrete results on behalf of women. In Belfast, for example,
the Ford Motor Company agreed to fund a community development project
in Northern Ireland that will tap the expertise of activists who
managed a successful education and training program in Detroit,
Michigan.