Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 13:11:09 PST
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said
Wednesday there are grounds for ``far more hope than despair''
in Africa and that she hopes to highlight them during a
six-nation tour of the continent.
``Africa is on the move with a new generation of leaders,
the fresh air of political reform and thriving multi-ethnic
societies,'' Mrs. Clinton said in a speech at the State
Department honoring International Women's Day.
President Clinton's wife, along with their daughter Chelsea,
departs Saturday on a two-week tour that will take her to
Senegal, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda and Eritrea.
It will mark her ninth solo trip outside the United States.
She said in the last six years the number of African
democracies have jumped from five to 23, and last year 30
African nations recorded positive economic growth. But lest she
be accused of painting a too-rosy picture, she said many
problems remain.
``To be sure, many of the African democracies are new and
therefore fragile. Hope remains tenuous. Too much of the
continent continues to be riven by disease, malnutrition,
poverty, injustice, corruption, perilous conflicts and their
aftermath, refugee crises that trap women and children
especially in lives that go from bad to worse,'' she said.
Still, she said, ``in spite of these challenges, for the
first time we can say that at this moment in history, there are
in Africa grounds for far more hope than despair, and with the
support of the United States, we can solidify that hope.''
During her trip she plans to stress grassroots efforts to
encourage democracy and a civil society. Her itinerary includes
a visit to Saam Njaay Village in Senegal, where an effort is
under way to train citizens about the institutions of democracy.
Mrs. Clinton's trip will be a welcome break for her from the
wiles of Washington, where a Democratic fund-raising scandal has
the capital in an uproar. She will be laying some of the
groundwork for an expected trip to Africa by her husband in the
next year or two.
Without an official role in her husband's second term, Mrs.
Clinton has taken on the duty of goodwill ambassador promoting
the rights of women and children around the world.
She said she has found that in urban and remote areas
''women are bearing often the bulk'' of work on planting and
harvesting crops and more.
``If all the women in the world tomorrow said they would not
work outside the home, the economies of every country would
collapse,'' she said to loud applause.
One way to help women, she said, is to encourage family
planning practices. She said 100 million women worldwide cannot
get or are not using family planning services.
President Clinton recently signed legislation that will
provide $385 million for organizations working to promote family
planning worldwide.
``If we really care about reducing abortion and fostering
strong families, we must not back away from America's commitment
to family planning efforts overseas,'' Mrs. Clinton said.
Mrs. Clinton was warmly welcomed by the standing-room-only
crowd at her State Department speech, where she was introduced
by America's first woman secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.
``Advancing the status of women is not only a moral
imperative, it is being actively integrated into the foreign
policy of the United States,'' Albright said.
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