SECRETARY CLINTON: Hello, everyone. It’s a great pleasure to be back in the Republic of Korea.
Before
I begin, I want to say a brief word about yesterday’s events at the
British Embassy in Tehran, Iran. The United States condemns this attack
in the strongest possible terms. It is an affront, not only to the
British people but also to the international community, and we stand
ready to help in any way that we can to make the point, as strongly as
possible, that governments owe a duty to the diplomatic community to
protect life and property, and we expect the Government of Iran to do
so.
Today, here in Busan, I had the opportunity to address two
high priorities for U.S. foreign policy. In meetings with President Lee
and with Foreign Minister Kim, I reaffirmed America’s deep bond with one
of our closest allies. And at the High-Level Forum on Aid
Effectiveness, I engaged on a great global challenge and a personal
passion of mine – creating sustainable growth and improving lives around
the world.
Let me begin with my meetings with the president and
foreign minister. The alliance between the United States and the
Republic of Korea is a lynchpin of security, stability, and prosperity
in the Asia Pacific. This alliance has never been stronger. President
Lee, Foreign Minister Kim, and I discussed issues of global and regional
importance, as we always do when we have the opportunity to exchange
views.
And we
particularly focused on the importance of promoting nuclear
nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula. I know we recently passed the
one-year anniversary of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Let me
reaffirm that the United States stands with our ally, and we look to
North Korea to take concrete steps that promote peace and stability and
denuclearization.
I also congratulated President Lee on the
passage of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. It has been a long time
coming, it took a great deal of work on both sides, but now we can get
down to the important business of creating more jobs and economic
opportunities for both our people.
And I thanked President Lee for
hosting the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness here in Busan. As he
eloquently told the audience this morning, 50 years ago Korea was
recovering from a devastating war. Today, it is a vibrant industrial
power and a major contributor to growth in other countries. And no one
understands the importance of effective development better than the
Korean people.
I came to the forum as the first American Secretary
of State to do so to send a clear message: creating economic growth and
delivering development results are not side issues. They are central
matters in America’s foreign policy. We have elevated development
alongside diplomacy and defense as a pillar of America’s foreign policy
because it is core to promoting our values and interests. Countries
whose economies are growing are more stable and less likely to spark
regional crises. They become partners that can help solve global
challenges.
And so not only is development a top priority for my
country, it should be a priority for every nation, whatever its income
level or stage of development. And I was very pleased to see the
high-level representation from heads of state in government, ministers,
and other officials representing governments, multilateral
organizations, the private sector, civil society, and NGOs.
In
this morning’s plenary session, I spoke about the sometimes-difficult
steps that every nation – developing and developed – the private sector
and civil society groups can take to deliver tangible results. The task
for all of us is to use development investments in a different way, as a
catalyst that sparks self-sustaining progress. I’m very pleased to see
these principles reflected in the political statement from this
conference, which President Lee released earlier today. That statement
reflects our shared vision and commitment to maintaining political
leadership, and it is important in turning our aspirations into actions.
And
finally, I participated in two events that mark important advances in
our work to promote growth – first, a special session on gender, because
the evidence is in and it is unmistakable: It pays to invest in women
and girls, in their opportunities, from education to employment to
health. Countries that make these investments are more likely to see
sustainable economic growth. So we know what to do, but we don’t yet
know how to do it. So we need better data to guide these investments,
and the project we launched today, the Evidence and Data for Gender
Equality, or the EDGE Initiative, will standardize the information that
is collected on women’s inclusion in a economies by many different
agencies that will help us make sure we are targeting our resources in
ways that do the most good for the most people.
I also was able to
meet with the four countries’ representatives who are part of our new
Partnership for Growth – El Salvador, Ghana, Tanzania, and the
Philippines, the countries we are working with to try to put into
practice all of these changes that we think will bring about better
results.
And lastly, I want to thank not only the Government of
the Republic of Korea, but the OECD, which has been a leader in creating
a new development strategy. And how we mobilize domestic resources so
that they are available for the development of people in their own
countries remains a key challenge, and I thank them.
So we’ve covered a lot of ground already today, and I’ll be happy to take your questions.
MS NULAND: We have time for two questions today. The first one goes to Matt Lee of Associated Press.
QUESTION:
Hi, Madam Secretary. Next week, you are going to be attending this
conference in Bonn on Afghanistan, and I’m wondering, considering the
fact that you were just in Pakistan a couple of weeks ago and came away
from that with high hopes or at least some expectation that cooperation
would improve, I’m wondering how disappointed you are or how bad a thing
it is that the Pakistanis are refusing to attend.
And then
secondly, looking ahead to your trip to Burma late this afternoon, can
you tell us what specifically you would like to see the Burmese do, and
what is the U.S. prepared to do to reciprocate on those steps? Thank
you.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, with respect
to Pakistan, what happened across the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan was a tragic incident. I called my Pakistani counterpart,
Foreign Minister Khar, on Sunday to express our condolences on behalf of
the American people and to pledge a full investigation into the
circumstances of the event. Generals Dempsey and Allen, Ambassador
Munter have been in close touch with their Pakistani counterparts, and
we will look to move this investigation forward as swiftly and
thoroughly as possible.
What
is most important, I think, is that we learn lessons from this tragedy,
because we have to continue to work together. We have all said many
times that terrorism and extremism in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region
threatens both countries as well as the interests and citizens of many
other countries across the world. Nothing will be gained by turning our
backs on mutually beneficial cooperation.
Frankly, it is
regrettable that Pakistan has decided not to attend the conference in
Bonn, because this conference has been long in the planning. Pakistan,
like the United States, has a profound interest in a secure, stable,
increasingly democratic Afghanistan. Our gathering in Bonn this coming
Monday is intended to further that goal. Everyone knows Pakistan will be
a major participant in what occurs in the future, so I would express
regret and hope that perhaps there can be a follow-up way that we can
have the benefit of Pakistani participation in this international effort
to try to work toward a stable, secure, peaceful outcome in
Afghanistan.
With
respect to our upcoming trip, I am obviously looking to determine for
myself and on behalf of our government what is the intention of the
current government with respect to continuing reforms, both political
and economic. And I’m going to save specific comments till I've had that
chance, starting tomorrow, to begin my consultations. But obviously, we
and many other nations are quite hopeful that these flickers of
progress, as President Obama called them in Bali, will be ignited into a
movement for change that will benefit the people of the country.
MS. NULAND: And last question, Ms. Hong Ton He of YTN.
QUESTION: (In Korean.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got to put my earpieces in. Thank you. Okay.
QUESTION: (In Korean.)
SECRETARY CLINTON:
Very good question. Because as I said in my remarks this morning, and
again at the Gender Session, research shows that countries that invest
in their girls and their women make more progress. I was later
discussing this with President Lee, and he was talking about how
education, even after the devastation of the Korean War, was readily
available because of the commitment of both the government and the
families of Korea for both their daughters and their sons. We know that
investing in women’s employment, their health and education, have strong
consequences for development.
So here’s what we are attempting to
do. Just in the last three years, we have revamped our agriculture
programs, which are now very much focused on women. Why? Because in the
world, particularly Africa and Asia, the vast majority, as much as 60 to
70 percent, of the people in the field at smallholding – small
agricultural holdings, who are doing the work of planting, of livestock
tending, of harvesting, of marketing, are women. So how can one have a
development policy for agriculture and leave women out?
Yet we
know from research that often women are not given the chance to
participate in programs that provide better seed or technical advice
about how to do irrigation more effectively. Women who often labor in
the fields of their family’s holdings are denied the right to continue
to even live in their homes on that property if their father dies or
their husband dies or their older brother dies. And so laws that
eliminate the right of women to have the benefit of their work in
agriculture are standing in the way of productivity.
We have also
worked very hard to look at the impediments to economic growth, and we
find that women are often denied access to credit. You may have a man
and a woman who both go to the same lender, and they are not treated the
same, even if they’ve come with the same collateral, the same
background, the same work experience.
So those are just two
examples of what we’re trying to do, which is working with countries to
help them eliminate the barriers to participation in the economy for
both men and women, but very often in the developing countries the
barriers against women’s participation are greater. So focusing on
tearing those barriers down will unleash creative productivity, will
create entrepreneurs.
And the final thing I would say is that when
we talk about putting women at the center of development, it does
require us all to ask: Well, what are the barriers that maybe we’ve
never seen before? Many years ago, I was in Africa, and everywhere I
went I saw women working in the fields, I saw women carrying water, I
saw women fetching firewood, I saw women at market stalls. And I was
talking to some economists, and I said, “Well, how do you evaluate the
contributions of women to the economy?” And the answer was, “We don’t,
because they don’t participate in the economy,” meaning the formal
economy. But if women across Africa all of a sudden stopped working one
day, you would find that they actually contribute a lot to the economy.
Well,
it’s true around the world. And we know that if we lower these
barriers, GDP and per capita income will increase in every region of the
world, in every country, including my own. So focusing on that is in
everyone’s interest, in particular our mothers, our daughters, our
granddaughters, and future generations of women to come.
Thank you all very much.
MS. NULAND: Thank you very much.
