Secretary Hillary Clinton

Andrea Mitchell sat down with Secretary Clinton to discuss the state of the world’s women today. In the interview, Secretary Clinton talks about the growing role of women in developing countries, and the setbacks they still face.

It’s an excellent insight into how the Obama Administration is approaching the promotion of women’s rights around the world:

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The Presidents held a joint press conference just moments ago upon meeting at the White House. Below is the video:

Yesterday, Secretary Clinton also held a joint press conference with President Preval You can watch in full below:

“Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just posted a video commemorating International Women’s Day. In it, she touches on increasing women’s access to education, healthcare, and jobs and builds the case that working towards these goals is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.

Watch:

As we mentioned last week, we’re back with some analysis of Secretary Clinton’s days on the Hill. Clinton gave nearly identical opening testimonies in all four of her hearings. From there, each hearing diverged with different issues in the spotlight, but despite four different audiences, some issues came up repeatedly.

Each hearing brought up Haiti, generally focusing on the rapid initial humanitarian response and ways to strengthen that response moving forward. As always, national security is a focus of Congress—questions about the response to Iran were prevalent, as well as questions on the challenges of the “frontline states” of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. National security was also brought up in a more positive light, too. Representative Berman, during his opening statement of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lauded the President’s defining his national security budget as both the Defense and International Affairs Budget, calling investing in development the “ounce of prevention” for national security.

There were several other themes running across all four hearings. Senator Lugar brought up the strong commitment the US has made to address global hunger and food insecurity during his opening testimony of the Foreign Relations committee. His own Global Food Security Act, co-sponsored with Senator Casey, was also brought up by Representative McCollum during the House Foreign Operations Appropriation Subcommittee. Clinton lauded the legislation for its focus on the plans the State Department already has for food security efforts, namely focusing on the role of small-holder farmers and women, as well as harnessing new technology.

There were questions on proposed health initiatives, as well. Representative Lee, from the House Foreign Ops Appropriations Subcommittee, brought up PEPFAR, asking how PEPFAR and Global Fund money fit into the overall Global Health Initiative. Senator Lugar also pushed on PEPFAR, asking about reductions in funds for HIV/AIDS prevention in favor of treatment. Clinton said that PEPFAR is committed to maintaining and fulfilling treatment obligations, and hopes to design more aggressive prevention programs to use prevention money more efficiently, as well as forging new country partnerships for PEPFAR.

During the House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting, Clinton was also pressed on funding for basic education. The Chairwoman of the subcommittee, Representative Nita Lowey, pointed out in her statement that the education fund took a cut of nearly $100 million and that she believes education is the foundation for many other development goals. She urged Clinton to restore funds to the program.

For more on the FY 2011 international affairs budget, check out the State Department’s info page on it, or our own coverage on the ONE Blog.

As we noted yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the FY11 International Affairs Budget. You can watch the video of her opening statement below:

Here’s a key excerpt:

The second major area is investing in development. And this budget makes targeted investments in fragile societies – which, in our interconnected world, bear heavily on our own security and prosperity. These investments are a key part of our effort to get ahead of crisis rather than just responding to it, positioning us to deal effectively with threats and challenges that lie ahead.

The first of these is in health. Building on our success in treating HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, our Global Health Initiative will invest $63 billion over six years, starting with $8.5 billion in FY11, to help our partners address specific diseases and, equally importantly, build strong, sustainable health systems as they do.

The Administration has also pledged to invest at least $3.5 billion in food security over three years, and this year’s request includes $1.6 billion, of which $1.2 billion is funded through the State Department. And I greatly appreciate the work that Senator Lugar and Senator Casey have done to help target the United States effort when it comes to global hunger and food security. So this funding will focus on countries that have developed effective, comprehensive strategies, where agriculture is central to prosperity and hunger remains widespread.

On climate change, we could not agree with the Chairman more. Therefore, we have requested $646 million to promote the United States as a leader in green technology and to leverage other leaders’ cooperation – including through the Copenhagen Accord, which for the first time, to underscore the Chairman’s point, brings developing and developed countries together. This is such an important initiative. We need leadership from the rest of the world. This is an opportunity for us to push this initiative and to ensure that we have support to give to core climate change activities and to spread the burden among other countries so that they share part of the responsibility in meeting this global challenge.

You can read the full text of the Secretary’s remarks here.

PS– Today Secretary Clinton is addressing members of the House. We’re following the remarks and will have some highlights/analysis shortly.

UPDATE 2: Video of Clinton’s testimony below.

UPDATE: C-SPAN video doesn’t appear to be working, you can stream live here.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is about to testify in front of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. You can watch it live below:

One year ago, newly confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the State Department and outlined her vision for “smart power”. Yesterday Secretary Clinton held a town-hall for employees at the State Department looking back at the first year of the Obama administration. During the event, Clinton touched on smart power and her work to elevate diplomacy and development to the same importance as defense.

An excerpt:

We began with the idea of “smart power” and the goal of elevating diplomacy and development and making them equal partners with defense. I’m pleased at how far we’ve come in doing that. Our budgets demonstrate both the commitment of the Administration and the Congress to this vision. We’ve strengthened relationships with historic allies. We’ve reached out to emerging powers. We’ve pursued constructive dialogue, even with longtime adversaries. We’ve broadened our definition of diplomacy to extend beyond government-to-government engagement, and to include NGOs, the private sector, and citizens and media in nations across the world.

As we’ve worked together to bring governments, the private sector, and civil society together in cross-cutting partnerships, we’ve seen some exciting examples. One is the use of technology on behalf of diplomacy and development, a subject I discussed last week in my speech at the Newseum.

Our civilian experts from State and USAID are supporting the Afghan and Iraqi people as they work to build democratic institutions, functioning market economies, combat violent extremism, and strengthen civil society. And we are working to promote effective, democratic, transparent governance in both those nations.

We’re also redoubling our efforts to deal with the long-term issues like poverty and hunger, climate change, non-proliferation, and others. And the Department has played a central role in advancing President Obama’s vision of a world someday without nuclear weapons.

We’ve put forward a new development agenda for the 21st century. We’re pursuing a policy based on partnership, not patronage. That means working directly with developing countries to help them identify their own obstacles to growth, crafting solutions to overcome those obstacles, and implementing programs that can be held accountable for results.

In close partnership with USAID, we’re supporting investments to make agriculture more productive. We’re helping farmers produce more in a sustainable way that, in turn, promotes economic growth. And we’re seeing the impact of that approach in many countries around the world.

Here’s video of the town hall:

Yesterday the Government of Haiti and other members of the international community, including U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, met in Montreal to discuss the recovery and rehabilitation process in Haiti. Canada convened the meeting, demonstrating strong leadership that should continue in the run-up to the 2010 G8 meetings, which Canada will host. The group committed to a ten-year rebuilding effort, guided by a set of principles: Haitian ownership of their own future; coordination; sustainability; effectiveness; inclusiveness; and accountability. The group also committed to the continued response of donors to Haiti’s most pressing post-disaster needs.

Acknowledging the crucial connection between emergency assistance and long-term development initiatives, the convening groups pledged to pursue longer-term, strategic objectives to assist Haiti. The participants emphasized that the Haitian government will be front and center of the rebuilding effort, and that any initiatives will also have a strong focus on accountability and effectiveness of the financing. As Secretary Clinton noted, “As we work together to design the mechanism that will be used to deliver assistance and create the conditions for sustainable development, we bear a responsibility to our taxpayers to assure that the money that our government commits will be well spent, transparently, and with results on the ground for the Haitian people.”

Here’s the video:

The strategic objectives agreed upon include strengthening democratic governance, for example, building effective, transparent democratic institutions that can respond to the needs of the people. Engagement will also focus on sustained social and economic development, including economic growth and poverty reduction. A third objective is maintaining rule of law which means supporting the UN stabilization mission in Haiti and integrating the security, law, and justice systems to achieve democratic governance and social and economic development.

While no group financial pledge was made at the meeting—Haiti made no financial requests as no comprehensive assessment has been conducted to determine the cost of reconstruction a few countries announced new commitments Participants also committed to meeting the basic needs of Haiti’s people, and working to construct a roadmap for Haiti’s reconstruction and development. In the short term this means restoring operational capacity of the Haitian government to meet the needs of its people, and conducting comprehensive needs assessments.

In March, an international conference will be held in the U.S., steered by the Government of Haiti, with major donors attending. At this conference, partners will agree on an effective coordination mechanism to address Haiti’s needs, clear and realistic benchmarks, and an ongoing tracking mechanism for implementation.

The prospect of strong support for the reconstruction effort coupled with the debt cancellation for Haiti that ONE is calling for (link to other blog post or site), which is being discussed in the decision-making bodies of multilateral creditors, will help Haiti get back on track to undertake after the earthquake.

Just a reminder that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will address the International Conference on Population and Development today sometime between 2:30 and 2:45 PM EST.

You can watch a live webcast of the speech here, and I’ll post any video and transcript as it becomes available in this post.

Between Tuesday’s speech on “Global Development in the 21st Century” and today’s opening remarks for USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Secretary Clinton has been on the ONE Blog quite a bit this week. And tomorrow she’ll commemorate the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

According to a statement from the State Department, the Secretary will “declare the U.S. Government’s renewed support for and dedication to reaching the ICPD and other related UN agreements, including the Millennium Development Goals, by 2015″. The speech, scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM EST, will be streamed live here.

I’ll post video and transcript when/if it’s made available.