Thanks for joining us here today. I’m here with Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, and our National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien

Thanks for joining us here today.

I’m here with Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, and our National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, as well as Bonnie Glick, the Deputy Administrator for USAID, in order to announce and celebrate an important new step for the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, or W-GDP.

W-GDP is the first whole-of-government approach to helping millions of women around the world achieve their full economic potential.  And today, ten U.S. Government agencies are releasing their W-GDP Action Plans to promote economic freedoms for women around the world.

Here at the State Department, we are advancing women’s access globally to employment, credit, land ownership through our diplomacy and public-private partnerships and assistance programs.

We will continue to advance these foundational freedoms with other governments at the highest levels, while also working to achieve liberties – these same liberties with businesses, civil societies, and women themselves.

By empowering women in other countries, America benefits from the stability and prosperity that they bring to their communities and to their countries.

For example, the Millennium Challenge Corporation has been working through W-GDP with the Moroccan Government to recognize the rights of all heirs, including daughters, to inherit and own land.

One woman, Samira Sabri of the Marrakesh-Safi region, will finally be legally able to inherit land passed down to her from her father.  She will now have the right to work the land that her family has been farming for generations and use it to provide for her own family.  As a landowner, she’ll also have better access to capital, to education, and to opportunity.  Samira will contribute to the prosperity of her nation, and she will be economically self-sufficient.