The US will invest $500mn in a programme to empower women in Latin America, President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter and adviser Ivanka announced at the 8th Summit of the Americas in Lima yesterday.
She spoke at a CEO summit preceding the actual summit, which brought together leaders and delegates from about 30 countries in the Peruvian capital yesterday.
“We once again affirm the critical role of women in the economy,” Ivanka Trump said.
She said the US would invest the money to promote the access of Latin American women to “capital, jobs and opportunities to prosper.”
The US has 40 programmes to empower women, many of them in Latin America, acting secretary of state John Sullivan said.
Bolivian President Evo Morales meanwhile indirectly criticised US President Trump’s plans to build a wall on the Mexican border to stem migration.
“It is not a time for physical or legal walls,” Morales said at the CEO Summit.
Bolivia’s leftist president said the world was seeing “the decadence of the neo-liberal model, which has not succeeded in doing anything but impoverishing us at the cost of a benefit to a few.”
The Summit of the Americas was taking place in the absence of President Trump, who cancelled his attendance on the grounds that he had to deal with the US response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria.
Vice President Mike Pence will attend the summit in Trump’s place. In a summit schedule issued by his office, the name of Peru’s president was given as Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, though he resigned last month and was replaced by Martin Vizcarra.
Trump’s “indifference” to ties with Latin America is “evident,” said Peter Hakim, president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue. “Latin Americans wanted to talk to Trump, hear him, and let him hear them,” the analyst said.