U.S. to Push Women’s Empowerment Issues at Earth Summit

Under Secretary of State Tim Wirth has said that the United States will press to link women’s rights and the environment at the United Nations Earth Summit. U.S. negotiators will attempt to link empowering women with fighting environmental degradation in the document which the five-day summit will produce. Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, commented that a wider understanding was needed “of these life-sustaining synergies – women’s empowerment, gender concerns, population pressures [and] poverty.”