On the recordJune 15, 2016
I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member of the subcommittee for coming forward on what I know is a very hard task. I thank them so very much. I thank the Rules Committee, in this structured rule, for allowing this amendment to come forward, and I would like to share with my colleagues my intense commitment to the language of this amendment and the purpose. Over the last year, I have been working with IFES and NDI, and I have been working with women around the world who have come here to the United States Congress to discuss peace and security. The purpose of this amendment is to encourage the Secretary of Defense to allocate resources needed to provide technical assistance to U.S. military women, to military women in other countries, so military women to military women, in combating violence as a weapon of war, terrorism, human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, and their impact on women and girls. I recall the aftermath of the Afghan war, when we went over to Afghanistan, when they were writing the constitution. Members of the United States Congress, women, insisted on women's rights being in that constitution. I, myself, went to Afghanistan and met with women parliamentarians, and we thought that we had secured their place in the infrastructure of that country. But, ultimately, when the Taliban rose up again, girls' schools were burned, and women were not protected.…
