Siem Reap, Cambodia---Michelle Obama was greeted by flag-waving schoolchildren Saturday during the first trip by a sitting First Lady to Cambodia as she pushes a US-led initiative to combat a "crisis" in girls' education.
Obama visited a school on the outskirts of Siem Reap with Bun Rany, the wife of Cambodian strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen, to hear first hand from schoolgirls about the problems they face accessing education and staying in school.
Dressed in crisp black and white uniforms, the children waved the national flags of Cambodia and America, greeting the First Lady in carefully practised English.
The Harvard-educated lawyer is using a five-day trip to Japan and Cambodia to highlight how 62 million girls around the world are denied the right to go to school, primarily for economic or cultural reasons.
"For those people out there who think it is better for their daughters not to go to school, you are going to have convince them that it is worth investing in girls," she told a group of girls.
Some of the students described the difficulties they had staying in school, faced with long journeys to class and pressure from their families to find work or complete household chores.
"Everyday, I get up at 4:00 am to cook rice to bring to school," one girl called Sohang told Obama. "It takes me one hour to ride a bicycle to school."
Cambodia's education system was ravaged in the 1970s during the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule.
Huge numbers of intellectuals and teachers were killed as Pol Pot's regime dismantled modern society in their quest for an agrarian Marxist utopia.
The traumatic period left the country impoverished and with an acute shortage of teachers, something that still haunts its education system to this day.
- Girls left out -
According to Cambodian government statistics 68 percent of children are enrolled in primary education, but this drops off to 17.7 percent by lower secondary and just 8.8 percent by upper secondary.
Room to Read, a charity involved in children's education in Cambodia, says there are three times more boys than girls in school.
The US government has launched the "Let Girls Learn" initiative, which Obama is promoting during the trip. The programme will be run by Peace Corps volunteers in 11 countries and promote girls' education.
Before flying to Cambodia, the First Lady visited Japan, a major donor to the initiative.
Alongside Cambodia, the initial recipient countries are Albania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Georgia, Ghana, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Togo and Uganda.
The trip comes at a time when the White House is pursuing its foreign policy "pivot" towards Asia, seen by many as an attempt by Washington to counter China's meteoric rise and increasing influence in the area.
Southeast Asia is a key component of that pivot and the Americans are keen to woo the region.
During President Obama's last two trips to Asia, southeast Asia has featured prominently, including a 2012 visit to Cambodia -- a country that was once secretly carpet bombed by the US.
White House officials said his wife's trip is "meant to underscore the breadth of our interactions" within the region.
AFP
