Mrs. Clinton Ends Trip Determined to Help Women

Winding up a 12-day journey through the storied lands of the Indian subcontinent, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the poverty and promise she saw had reinforced her determination to help women gain a stronger voice.

Mrs. Clinton said she and her 15-year-old daughter, Chelsea, came away “overwhelmed . . . by the conditions that some of the people we saw and met were living in, but also very moved by how people were attempting to make the most of whatever situation they found themselves in.”

Their travels through Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka took them from the grandeur of presidential palaces to the grit of remote villages.

Professional women told Mrs. Clinton of the obstacles they had surmounted in this male-dominated society; vegetable vendors told of their yearning to send their daughters to school.

The First Lady defended her decision to avoid confronting her hosts about widespread rights abuses, saying her effort to improve the lot of women and girls was itself a campaign for human rights.

“I don’t think girls and women get as much attention on a regular basis as some of the well-publicized other instances of human rights concerns,” she said. “I believe we have to emphasize as much as possible that the denial of education, the denial of basic health care, the denial of basic choices to girls is a human rights issue.”