Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pledged to give a total of $100 million to the Women’s Empowerment Fund, which Ivanka Trump has publicly supported.
The announcement came at an event that Trump attended while visiting Saudi Arabia as part of the first foreign trip of her father’s presidency.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim was the one to announce the donation, saying that the two countries had pledged a combined $100 million donation to the World Bank-based fund.
He added that because of that pledge, as well as additional pledges from the U.S. and other countries, they are expecting to have accumulated $1 billion for the fund by the G-20 summit in July.
“This is really a stunning achievement. I’ve never seen anything come together so quickly, and I really have to say that Ivanka’s leadership has been tremendous,” Kim said, according to the pool report from the event in Saudi Arabia on Sunday.
The fund is intended to provide capital for small and medium sized women entrepreneurs.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for further information about the fund and will update accordingly.
Kim first announced the creation of the fund on April 26, 2017, releasing a statement applauding the support of Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“The World Bank Group is working with partners on the details around creating a facility for women’s economic empowerment, specifically through providing access to finance, markets and networks,” the statement reads. “Typically, the governance of facilities we manage is decided among donors, and the secretariat sits within and is administered by the World Bank Group. We are very grateful for the leadership Ms. Trump and Chancellor Merkel have demonstrated on this important issue.”
While specific details about the fund have not been released publicly, Trump’s connection to the fund has already prompted questions from at least one senator.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, sent a letter to the director of the Office of Government Ethics on April 28 urging them to review potential conflicts that come from both Trump’s involvement with the fund and her decision not to divest from her businesses.
“I am concerned that Ms. Trump’s refusal to divest from her business interests, and her creation of a fund to solicit foreign money, provides foreign governments an opportunity to improperly influence United States trade and foreign policy,” Wyden wrote in the letter.
During the presidential election, Donald Trump was a frequent critic of the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from Saudi Arabia and other countries with bad human rights records.
“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!” Trump wrote in a Facebook post on June 13, 2016.
He reiterated that sentiment during the first presidential debate as well, saying that countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar “are people that push gays off … buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money … why don’t you give back the money?”
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