Page 396 - 100 Reflections that Crafted Geneva International_V-Petrovsky_private special edition

75.

OPENING STATEMENT
BY MR. VLADIMIR PETROVSKY
DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA
AT THE “WOMEN PAGING PEACE” ROUND TABLE
TO COMMEMORATE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Palais des Nations, Room V, 8 March 2000

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to welcome all of you here on the occasion of the first

International Women's Day of the new century and the new’
millennium. More advances have been made towards real
equality for women in the last decade since the day has been proclaimed in the
late 1800's! Today's commemoration provides the perfect opportunity for
reflection upon the strides worsen have made and on the long journey ahead. It
is clear that we still have a lot of work to do if we are to make the equal rights of
one half of humanity a reality.

The United Nations strongly supports and has always been committed to
the promotion and the protection of equal rights for women. Fifty-two years
ago, the UN adopted one of the first international agreements to proclaim
gender equality as a fundamental human right, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which proclaimed the: “equal and inalienable rights of all
members of the human family.” Since then, the Organization has not ceased in
its efforts to advance the status of women worldwide and to imagine a different
future for women and men, in a society based on equality and mutual respect.

Law is one of our most powerful instruments in the struggle for social
justice and equality and the legal instruments available to us to consolidate

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