UN General Assembly
2002

on whether those events would remain a tragic moment in history, or whether they would prove to be a turning point. We have been searching for an answer to a question representing the most difficult challenge to humankind: how to preserve the fundamental right of every person — the right to life. For Ukraine, “terror” and “terrorism” are not just words. For decades, the Ukrainian people lived under the oppression of terror, which was raised to the rank of State policy. Next year Ukraine will commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the induced famine which in 1932 and 1933 took the lives of over 7 million Ukrainians. That most tragic event in our modern history, caused by the totalitarian regime, was a brutal act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation. At that time the world failed to respond to our tragedy. Nor did it recognize early enough the face of fascism: certain politicians and certain States thought that that evil would bypass them. The consequences of that inaction turned out to be enormous.