UN General Assembly
2008

liberalized across the board. Every country and every region must do its fair share in that process. I would like to congratulate Ms. Navanethem Pillay, the new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the assumption of her duties and to wish her every success in that highly important post. I would also like to thank Ms. Louise Arbour for her invaluable contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights. This year, symbolically, the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights coincides with the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Latvia. In 1918, the Act of Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia declared: “All citizens, irrespective of their ethnicity, are asked to help, for the rights of all people will be guaranteed in Latvia. It will be a democratic and just State where oppression and injustice do not exist”. I am truly proud of that statement. Thirty years before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Republic of Latvia declared its adherence to