As Parliamentarians and leaders, we can learn from each other. We are all inspired by the role Indian women played in the freedom struggle of their country. We also take pride in the role played by the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, not only in the Non-Aligned Movement but also in support of the liberation of Southern Africa and in promoting the advancement of women. We recall with admiration that the first woman President of the United Nations General Assembly way back in 1953, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, was from this great country. I would like to thank those women through whose creative initiative this Conference has been organised under the auspices of the Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Partnership encompasses concepts such as equality, equal opportunity and democracy.
As such, partnership is a prerequisite for development. Furthermore, we should examine the relationship between men and women in politics, so as to enable us to devise strategies to cement the partnership between men and women. This is essential because, if we were to look only at the number of women who have been integrated into the political arena, we would surely be missing an essential element of partnership between men and women in politics, namely, the significance of gender issues in our laws and in the whole development process. This Conference is essentially about political power-sharing. This is the spirit in which our deliberations here should be conducted.