Allow us to join our voices with others in thanking the Chinese Government and the Chinese women in particular for their hospitality. We are also indeed very grateful to the Secretary General, Mrs. Gertrude Mongella and the secretariate for this opportunity given to the rural women of the world. Truly, this is the first time the rural women are seen and heard on a platform like this. We are no longer invisible and voiceless. Your Excellencies, allow me to explain what we mean by rural women.
Rural women are knowledgable and endowed with skills, talents and creativity.
They are hard working producers who are not poor but impoverished. 200 million in the rain forests and another 850 million on dryland in danger of desertification. Despite all this, they remain unrecognised, voiceless, invisible, powerless and impoverished. They remain poor because of socio-economic and cultural structures that keep them entrenched in poverty. Furthermore they continue to suffer from the injustice of globalization which is characterised by exploitation of the natural resources, loss of traditionally used formulae and technics through patent rights and the use of modern insensitive approaches to rural technology.