I should not need to.
Violence afflicting women and abuse, especially against women and children, are still prevalent.
And the victims of poverty, as we know, are above all women and children. Our most urgent task therefore is to help eradicate poverty through bold policies which lift the poor, and especially poverty-stricken women and girls, through education, decent work and sustainable livelihood, a more equitable sharing of resources, full access to information and to communication technologies and, underlying all this, through the uncompromising respect of their fundamental human rights. This agenda is a tall one and we must mobilise all our energies, capacities and resources to succeed. Five years after the Beijing Conference, we need to state again, loud and clear, that there can be no sustainable development, neither locally nor globally, if the intellectual capacities, creative potential, practical resourcefulness and leadership abilities of more than half of the world s population are ignored or suppressed. I salute individuals and organisations who are providing leadership and inspiration on the path to gender equality.