Thank you, Madam Chair, for leading this important meeting. As we prepare for the five-year review of the Fourth World Conference on Women , we reaffirm our commitment to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and pledge to continue its implementation. Our review should embody, as does the Platform itself, a holistic, human rights based approach to gender equality that has at its core the recognition that society as a whole benefits from women's equality. We have faced countless obstacles and even a few serious setbacks in the past quarter of a century, but overwhelmingly we have made progress.
Women enter the twenty-first century transformed.
Quite simply, it is a different world for women, and a better world. We have cause to celebrate. It is within this historical context that the General Assembly has called for a special session to appraise and assess the progress achieved in Implementing the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action . This review will be an important milestone for the world community. Our official delegations to the Special Session should reflect the importance of that event.