Mr. President, distinguished Delegates,

The documents we are about to adopt clearly express the political will and commitment of the governments of the world to full and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action. For the Italian Government this commitment comes at the end of a long road that reached a turning point in 1996: a Center-Left government was elected that, for the first time ever, established the position of Minister for Equal Opportunities. Equal opportunities policies in Italy since then have been based on certain key ideas and practices:

The national report being distributed with the text of my statement describes how and in what context these key ideas have been translated into action, so I will not dwell on them. Instead I would like to talk about problems that go beyond our national dimension, regarding the connection between the Beijing policies and the global challenges facing every country and the United Nations as a whole.

The challenge of poverty. As the numbers tell us, poverty has the face of a woman. This is why Italy's development cooperation activities in Africa, the Balkans, Central America and elsewhere, have focused on key policies to fight the social exclusion of women and empower them as agents of political change and economic development. This is true both in bilateral initiatives and in our enhanced support for international agencies such as UNIFEM.

The challenge of economic globalization. For globalization to become a source of new opportunities rather than new inequalities, we must also globalize human rights, equality and equal opportunities for all women and men, throughout the world. It is on this basis that Italy has chosen to prioritize reducing the debt of the poorest countries and on the gender -sensitive social policies that should accompany it, for example through participatory decentralized development cooperation.

The challenge of preventing conflicts. We must come to terms with the tragic experiences of recent years: wars generated by ethnic and religious intolerance, and characterized by a systematic attack on the bodies and freedom of women. To prevent such conflicts, political and peace-keeping measures are not enough. We need a vision of the future that sees diversity as an asset, and treasures the ability, first and foremost of women, to build coexistence on the basis of the concrete, diversified needs of individuals and communities.

In Europe we face these challenges every day. Together we are struggling to emerge from the devastating experience of the Balkans through cooperation, democracy, and human rights. And again, we are faced with the same challenge in Sierra Leone, or in the Horn of Africa, where Italy is playing a leading role in efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. We cannot allow our perceptions of the African wars to be clouded by indifference, or worse, by racism. Nor can we forget that the victims, refugees fleeing from the Balkans and from Africa, are for the most part women, and that women are the key actors, even in such extreme circumstances, ensuring care for their families and respect for human dignity.

On all these issues, there are close ties between the themes of today's Special Session and the themes of the upcoming Millennium Summit. This lends even greater urgency to our work today and our future prospects.

In this perspective, monitoring the will of governments' to implement the Beijing commitments is not a technical issue but a highly political one. Technical instruments are obviously needed: common indicators, statistics, research methods, benchmarks and measurable goals. Legal instruments, too, are needed. The CEDAW Convention should be universally ratified, and reservations that are incompatible with its goals and purposes should be withdrawn. The CEDAW Optional Protocol should be swiftly ratified and implemented, as should the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In Beijing we established that these goals were essential. They are no less pressing today.

But above all, we need political instruments. For several years now Italy has been championing the reform and democratization of the United Nations. This reform need look no farther than the experience of women for a wealth of ideas and proposals, starting with their ability to develop dialogue and partnerships in and with civil society. Without these partnerships, the United Nations of the new millennium will never get underway, nor will the global changes advocated by the UN conferences of the 1990s, which borrowed their legitimacy, energy and vision precisely from their dialogue with NGOs.

But today's movements are not always seeking dialogue. The Seattle march against the WTO, the Washington demonstrations against the RAF, and the Genoa protests against the misuse of biotechnology were sometimes reactive rather than proactive. Nevertheless we cannot ignore their voices. We must build new strategies that embrace the most forward-looking ideas that such protests have expressed. Likewise, we must seriously consider the proposals of the Global March of Women, of the NGO Forum, and learn from the experience not just of women's organizations but also of women working in trade unions, environmental groups, and campaigns to ban antipersonnel landmines, abolish the death penalty, and advocate all human rights for all women and men.

Let me repeat this: all human rights, for all women and men. Social, cultural and economic rights: in Europe this means first and foremost the right to work, and in developing countries, the right to people-centered sustainable development. Civil and political rights: it is not enough to make these rights law if we do not tackle the democratic deficit represented by political, economic and social inequality between women and men. Last but not least: sexual and reproductive rights. We approved the substance of these rights in Cairo and Beijing. Today we should no longer hesitate to call them by their proper name, and defend them against any and all violations, no matter who commits them.

As we did in Beijing and at the conferences of past decades, I hope we shall once again manage to find a consensus on these issues, in full respect for our political and cultural diversity. We have built a great heritage, a heritage that has given strength, authority, and new political spaces to all of us, in government and in civil society.

This is why the decision whether to work toward a new world conference on women in future years, or toward other common fora, what these fora should be, and who should participate, cannot be simply absorbed in the general debate over how to follow up the UN conferences of the 1990s. Women are not one problem among many: they are half of humankind. In a globalized but paradoxically more fragmented and unequal world, women are the half that knows how to find strength through dialogue and unity, through understanding diversity while upholding equality of rights. Women can overcome the boundaries that divide continents and cultures, North and South, institutional roles and grass-roots experience.

The United Nations of the year 2000 cannot do without this resource. Empowering women, through decision-making powers and fora where their voices can be heard, is not a concession. It is an investment in our common future.