Thank you.

I am very glad to be here with so many distinguished women, and of course, so many attractive and courageous men. As always, International Women's Day is a time for celebration, but it's also a time for sober reflection. We are making great progress - and exactly because we are making progress, we are finding that the opposition is becoming louder and more extreme. The parents among you may find that in your families; the ones losing the argument always shout loudest. But that isn't to say we can ignore the opposition. They have support among some grown-ups, or at least among people who have grown-up jobs.

Even without the opposition, we have a very long way to go before we end poverty among women. Statistics tell interesting stories. And where statistics are lacking, that tells a story too. In the case of women, statistics are lacking in almost all areas. We don't even know how many of the poor are women. The best information we have is that 70 per cent are women and children. According to IFAD, two-thirds of the rural poor are female, and 28 per cent of households are headed by a woman. Women-headed households tend to be poor, because there is only one person doing the work; but there are also plenty of poor women in male-headed households-we don't know how many.

The huge, persistent problem of deep and very widespread poverty among women needs a solution proportional to its importance. We have many special programmes for women, but we need a more systematic approach. After many years of these efforts, it seems to me that it is time to switch the bulk of antipoverty programming towards women and gender concerns.

This proposal is ambitious, but it isn't out of proportion. For example, gender equality has its place as one of the Millennium Development Goals. But all the Millennium Development Goals depend to some extent on achieving women's empowerment and gender equality. The Millennium Project can't succeed without women; and women can't succeed unless the Millennium Development Goals give them close attention.

You won't be surprised to hear me say that much more money and effort is needed for women's reproductive health. This too makes perfect sense in terms of the Millennium Development Goals. Reproductive health and rights are the basis for all other aspects of women's empowerment.

Reproductive health-and I have to spell this out-includes safe motherhood; family planning, protection from sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS; and freedom from gender-based violence. Reproductive health, for men as well as women, is simply a human right. High levels of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion, and high risk of HIV/AIDS infection, deny women their human rights. As a cause of death in developing countries, maternal mortality ranks 5th. Pregnancy takes more lives than tuberculosis and malaria. ( 1990 figures )

The HIV/AIDS pandemic throws gender issues into sharp relief. Women are physically and socially more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection. Women are now the majority of new infections. Young women are more likely to carry the infection than men their own age, which makes its own comment on the sexual behaviour of older men.

Yet, in many countries, we find women taking the blame for spreading the pandemic-not only sex workers, but all women. We find husbands blaming wives. We find men blaming young women for promiscuity, and we find men trying to protect themselves from infection by seeking out younger and younger girls. Sometimes they are the same men.

At the same time we find refusal in some quarters even to consider prevention efforts in the high-risk groups: among sex workers; among men who have sex with men, or among intravenous drug users. We find the same sort of denial among parents who keep information and education from their children, especially their daughters, even though the girls are more at risk.

We must fight these attitudes with all our strength. We must help people who need help, not sit in judgement on their behaviour. If we are to defeat HIV/AIDS we must look at the pandemic through the lens of tolerance, not the lens of prejudice. One of the members of UNFPA's Executive Board put it very well. He said, "My daughter and I may disagree about the morality of her sexual behaviour. But our disagreement should not mean her death."

The opposition chooses to see all these issues through the lens of abortion. This is a strategic choice - abortion is a highly sensitive and emotionally-charged issue. But the real target is women's empowerment and gender equality. This idea that women should be free to determine their own fates simply terrifies some people.

The opposition has been quite unprincipled. They have deliberately misrepresented the nature and content of reproductive health; and they have ruthlessly pressured international conferences to adopt their strange and distorted view of women's lives. It is greatly to the credit of member states that they have stoutly resisted this pressure, most recently at the Fifth Asian Conference on Population and Development in December. At that conference, some of the poorest and least powerful countries in the world stood firm, against both incentives and coercion. The conference ended with a ringing endorsement of the consensus on reproductive health and gender equality, from the whole Asia-Pacific region. It was a remarkable outcome.

I hope that all parts of the United Nations system will take heart from this example of what countries really want.

The opposition will continue their attempts to derail the international consensus. We must not allow them to do that. I can tell you from experience - it is useless to compromise with them. Withdrawing or watering down essential language in consensus documents does not work. Extremists and ideologues see negotiation as weakness, and they simply take advantage of it to push their agendas. We should listen, note their reservations, and move on. I think as a start that we should include reproductive health as one of the indicators towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals-whatever the opposition says.

Experience shows that the United Nations process works. When I joined UNFPA in 1970 we could not even discuss family planning in most countries, let alone support it. Today, the question is not whether we support it, but how well we support it. That is what consensus means in practice.

Using experience as our guide, we can go forward. We must go forward. Cairo and Beijing showed that differences in national or cultural approaches can be settled with honesty and good will. We can find a common approach to all questions-even the most sensitive issues, like adolescent reproductive health-if we maintain our principles: if we respect national sovereignty on one hand and human rights on the other.

We need to move forward, because, as I said in Cairo in 1994, consensus is only a paper promise. Success depends on action. I hope that all countries will commit themselves to the Millennium Development Goals, and turn their principles into practice. I hope the rich and powerful will help the poor and weak. And I hope that all parts of the UN system will support their efforts.

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