Format: Real

Duration:4:48 mins.

Inter Press Service International Achievement Award
United Nations, New York, 11 December 2000

REMARKS BY DR. ROBERTO SAVIO
President, IPS Executive Committee
(Edited transcript)

Somehow the debate on globalisation does not come very frequently in relation with the future of the United Nations system. Some of us think that the globalisation process is coming with very great strength and somehow the intergovernmental system is not up to the task to debate governance of globalisation, or even global governance. Somehow the conferences that have been held in the decade starting from Rio and ending with the Social Summit in Copenhagen did establish some elements for global governance. But none was so controversial in efforts to bring up values, principles and rules for global governance as the one on population.

I have been a personal witness of the fact that Nafis Sadik was finding herself facing opposition not from minor quarters. I am not a diplomat. I can be very outspoken to remind you that among those opponents there was a very scattered and very great number of characters going from the Pope to the Government of the United States, to the Mullah and Islam leaders and to other countries which did join for different reasons this kind of very great alliance.

Nafis didn´t shy from having a position that was very firm and which I think for the first time in the history of the United Nations, somebody successfully did confront major powers and win that battle, which brings us to the reason why at IPS we are giving this award. We think that in the United Nations we need people who can stand up for the institution, for its ideas, for its goals, for its commitment, for its utopia. That is a fundamental task we have to face and somehow we feel that the institution has gone through too many compromises, too many assessments of realities, and that sometimes these assessments of realities do not give justice to what people are expecting from the United Nations.

Nafis was able on so a central issue like the women´s rights to dispose of themselves in issues of reproduction and health, which detached the core of male domination over the centuries and man´s concepts also in religions. She did not shy from fighting that fight and winning it. And I think we are honouring her as a symbol not only of what she did but what the United Nations should do: being at the forefront of creating a society where justice and values are shared among people all over the world. And where people who do not share those values and have different interests might be faced clearly to the fact that they do not act in the interest of humankind. That clarity of mission and that clarity of goal is essential in our view for the future of the United Nations and all of us. And this is why we have given the award to Nafis Sadik as the symbol of that fight.

And I would like now to give the IPS Award which reads: “IPS International Achievement Award 2000 presented to Nafis Sadik, Medical Doctor, and as Under-Secretary-General for her inspiring leadership of the United Nations Population Fund as its Executive Director from 1987-2000, and her fearless advocacy of the rights of women”.