Unit 2: Selection Vocabulary 3

In 1995, we came together in Beijing, 17,000 governments from all over the world and 26,000 activists to envision a world where women and girls have equal rights, freedom and opportunity in all spheres of life.

In the 20 years since Beijing, more girls are educated, rural women have found their voices, more women hold professional positions, more women are chief executives in the private sector, more women are in parliament, and in exceptionally high percentage such as in Rwanda, more women are vying for high political office and some of us have finally broken the glass ceiling.

This simply is a clear manifestation of an unjust world that seeks to leave women behind.

This call seeks a commitment to address 12 critical areas of concern—essentially calls for the protection, education and training for women and girls, ensuring access to information and the factors for production, especially for rural women; removing the constraints that lead to participation in decision making at all levels in the society.

Liberia has a history of turbulent times but in 2013 for the first time in two decades we celebrated ten consecutive years of peace and two successful general elections.

The United Nations, human rights organisations, indigenous peoples, and all the countries of the world should concentrate their efforts on education.

You should find out what indigenous people can contribute toward a global vision, a vision of nature, of development, of community based on the oral transmission of our ancestors’ knowledge from generation to generation.

Among the nations which have suffered the most widespread human rights abuses, unpunished atrocities, murders, terror and fear, is Guatemala.

Blatant disregard for the law is rampant.

If we don’t recognise the magnitude of the problem in Guatemala, we will never come to grips with the whole issue of development both in Central America and throughout the continent.

And now, I stand before you, Mr. President—Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others—and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means “no difference.” A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene.

And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place.