Statement of Costa Rica, September 2016

“We have advocated, and shall continue to advocate, that a Woman should occupy the office of Secretary-General for the first time in history. We have reached a new milestone in history by having six extraordinary Women, including a Costa Rican, as candidates for the position of UN Secretary General. The transformation demanded by humanity requires new sensibilities and forms of exercising leadership.

Mr. President of the General Assembly,

My goal is that my daughter Inés, who is 10 years old right now, will tell her descendants of a strange former era, where Women did not earn as much as men for the same task, that they were not equal owners of the means of production, where the care of children was a chore largely reserved for themSelves and where their sexual and reproductive rights were not safeguarded. That strange era is the one which We must leave behind, in the same Way that we slowly leave behind other Scourges Such as slavery, discrimination in any of its many forms, or consumerism war as the basis of Our economy which is destroying Our shared home, Mother Earth.”