Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to express here on this happy occasion my pride and my joy to the fact that UNDP has accomplished its mission here in Latvia and that the office with which we have had such a wonderful collaboration is now going to be closed in order to be able to devote its efforts and resources in those lands where needs are much direr and much greater than ours.
I would like to express Latvia's thanks to UNDP as a body for the helping hand it extended to my country during the phase of recovering its independence, of rebuilding civil society which it had lost under the totalitarian system. It was not an easy task and it is by no means over. We have enormous amount that we have to do in this country so that year by year, step by step we would continue to grow, to develop and to show progress in all the various aspects that have been covered and touched upon by the programmes of UNDP because the needs are great many and in many cases they are still extremely severe. Thank you for all the help that Latvia has received, thank you for all that has been given to us both in terms of funds, of ideas, in terms of evaluation and criticism, in terms of encouragement, but most of all in terms of human relations and of human presence here.
The experience gained in all those programmes is invaluable. We are happy to see that some of our people are able to go on into the world on an international level, and I am sure that in the future many of those present here today will do the same in one way or another. We stand ready to extend the help that we have received to others who are in worse situation than we are. The progress that we have seen in last 14 years – it is only the beginning, it is only the basis of a foundation, of a development that we need to pursue, and pursue energetically for rest of our lives and generations to come.
Humanity faces an enormous number of fundamental problems - some of them are eternal, some of them are solvable but we must do all that we can to rise up against these challenges and do the best that we can to ensure that every human being on earth is first of all taken as a something of value, that human life is valuable, that it is a worth and inherent worth that can not be denied.
We have to work towards seeing the world where women are considered as equal human beings to men and not some sort of separate and inferior race. We are looking to the world where there will not be castes where people are born into and which doom them from birth to keeping in loon and mean conditions. We would like to see a world where we do not see the strife between the ideologies and because of religious convictions. We would like to see the world where everybody can worship if they so desire and worship the God as they see it in their own manner without diminishing the rights of others and seeing their form of worship as the only correct way. We have so many challenges in the world - diseases, poverty and strife, and most of them will be with us forever but the task is to get as many countries as possible to show the sort of progress that we have been able to evidence here in Latvia in last 14 years.
And I would like to think that in that sense we are a sign of hope of what can be done if really there is a commitment and a will from a part of people to go a certain path and to build certain values. What has happened in Latvia shows that it can be done. You can go from being undeveloped to developed, you can make progress, you can change the world, you can change your own country, and, yes, you can change yourself as the beginning of it all. Thank you for the wonderful collaboration; let us continue working for the betterment each of our own country and together for the betterment of the world.
