 We're very honoured to have Dr. Babatunde Oztiman here today, Under Secretary General of the United Nations with Executive Responsibility for the UN, UNFPA as I knew it, the UN Population Fund. And he has been here to launch the World Population 2016 report this morning with the Irish Planning Association. And I think they have hit on a master stroke by looking at the 10-year-old girl in the world today in various countries and tracking the progress of 10-year-old girls over the next 15 years, the length of time of the sustainable development goals. So by the time they're 25 to see how they are doing. Dr. Babatunde is, as I said, Under Secretary General and Director of the Population Fund, a physician and a global health leader. And he's had a number of prestigious positions in several academic and health organisations, including Provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan and Chair of the National Action Committee on AIDS in Nigeria, Director General of Nigeria's National Action Committee on AIDS, and Health Minister of Nigeria before taking up his present position in 2011. So I think without further ado, I'll pass the microphone to you, Dr. Babatunde. And we'll be very interested to hear your presentation today. I want to start by thanking the Director General for inviting me, Tom Arnold. And he and I share commonalities with David Nabarro, and we've just been talking about him. So I was asked to speak about women's health and gender equality, and we could do that for the rest of the year. But I think, you know, given the centrality of gender equality in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, I think it's a very apt subject to speak to. The new development agenda calls on all of us to lead no one behind, and to start with the farthest, with those farthest behind. And we know all too often that these are women and girls in every circumstance. And I think it's important to state here that the development, the Sustainable Development Goals is not about developing countries. It's about all of us. It's universal, and all of us have to be part of it. And when you look at women and girls, women and girls are left behind everywhere. The pay, the gender pay gap is an index of what is happening just about in every community. And I was telling a group just now that I was very surprised when I got to the United States, I've lived there now for, it's my sixth year, that corporate America does not actually give maternity leave to women. It's like, where did that come from? But it tells you the frame in which women are held and what the mean to the world. And which is wrong? Because I believe and I've lived it all the time that women are better in management, women are better in many circumstances. And if you give them the opportunity, they will show themselves. I used to teach in a medical school. And my best students were girls. And they are the ones who stay with the patients. They are the ones who look after them. They are the ones who deliver. The boys are busy playing football or snooker. And they don't come to the table. They don't do what they have to do. But unfortunately, when it comes to selection and when it comes to the way we place them going forward, they disappear. And so I think it's important that we begin to address this. Now, around the world, women and girls feel the greatest impact of poverty, of climate change, of food insecurity, lack of health care and education. I mean, health care. And I will say this because I was in Japan last year. We're talking about the issues of gender in Japan. Japan has the largest number of long-living people. I mean, that is the oldest country in the world. But of course, within that demographic, women live longer than men. But you know what happens? The women who outlive their husbands actually are poor because the system doesn't look after them in a way like you expect them to be looked after. So in a sense, in every circumstance, we have to continue to think about it and make sure that we look after them. And today, 65 million people have been displaced from their homes. So migration and refugees is something that we have to contend with. And women and girls make up an increasing proportion of migrants. And the face of the migrant today is the face of the girl. And their rights are increasingly under threat. So displaced women and adults and girls are at a height in risk of violence, rape, trafficking, and sexually. And I think we have to ensure that as we take all this into consideration, these are the things we must act upon. And whether women live or die in crisis, settings often depends on whether they can access basic sexual and reproductive health services. This includes pregnant women who may face potentially life-threatening childbirth complications. Yet in humanitarian settings, these services often take a back seat to other urgent needs. And I'm sure that if I ask you today what would be your first priority if there is a crisis, you would tell me food, sanitation, water, and shelter. Nobody thinks of the dignity of women. But it's very important. And, you know, just how we satisfy that and we look after that is so critical in going forward. So the health and the well-being of women's world, of women's, world's women and girls must be top priority if you are to achieve the sustainable development goals. So what I'm talking about is in peace and in conflict and in disasters, we have to have systems and mechanisms in place to look after them and to ensure that they get what they require for us to be able to have a sustainable system. Now, so the peaceful, stable, and prosperous future we all want for our healthy planet is totally dependent on the welfare and the way we look after our women and girls. And so when you look at the sustainable development goals, the world leaders recognized that and the family embedded gender equality and women and girls empowerment throughout, you know, no matter which of the 17 goals you look at, there is a piece of it that speaks to empowerment of women and girls. And I think that that's something we must carry with ourselves all the time now. Also, I must say and there was a conversation on this morning that when it comes to, and I'm going to talk to some SDGs, but I want to put a prefix to it. When we talk about the sustainable development goals, they are supposed to be implemented together. We are not supposed to now say the priority for Ireland is SDG 5. No, because SDG 5 is dependent on one, two, three, four, and on peaceful societies and, you know, all the things that we put there. So you have to put all of them together for it to make sense. So it is with that prefix that I will talk to SDG 5, which specifically calls for an end to discrimination against women and girls and the elimination of all forms of violence and harmful practices. And let me say there are some things that are violent. We all agree to that. But to also say that one in three women in the world, no matter where they are, will suffer gender-based violence in their lifetime. One in three. So it's a pandemic. Many people don't talk to it, but it's there. But there are some things that stand out. Early and forced marriage. I mean, those are things that we cannot accept. How do you marry a 10-year-old? How do you marry a 9-year-old? What kind of man will marry a 9-year-old? I mean, those are things that we have to stand up to and say we have to stop. And just before we came here, we were talking about female gender mutilation. You know, why would you go and mutilate your daughter? And in the name of culture, there's no culture that destroys people's bodies and lives. And I think that, you know, we have to stand up and speak against this and try to make sure that it stops. Now, SDG 3 aims at ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for women at all ages and contains targets on reducing maternal mortality and ensuring universal access, sexual and productive health, and care services, including family planning. Now, I think it also links to SDG 5. Why should we as societies stand by and allow a woman to die trying to give life? It's not acceptable. And I think we have to look at it from a rights perspective. We count and should not look at it as health. Because when you look at it as health, you reduce it. You know, this woman is pregnant, she's going to give life. And to that extent, we have to invest in that life to ensure that in giving life, she doesn't lose our life. Now, that's a right. That is not something we must compromise. But we do compromise it because it goes back to the value we place on the women in our societies. And we don't do enough to protect them. I'll tell you a story. I went to a neighboring country, to Nigeria, when I was minister of health. And I got to the hospital because they thought, as a doctor, they should show me a hospital. I'm tired of looking at hospitals. But they took me there. And I entered and I saw this woman who was in labor. They said, how long has she been in labor? Been in labor for 36 hours. So I asked the doctor, so why have you not done anything with her? I said, oh, you know, she has to pay. I said, no, this is unacceptable. How much is it? I'll give her the money. So now he says, minister, you don't have to pay me. I said, no, because that's what you just told me that she has to pay. Anyway, they went ahead and tried to operate as she died, the child died, which you can expect. But I asked a further question. So where's the husband? The husband brought and dumped and left. I think that husband should be prosecuted because how do you, how are you responsible for the pregnancy of a woman? You take her to hospital, you live and you disappear. And you don't care what happens to her. But that tells you the value that he places on that woman and on the child she's going to bear. And when I asked, okay, so what is the attitude of society? Society looks at it and says, he can always take another wife. So in a sense, it's about value systems, about how we look at this and we want it to have. Now, SDG4 is on quality education and calls for elimination of gender disparities in education and ensuring equal access to all levels of education. That means that all girls and the ones that we're talking about, the 10-year-olds, must have access to science, technology, mathematics, engineering, everything that boys get into. So you should stop profiling girls to say, oh, you're going to go to teacher training, you're going to be a nurse, you're going to be a secretary. That's not the way it should be because, as I said, my medical students, the female medical students that I teach are the best that I've come across. So in a sense, what you are saying is we should have a level playing field for everybody, particularly women. But all the SDGs from eradicating poverty to protecting ecosystems and promoting peaceful societies depend on the empowerment of women and girls and ensuring that they can have access and exercise their rights. The 2030 Agenda's comprehensive integrated approach to development recognizes that we can't just focus on individual problems in isolation. We need to make connections for truly a transformative change to happen. It's also a universal agenda that I said that before to all countries rich and poor. And this is critical because what we face are universal challenges. Issues such as child marriage, adolescent, pregnancy, and female gender modulation are not just confined to a few developing countries. For example, it is estimated in the United Kingdom 65,000 girls under 13 are at the risk of FGN. Moreover, many of the gains we have seen in recent decades in reducing maternal and child mortality, improving access to sexual and reproductive services, including family planning, boosting girls, school enrollment, and so on, mask significant inequalities in our societies. Beyond that, I also see that there's a rollback in many Western countries of some of these things. I was in Paris the other day when I saw a large group of women marching in Poland. These are issues we have to continue to jury. It is not static, it's dynamic, and we have to continue to make sure that even for the progress we've made in countries like this, we cannot afford to stand still. And even in some weather countries, inequalities prevent most vulnerable marginalized and excluded, especially women and girls, from realizing their rights, including their rights to health. Whilst women's rights, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, are key to achieving many of the sustainable development goals, there's a strong pushback on gender equality. And women's empowerment in many places. This is especially true with respect to SRHR, sexual and reproductive rights, which are the foundations for a life of choice, empowerment, and equality for the women, for the world's women and girls. Too many women and girls, particularly the poor, still live without access to SRH services, including family planning. And so it should come as no surprise that one third of the world's burden of disease for women between the ages of 15 and 44 is related to poor sexual and reproductive health. Too many women continue to have more children than they would prefer to have. And as I speak, 225 million women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy are not able to do so because they don't have access to effective contraception. Every year, some 300,000 women still die during pregnancy and childbirth. And this is the second largest leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. Adults in childbirth are as declined, but it's still high in many countries. In fact, when you look at the band of Latin America and the Caribbean, that is the one thing that they want to resolve, which they are not able to resolve. But when you don't do a critical analysis of it, what you see is that teenage pregnancy is consigned to the poor in those countries. So poverty and exclusion is an issue which we have to continue to worry about. So every day when you add it up, adults and girls and women have been left behind. Now I've just come from the launching of the UNFPA, State of the World Population, for 2016. And the report shows that our collective future depends, to a very large extent, on the investments we make in today's adult and girls. When a girl reaches the age of 10, the beginning of a journey through adolescence are world changes. And in a sense, it depends on where she is. In some parts of the world, age number 10, as we saw Hannah, who was presented to me today, it can be a time of exploration, expanding horizons, new possibilities. But in some other parts, and in large part of the world, it can be a time when girls, horizons, choices and opportunities contract and bearers emerge on their path to adulthood. In some countries and communities when a girl reaches age of 10 and approaches puberty, she may suddenly be seen not as a girl capable of anything that she says her mind to, but as a commodity that may be sold, traded or trafficked for marriage, for childbearing, free labor and for sexual exploitation. Although risks are bound for both boys and girls, gender discrimination makes this risk worse for girls in almost every way. And the consequences in loss of health, empowerment, education and opportunities for work are profound. Communities and societies potentially feel the impact if they understand it. And every day, about 47,000 girls, many of them as young as 10, are the risk of early and forced marriage. With child marriage comes pregnancy and with child pregnancy comes the health risks and curtailed education, undermining girls' prospects for jobs and self-sufficiency. I mean, I'm not sure how many of you have seen these girls who have developed fistulas in their lives. Fistula destroys the lives of these girls because they have to be taken away from their social context. They actually are thrown out of homes. They are outcasts in their societies. And in many circumstances, they never recover. Even when you go ahead and repair the fistula, it's difficult for them to reintegrate society. And they're young. So a girl develops a fistula at 11 or 12, it's difficult for her to even go back to school or do anything with herself. And somehow it is this sort of thing that you see that tells you that society has to do something about empowerment and gender equality because that's the way it's going to be. So for many of these, for millions of girls, the level of poverty marks the beginning of a lifetime of poverty and powerlessness. Now, their lives stop being their own and they're dozed to the future slam short. This is an unforgivable injustice and a violation of the fundamental rights of these girls. But when a girl injusta rights is able to stay in schools, stay healthy, and is protected from child marriage and early pregnancy, she has a better chance of realizing full potential by the time she reaches adulthood. She will be better equipped to find a job and a good wage and seized opportunities as they arise. And the report that we just launched shows that girls who reach adulthood with an education and their health and rights intact stand to triple their lifetime income. High incomes are greater and greater productivity, of course, have the full progress of their own personal economy and the economy of their communities and their countries. I must say immediately that as a rights advocate, I never like to talk of women in terms of money. But you know, that's the only, that's the one way that ministers of finance listen to me because when I say, well, listen, I mean, I can double your GDP. If you train this, then you see the light up because that's the only thing they like to hear from you, even when they're women, even when the ministers are women, you know, sometimes like you should know that I shouldn't tell you. Now, over the next 15 years alone, developing countries together stand to gain a profit at least 21 billion US dollars, depending on whether they invest in the well-being and education and the independence of these 10-year-old girls. Now, you might think that that number is small, but considering that it covers many countries, it might be small. But for the individual girl, the gains are very substantial, the ability to who she wants to be, ability to have a job, ability to start a business, ability to marry when she wants to marry, to have children when she wants to, if she wants to have children and the number she wants to have and the distance between the one and the next. It's such a profound thing to the lives of these individuals. Research has shown that a girl who makes a safe and healthy transition through adolescence to adult youth has her status in a household and the community and invests and back into our household. And as was said earlier, even the children that bear are better off than those of the girls who don't go to school. We know that if a girl has children before she's 18, the livelihood of that child as compared to those who have children after 18 are very different. Survival is different and the quality of life they get is much, much, much better. So now, so when you, you know, if you try to ensure that we do that, we can, we can set in motion a circle of social and economic empowerment that can last for generations. The benefit of keeping a 10-year-old girl's life on track are indisputably large. Doing so requires support from and investments by everyone around her, the family, the community, and government. Men and boys have a critical role in tearing down the barriers that prevent girls from realizing their full potential. We would never achieve gender equality without addressing social norms and gender stereotypes that perpetrate the belief that women and girls are worth less than boys and men because they're not. So how do we keep the girls' life on track? Three things are critical. First, end all practices that harm girls. That means we must enact and enforce laws that prohibit child marriage, that ends female gender mutilation and protecting girls from violence. And it's not about just carefully choosing words. Enact and enforce because if you don't, then it doesn't work. That means that you must work from level of policy all the way to communities to make sure that that works. Second, enable girls to stay in school. That's critical. School education transforms society considerably and at least through high school. And studies after study have shown that the longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to become pregnant as an adolescent. The more likely to grow up healthy and join the paid labor force. Third, we must provide extra support to marginalized and impoverished girls who have traditionally been left behind. And we've seen that happen. Societies that have difficulties like that, we've given conditional cash transfers that ensure that the girls go to school and stay in school. And I think we've demonstrated that the poverty that goes with this is something we can alleviate and make sure that these girls do better. Make sure girls, before they reach poverty, have access to information about their bodies. I've never understood it. Why people tell me that I cannot talk to boys and girls about their bodies. And they tell me, oh, it's because, you know, when you do so, you can induce them to become gays and lesbians. And I'm like, how is that supposed to happen? Oh, yeah, you know, you don't know. I say no. Because I'm a doctor. I've been a doctor for 45 years. I know what you're talking about. You know, a girl should know that she's going to go from a child to an adult. And there are physiological and atomic things that would happen to her during that period of time. So she can take responsibility for her body. She can actually look after sanitation and be told and understand their vulnerabilities. And in those circumstances, can prevent things from happening to her. Early, you know, pregnancies, teen pregnancies, infections, HIV, all of that. Those are things that we can actually prevent if you tell them what's going on. I was astounded. And I actually had to, I had to, I really had to fight a minister in Southern Africa because, you know, he was talking about, oh, no, no, no, we don't want to do it. I say, really? You have the highest prevalence of HIV in the world amongst adults and girls in your country. Only 27% of them know how HIV is transmitted. How do you want to defend that? So you're telling me you should not tell them what's happening. And incidentally, it is the adult men in those societies that are transmitted HIV, not the boys. So in a sense, this is something which we must push and use evidence all the time to talk about what's going on. Now, adults and girls and young people need access, and I've just said it, to compare sexuality education, whether they're in school or out of school, and sexual and reproductive health services, including contraception. So they should be able to say, I don't want to get pregnant now. I want to stay in school. I want to do things. And you know, people argue against it, but you know what? These girls access it and they get it. And if you don't tell them what is the right thing to do, they go and get it from the internet or get it from friends and they run into trouble. I've actually had a girl stand up before me and say, you know, I didn't know I was going to get pregnant. I say, really? Yeah, yeah, it says, you know, because a friend told me that if I have sex standing up, I'm not going to get pregnant. I mean, you understand? I mean, like, no. Then, you know, you're wrong because you didn't get the right information for this to happen. So we must protect that right to information and give them the appropriate information. We have every reason to prioritize the development of every girl's capabilities. Our collective future depends on this. In fact, I always say that the real test of the success of the new development agenda will be whether each of today's 60 million, 10-year-old girls will be healthy, educated and productive in 2030. It is possible. So we have 24 years to get there. So we have to start now and we have to put in place mechanisms that ensure that that happens. And that implies it's not government alone. It's civil society. It's the private sector. It's the media. It's everybody who must ask the questions. We must insist that these things happen because if we don't, then 50 years on the road, we'll ask ourselves, so where did you lose it? We have today a better program than we did with the MDGs. We have today a program that actually has indicators for all of this. We have today an understanding amongst ourselves. When I was talking to Michael earlier today, we need to also mobilize societies to understand it. Communities must understand that this is not business as usual. They must invest in this. And investment is not just about money. Investment is about expertise. Investment is about everything that we have. Today we have a better society, more informed society, more connected society. We can transmit information and get information better than we've ever done before. So it is possible to do it, but we have to get ourselves to do it. And we cannot do it as Ireland or as the UK or as Nigeria or Tanzania or Indonesia. We have to do it as a global community because what works here can actually work someplace else. And we can share those, the knowledge, the expertise, the information. So we don't reinvent the wheel in many parts of the world. We can do it. And that is what this is all about. Universality, sharing information, open borders. Let's do it and let's get these there. We cannot, at this stage, afford to squander the potential. And even more important, we cannot, and the 10-year-old girl of today would not forgive us, when she gets to 24, 25, and she understands that we had those, we had the chances and we just squandered it. Because it's only then that we can have the world, the world world. I thank you.