 Indeed, I'm very grateful also to be in a position to be given the opportunity to speak about the soft power of UNESCO within the series on Development, Matter, Secure Lectures. I'm particularly pleased to be here at the Institute for International and European Affairs within my first official visit to Ireland. And if you allow me, I would like to say that I'm feeling very much at home. I started this morning my day with the wonderful exchange and breakfast that I was very happy to be invited by His Excellency, Mr. Michael Higgins, the president of Ireland, whom I had the honour of hosting a year ago, almost exactly a year ago. At that time, President Higgins spoke about the central importance of UNESCO in building peace through recognition of the power of culture. Obviously, a title like that is bound to go down very well at UNESCO. But I would say that his lecture went much deeper than that. President Higgins spoke of the power of culture and diversity for dialogue and understanding. I believe this is a passion that he shares and he shared this morning once again with me. And he did argue at the time that cultural space is wider than the economic space. And he said, and he reiterated it this morning, that we must put the stamp of common humanity on all current changes to build peace on human rights and dignity. And I would say that maybe you are used to your president, if I may say so, to his words and his thoughts. But I would say that we are not. And that is why his words were so highly acclaimed by delegations at headquarters. And if he was met with such appreciation, it is because also Ireland is one of UNESCO's greatest champions. Ireland is a champion of our work for education for all, for human rights education, for safeguarding also cultural heritage. And I dare say that Ireland itself embodies values which are at the heart of UNESCO. The values of human dignity, the value of equality, as we know that as Irish women and men have left their mark across the world by carrying forward these same values. And of course, I'm thinking of Irish artists as last year of Irish writers and intellectuals. And only last year UNESCO hosted two exhibitions on James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. And I believe this is also why Dublin has been nominated as a city of literature in UNESCO's creative cities network. And I think of Irish culture more widely. During just this week of St. Patrick's Day, many members I know of government are traveling. The ambassador informed it to represent Ireland with millions of Irish descendants across the world. And I would say millions of others who feel very close to Ireland. And I think we at UNESCO also feel quite close to Ireland because Ireland is a cultural powerhouse whose appeal flows from the vibrancy of its history. We know all too well that it is a history of resilience, of community, of imagination. And this is, I believe, a history that all people can share. I speak here about the soft power of UNESCO. And I believe Ireland also builds true soft power. And we need this power more than ever today. Because, ladies and gentlemen, more and more across the world, we see the crisis of hard power, a crisis of exclusive approaches to international relations, which have sometimes led to what I would call dead ends. And also because we know that the planet is under pressure and conflicts remain aflame across the globe. As we speak at this moment, and I am very sensitive to this, I just come from Jordan when I visited some of our projects on education for Syrian refugees children. And we know the horror of the violence that is raging in Syria, which is, of course, hitting hard as the civilians. And we know that also in other areas over one and a half billion people live today in fragile, all conflict-afflicted countries. We see the rise of violence driven by radical extremism, by endemic poverty, and by human rights abuses. And at the same time, there are huge opportunities as half of the world is under the age of 25. So 90% of this young population of young people is living in developing countries, and most of them in Asia, in Africa. And in many of these cases, we face what I call a crisis of future. Young people without skills, without jobs, and without hope. Our societies and cities are ever more diverse, but intolerance is also on the rise and culture lies increasingly on the frontline of conflicts. We see this both in Syria, but we see that in the attacks against the Mosulians of the fabled city of Timbukto in Mali, we see this also in many other parts of the world. These are difficult times, but as I said, they feature great opportunity. Exchanges have never been so rich, nor connections so deep. We are developing powerful new ways to share knowledge, to express ourselves. You just mentioned, Mr. Arnold, the fact that we are meeting here for the Broadband Commission with the International Telecommunication Union, where we try to breach the digital divide and to give new opportunities for technologies, innovation, to empower people, to give them not only hope, but the skills they knew. And I think also that new centers of dynamism are emerging. And we know it started also in the Arab world, but we see in many parts of the world a new quest for lives of dignity and opportunity, a new quest for greater freedoms. We speak about countries in transition, and I saw this also in Myanmar when I was there last year, when we spoke to young women and men seeking this opportunity in times of transition and peaceful change. And I saw it also in Kabul, where I visited a girl's school just half a year ago. And I saw the courage of students, teachers, and parents. And all of this, I think, is putting with the new strength, with the new commitment, the need about to rethink the meaning of progress, about what makes the foundations of peace and sustainability in this world. For decades, and we had this morning also an extremely interesting discussion with President Higgins, what measures development, whether we are satisfied also, we may confine ourselves to the economic indicators. And for all too long, this was the overriding criteria. Then we saw that human development began to be assessed with wider criteria, including life expectancy and also educational attainment. We see this in the human development reports that UNDP, of course, with the concurrence, the United Nations are published, and we are also contributing very much to developing these new indicators. And we at UNESCO strongly believe that we need new thinking again to craft a new paradigm of sustainable development that takes in all humanity. This is why I believe this debate is so important. The debate that is developing now a year and a half before the Millennium Development Goals ends in 2015, and also when the international community, the United Nations leading, we are shaping a new global development agenda to follow. We strongly believe that no single country can build sustainable human development alone, be it developed or developing country. Nor can sustainability only be a matter for governments. It must engage all parts of society. And we also deeply believe that sustainability has deeper roots than economic assets. It is about enhancing the rights and dignity of every woman and man through quality education, through freedom of expression, by safeguarding heritage, by harnessing the power of the sciences. And this is UNESCO's message which has been at the heart of our mandate since the day of our foundation in 1945. And we will never be tired of repeating the words of our Constitution, the opening words of our Constitution, which says, since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. And I believe that these words are deeply inspiring today because far from resisting change, I believe we must embrace it together to shape it in positive directions. And this is what I modestly called an appeal for a new humanism for the 21st century in this globalized and connected world. We need today a new vision of development where every citizen feels a sense of responsibility towards others and the world we live in, because we do live in a new age of limits in terms of our planet, in terms of our resources. In this context, we must make far more of the greatest renewable energy we have, human ingenuity, human talent, human intelligence, to craft solutions that are just, inclusive, and of course sustainable. This is UNESCO's vision. Lasting peace and sustainable development must begin with the rights and dignity of every woman and man, with their ability to aspire and become everything they can. This is our soft power. This is our transformative power, and it starts with education. Education is a human right, and it is essential also to individual dignity, but it is equally essential for sustainability of all development. This vision guides the global education for all campaign that UNESCO leads. And now that we stand, as I just mentioned, less than 700 days from the 2015 deadline, we have to make a very frank NCCR assessment. There has been tremendous progress, but we are still far off track, as shown by our last UNESCO education for all global monitoring report, which Ireland has long and generously supported, and I believe there will be also a particular launch here of this global monitoring report. In this report, what has been shown is a stunning, I would say, figures. And I would say, shocking sometimes, because 250 million children are not acquiring basic skills even after years in school because of the poor quality of education. Girls and women are hit hardest. There are still 31 million girls out of school. We have also two-thirds of the world's 775 million illiterate adults. And with the pace of acquiring, I would say, this progress for the future, we will reach inclusion of girls in the poorest rural areas in Africa only in the year 2086. I think we cannot speak about eradicating extreme poverty. The United Nations and the international community puts into the objective by the year 2030 eradicating extreme poverty if we keep the same current pace of achieving these goals. We cannot be satisfied with this progress. And that is why our global monitoring report and everything that we are advocating for recently is a call for action, is an alarm also to action. We need to place education on the global political agenda. We need to reach to the marginalized. We reach to where needs are most. And we need also to support the governments and communities to have a strong educational systems. And it means that we cannot agree that any single boy or girl is left behind whatever their origin, background, ethnicity and otherwise. So I believe what we at UNESCO are doing is really targeting those marginalized communities where needs are most acute. And that is why we UNESCO will lead our biggest educational program in Afghanistan reaching 600 men and women with literacy. We are training also Afghani police where two-thirds of the Afghani police are illiterate and we cannot expect that they are protecting the rights of the citizens and they are really up to the expectations of the society if they lack some basic literacy skills. And this is also where we work with the government of Pakistan. I was last month in Pakistan and we launched the Malala Fund for Girls' Rights to Education working with the government, working with the traditional and religious leaders in the places where the needs are most acute. And we need a global push on education. We need to do what is most important by the year 2015 and then, of course, to set an ambitious new agenda to follow. And this was the goal of our supporting United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his launching of the Global Education First Initiative with UNESCO is tearing forward. This is where also we expand our partnership with the private sector. We think that this is an agenda of such a huge proportion and importance for all governments and for all countries that we need to involve all the members of the society. We need, of course, to work mainly for governments. We need to bring the private sector on board. We need to work closely also with the civil society. And we are expanding our global partnership on girls and women's education that I launched in 2011 with the United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, was at headquarters and the then Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, working also with the private sector and working with the civil society. And we have many success stories here to say in terms of how we can make a true impact on the ground. Just mentioning a strong partnership that we started with Procter & Gamble, leading girls and women's literacy project, targeting the secondary education, dropouts of girls, early marriages, early pregnancies, keeping girls in school, which has a wider positive impact on development in the countries. So this is also where I would like to briefly mention, if you allow me, another aspect of UNESCO's work. And this is where culture is seen also as another source of soft power. And I believe Ireland knows this very intimately. Ireland boasts two sites on universal significance on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Band of the Boine, as well as the Scalic Michael. The vibrancy of Irish living heritage, I believe also, as we call it, sometimes intangible heritage and others, I believe is also particularly important for the Irish people, and to some extent also can reach out to the other countries. And this heritage and diversity, we consider, is a strong bond and source of belonging and identity. But it is also a wellspring for creativity and bridge, as I said, for reaching out to others. Our UNESCO's message is quite clear, and we share this with Ireland, that no society can flourish without culture, no development is sustainable without it. This is why we are in this particular moment rebuilding the Muslims, destroyed Muslims by extremists in Timbukto. And this is why also we are working to protect and preserve the heritage, a rich heritage of Syria during a very challenging time of conflict. And we just launched last week a joint statement with United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, to hold the destruction and looting of Syria's heritage. Because if you distract heritage, you distract identities, and you don't have a where to sit on, where to be based, your future efforts of reconciliation and of rebuilding your country and your heritage. So I believe that here is UNESCO's work on the cross-cutting between our different works in education, in the culture and the sciences, the work that we do in the biodiversity, protecting biodiversity, protecting also the jail parks. And I had very interesting meetings also this morning with the very strong jail park networking branch here in Ireland. And we know that you have here in Ireland two biosphere reserves, the North Bull Island and the Kilarni. In both are living laboratories for sustainability and for sustainable development. So I believe that this gives us the strength and the commitment and the belief, the conviction at UNESCO that the soft power, the power of education, the power of culture, of the sciences, of the communications is so important nowadays in order to broker ideas, to bring the right actors together to mobilize collective action for global goods, of course, on the basis of the shared values and the values of human rights and human dignity. And all by UNESCO is not an aid agency, we are not delivering financial aid, we are crafting our transformative power for societies has an immensely, I would say, outreach and creating a better condition for sustainability in every development. And I believe that the vital work that we are doing in order to, I would say, reform, in order to sustain human dignity and human rights is so important nowadays that we also craft our own reform at UNESCO. Because we are more than convinced that the demand for our mandate is also a hope for a better future for millions, if not billions of people in the world. And I started, as I said, this morning with the wonderful exchange, very inspiring exchange by President Higgins. And I know that apart from being a president, he is also an intellectual with the wider, I would say, interest and contributions. And when he came last year to UNESCO, I was also very inspired by the fact that he's a poet, he's publishing also poems. And I would like to assign, to cite a line, some lines from his poem when he said that the stuff of hope beckons out of the darkness, out of the darkness we step and blink into the new light. I think this is really very inspiring to see that there are always opportunities in this world. And this stuff of hope, I believe, lies in education, in the culture, in the protection of heritage, in outreaching to the others, in the freedom of expression, in the power of the new technologies. And this is precisely the soft power which is within our mandate in a globalizing world. And this is our UNESCO's message today. So I thank you for this opportunity.