Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
42nd United Nations Inter-Agency Games: Opening Cermony : Opening Remarks
29 April 2015, Salou, Tarragona, Spain
Good evening, buenas tardes, bienvenida, welcome to the Opening of the 42nd United Nations Inter-Agency Games.
The Games were founded with the goal to improve mutual understanding, working relations and the wellbeing of UN staff and the UN agencies in which they work. The Games attract, mobilize and inspire participation, and they require respect, teamwork and fairness, and this, the 42nd games, is a reflection of the hard work and dedication to these principles by all the UN staff involved, from those who have the honour of organizing them, to those who travel the many miles from UN duty stations from around the world to participate in them.
This year, ITU staff celebrate our sesquicentennial anniversary, and we invite you to celebrate with us our past and present staff who have contributed over 150 years of technological development that has resulted in today's telecommunication ecosystem, the single most important engineering feat in history, which brings benefits to education, health, and wealth around the world.
Over the years, ITU staff have contributed to the birth of the modern sporting era, by enabling newspapers to report on the first Olympic Games in 1896 through the use of the international telegraph system, by enabling the first ever live radio broadcasts from the Chamonix winter Olympics in 1924, the first television coverage at the Tokyo Games in 1964, through to the most recent Games in Beijing and London which were the most widely broadcast and widely communicated events in human history.
Today, ITU seeks to address many other challenges, and like sport, information and communication technologies (ICTs) can promote social inclusion, sustainable economic development, peace, fraternity, tolerance and justice. The fight for gender equality is on the ITU agenda for the games, and we are pleased to welcome over 600 women and girls to the 2015 Games! Appropriately our ITU 150th anniversary theme for this month is Girls and Women and Innovation. We champion the empowerment of women through ICTs: to foster self-esteem and empowerment; to facilitate social support and inclusion; to provide opportunities for leadership and achievement. In short, all the things that the spirit and principles of these Games strive to do.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The 42nd UN Inter-Agency Games provides a useful and unique reminder that we are all part of the One United Nations family. It is a wonderful opportunity to exchange experiences and meet colleagues from all around the world.
Over the coming days, there will be many winners but there will be no losers – because the important thing, the thing that makes everyone here a winner, is to take part, to make new friends and renew old friendships, and to enjoy the time we spend here together on the beautiful Costa Daurada.
Before closing let me thank Leroy Brown, the Chairman of the Organizing Committee, and his team for all their efforts, our partners Salou and PortAventura (congratulations on your 20th anniversary) for offering us these excellent facilities and for your wonderful hospitality, as well as the UNFCU for its financial support.
Thank you all for participating. I wish you all a wonderful evening and a very enjoyable games.
It gives me great pleasure to declare the 42nd Inter-Agency Games open !
