Twenty-Eighth World Health Assembly Geneva, 13-30 May 1975 II. [antikvár]

VERBATIM RECORDS OF TEIE PLENARY MEETINGS FIRST PLENARY MEETING Tuesday, 13 May 1975, at 10 a.m. President: Professor A. POUYAN (Iran) 1. OPENING OF THE SESSION The PRESIDENT (translation from the French): Your Excellencies, delegates, ladles and gentlemen, I am happy, on this lovely spring day, to welcome you to the Twenty-eighth World Health Assembly. I am convinced that the fine work I know you all accomplished last year in pursuit of your noble mission will be surpassed this year, at this Assembly. So, with your permission, I call the meeting to order. As President of the Twenty-seventh World Health Assembly, I have the honour to declare open the Twenty-eighth World Health Assembly. It is also a pleasure for me to welcome, on behalf of the Assembly and the World Health Organization, Mr Willy DonzL, representative of the Conseil d'Etat of the Republic and Canton of Geneva; Mr Gustave Morex, President of the Grand Conseil; Mr Raymond-A. Foex, Attorney General; Mr Pierre Raisin, Mayor of the City of Geneva; Mr Marcel Clerc, President of the Municipal Council of the City of Geneva, Mr Ernest Heer, Rector of the University of Geneva; Mr William Geisendorf, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine; Mr Winspeare Guicciardi, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, representing the Secretary General of the United Nations; the Directors-General of the specialized agencies, their representatives, and representatives of the various United Nations bodies; the delegates of Member States and the representatives of Associate Members - I extend a special welcome to the delegates of Guinea-Bissau, Grenada and Botswana, States which have become Members of WHO since the last World Health Assembly; the observers for invited non-Member States; the observers for States which have requested admission to membership of WHO; the observers for national liberation movements invited to attend in accordance with resolution WHA27.37; the representatives of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations in official relations with WHO; and the representatives of the Executive Board. I now give the floor to Mr Winspeare Guicciardi, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, representing the Secretary-General of the United Nations. 2. ADDRESS BY THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA Mr WINSPEARE GUICCIARDI (Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva): Mr President, both as representative of the Secretary-General and in my own capacity as Director-General of the United Nations Office in Geneva, I take great pleasure in welcoming you again to the Palais des Nations. The Secretary-General, Mr Waldheim, has asked me specifically to convey to you, and to the distinguished delegates, his warmest good wishes for the great and complete success of this twenty-eighth session of the World Health Assembly. The occasion provides an opportunity to look at our organizations in the wider context of the United Nations system and of the world at large. It is important to do this from time to time, to see how our own preoccupations - often rather specialized, always very absorbing - relate to those of colleagues at work in areas so diverse that one does not readily notice the connexion. But how else can we see the relevance of our day-to-day concerns to the great tasks which face the United Nations, which derive in turn from the deeper aspirations of mankind for security, material wellbeing, health and freedom? In this day of profound economic and social change perhaps the most significant undertaking of the United Nations as a system - one in which all parts of the family are somehow involved - is that of creating a new economic order. While all States do not share precisely the same vision of the future - and they made it known in their response to the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties - we knott the broad outline of the goals for - 35 -