Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to join you.

Professor Ngan, Mr. Michael Suen Ming-Yeung, Secretary for Education, Professor Cheung Bing- Leung, Ms. Lina Yan, Chair of the Organising Committee, distinguished guests and fellow delegates, it is a real pleasure and privilege to be with you all at the opening of this conference, at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, situated so perfectly between the hills and sea.

Thank you to the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong, the Institute and their partners and sponsors, for organising this event - an excellent example of partnership between civil society and government, which demonstrates how much more we can achieve when we work together, far more than each of us can do on our own.

On behalf of the 151 organisations that are Members of IPPF and that I have the privilege to represent, I bring greetings and congratulations to FPA Hong Kong, on being 'young at sixty'.

FPA Hong Kong and the other Member Associations of IPPF, are community based organisations, and leading providers of  sexual and reproductive health services, education and advocacy. Together they share a collective vision of a world 'where women, men and young people everywhere have control over their bodies and therefore their destinies. Where gender and sexuality are no longer a source of inequality or stigma'.

Indeed FPA Hong Kong was one of the 8 founders of IPPF. I would like to publicly acknowledge the achievements of your volunteers and staff over 60 years. You have provided advocacy, services and education programmes in innovative ways, initially for the people of Hong Kong who farmed and fished.  And, today, you continue to adapt and reach out to diverse communities to meet their needs. You also support and mentor other organisations within the region, including IPPF partners. Your leadership has been equally important at the governance level, where it has contributed to a bold vision and mission which seek to 'safeguard important choices and rights for present and future generations'.

We meet here at a time when the world is interconnected as never before, but not, regrettably, by commitment to a shared vision of a better, brighter world for tomorrow's generation. Rather our world today is interconnected by the inexorable advance of climate change, which is all too clear in this region, and by an economic recession which undermines hard won development gains. It is a world too often connected by the inequities and injustice brought about by poverty, violence against women and girls, and the denial of human rights that occur in every country, including the right to the highest attainable standard of health, to education, bodily integrity and to development.

We also meet at a time when the world has the largest generation of young people in its history. In order to achieve change and ensure that they have that better, brighter future which is their rightful legacy, the world's leaders at global, national and local levels must invest in young people - this is the fastest way to bring about change - and there is clear evidence to prove the value of this investment.

Recently, for example, UNAIDS released results that show young people are leading the fight against HIV and AIDS, by reducing infection rates in 15 of the hardest hit countries through changing their behaviour.

But a survey carried out by IPPF last year, 15 years since the ICPD, showed we are failing young people across the globe.

Comprehensive sexuality education has the power to be a transformative catalyst in the lives of young people, to replace vulnerability with resilience, so transforming the lives of individuals, their families and communities, and freeing women and girls from violence and disempowerment so that they can, in the words of the ancient Chinese, 'hold up half the sky' alongside their brothers, husbands and partners, as is their right.

Good comprehensive sexuality education is integral therefore, to human development, to gender equity, to the fight against maternal mortality and morbidity, and HIV and AIDS, to the fight against ignorance, the barriers of class and gender, against poverty and the denial of human rights. At its best it will encourage active citizenship, and contribute to social and economic development.

No-one should die because of ignorance, or have their lives ruined, but millions do because of lack of knowledge.

Over the next few days we will learn more about the practice and pedagogy of effective health promotion, and sexuality education. This will enable us to strengthen our work in the places where people live and work, in and out of school - and this is critically important.

But there is more for us to do when we leave this conference.

In 2007, at Hyderabad, at the Asia Pacific Conference on reproductive and sexual health and rights, the young people attending issued a press statement strongly criticising the 8 Indian states that had just banned sexuality education.

We should leave here determined to follow their example, and with young people, beside us, advocate together with country governments and donors, to encourage them to invest in young people, and to convince them of the transformative impact of sexuality education on human lives, on the achievement of the MDGs, and sustainable development.

I would also suggest that while we must do this individually, it is time to collectively consider a regional approach like that taken in Mexico in 2008 when Ministers of LAC and Caribbean countries jointly committed their governments to the implementation of sexuality education in schools across their region. This would build on this conference, and its predecessors, and on the example set by Hong Kong, and enable sexuality education to play its key role as a catalyst in transforming the lives of tomorrow's generation, and their children.