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At the International Conference on Health and Environment “Creating Sustainability”, commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Holodomor, a mass starvation in Ukraine, Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaitė, Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the United Nations, highlighted the necessity to learn from tragedies of the past, to promote democracy, the principles of good governance and the rule of law, ensuring sustainability and universal food security.

At the conference, co-organised by the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations and World Information Transfer, Inc., a non-governmental organisation, the Ambassador noted that historical experience had demonstrated that the non-compliance with these principles could have painful consequences.

“Eighty years ago the people of Ukraine had suffered one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century – the Holodomor, a mass starvation caused by the deliberate actions and policies of Stalin’s regime. Millions of people were dying from hunger because of Stalin’s plans of mass collectivization of agriculture. The memory of the tragedy of the Holodomor resounds strongly in our hearts - also because it evokes our own people’s suffering caused by Soviet repressions and tragedies caused by totalitarian regimes,” the Lithuanian Ambassador said.

She added that in order to succeed in tackling the issue of global food security, we must build on existing achievements and best practices; rely on scientific findings and technological innovations; and change our patterns of consumption, and our approaches to sustainability as a whole.

The 21st International Conference was also attended by heads of the Permanent Mission of Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and the Slovak Republic to the United Nations, as well as by representatives from non-governmental organizations working in the field of sustainable development.