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Minister Zappone to take part in three days of high level events at UN

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Dr Katherine Zappone, will join celebrations at the United Nations in New York today (Wednesday 5th Dec 2018) to mark 100 years since women won the right to vote in Ireland.

Minister Zappone will address the launch of ‘Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women’, a poem by leading Irish poet, Eavan Boland, to mark a century since the women of Ireland won suffrage.
The poem, commissioned by the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations, will be launched in the presence of international ambassadors to the UN, the poet and the 73rd President of the United Nations General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés.
Speaking ahead of the event Minister Zappone said:
“Until that winter of 1918, Irish women lived ‘outside history’, or at least of official history, the history of participating in ‘the search of a nation’. Ireland was so much the poorer for that.

It is right then that on the global stage we take a moment to reflect on what we can learn from that past campaign for suffrage.”

The celebration of women’s suffrage comes at the start of three days of engagements by Minister Zappone both at the United Nations and with the Irish community in New York.

NOTE TO EDITORS – launch of ‘Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women’ will take place at 6:15pm Irish Time at the United Nations. It can be watched LIVE at http://webtv.un.org/