Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson last night urged the media to ensure that the world focus on poverty and development issues remained constant after the G8 meeting ended.
She said public focus on a G8 meeting had never been more intensive or more critical. "Never has world opinion been so clear about the responsibility of those making the decisions," she said.
"Promises made must be promises kept. Failure of political will of the G8 must be pursued relentlessly throughout 2005 and throughout the years ahead."
Mrs Robinson was giving the first commemorative lecture for Irish Times journalist Mary Holland, at the Mansion House, Dublin.
Ms Holland died in June 2004, after a long and painful battle against the chronic illness, scleroderma.
Mrs Robinson quoted the poet Seamus Heaney, who said Mary Holland had shaped the very history she reported.
"May Mary Holland continue to inspire journalists of today and tomorrow to follow her example. Instead of dumbing down the news content of the media, let journalists make sure that the agenda of making poverty history dominates until it becomes, in fact, history."
The memorial lecture was organised by the Irish Hospice Foundation, in association with The Irish Times, both as a tribute to the journalist and to highlight the deficiencies in end-of-life care.
Mrs Robinson said Mary Holland's difficult experience in her last months of life highlighted the need for care facilities for people with such complex and debilitating diseases.
Paying tribute to Ms Holland, she said the journalist had "an internal human rights compass which she never failed to check and follow". The effect of the current HIV/Aids epidemic on women was an issue that Ms Holland would have tackled head-on, she said.
Mrs Robinson quoted one doctor who said that girls were becoming "an endangered species" in some African countries because they were six times more likely than their contemporaries to become HIV positive.
The ABC approach, Abstain, Be faithful, wear a Condom, but with the emphasis on abstinence simply did not work in certain parts of Africa, Mrs Robinson said. Mary Holland would have challenged "an ideological approach which had become life-threatening for many women".
Before Mrs Robinson spoke, a minute's silence was observed for the victims of the London bombings.
She said it was right to remember the "terrible attack on innocent people" and it was "sad and somehow ironic that there is once again the dark shadow of explosions in London hanging over us as we speak".
Denis Doherty, chairman of the Irish Hospice Foundation said Mary Holland had often written about "the lives of quiet desperation" endured by people who faced injustice.
"We are now required to honour her life and her commitment to social progress, by focusing on people who are dying in quiet desperation; people who can experience specific individuals as being practical and caring, but whose desperation arises from the overall failure of systems of care to meet their particular requirements," he said.
