Speech by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the awarding of the Doctor António Agostinho Neto Order in Luanda, Angola

Well, I wanted to greet President João Lourenço, ministers, the vice-president, the president of the Constitutional Court, the president of the Parliament who was here, my delegation of ministers and congresspersons – and to say that it is very honorable for a man who has been in politics for 50 years to receive an award that bears the name of António Agostinho Neto at the age of 77.

When a human being reaches my age, people usually think it's time to stop. And when I receive an Order, the most important in Angola, which bears the name of the symbol of this country, which bears the name of the person who died before his time – because he could have lived much longer to build the Angola he dreamed of all along the struggle for independence.

I will carry this medal with the commitment that whoever has a cause cannot stop fighting. This Order increases my responsibility, because now, Mr President, I am making a commitment to try to create a worldwide campaign against inequality. Inequality exists in so many places that often we look only at ourselves and don't see that inequality is between me and the person I'm talking to. Because there is race inequality, gender inequality, age inequality, inequality in the quality of education, inequality in the quality of health, inequality in wages. Now in Brazil we have approved a law saying that women will have to receive the same salary as men if they do the same job. Now it's a law, and we think it's an extraordinary step forward.

And do you know what I intend to do in this campaign against inequality? This fight can only work if we create indignation in people who eat; if they feel indignant about people who don’t eat. It only makes sense to fight this fight if a person who studies is able to feel angry because another can't study. If a person has breakfast in the morning, he has to be indignant because there is a child who doesn't have breakfast in the morning.

If we are not able to create an awareness that this world has scientific, technological, genetic knowledge, that this world produces food to sustain as many billions of human beings as are born… it makes no sense how many millions of children go to sleep every night without having a glass of milk to drink. And it's not because there's no milk, it's not because there's no food; it's because they don’t have money, because the concentration of wealth has been increasing each passing day.

As much as we fight, the concentration of wealth is increasing. The 1% have more and more wealth, and the poorest 50% are increasingly poorer. I hope that, with this honor and with this medal on my chest, perhaps fueled by intelligence, by the revolutionary thinking of Agostinho Neto, I can attempt to convince humanity to be indignant against inequality, because it is unacceptable.

Brazil is the third largest food producer in the world, Brazil is the world’s largest animal protein producer. However, millions cannot eat a piece of meat, and 33 million people are still hungry in my country, although we had ended hunger in 2012.

I have already talked about this fight with Pope Francis. I went to the World Council of Churches, and this is a fight that I think we will only win if we make it a priority in our lives, in every speech, in every sound.

We all dream of women's participation in politics, but due to the unequal treatment that women receive in society, due to the amount of inequality that exists in men's behavior towards women, women have not yet been able to express themselves as the majority that they are, in politics, in countries.

Sometimes we're happy because there's a woman president of a party, because there's a woman president of the Chamber, because there's a woman president of I don't know what, but if they’re a majority, if they’re the ones who put us in the world, I think it's fair for us, once and for all, to understand that they can indeed be the majority and govern the world instead of us. Who knows, maybe one day we will achieve this, we will put an end to the most serious inequality, which is women being treated as an object of bed and table even in the 21st century.

Men need to mature, humanity needs to mature. And now with the ideas of Agostinho Neto – because the truth is that he died, but his ideas did not die, the ideas continue to hover in the air, entering the head of each companion and each companion of Angola, of each companion, now, Brazilian, because these ideas will be in my head and I'm sure we'll achieve this goal.

Because, if even by myself I had managed to return, alongside Agostinho Neto we are going to be victorious.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.