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Spice Girls Lip Sync Video Promotes Women's Rights

The video helps launch the UN #WhatIReallyReallyWant campaign

A new video from the United Nations is using a 20-year-old hit song to ask girls around the world to tell them "what they really, really want." 

The short lip sync video from The Global Goals for Sustainable Development takes the Spice Girls' 1996 smash "Wannabe," which introduced their message of "girl power" to the world, and refreshes it for a 2016 ad campaign aimed at achieving gender equality.

Released Tuesday, the video features women and girls from many backgrounds singing the song, which was deemed the catchiest of the last 60 years by a 2014 University of Amsterdam study. It begins, "Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want / So tell me what you want, you really, really want."

The women dance through streets, schools, villages and cities throughout the world, the backdrops adorned with tapestries promoting the United Nations' Global Goals campaign. The goals include an end to violence against girls, quality education for all girls, an end to child marriage and equal pay for equal work.

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"Girl power has come a long way, let's take it further," a card shown at the end of the video says, encouraging viewers to share a photo of themselves with the hashtag #WhatIReallyReallyWant.

Posh Spice herself, Victoria Beckham, tweeted her support for the video, which topped 500,000 views on Facebook and 100,000 on YouTube before the end of the day Tuedsay.

"20 years on - Girl Power being used to empower a new generation" Beckham said. Later in the day she tweeted: "#WhatIReallyReallyWant is no more girls dying of HIV."

Fellow Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, a.k.a. Sporty Spice, also tweeted out the video.

"Flattered and honoured that our crazy song is being used so beautifully," she said.

The video was launched in partnership by Project Everyone, an organization founded by Richard Curtis (writer of films including "Love Actually," "Notting Hill" and "Bridget Jones's Diary"), and aimed at promoting the global goals released by the U.N. in 2015.

The video includes Sri Lankan Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez, London R&B trio M.O. and artists from India, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, U.S. and Canada, The Guardian reports.

“This is about modern day girl power,” MJ Delaney, who directed the film, told The Guardian. “The Spice Girls were about a group of different women joining together and being stronger through that bond. These differences are what we want to celebrate in this film, while showing there are some universal things that all girls, everywhere, really, really want.”

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