UN General Assembly
2008

the masters of our own destinies. We are severely constrained in what we can do to advance our own development agendas because we simply do not possess and cannot readily access the human, financial or technological resources needed to develop our people and to secure our futures. And given the predatory nature of the world we live in today, we will never be able to attain those resources using our own devices. We will most certainly need the assistance of the international community. We live in an interdependent world. While the developed countries may possess all the human, financial and technological resources we lack, the crises which now confront us are making it manifest that not even the richest and most powerful of them can successfully withstand and combat the catastrophic consequences of nature’s fury and man’s excesses by relying on their own devices and resources. They must join forces with the rest of the world. That imperative was articulated by Mr. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on 26 September in this very Hall (see ) when