UN General Assembly
1992

I first had the honour of addressing the General Assembly in September 1989, shortly after assuming the presidency of Bolivia. I anticipated then that the vertiginous changes taking place in and around us would bear the hallmark of what I termed the revolution of democracy. Today, after all we have experienced in this brief but intense period, we can see more clearly that the growth of universal awareness among men and women has not only given democracy, as a system, a global dimension for the first time in the history of mankind, but has also meant that its power for change and its potential for transformation are clearly challenging old ideas, old structures and old habits. I will say without fear of contradiction if I may be permitted to paraphrase what someone has said that democracy is racing round the globe, no longer a phantasmal newcomer but rather a wind of renewal and hope. Accordingly, what we must now surely call global democracy is shedding new light on old truths, leading us to understand better, for example, that