UN General Assembly
2000

I am thinking especially of those processes we include under the term globalization. Globalization does not stop at Forty-second Street. It is rushing around the world with the force of a typhoon, picking up speed as it is fed ever new discoveries in information and communication technology. But globalization is a much more comprehensive phenomenon than the mere standardization of traffic regulations, television systems or bananas. Globalization entails development and human security, as well as poverty and human fear. But it also encompasses human thinking. If it does not embrace solidarity and social justice, it will continue to divide the world between winners and losers, as was mentioned here from this rostrum recently by the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. The United Nations can help with this issue. If it fails, it will be guilty of loosing this crucial opportunity of making the United Nations again into a highly respected Organization able to tackle the most important global problems. We have to find the political will and the means to do so.