UN General Assembly
2004

destruction, in particular nuclear weapons, could destroy human life on our planet many times over. That is why the Sultanate of Oman has signed most conventions on disarmament and arms control, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. The emergence of globalization and the World Trade Organization raised the hopes and aspirations of peoples for an era of international cooperation that would broaden sustainable development. However, the results of the new developments have been an amalgamation of democracy and dictatorship, of human rights and enslavement, of great prosperity and extreme poverty, of the provision of advanced health care side by side with fatal contagious diseases, of free trade and world trade monopoly, and of a rise in the price of industrial products and a decline in the prices of the raw materials required to maintain their production. The amalgam has led to economic imbalances. Is that what we sought to achieve? The High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change was established in the context of an initiative