UN General Assembly
1998

“ cannot forever be an oasis of prosperity.' Growth at home depends upon growth abroad”. I have quoted the President of the United States at such length both because he is correct and because he is the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Accordingly, we would like to believe that with the problem facing all humanity, and especially the poor, having thus been recognized, courage will not desert the powerful when it comes to determining the correct course to be taken, and following this course, addressing the challenge that has been identified. The tragedy President Clinton describes goes far beyond the sudden impoverishment of the middle class to which he correctly refers. Poverty has been and is the condition of the daily existence of even larger numbers of ordinary working people. Paradoxically, the challenge of poverty around the globe has been brought into sharp focus by the destructive fast movements of currents of wealth from one part of the world to another. Put starkly, we have a situation in which the further