UN General Assembly
1997

walls of our cities and airport corridors? Will those with uneasy consciences continue forever to play dumb with regard to the Rwandan genocide, the very first in the history of our continent? Will religious fundamentalism thrive at the cost of human lives? Extreme selfishness, despair, suicide, racism, crime, terrorism, drugs, paedophilia, battered women, rape: Are we going to bring all this luggage with us into the third millennium? What are we doing now? What are our strategies to eradicate all these evils? Resignation? Fatalism? Will the third millennium hold anything to shock us? We all claim to govern on behalf of our respective peoples. What actions are we undertaking today to ensure that they advance calmly, smoothly, without panic or anxiety into the year 2000? If we do nothing, how will we explain it to them on the eve of 1 January 2000 or on 27 the first day of the year 2000? Will we use the language of cynicism, pain, realism, politics, diplomacy or ritual — in just enough to get them off our backs and hustle them