UN General Assembly
1998

satisfaction. This century, which is about to end, contains few events of which we can reflect with satisfaction. The world has witnessed campaigns of extermination, holocausts and wars. It has all been extremely cruel and bloody. We can still see this black light in countries where assassinations take place under the guise of redressing religious grievances. Many other examples can be cited to show that the universal application of human rights has not been achieved, and we feel the same sense of powerlessness when we see our friends and neighbours in the Mediterranean dying on the southern borders of Europe. Those who survive are lifted out of the opulence of Europe and deported, after false hopes and impossible dreams, back to the misery of their places of origin. This also occurs, among other places, on the Adriatic coast. The Mediterranean is no longer the unifying sea that it once was. Rather it has been transformed into a barrier between the rich North, with its aging populations, and a South that, like Prometheus, is filled with misery — but