UN General Assembly
2003

﻿The deaths of Sergio Vieira de Mello and his colleagues leave a terrible void. The loss of so many dedicated servants of the United Nations at its headquarters in Baghdad fills us with shock, grief and concern. This atrocity and the other murderous attacks we have seen in the past two years are chilling evidence that terrorists are ruthlessly targeting the civilized world. Terrorism is a direct threat to us all, to humanity as a whole. Weapons of mass destruction are the other direct threat, an even worse threat if such weapons were to fall into the hands of terrorists. In addition to these direct threats to peace and security, we are faced with, in the words of Secretary- General Kofi Annan, “soft threats”: poverty and hunger, environmental degradation and diseases of mass destruction like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. What all these threats have in common is that they do not stop at national borders. Their often lethal consequences affect groups of countries, whole continents or even the entire planet. The only way to