It has created vast new opportunities, but it also brings new risks, such as marginalization, and its benefits still affect relatively few developing countries. This is all to the good. It promotes democratization and the involvement of people in the decisions affecting their lives. We must combat this menace at every turn. The need to safeguard the global environment, for example, has brought nations closer together and led to legally binding international treaties on climate change, biodiversity, desertification and the ozone layer.
Fragmentation runs in the opposite direction.
We have seen genocidal violence, and combatants who deliberately target civilian populations and relief workers. We must take great care to recognize, confront and restrain the forces of fragmentation, lest they destroy the potential for peace and progress that the new era holds in store. The global agenda has never been so varied, so pressing or so complex. It demands of the international community new approaches, new resources and new commitments of political will. It also demands a renewed United Nations.