Applicants should complete the application form along with a brief statement as to what you expect to gain from participating, and send it to the Seminar Secretariat by 28 May 1999 . A certificate will be issued for each participant who satisfactorily completes the Seminar. The UN Secretaty-General Kofi Anann points out in his 1998 annual report that after a decade since the end of the cold war, the contours of the new era remain unclear, while the states and international organizations continue to grope for their respective roles. He also expounds that the people of the world are searching for the ways to define how they are united in the global community though divided by customs, conviction, power, and interest. What is certain is that globalization is greatly affecting the people of the world.
Globalization denotes movement of money, goods, information and people across national borders.
In particular, the gap between the rich and the poor within and among the countries has widened. The United Nations Development Programme has reported that the divide between the rich and the poor in the world has increased in the 1990s compared with in the 1960s. The series of international conferences that the United Nations sponsored in the 1990s on such themes as children, environment and development, human rights, population, social development, and women have reconfirmed that the eradication of poverty is the fundamental issue for the work of the UN system. In an attempt to concentrate the development efforts on the question of poverty, the General Assembly of the United Nations has declared the years 1997 to 2006 as the 1st UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty. The Seminar is designed to offer an opportunity for the participants to better understand the issues of poverty and development within an era of globalization, not only in terms of the economic activities, but also on political, social and cultural issues involved through interdisciplinary examination.