And you, the General Assembly, have provided a unique opportunity for us all to reflect on our common destiny, by convening what will surely be the largest gathering of political leaders the world has ever seen. The object of my Report is to provide that gathering with a basic document to work from. We live in a world that is interconnected as never before - one in which groups and individuals interact more and more directly across State frontiers, often without involving the State at all. This has its dangers, of course. Crime, narcotics, terrorism, disease, weapons - all these move back and forth faster, and in greater numbers, than in the past.
People feel threatened by events far away.
One problem is that, at present, these opportunities are far from equally distributed. We cannot, without insulting their poverty. A second problem is that, even where the global market does reach, it is not yet underpinned, as national markets are, by rules based on shared social objectives. In the absence of such rules, globalisation makes many people feel they are at the mercy of unpredictable forces. So, Mr. President, the overarching challenge of our times is to make globalisation mean more than bigger markets.