GREATEST CHALLENGE POSED BY GLOBALIZATION IS THAT OF GOOD GOVERNANCE IN BROADEST SENSE, SECRETARY-GENERAL STATES ON OCCASION OF UN DAY
Press Release
SG/SM/6760
OBV/71
GREATEST CHALLENGE POSED BY GLOBALIZATION IS THAT OF GOOD GOVERNANCE IN BROADEST SENSE, SECRETARY-GENERAL STATES ON OCCASION OF UN DAY
19981020 Following is the message of Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the occasion of United Nations Day, 24 October:Every year, United Nations Day gives us an occasion to look back and take stock of our achievements and shortcomings, to reflect upon where we stand as a community of nations and to think about the challenges that lie ahead. When I issued my message on this Day a year ago, our focus was on reform of our Organization. Today, I can say with satisfaction that the "quiet revolution" is real. The United Nations family now acts with far greater unity of purpose and coherence of effort than we did a year ago.
Now, we need to define the new challenges we face, and devise suitable means for meeting them. An accident of the calendar gives us a precise and dramatic deadline to focus our minds -- the opening of the third millennium. A mere two years remain before the opening of the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly, designated as the Millennium Assembly. We should use those two years to reflect carefully on what we need to do. We are not going to tear up the Charter and write a new one; nor will we produce a blueprint for utopia. But what we must do is identify a select few of the world's most pressing problems and set ourselves a precise, achievable programme for dealing with them. Much, if not all of that programme, I suspect, will be subsumed under a single rubric which has become the catchword of our time: globalization.
At this year's General Assembly, globalization was by far the most discussed topic -- especially among countries who have suffered severely as a result of the Asian crisis and its consequences. I believe that over the long term, globalization will be positive. It draws peoples closer together and offers many of us choices that our grandparents could not even dream of. It enables us to produce more efficiently and allows some of us, at least, to improve our quality of life.
But these benefits are far from being felt equally by all. The long-term positive change is, for millions of our fellow human beings, simply too far off to be meaningful. Millions still live on the margins of the world economy. Millions more are experiencing globalization not as an opportunity,
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but as a force of disruption or destruction, as an assault on their material standards of living or on their traditional way of life. And those who feel marginalized in this way are growing more and more numerous.
The Asian crisis has triggered severe worldwide effects with devastating social consequences. Some of the most successful economies have been plunged into recession at a speed which has taken the whole international community by surprise.
As usual, it is the most vulnerable groups which are hardest hit. And the countries whose economies had taken only the first faltering steps on the road of recovery are the ones that now find themselves in greatest jeopardy. The crisis has now spread to Russia. Even the markets of North America and Europe are not immune.
Arguing against the fact of globalization would be as fruitless, frustrating -- and ultimately as destructive -- as waging a war against the weather. Rather, I would say that our duty is to build on what is positive. We cannot reverse the track of a storm -- but we can provide shelter for the millions who suffer most from its effects. We cannot hide from a hurricane -- but we can seek to build solid foundations for the houses that risk being rattled by the hurricanes of the future.
And so we accept change: but we do not accept ourselves as helpless. The issues this crisis raises are not just financial or economic -- nor, for that matter, purely social or political. They are all of those things at once. They must be addressed on all those fronts. They must be dealt with both locally and globally.
More than ever, we need to come together to manage this change; more than ever, the greatest challenge posed by globalization is that of good governance in the broadest sense. More than ever, we need to display leadership at the global level. More than ever, we need to forge new partnerships.
We draw hope from the fruitful cooperation between the United Nations and the non-State actors which, taken together, form the embryo of a global civil society. The past year has given us two shining examples of such cooperation in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the coalition of non-governmental organizations which lobbied for an international criminal court.
These partnerships for global community are growing in number every day. They are not short of work. But if we truly resolve to pool our resources, to set aside our differences, and to work together, there is almost nothing we cannot achieve. On this United Nations Day, let us rededicate ourselves to that belief, and let us get to work.
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