Keynote Address at the UNU Millennium Conference
UNU Headquarters, Tokyo
19 January 2000

The United Nations University is an excellent place from which to start a new chapter in human history. It is dedicated to the sharing of knowledge. In a world where knowledge is as formidable an asset as technology or oil, that commitment is in the best tradition of global fraternity.

We are, however, engaged in a somewhat uncertain enterprise. The philosopher Karl Popper once said that "we cannot anticipate today what we shall know only tomorrow". The course of 20th-century history is littered with discarded theses and discredited predictions. As we look ahead, we are not likely to know what advances or crises are going to light or blight our path. Surprise has always been the order of the day. Still, however difficult or risky it might be to peer into the future, peer we must. Population growth; energy consumption; economic growth; health and education levels; technological breakthroughs -- these are some of the trends we can extrapolate, and so at least imagine what the world may look like one or two decades hence. And while human beings are not known for long-term thinking or planning, we must project ourselves forward, lest we miss opportunities for progress; lest we fail to ward off impending calamities; or, just as bad, lest we gird ourselves for the wrong battles.

Two trends

Two trends form the overall environment in which we work. The first - concern for the well-being of individual human beings - is certainly not new. Is it not what 'liberté, egalité, fraternité', or the 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' are about? But it has assumed true prominence only in recent years. The second - globalization - is also familiar to us; human beings have interacted across the planet for centuries. But today's globalization is different -- in its pace, its impact and especially in its driving mechanisms.

The two trends are closely related. Both create intense pressure on the nation-state -- globalization from above, concern for individuals from below -- and imply dramatic changes in our understanding of state and individual sovereignty. And each feeds, and is fed by, the other.

The information technologies that make up part of globalization's leading edge also help foster world-wide awareness of the fate and welfare of men, women and children. Indeed, the starving child whose image is beamed to comfortable living rooms from some faraway war-zone land; and the images of plenty and conspicuous consumption transmitted from a rich-country capital to the shanty-towns of the poor; both create two-way traffic in concern and wonder. The rights revolution, for its part, provides a spur to globalization. It is not only trade, finance and investment that are being globalized; so, too, are values such as equality, tolerance and freedom -- which today, even more than in 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, are recognized as truly universal.

Concern for the individual human being -- for his or her dignity, liberties, rights and well-being -- has a long if checkered history, but what is most striking about its development in the last half century is not only the intensification of these concerns at the national level, but the prominence they have assumed in the international arena. That development has been marked by a series of milestones: the UN Charter, written in the name of "we, the peoples"; the Universal Declaration itself; and the plethora of more recent conventions, covenants and mechanisms that now encompass women's rights, minority rights, torture and more.

A solid framework of international law and practices has been put in place. Some say this is a mere "paper" triumph, and there does remain an alarming chasm between laws on the books and daily reality. Still, the United Nations has spawned increasingly intrusive mechanisms to monitor and foster respect for human rights -- for example, the thematic and country-specific special rapporteurs. Of an even higher order -- and this is truly one of the most dramatic developments in the last decade of the 20th century -- has been the willingness of the international community to deploy troops and take other action aimed at preventing gross abuses of human rights. I am thinking, for example, of the International Criminal Tribunals created by the Security Council to investigate genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

The internationalization of concern for individual human beings seems to me to be irreversible. It is bringing profound changes to national life and international life. Citizens, conscious of their rights, want to be heard, want to participate -- in short, to be in charge of their future. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, it is now widely understood that states are the servants of, and accountable to, their peoples, not the other way around.

However, growing pains are evident in efforts to involve civil society more deeply in the work of governments and international organizations. The passion of civil society groups is clear. So is their power; witness their role in successful campaigns to ban land-mines, promote debt relief and adopt the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, and in influencing the outcomes of the Earth Summit and other major world conferences over the past decade. But the actual mechanisms for their participation are showing strains, as governments question their legitimacy while they in turn question whether governments are really committed to anything more than token transparency.

Globalization is also irreversible. Globalization is commonly understood to describe those advances in technology and communications that have made possible an unprecedented degree of financial and economic interdependence and potential for growth. As markets are integrated, the theory goes, investments flow more easily, competition is enhanced, prices are lowered and living standards everywhere are improved. Today globalization is a fact of life, although the theory has not worked out precisely as envisaged.

We are all consumers in the same global economy. Instant communications and free-wheeling movements of capital, goods and peoples have created a web of relationships that transcend frontiers. The process is bringing us more choices and new opportunities for prosperity. It is making us more familiar with global diversity. But it also brings uncertainties. There are losers as well as winners. It is exacerbating already large gaps between rich and poor, both within and among nations.

Millions of people around the world experience globalization not as an agent of progress but as a disruptive, even destructive force. Many more millions are completely excluded from its benefits. Half the world's people, for example, have never made or received a telephone call. To them, the great gains of science, medicine and technology might as well be taking place on another planet. Meanwhile, criminal groups take advantage of porous borders and powerful new technologies for their own nefarious aims.

Earlier this month, a single day's front-page of the New York Times offered two examples of the fast-changing world in which we live and the wide-ranging new forces with which we must contend. One story told of a credit card cyberscam in which the criminal was sitting at a computer somewhere in Eastern Europe, but the threat was to wallets and pocketbooks on the streets of the United States. A second story showed how people could circumvent public health laws by ordering medicines, some of them untested or of questionable value, through the Internet. Clearly, states are having difficulty in keeping pace with technical change and human ingenuity.

So globalization confronts us with the challenge of reconciling the imperatives of global markets with the socio-economic needs of the world's people; and of realizing its full potential while minimizing the threat of new divisions in our world, of backlash and recourse to the damaging "isms" of our post?cold?war world: populism, nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, fanaticism and terrorism.

Three Imperatives

This, then, is the backdrop for our work as we embark on a new millennium. Globalization and concern for individual well-being are the grand, defining forces of our day, affecting more and more aspects of our lives. And as they do so, they are showing us yet another key feature of our world: that almost every phenomenon or problem we face -- from education to the environment; from disarmament to development to discrimination -- has a compelling and often overwhelming international dimension. These are issues which transcend borders, and are beyond the power of any single nation to control or even confront. Thus they require some form of management and cooperation at the global level. And that challenge suggests three broad imperatives.

First is the need for legitimacy. Our intergovernmental institutions often function in a way that is not fully in keeping with today's demands and desires for openness. Whether we are speaking of the United Nations Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the Bretton Woods Institutions or forums such as the G-7/G-8, decision-making is often concentrated in the hands of only a small number of powerful nations. Indeed, sometimes the institutions are designed in just such a way as to keep key issues under tight control. This was one of the main criticisms of the goings-on in Seattle, not without reason or resonance. In the future, things must be more transparent and participatory, not as a reward or privilege but as a basic right and smart way of doing business.

There is another side to the question of legitimacy. In addition to excluding other governments, governments also routinely fail to reach beyond the ranks of officialdom into those of civil society. The state-based order continues to prevail. Governments must do more to involve civil society groups and make national and international decision-making more representative. Only then will those decisions be able to win popular support and adherence.

Second, we must also ask whether we have the instruments and institutions we need to make connections among a vast array of complex and closely related issues. At the moment our system is fragmented; all too often issues are addressed piecemeal rather than "in the round"; and in the worst case institutions trespass on each other's turf, causing substantive confusion, bureaucratic strife and political stalemate.

What went wrong in Seattle is an example. While much has been done over the last half-century to make the trading system a success, other urgent issues -- such as protecting human rights, safeguarding the environment and ensuring labour standards -- have not been addressed with a similar sense of purpose. Conventions and institutions exist with which we can deal directly with these issues: the International Labour Organization, the UN Environment Programme and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But they have been under-utilized, and instead we see NGOs seeking to advance these worthy causes by placing new shackles on world trade. So my sense is that we do have the instruments and institutions we need, most notably the United Nations and its system of specialized agencies, but we need better coherence among them and greater willingness to give them the resources and authority they need. This is the essence of the Secretary-General's reform programme.

A third and final imperative is our ultimate test: the test of effectiveness, for which legitimacy and institutions are the building blocks. Effectiveness has two aspects: the availability of tools, and the enforcement of what has been agreed. The international community has long experience with peacekeeping, refugee protection and other steps in the face of humanitarian emergencies. But in the wake of failures, and in light of newer and more complex challenges presented by internal conflicts, we have only begun the difficult task of elaborating and discussing principles for intervention. Likewise, in our efforts to defeat poverty and advance development, we face a gap between the lofty goals which states agree on in principle, and the meagre resources -- including official development assistance -- which they provide in practice. If creating the tools is a matter of collective, international action, enforcement is a question of national follow-up. Here, too, governments acting within their spheres are often tardy or reluctant to comply with the promises they have made.

Our constant search is for the right balance: between universal institutions and effective ones; between what sounds correct in theory and what makes a real, positive difference in peoples' lives. However difficult this process may be, there is no doubt that we can and must improve upon "business as usual". And in those many areas where there is a common interest, threat or vulnerability, the United Nations system can be a crucial part of the solutions we need -- but only if its Member States endow it with the authority and resources -- political, material, financial -- that it needs to do the job.

The obstacle is not so much lack of knowledge about what to do, as a lack of political will to do what we know needs to be done. So let us continue taking the future's measure. Let us continue building the rules, tool and institutions by which an international community can manage life in the global era. Most of all, let us resolve to live in that community rather than visiting it from time to time when the mood or need suits.

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