2000 Issues
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	Issue 1, 2000: Growing Global Surprise has always been the order of the day, remarked United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette at the international conference on “The United Nations and Global Governance in the New Millennium”. (We are carrying some of the papers presented at this Conference in this issue and the next.) Ms. Fréchette was looking back on the 20th, and ahead to the 21st century, a century, as she put it, of “intense pressure on the nation-state — globalization from above, concern for individuals from below”. Those two forces manifest themselves vividly in the report of the Secretary-General — for consideration by the Millennium Summit of world leaders at the United Nations in September — to which this issue devotes a special centre section. The report carries forward Mr. Annan’s submission to the current session of the General Assembly that efforts to combat war and poverty can only succeed if the United Nations adapts itself to a world of new actors, new responsibilities and new possibilities. It will also require, as Queen Noor observes, making fundamental choices on which combination of its many modes of action meets most effectively the new global challenges. This may well require: developing a “new language to speak across issue areas”, in the phrase of Millennium Forum co-Chair, Techeste Ahderom; a culture of tolerance and acceptance; or, indeed, harnessing the divine force that links us all as global citizens ...
	Issue 2, 2000: Only Connect It’s a measure, perhaps, of how jaded we’ve become that E.M. Forster’s quote seems faintly unfashionable today: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” Yet, as expectations focus on the Millennium Summit, isn’t it precisely this connection they seek: between the prose of its conclusions and the passions of the peoples in whose name they will be drafted? President Halonen of Finland and President Nujoma of Namibia, who will jointly preside over the Summit, reflect this in the Chronicle Interview: the need to reshape the United Nations to put people at the centre of its activities and make a difference to them in this new century. Connections bond our “Millennium of Minds” section, with security as a cementing theme: the changing relationship between national, international, global and human security; the thought that the more they connect with each other, the more they emerge as a single whole. As Geneva 2000 — the “Social Summit” — heard, extreme poverty can be substantially decreased by 2015 if commitments to attack its roots causes are met...
	Issue 3, 2000: Can They Make a Difference? When the United Nations commemorated its fiftieth anniversary five years ago, participants in its summit session issued a declaration in the name of “we, the Member States and Observers of the United Nations, representing the peoples of the world”. When a similar, and larger, gathering convened a few weeks ago for the United Nations Millennium Summit, its Declaration began: “We, Heads of State and Government recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world’s people”. Notice the change? Leadership, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written, commands specific attributes. Credibility. Altruism. Selflessness. The ability to balance opposite traits. Knowing when to act and when to compromise. Being in solidarity with those who are led. Enabling them to find their own fulfilment...
	Issue 4, 2000: Managing Disasters When Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched First On the Ground last year (1999), he acknowledged that “we in the policy-making world need to understand better how the economics of information differs from the economics of inherently scarce physical goods — and use it to advance our policy goals”. First On the Ground brought the economics of information (made wondrously non-scarce in our hyperlinked times) to the economics of disaster response. Telephonic and microwave communications connected humanitarian relief workers (see Issue No. 1/2000), enhancing existing linkages through which the United Nations has spurred a safety net to anticipate and address disaster. But should still other linkages, other commitments including political, be considered, as our Essay argues?

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