1.  The turn of the millennium provides a unique vantage point from which to view humanity’s progress and challenges. In my report to the Millennium Summit, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the Twenty-first Century, I offered my own assessment, and suggested ways in which the entire international community can work together to better the lives of people still left behind.

2.  The past year has reminded us that the international community is not yet close enough to meeting that goal. Since last September, new wars have erupted in several parts of the world, and many long-running conflicts have continued to defy the best efforts of mediators to end them. The devastation caused by natural disasters continued to increase, with drought, floods and earthquakes blighting the lives of millions. Demands on United Nations humanitarian agencies vastly exceeded worst-case predictions.

3.  While living standards in much of the developing world continued to improve, in many of the least developed countries they remained in decline. This is particularly so in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS, violent conflict, and in some instances predatory behaviour by Governments and political factions have taken a heavy toll, while per capita economic assistance from the richer world has declined dramatically.

4.  In Africa, AIDS is now killing at least four times as many people each year as the continent’s numerous armed conflicts. In other parts of the world, the pandemic continues to spread with frightening rapidity. The gravity of the threat HIV/AIDS poses is at last being widely recognized, but this provides small comfort. What is needed is a stronger commitment to action.

5.  During the year, the creation of three new peace missions resulted in a tripling of the numbers of authorized United Nations peacekeepers to 45,000, straining United Nations Headquarters resources to the very limits. United Nations operations in East Timor and in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, are the most complex, and in some ways the most demanding, in the Organization’s history. We are charged with nothing less than helping to rebuild shattered societies almost from scratch.

6.  In 1999, in the wake of the war in Kosovo, the question how the international community should respond to gross violations of human rights was fiercely debated. For the Organization this had already been a critical issue for some time, not least because the inability of the international community to help prevent the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 or the massacre of thousands of unarmed men and boys from the United Nations “safe area” of Srebrenica in 1995 continued to weigh on our conscience.

7.  Two United Nations reviews were conducted in 1999 to determine what had caused those failures — a Secretariat study on Srebrenica and an Independent Inquiry study of Rwanda. Both reviews revealed how lack of political will, inappropriate Security Council mandates and inadequate resources contributed to failure, together with doctrinal and institutional misjudgements and shortcomings on the part of the United Nations itself.

8.  While both studies offered valuable recommendations, it was evident that a more comprehensive diagnosis was required of the deep-rooted problems that have plagued so many of our missions, and above all a prescription for avoiding such failures in the future. Therefore, in March 2000, I established a high-level panel, chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, to undertake a major review and recommend ways of ensuring that future peace operations will be more effective.

9.  The Panel’s report has just been issued. It contains a frank and clear-sighted analysis of the problems we continue to face in mounting effective peace operations. The Panel’s recommendations for change are realistic and cogently argued. They go to the very heart of the dilemmas that we confront in seeking to meet our commitment, under the Charter, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. I trust that Member States will give them the most serious consideration, and join me in putting them into effect swiftly.

10.  No objective observer could doubt that the current level of Secretariat support for peace operations is inadequate. The 12,000 troops currently serving in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, for example, are supported by just five people at Headquarters. No national Government would dream of deploying a comparably sized military mission overseas with such a minimal headquarters support unit.

11.  Not surprisingly, therefore, some of the Panel’s recommendations will require additional resources to implement. The international community must accept that these are indeed essential if we are to meet our international peace and security commitments. The estimated cost of all United Nations peacekeeping operations in 2000 amounts to less than one half of 1  per cent of the approximately $800 billion that Member States spend on national defence. The additional resources needed to implement the Panel’s recommendations are very modest by comparison.

12.  Security has not been the only contentious issue during the past year. The protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle indicated a growing potential backlash against globalization. Concern is by no means restricted to street demonstrators in the developed countries; albeit largely for different reasons, it is also evident in the capitals of many developing countries.

13.  To some, globalization is imbued with great promise; to others it appears deeply threatening. Few deny that the economic and technological forces that drive it have the potential to lift the dreadful burdens of poverty and disease that still weigh on half the world’s population. But in the face of persistent poverty, rising inequality and the volatility of global markets and financial flows many doubt that this potential will be realized. Others are concerned that open markets will threaten both the integrity of cultures and the sovereignty of States.

14.  That there should be such disagreements is not surprising. Like other great changes in history, globalization creates losers as well as winners.

15.  It is clear that no country has developed successfully by rejecting the opportunities offered by international trade and foreign direct investment. The developing countries that have become most effectively integrated into the global economy, notably those of East Asia, have not only grown faster than the rest, they have also been far more successful in reducing poverty levels. At the same time, engagement with the global economy alone is no panacea for rapid development, and additional measures, domestic as well as international, are necessary to make globalization work for all.

16.  I firmly believe that thriving markets and human security go hand in hand. But if support for open markets and financial liberalization is to be sustained, globalization must be made more inclusive and its benefits must be spread more equitably. These goals cannot be achieved without more effective global institutions.
17.  Here the international community confronts a major problem. The international economic institutions that were created in the aftermath of the Second World War were designed to manage a much less complex and fast-moving set of issues. Even more importantly, they were designed to manage the flow of international economic transactions. We have however moved into the era of global economic transactions.

18.  Economic liberalization has unleashed extraordinary growth but, as the East Asia crisis of 1997-1998 reminded us, it has also reduced the ability of Governments to resist the influence of the global economic environment. There is a need for more effective global governance, by which I mean the cooperative management of global affairs.

19.  In some instances, far-reaching institutional changes are called for, but governance does not have to involve formal institutions, regulations or mechanisms of enforcement. It can also be achieved through informal dialogue and cooperation. It can involve agreements with non-State actors as well as between and among Governments.

20.  Indeed, during the past decade many informal coalitions have emerged to pursue cooperative solutions to common problems — not only among Governments but also encompassing international institutions, civil society organizations and sometimes the private sector. Such engagement does not threaten Governments. On the contrary, it increases their power by bringing them willing and able allies. All partners can gain in such coalitions, because each achieves through cooperation what none could achieve alone.

21.  Sometimes called “coalitions for change”, global policy networks transcend both geographical and political boundaries. They focus attention on specific issues, disseminate knowledge, set global agendas and mobilize people for change. Recent examples can be seen in the campaigns to reduce global warming, roll back malaria, ban landmines, create an international criminal court and provide debt relief for developing countries.
22.  The United Nations, with its universality, legitimacy and broad mandates, has unique convening and consensus-building roles to play in such coalitions for change.

23.  Much is already being done. In the past year the United Nations has forged global partnerships that would hardly have been conceivable even a decade ago. Last year, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I proposed a Global Compact by which private corporations would commit themselves to observing, in their own corporate domains, good practices, as defined by the broader international community, in the areas of human rights, labour and the environment. In July 2000, in New York, I convened the inaugural meeting of the Compact partners, which was attended by representatives of the international trade union movement and major civil society organizations, as well as the leaders of some 50 multinational companies.

24.  The Global Compact is not intended as a substitute for international agreements or effective action by Governments, but as a complement to them. The corporations that have joined it did so because the values that the Compact promotes will help to create the stable and secure environment that business needs if it is to flourish in the long term. Labour and civil society organizations have joined because the values that the Global Compact upholds are also their values, and because they recognize the importance of having corporations support them.

25. We are also working with business, philanthropic foundations and civil society organizations on an ever-increasing range of partnership projects at the country level. One will bring Internet-delivered medical information to developing countries, another will provide communications equipment and expertise for use in disasters and humanitarian emergencies, while a third seeks to significantly increase vaccine coverage among the world’s children.

26.  Other cooperative activities that the United Nations is pursuing with international organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations, and with individual Member States, are described in the body of this report.

27.  In my report, We the Peoples, I review some of the major challenges confronting the international community in the twenty-first century, suggest a series of targets and actions for the Millennium Summit and Assembly to consider and call on Member States to renew their commitment to the United Nations.

28.  I am gratified that my proposals have met with such a positive reception. I sincerely hope that Member States will use the opportunities presented by the Millennium Summit and Assembly to go beyond supportive sentiment, and commit themselves firmly to action.