There are signs that the system of collective security established in San Francisco nearly 50 years ago [at the founding of the UN] is finally beginn… - Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The days of dictatorship are over. … We have come a long way. Millions of Egyptians and Iraqis have cast their votes at the ballot box. The Palestinians will follow suit.

We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.

Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead.