"The world - our world - is ailing and its illness is the one that Tolstoy described more than 100 years ago as the "mania of selfishness".

Some say that this is irreversible-that it is too late to do anything about it. I think this attitude is one of dangerous defeatism that will only paralyse us and guarantee that we keep sinking, until we drown, in the morass of maniacal, suicidal selfishness in which we find ourselves.

More than half the world's people languish in hunger and poverty while at the same time more and more money is spent on weapons, wars, luxuries and totally superfluous and unnecessary things. We must resist the temptation to bury our heads in the sand in an attempt to deny reality. Let us be brave enough to acknowledge the vast inequities that exist in the world and within most of our countries, even in many of the most developed countries. These inequities are time bombs that will not simply go away if we ignore them.

In addition to the problem of hunger, poverty and high food prices, there are many other problems whose human origin can no longer be doubted. These include climate change, efforts to privatize water and the squandering of water as though it were an inexhaustible resource, the arms build-up, terrorism, human trafficking, the Palestine situation, humanitarian aid, gender inequality and children in especially difficult circumstances such as armed conflict or humanitarian disaster.

These are the most pressing problems that our world faces today. All of them are man-made, and all can be traced in large part to the lack of democracy at the United Nations.."

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