I want to start not by talking about the United Nations but by talking about what is happening in the world. Because I think that the United Nations is only of any interest in so far as it is relevant to the actual problems that people in the world are having to cope with - and that is certainly how the Secretary-General thinks about it. We don't exist for our own sake. We exist for your sake, "We the Peoples", in whose name the Charter was written.

And what is happening in the world has got a name which is not a particularly beautiful word but it is one that I think we have all got used to using after a few years: Globalization.

Well, what does it mean? What is globalization? Essentially it means that today, more than ever before, groups and individuals interact directly across frontiers without necessarily involving the state. And why is that happening? I think for two reasons. First of all there is the new technology that we all know about, the Internet, the satellites and all that, and secondly there is a series of decisions by human beings, people in power or in office in countries around the world, essentially to regulate and control less than they used to do. Why? Because states have found that prosperity is better served by releasing the creative energies of the people than by restricting them. I think thatís a very broad generalization but it is surprisingly hard to find any exception to it anywhere in the world. The result is that states no longer control and often can no longer control, even if they want to, the movements of goods, of services -- and in services I include especially information - and even to a considerable extent the movement of people, in the way that during most of the 20^th century they were in the habit of doing.

Now is that a good or a bad thing? That seems to have become the main ideological issue of our times. It has almost given the lie to the famous conclusion of Francis Fukuyama in 1989 that history had come to an end because there was no longer any real disagreement about what should be done, only a lot of tiresome detail about peoplesí interests or identity, but no grand competing projects. The liberal democratic project, if you remember, had won out because utopian socialism had folded its tents and departed from the field. Now we have a very strong clash between those who believe that globalization is a good thing and those who believe that it is a bad thing. But whether that quite qualifies for a grand ideological battle such as we knew in the 20^th century I am not sure. It seems to me that those who think that globalization is a bad thing have not really - and maybe it is in the nature of their argument that they shouldn't - put forward any grand alternative schema. They are anxious, they are complaining, but essentially they are proposing a negative.

Before we take sides in this debate about whether it is a good or a bad thing, I think thereís one very important thing to notice. And that is that there are very many people in the world to whom, whether good or bad, it is actually not happening yet. There are six billion and something people on this planet as far as we know, of whom roughly five billion live in developing countries. Of those five billion, half - according to the International Telecommunications Union - have never made or received a telephone call. And there are more Internet users in Manhattan alone than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

Now are those people who are left on one side by this great historical movement better or worse off than the rest of us? Maybe some are better off. Maybe somewhere in the rainforest they are living beautiful integrated lives in harmony with their natural environment. We should not be too glib in equating new technology with human well-being, or assume that the most important things in life are necessarily those that can be quantified in US dollars. But I would still maintain that the vast majority of those people are impoverished, uneducated, living with poor sanitation, and exposed to endemic and epidemic disease. Their lives resemble all too closely the famous description of man in the state of nature given by Thomas Hobbes more than three hundred years ago: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." So, on the whole, if I may be permitted a very broad sweeping generalization, the more people are in contact with the global economy, the more interesting and hopeful their lives and the wider the range of choices open to them. It is a very broad and sweeping generalisation - I have no doubt that everyone here can think of exceptions to it - but I think I would still maintain that it is on the whole correct.

In which case, why is the anti-globalization movement apparently so strong in the world right now? I think there are three main reasons:

First of all, as I have already indicated, the benefits of globalization are very unevenly distributed and I think there is a natural and healthy revolt against something that is so conspicuously unfair.

Secondly, even those who are affected by globalization often find the effect very bewildering. I am reminded of an American friend I had as a student at Oxford, who had one of those small Volkswagen beetle cars which were fashionable in those days, and on the front of the passenger seat on the dashboard there was a rail. I asked him what this rail was and why it was there. He said it was there to make you think that the car goes faster than it actually does. And it is called the 'Jesus rail'. And why is it called that? He said "because you are supposed to hold on to it and shout 'Jesus' when the car is going around the corner". Well, I think that is what a great many people around the world are doing right now. Some are shouting 'Jesus' and some 'Allah' and I have no doubt that there are other culturally particular ways of expressing themselves, but the cry of alarm is a recognizable one. The world gives us that feeling of going around a very sharp corner very fast and we are not sure if we are going to be thrown off the vehicle, or where exactly we are going to end up. To put it more prosaically it may mean that you may lose your job, it may mean that you will find your children watching television programmes or logging on to things on the Internet which you don't understand and which you think are probably not very healthy and you are not quite sure what sort of people your children are going to grow up as. There are many ways in which you may feel that your livelihood or your identity is being threatened by change in the world today. And it is very natural, I think, that in those circumstances people latch on to whatever seems familiar.

And the third reason - which may be a way of describing the other two or an explanation for them - is that there is a lack of rules in the social and cultural area, to match the rather surprisingly effective rules that have been introduced in the commercial area in the last ten or fifteen years, particularly with the advent of the World Trade Organization -which is why, I think, the WTO has been the focus of some of the most vocal and sharpest protests. It seems to some people as if the international community is more concerned and tougher about protecting the intellectual property rights of large multinational companies than it is about protecting the fundamental human rights of people in different parts of the world who find themselves in danger.