The Coming Decade.

There are many challenges facing us in the next decade, the demographic explosion, the environment and global warming, developing clean renewable energy sources and potable water. Famine continues to haunt many parts of the world and regional conflicts continue unresolved. The number one concern is a just solution to the Palestinian situation. Justice internationally and at home is just as vital for human development as is education and jobs for our young people. For many years following the Cold War we could say that the nuclear threat had diminished, no longer, because flashpoints such as Israel and Iran, South and North Korea, Pakistan and India make it a recurring danger.

There was much talk about the global village but globalisation can only be successfully achieved with a regard for the preservation of local identity. We need a solution for the global financial crisis so that trade and economic growth can be pursued.

The challenge of terrorism whether ideological or non ideological will be with us for a long time to come. Technology and cyberspace has to be used for the benefit of all.

The World has to understand that the individual, in order to be positively productive has to be well fed, healthy, educated with freedom of speech and equality. Feeling like any human being in the world without inferiority or exclusion regarding geographical origin, ethnicity, religion or ethnocentrism.

This brings us to the idea of the culture of dialogue so that our way of standing up to the challenges we are facing and avoiding conflict, is to know how we can regulate globalisation in a manner that it can be used to profit all of humanity.