Democracy: An international issue.

• Position: From the Secretary-General

In many parts of the world, over the last ten years or so, the United Nations has had to cope with conflicts in which one group's fear of another was cultivated and exploited by political leaders for their own selfish ends and made the basis of appalling acts of ethnic or racial hatred. It is for that reason, above all, that I attach such importance to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. I hope it will help us devise a global strategy which each of us can use to combat these hateful phenomena in our own societies. They are the roots of conflict in every part of the world, and we must tackle them urgently in every society if we are to prevent more and worse conflicts in the future. No doubt that is one reason why the United Nations finds itself more and more involved in democratization, even outside the context of peacekeeping and peace-building. An increasing number of countries turn to us, not just for electoral assistance but for a much wider range of tasks in the area of governance and human rights.

States which respect the rights of all their citizens, and allow all of them a say in decisions that affect their lives, are also likely to benefit from their creative energies, and to provide the kind of economic and social environment that attracts that attracts investors. So democracy is an issue of great importance not only to international peace but also to development, and therefore to the, agenda of the United Nations as a whole-indeed, to the hopes of all humanity for better future. At its best, it provides a method for managing and resolving disputes peacefully, in an atmosphere of mutual trust. And nothing destroys that an atmosphere more corrosively than fear and intolerance, combined with injustice and discrimination.

It is true that in the past, many societies did combine a degree of democracy with racial discrimination. But today we see that discrimination is one of democracy's worst enemies, because people lose faith in democratic institutions-indeed, institutions of any sort-as soon as they feel that they are not being treated fairly, and especially if they feel they are being threatened or excluded simply because they belong to some particular group or category. I often quote a study done for the United Nations University, which shows that conflicts are more likely to break out in countries where social inequalities coincide with the divide between different ethnic...