Kofi Annan: looking back on a 'remarkable decade.'.

WHEN I FIRST SPOKE TO YOU from this podium, in 1997, it seemed to me that humanity faced three great challenges. One was to ensure that globalization would benefit the human race as a whole. Another was to heal the disorder of the post-cold war world, replacing it with a genuinely new world order of peace and freedom. And the third was to protect the rights and dignity of individuals, particularly women, which were so widely trampled underfoot.

As the second African to serve as Secretary-General, I felt that all three of these challenges--the security challenge, the development challenge, the challenge of human rights and the rule of law--concerned me directly. Africa was in great danger of being excluded from the benefits of globalization. Africa was also the scene of some of the most protracted and brutal conflicts. And many of Africa's people felt they were unjustly condemned to be exploited and oppressed, since colonial rule had been replaced by an inequitable economic order on the global level and sometimes by corrupt rulers and warlords at the local level. In the decade since then, many have been struggling to confront these three global challenges. Much has been achieved, but events have also presented us with new challenges. In the economic arena, both globalization and growth have continued apace. Some developing countries, notably in Asia, have played a major role in this growth. Many millions of their people have thereby been released from the prison of perpetual poverty.

At the level of development policy, the debate has advanced, moving from rival models to agreed targets. And the world has now recognized HIV/AIDS as a major challenge to development and begun to confront it. Development and the Millennium Development Goals now take pride of place in all our work. But the Asian miracle is yet to be replicated in other parts of the world. And even within the most dynamic Asian countries, its benefits are far from equally shared. By the same token, the Millennium Goals are unlikely to be achieved everywhere by 2015. True, in many developing countries there is a much better understanding of what good governance is and why it's important. But many still fall short of it in practice. True, there is progress on debt relief, as well as encouraging promises on aid and investment. But the "global partnership for development" is still more phrase than fact, especially in the all-important area of trade. Globalization is not a tide that...