From the UN Website
The rate of growth of the Global Gross Domestic Product has decreased progressively from an average of 3.6% in the Sixties to an average of a 1.1% in the Nineties.
If we compare the GDP per capita of the twentieth poorest countries and that of the twentieth richest countries, in constant dollars, we notice that, between 1960-1962, the first ones were almost 54 times poorer than the later ones, while four decades later, in the period 2000-2002, they were 121 times poorer that the second group of countries.
These results show an inverse relationship to what we should be looking for, if we really seek a peaceful, stable and fair world...
...Poverty, the lack of opportunities, deficient medical services and limited access to education, frequently accompanied by excessive expenditure in armaments, cause the suffering of most peoples.
It is noteworthy that, in 2003, the world reached a new record by devoting 956 billion dollars to military expenditure. This represents seventeen times the amount of resources devoted, worldwide, to official
development assistance and more than the sum of the foreign debt of the 64 countries with the lowest GDP.
These numbers show that mankind has not understood yet that security does not result from a multiplication of the weapons but from a multiplication of the loaves of bread. Peace and security are built,
in the first place, by combating injustice, satisfying the basic needs, striving for common social goals and by a fair and honest government.
As pointedly noted by Dr. Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace prize, "the billions of dollars spent every year on weapons and on military contingents deprive the world's poorest peoples of the chance of fulfilling their basic needs."
In this regard, Costa Rica fully supports the draft Framework Convention on International Arms Transfers. That project, based on the obligations already undertaken by states, seeks to regulate the export of weapons, their marking and tracing, in order to prevent any arms transfers to terrorist and rebel groups and to those states that breach international humanitarian law or basic human rights principles...
...The aphorism that "the security of one is inseparable from the security of all" becomes truer every day. Global democratic governance requires strengthening both the United Nations and the competences of the General Assembly.
Every state member must have a voice and every people of the world must be represented, in conformity with the principles of equality and universality that govern the UN system. The Security Council must be reformed to enlarge it and to make it more democratic...
...and then he went on about the ICC and Kyoto and whatnot...
I liked that above part, anyways.
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