The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror.

We have three billion people, half the world's population today, living on less than two dollars a day.

In this time of globalization, with all its advantages, the poor are the most vulnerable to having their traditions, relationships and knowledge and skills ignored and denigrated, and experiencing development with a great sense of trauma, loss and social disconnectedness.

What we need to do is increase the totality of money that is given to the poorest areas and then we can do more on prevention but we have crucial needs at the moment just to get people out of poverty and to get the eight hundred million people that go to bed at night hungry, give them some food and some hope.

The first thing that you need to deal with is the issue of equity and poverty.

If you have Palestinians who have no hope, who don't have a job, who've used up all their resources, the notion of getting rid of violence is a dream.

First of all, the people left, and they're now coming back. What we have to do is try and help them regain their lives, and the cause of the need for the immediate money is to establish some system of government. You must remember that Kosovo was never self-standing, and so we have to create that government structure, and that's, in fact, what Bernard Kushner is doing on behalf of the secretary-general.