Education is a human right with immense power to transform

When we talk about the UN, what are we really talking about? We are talking about my country, your country, other countries and their collective will to stand together and apply pressure or offer incentives to steer things in the right direction. When the nations of the world come together, with collective will, on an issue and they speak with a united voice, they have a much greater impact. When there is division, then the impact is much, much less.

A United Nations that will not stand up for human rights is a United Nations that cannot stand up for itself.

Sometimes in peacekeeping operations you show force in order not to use force - people realise that there's a pushback and there's a solid force there that's not going to be pushed around, that sometimes helps.

I think that these flows of refugee are the inevitable counterparts to the flow of capital and goods. In other words, they too are by-products of globalisation.

In countries where democracy is either non-existent or in development, on the other hand, citizens crave those freedoms. Maybe that is one lesson Western citizens can learn from those countries: treasure what you have. Use your rights and freedoms to effect the change you want.

In an age of interdependence, global citizenship - based on trust and sense of shared responsibility - is a crucial pillar of progress. At a time when more than one billion people are denied the very minimum requirements of human dignity, business cannot afford to be seen as the problem. Rather, it must work with governments and all other actors in society to mobilize global science, technology and knowledge to tackle the interlocking crises of hunger, disease, environmental degradation and conflict that are holding back the developing world.