Dialogue: A toddler's birthday tests our humanity

At the presentation of his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo this week, United Nations Secretary-General KOFI ANNAN issued a moving manifesto for peacemaking in the 21st Century.

Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions.

But to be born a girl in today's Afghanistan is to begin life centuries from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved. It is to live under conditions that many of us would consider inhuman. Truly, it is as if it were a tale of two planets.

I speak of a girl in Afghanistan, but I might equally well have mentioned a baby boy in Sierra Leone. No one today is unaware of this divide between the world's rich and poor. No one can claim ignorance of the cost this divide imposes on the poor and dispossessed who are no less deserving of human dignity, fundamental freedoms, security, food and education than any of us.

The cost, however, is not borne by them alone. Ultimately, it is borne by all of us - North and South, rich and poor, men and women of all races and religions.

Today's real borders are not between nations but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another.

We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today, after the horror of September 11, we see better, and we see further, we will realise that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status. A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all - in pain as in prosperity - has gripped young and old.

In the beginnings of the 21st century - a century already violently disabused of any hopes that progress towards global peace and prosperity is inevitable - this new reality can no longer be ignored. It must be confronted.

This century, the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion.

This will require us to look beyond the framework of states, and beneath the surface of nations or communities. We must focus, as never before, on improving the conditions of the individual men and women who give the state or nation its character.

We must begin with the young Afghan girl, recognising that saving that one life is to save humanity itself.

The UN Charter begins with the words: "We the peoples." What is not always recognised is that "We the peoples" are made up of individuals whose claims to the most fundamental rights have too often been sacrificed in the supposed interests of the state or the nation.

A genocide begins with the killing of one man - not for what he has done, but because of who he is. A campaign of ethnic cleansing begins with one neighbour turning on another. Poverty begins when even one child is denied his or her fundamental right to education.

What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.

In this new century, we must start from the understanding that peace belongs not only to states or peoples, but to each and every member of those communities. The sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights. Peace must be made real and tangible in the daily existence of every individual in need. Peace must be sought, above all, because it is the condition for every member of the human family to live a life of dignity and security.

The rights of the individual are of no less importance to immigrants and minorities in Europe and the Americas than to women in Afghanistan or children in Africa. They are as fundamental to the poor as to the rich; they are as necessary to the security of the developed world as to that of the developing world.

From this vision of the role of the UN flows three key priorities: eradicating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting democracy.

Only in a world rid of poverty can all men and women make the most of their abilities. Only where individual rights are respected can differences be channelled politically and resolved peacefully. Only in a democratic environment, based on respect for diversity and dialogue, can individual self-expression and self-government be secured, and freedom of association be upheld.

The idea that there is one people in possession of the truth, one answer to the world's ills or one solution to humanity's needs has done untold harm throughout history. Today, however, even amid continuing ethnic conflict around the world, there is a growing understanding that human diversity is both the reality that makes dialogue necessary and the very basis for that dialogue.

We understand, as never before, that each of us is fully worthy of the respect and dignity essential to our common humanity. We recognise we are the products of many cultures, traditions and memories; that mutual respect allows us to study and learn from other cultures; and that we gain strength by combining the foreign with the familiar.

In every great faith and tradition one can find the values of tolerance and mutual understanding. Each of us has the right to take pride in our particular faith or heritage. But the notion that what is ours is necessarily in conflict with what is theirs is both false and dangerous. It has resulted in endless enmity and conflict, leading men to commit the greatest of crimes in the name of a higher power.

It need not be so. People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups.

We can love what we are, without hating what - and who - we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings.

This will not be possible, however, without freedom of religion, of expression, of assembly, and basic equality under the law.

Indeed, the lesson of the past century has been that where the dignity of the individual has been trampled or threatened - where citizens have not enjoyed the basic right to choose their government, or the right to change it regularly - conflict has too often followed, with innocent civilians paying the price in lives cut short and communities destroyed.

The obstacles to democracy have little to do with culture or religion, and much more to do with the desire of those in power to maintain their position at any cost. This is neither a new phenomenon nor one confined to any particular part of the world. People of all cultures value their freedom of choice and feel the need to have a say in decisions affecting their lives.

I began my address with a reference to the girl born in Afghanistan today.

Even though her mother will do all in her power to protect and sustain her, there is a one-in-four risk that she will not live to see her fifth birthday.

Whether she does is just one test of our common humanity - of our belief in our individual responsibility for our fellow men and women. But it is the only test that matters.

Remember this girl and then our larger aims - to fight poverty, prevent conflict or cure disease - will not seem distant or impossible.

Indeed, those aims will seem very near and very achievable - as they should. Because beneath the surface of states and nations, ideas and language, lies the fate of individual human beings in need.