Global governance: lessons from Europe

It is a great honour for me to address you here tonight in Geneva at this annual conference named after the most prestigious of your predecessors, Madam Executive Secretary. I first realised the extent of this honour on the day you kindly invited me. I realised its significance a second time when I learned the names of the two speakers who preceded me at this podium in 2003 and 2004. The first, Professor North, is a Nobel Prize laureate, as was Gunnar Myrdal. The second, Joseph Stiglitz, is also a Nobel Prize winner. The stature of these two men filled me first with awe, then with hope, and finally with determination.