The heightened awareness generated by the daily messages from the Secretary-General underscoring some important aspect of life - be it in the areas of environmental change, health, human rights, education, women empowerment, stopping of conflicts among nations and peace-keeping, economic issues and global partnerships, inter alia do have an impact.  Thanks to the media the subject matter impacts the grass roots and stirs the masses to action and compels decision-makers to account for their actions. 

And yet, removing the deep-seated problems of the planet, the Bahá’í writings explain is not possible for the United Nations Organisation.  For, it requires the formation of a World Commonwealth of all the nations of the globe “in whose favour all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within their respective countries. 

Such a world super-state will have to include within its orbit an International Executive adequate to enforce supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member of the commonwealth; a World Parliament whose members shall be elected by the people in their respective countries and whose election shall be confirmed by their respective governments; and a Supreme Tribunal whose judgement will have a binding effect even in such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to submit their case to its consideration.” 

If we were to take just one of the UN’s documents that has enormously impacted the common man today it would most certainly be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which enters its 60th year in 2008.  The right to life, to freedom, to food, to shelter, to work, to independent religious belief, to family, to health, etc. as unfolded in the 30 Articles have provided for hope to countless millions.  The primary question to be resolved, Bahá’u’lláh explained over a hundred years ago, is how the present world, with its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which harmony and co-operation will prevail.  All human beings have been created, Bahá’u’lláh says, “to carry forward an ever advancing civilisation,” “to act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man.”