Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations
rage in world affairs than they did 20 years ago. Developing countries have made no significant progress in their quest for a greater say in the management of the world economy and for control over global private economic and financial forces. Financial and trade practices still favour the most powerful, and exceptions to general rules are granted more rarely and reluctantly than ever before. There are strong inequalities and imbalances in the global decision-making processes affecting all countries. The processes and operations associated with the formulation, implementation and evaluation of the rules and regulations governing the functioning of the world economy are still largely controlled by rich countries. Financial dependency may be an important contributing factor; a number of Governments continue to rely on ODA for their daily operations. Personal security is another area of concern; countries at different levels of development remain extremely unequal in their degree of exposure to various risks and in their capacity to deal with the consequences of natural catastrophes or man-made conflicts and violence. Developing countries with low to moderate levels of power and influence have no more political autonomy now than they did several decades ago. For the countries of the world, the distance between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, and the self-sufficient and the dependent is now often characterized as an abyss.