United Nations Radio

We live in a wonderfully diverse global village.

That, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in remarks to the General Assembly's High-Level Meeting on the Promotion of Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue, Understanding and Cooperation for Peace.

The Secretary-General says globalization can be a great force for progress.

But he warns that as economies merge, as cultural boundaries disappear, as new media bring societies closer together than ever before, new fault lines can emerge.

And he adds, we are seeing some troubling phenomena:

"Communal strife is intensifying. Extremist ideologies are on the rise. Societies are more polarized. Anti- Semitism remains a scourge. Islamophobia has emerged as a new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice. And other kinds of faith-based discrimination and racism show a dismaying persistence. Sometimes, it seems as if none of history's awful lessons have been learned."

Secretary-General Ban says one of the great challenges of our time must be to ensure that our rich cultural diversity makes us more secure, not less.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.

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