, whose exotically clad warriors
had brought up the rear of the Diamond Jubilee procession in London only
five decades earlier, now began to appear as delegates to the Security
Council and occupants of senior posts in the United Nations and
non-governmental organizations of every kind. The magnitude of the change
is perhaps best symbolized by the fact that the Secretary-General of the
United Nations is today a Ghanaian, his two immediate predecessors having
been, respectively, from Egypt and Peru.(94)

Nor was this change merely one of formal and administrative character. As
time passed, growing numbers of outstanding figures in every walk of life
would escape the familiar limits of racial, cultural or religious
identity. In every continent of the globe, names like Anne Frank, Martin
Luther King Jr., Paolo Freire, Ravi Shankar, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Kiri
Te Kanawa, Andrei Sakharov, Mother Teresa and Zhang Yimou became sources
of inspiration and encouragement to great numbers of their fellow
citizens.(95) In every department of life, heroism, professional
excellence or moral distinction would increasingly be able to speak for
themselves and be embraced by the generality of humankind. The world-wide
outpouring of affection and rejoicing that was to greet the release from
prison of Nelson Mandela and his subsequent election as president of his
country would reflect a sense among peoples of every race and nation that
these historic events represented victories of the human family itself.

It became apparent, too, that pre-war conceptions regarding the use and
distribution of wealth would have to be overhauled. Apart from principles
of social justice, which doubtless motivated a significant number of those
committed to this task, the economic dislocations produced by the events
of the previous three decades had made it clear that existing arrangements
were outdated and ineffective. Experiments to address such problems at the
national level had been undertaken in several countries in response to the
Depression during the 1930s. Now an interlocking system of institutions
oriented to recognition that national economies constitute elements of a
global whole was successively devised and put in place. The International
Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, the World
Bank, and various subsidiary agencies began belatedly to grapple with the
implications of an integrating world, and with issues related to the