UN summit opens with appeal for collective action

The UN summit marking the 60th anniversary of the United Nations opened today with an appeal for collective action to prevent conflict and genocide and to protect human rights.

Facing more than 150 world leaders, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, the summit co-chair, warned that millions of lives will be lost if significant steps aren’t taken now to fight global poverty “and we will pass on a more unfair and more unsafe world to the next generation”.