Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Pro- fessor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University. Address: Center of International Studies, Princeton Uni- versity, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA; Email: rfalkwws.princeton.edu. He is the author of Law in an Emerging Global Village: A Post-Westphalian Perspective (1998) and Predatory Globalisation: A Critique (1999). Policy options for social integration Richard Falk Introduction The emphasis given to ‘social integration’ at the Copenhagen Social Summit was one of the most innovative features of the entire gathering, and the project for its gradual realisation is probably the most ambitious of all the undertak- ings agreed upon and incorporated into the Final Declaration and Programme of Action. In its essence, the near universal affirmation of social integration in these formal UN documents represents an impressive commitment by the official leaders of the overwhelming majority of people on earth. The core of this commitment is to work toward a social order based on the full implementation of human rights for all members of society. This implies a form of govern- ance that ensures effective and inclusive participation in a democratic spirit, and an overall atmosphere of tolerance and respect for diversity in all its forms while vigorously upholding a commit- ment to equality and equity regardless of cul- tural, ethnic, and religious identity. The achievement of Copenhagen was to agree in a global forum of such stature to affirm this normative idea of what constitutes ‘a good society’ at this point in human history. The means specified for putting this idea into prac- tice were left rather vague in the Programme of Action, and meeting the challenge of ISSJ 162/1999  UNESCO 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. implementation was entrusted almost entirely to governments operating at the level of the state. The only international actions proposed were of a hortatory nature, encouraging states to do more by way of accepting treaty commitments in the area of human rights, to be more forth- coming with respect to the care and funding of refugees, and to work more cooperatively with one another based on an ethos of equality and mutual respect. There is some danger that social integration as a basis for policy will be dismissed as too vague, and even self- contradictory. As with inter- national human rights as initially enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there was widespread initial scepti- cism because many of those agreeing upon the frame- work in 1948 were rep- resenting societies that were highly oppressive, and also because the Declaration avoided altogether the issue of enforcement. In a sense, this comparison is a source of encour- agement because now, more than 50 years later, there has been impressive progress nationally and internationally in placing human rights on the global policy agenda and steadily improving prospects for their implementation in many arenas. This progress owes much to the activism of civil society. One contribution that can be made within the United Nations System, in its many arenas,