Clearly, the emergence of the Lesser Peace will be a gradual
process and its various stages will no doubt witness tests and setbacks, as
well as great advances. It will certainly include, however, a development of
historic importance: that point at which the majority of the world's
nation-states formally commit themselves to a global order comprising
institutions and laws, and equipped with the means by which collective
decisions can be enforced. While we cannot at present foresee the precise form
that this development will take, much less the point at which it will occur, we
recognize that it is a feature of the process of the Lesser Peace.
- The
Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated 29 July 1996 written on its
behalf in reply to an individual; included in a Memorandum from the Research
Department of the Universal House of Justice dated 19 April 2001)
