The InterDependent

As the summer travel season goes into high gear, good news for the global tourist trade is coming from the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Despite a lingering recession, unemployment and upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, 2011 is off to a good start, led by a 17 percent growth in visitors to South America in the first four months of this year.

The General Assembly formally elected Ban Ki-moon to a second five-year term as Untied Nations Secretary General on June 21, only four days after the Security Council backed him for the position in a unanimous resolution. His first term ends on Dec. 31.

They are worlds apart – a determined Indian woman working in some of the world’s seamiest and most dangerous slums and members of Junior Leagues across the United States – but their goals are the same: to end human trafficking and, in particular, the sexual exploitation of women and children.

As the Security Council and NATO sharpened the international response to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s attacks on protestors against his rule in Libya, which were endangering lives across the North African country, the Libyan regime was finding it difficult to replace defecting diplomats in New York, including the country’s chief representative at the United Nations.