ABSTRACT
Fast-paced globalization and urbanization processes have created conditions of high population density, rapid migration flows, growing poverty and income inequality and frequent discontent and conflict among heterogeneous populations now living in close proximity. In 2004 the United Nations High Level Panel shifted the traditional understanding of interstate-conflict as the main source of international danger by pointing to widespread circulation of populations, weapons, environmental threats, diseases and poverty as central new challenges for the United Nations as an international security organization. In a time of increasing circulation of people, borders that from Weber to Durkheim demarcated the territories of states converge with boundaries that are with "social constructs establishing symbolic differences. It also asserted the "responsibility to protect" as the main organizing principle for the role of the world organization, thus highlighting the waning solidity of state borders as the ultimate symbol of sovereignty and barrier against external interference.
