Rejecting claims that globalization is increasing poverty and inequality, the Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, Maria Livanos Cattaui, has called for even closer economic integration among nations.
Addressing a conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OCSE) in Europe (OSCE) earlier this month, she said the real tragedy was that there has been far too little successful integration, not too much.
"Above all, economic integration, when it has been successful, has been the prime reason for the reduction of poverty and global inequality - it has not increased it."
The ICC Secretary General said one of the positive features of the past two decades had been that a large number of the most populous developing countries had started to participate successfully in the global industrial economy.
While at the beginning of the period, manufactures had accounted for less than a quarter of developing country exports, manufactures now accounted for about 80%.
"This is quite a dramatic increase. These same countries have increased their participation in the world economy, doubling such participation in terms of the ratio of trade to income."
The bad news was that there were still two billion people living in countries that were participating neither in globalization nor in development. "Growth in these countries was in fact negative in the 1990s. Tragically, they are being progressively marginalized within the world economy."
Ms Cattaui said: "The myths about globalization as such must be dispelled now. All successful developing countries have exploited international opportunities in their development. What is needed now is an agreement on how we start to reverse the marginalization of the rest."