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UN Reform

The United Nations need reform. On that everyone agrees. But there is sharp disagreement on what kind of reform is needed and for what purpose. Again and again over the years, the UN has been reformed - on average once every eight
years. But the pace has now quickened and reform projects seem a constant part of the landscape. NGOs gather to press their reform causes. Diplomats negotiate. And from Washington come somber warnings that the UN must "reform or die."
But after the fireworks, the same problems persist. Few reformers are willing to admit that the UN's complex and inefficient machinery results from deep political disagreement among its members and between other contending forces in the global
system. Yet the United States, military superpower and transnational corporate headquarters, clearly wants a weak UN with an impossibly small budget and scarcely any voice in economic matters. Many other nations, to the contrary, want a stronger UN and more effective multilateral policy making. Whose "reform" is to prevail? And how will any newly-devised UN institutions be paid for?
The Millennium +5 reforms, proposed by the Secretary-General in March 2005, were neither ambitious nor far-reaching. Designed to please (or at least not to displease) the superpower, they substantially ignored the most urgent issues - the
UN's financial woes, the unilateralism of the United States, the absence of real disarmament, and the shaky and unjust global economic order. In the end, the world leaders approved an embarrassingly weak document, filled mostly with empty platitudes. It remains to be seen how the UN will cope with this contentious and divisive reform process, and what avenues remain open for a stronger and more effective multilateral system.

Web site of Global policy forum (http://globalpolicy.igc.org/reform/)