"In Larger Freedom": Decision Time at the UN

Kofi Annan

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005

Summary:  Dealing with today's threats requires broad, deep, and sustained global cooperation. Thus the states of the world must create a collective security system to prevent terrorism, strengthen nonproliferation, and bring peace to war-torn areas, while also promoting human rights, democracy, and development. And the UN must go through its most radical overhaul yet.

Kofi Annan is Secretary-General of the United Nations.

A RENEWED UN

If the UN is to be a vehicle through which states can meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, it needs major reforms to strengthen its relevance, effectiveness, and accountability. In September, decisions should be reached to make the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council more strategic in their work. Just as we contemplate creating new institutions such as a Peacebuilding Commission, we should abolish those that are no longer needed, such as the Trusteeship Council.

No reform of the UN would be complete, however, without Security Council reform. The council's present makeup reflects the world of 1945, not that of the twenty-first century. It must be reformed to include states that contribute most to the organization, financially, militarily, and diplomatically, and to represent broadly the current membership of the UN. Two models for expanding the council from 15 to 24 members are now on the table: one creates six new permanent seats and three new nonpermanent ones; the other creates nine new nonpermanent seats. Neither model expands the veto power currently enjoyed by the five permanent members. I believe the time has come to tackle this issue head on. Member states should make up their minds and reach a decision before the September summit.

Equally important is reform of the UN Secretariat and the wider network of agencies, funds, and programs that make up the UN system. Since 1997, there has been a quiet revolution at the UN, rendering the system more coherent and efficient. But I am deeply conscious that more needs to be done to make the organization more transparent and accountable, not just to member states, but to the public on whose confidence it relies and whose interests it ultimately must serve. Recent failures have only underlined this imperative.

I am already taking a series of measures to make the UN Secretariat's procedures and management more open to scrutiny. But if reform is to be truly successful, the secretary-general, as chief administrative officer of the organization, must be empowered to manage it with autonomy and flexibility, so that he or she can drive through the necessary changes. The secretary-general must be able to align the organization's work program behind the kind of agenda I have outlined, once it is endorsed by member states, and not be hamstrung by old mandates and a fragmented decision-making structure that jeopardize setting a central strategic direction. When member states grant the post this autonomy and flexibility, they will have both the right and the responsibility to demand even greater transparency and accountability.

DECISION TIME

In calling on member states to make the most far-reaching reform in the organization's history and to come together on a range of issues where collective action is required, I do not claim that success through multilateral means is guaranteed. But I can almost guarantee that unilateral approaches will, over time, fail. I believe states have no reasonable alternative to working together, even if collaboration means taking the priorities of your partners seriously to ensure that they will take seriously your own in return -- even if, as President Harry Truman said in San Francisco 60 years ago, "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."

The urgency of global cooperation is now more apparent than ever. A world warned of its vulnerability cannot stand divided while old problems continue to claim the lives of millions and new problems threaten to do the same. A world of interdependence cannot be safe or just unless people everywhere are freed from want and fear and are able to live in dignity. Today, as never before, the rights of the poor are as fundamental as those of the rich, and a broad understanding of them is as important to the security of the developed world as it is to that of the developing world.