UN decision-making process in need of urgent reform

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced after the recent financial summit of the G-20 in Washington that there was agreement to reform the international financial institutions, particularly the International Monetary Fund, set up by the Bretton Woods conference in 1945.

He said: "The institutions built in 1945 are not necessarily equipped to deal with the problems of 2008." If these institutions were comprehensively reformed, he added, it would go a long way to prevent a financial crisis like the world is going through at the moment.

At the summit it was also agreed to restore global growth, lower interest rates and encourage more spending.

It is revealing to witness how quickly and categorically countries can act when their economic and financial condition is being threatened. It is commendable how the most powerful countries in the world can come together so quickly and how they can speak with one voice.

At more or less the same time as the Bretton Woods conference, the United Nations was established - at the San Francisco Conference on April 25, 1945.

At this conference, the Charter of the United Nations was approved, establishing among other organs, a Security Council with veto powers of the five major member states at that time.

According to the charter, this landmark organisation was expected to maintain international peace and security (Article 1.1) and to create conditions of stability and well-being necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations (Article 55).

The UN has responded admirably and effectively to some of the world's crises but has failed to deal with the scourge of global poverty. And although it may have prevented a third world war, we cannot say that the world is at peace and secure.

It is rather easy to point a finger at the failings of the UN and it is not surprising that efforts to reform the organisation started soon after it was established.

After over 60 years and innumerable number of recommendations and reports on reform by the UN secretary general and a list of eminent people large enough to fill a modest-sized library, there is still disillusionment at the fact that the UN is helpless when it comes to solving human disasters like the ones in Darfur and in the Congo, to say nothing of its inability to stop the human suffering and destitution as a result of a number of wars around the globe.

Hence, the continued calls for UN reform.

But a basic problem with UN reform has been that most of the restructuring exercises concentrated on the 'inefficient' administrative structure of the organisation.

In reality, the UN is not more inefficient than the administrative structures of its member states.

What has been often misunderstood is that the UN is not just its secretary general and its staff - the 'executive' arm of the organisation - but also the member states, the 'legislative' and decision-making arm of the organisation.

And it is the reform of this decision-making process of the UN that has so far been ignored and which needs transformation most.

Why is it so easy for the leaders of the countries affected by the global financial crisis to admit that the financial institutions built in 1945 are not necessarily equipped to deal with today's problems and yet so difficult to come to the same conclusion about the UN?

With Brown's announcement still echoing in our ears that the major players in the world today are different from those of 1945 and therefore they should be more adequately represented in the decision-making process, are we any closer to having the same yardstick applied to the reform of the UN and, in particular, the Security Council?