Dr. Ioan Voicu*

Created by 51 countries in 1945, the United Nations (UN) needs a radical reform. The Heads of State and Government committed 191 countries, through the 2005 World Summit Outcome (Appendix), to continue the efforts to reform the UN to make it more efficient, effective and relevant. Many substantive aspects of the document still need further elaboration and multilateral negotiations. The document reaffirms fundamental values and contains clear commitments on steps needed to reach, by 2015, the development goals agreed upon at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. It is aimed at strengthening the UN’s capacity for peacekeeping, peacemaking and peace-building, including a detailed project for a new peace-building commission. It contains recommendations to establish a Human Rights Council. A more dynamic reform process is needed. It has to be tailored to respond effectively to the most ominous threats to international peace and security. If “effective multilateralism ” is to be achieved, all States have to go beyond what is immediately significant and urgent to each of them at a strictly national level and help bring about a new multilateral approach for a new agenda on substantive and institutional issues. Member States cannot establish a new world policy agenda without an effective UN system adapted to the new realities of a changing human society at planetary level