The challenge of United Nations reform

The international community founded the United Nations in 1945 as the centrepiece of an ambitious institutional strategy to prevent the recurrence of world war, global depression, and massive humanitarian crises. Sixty years later the world is again confronting multiple governance challenges, none of which can be met through unilateral or bilateral means alone, and the existing architecture of multilateral institutions is in serious need of reform. A renaissance in multilateral institutions will not proceed far, however, unless the central problem of reforming the United Nations is confronted. In this Keynote, Christian Reus-Smit, Marianne Hanson, Hilary Charlesworth and William Maley consider three crucial aspects of UN reform: Security Council reform, renovation of the UN human rights system, and the role of the UN in responding to broader humanitarian crises. The release of this report coincides with the publication of the findings of a sixteen-member committee appointed by the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, to propose ways of strengthening international security