'Quiet revolution' of United Nations reform beginning to show results.

• Position: General Assembly 53 - Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization

General Assembly Discusses Secretary-General's Annual Report

Member States responded favourably to the Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization (A/53/1), which the General Assembly discussed in plenary on 5 October 1998. Thirty representatives responded to issues raised in the Report covering, among other things, United Nations efforts in securing peace and security, enhancing development cooperation and concerted humanitarian action, managing globalization, strengthening the international legal order and furthering reform of the Organization.

Introducing the Report to the Assembly on 21 September at the outset of its annual general debate, Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that he believed that a "singularly inspiring and forward-looking" fifty-third session could "open new vistas" for the world. He remarked that a "quiet revolution", initiated last year with his reform proposals, had already begun to show results within the United Nations system and had given it a greater unity of purpose and coherence. But he cautioned that the international community needed to have the "courage" to confront "with open eyes" the formidable challenges that lay ahead.

The Secretary-General stressed that, on the eve of the millennium, the international community needed to "rediscover the connection between peace and economic security". This "unifying principle" upon which the Organization was founded made it possible to see peacekeeping and development as complementary fronts of "preventive action" that addressed the political and social roots of conflicts before they deteriorated into humanitarian or environmental disasters.

Also, in the face of the disruptive but potentially beneficial forces of globalization, Mr. Annan urged that all parts of the international system come together to find "global solutions" to the "truly global crisis" triggered by the Asian downturn. The Organization's special responsibility was to "restore development to its rightful and central place in global economic strategy" particularly in eradicating poverty.

The greatest challenge posed by globalization, he noted, was strengthening good governance, social justice and the rule of law, as the transnationalization of "uncivil society" - the networks of terrorism, organized crime and illicit trafficking in human beings, drugs and arms - posed a global menace. For this reason, strengthening multilateral institutions was key to creating a "global civil...