Towards a new clarity for UN work.

• Author: Seufert-Barr, Nancy
• Position: Efforts to reform United Nations goals, objectives and policies - The Road to Reform; includes related article on views of Under-Secretary-General for the Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, Nitin Desai - Cover Story

Calling for a restructured UN to lead the way towards a new definition of economic and social progress, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned the Economic and Social Council on 30 June that "unless we move forward to create an economically and socially more balanced world, peace, and security will be endangered".

Amidst a complex reform process that has touched virtually every major organ, responsibility and aspect of the post-cold-war United Nations, a restructuring of intergovernmental machinery in the economic and social fields was "both necessary and overdue", Mr. Boutros-Ghali told the highlevel segment of the Council's five-week substantive session (29 June-30 July, Geneva).

"From the outset of my mandate I have been convinced that the structure of the Organization must mirror as closely as possible, the tasks it assigned to undertake", he said. "An institution must reflect the objectives it pursues, and I hope, to be able to make this happen wit:h increasing accuracy.

The UN therefore faces "the difficult task of relating our aims to our means, of updating and reforming institutions set up at different times and with different imperatives", he said.

Indeed, with the Organization struggling to deal with the deadly mixture of starvation and civil war in Somalia, the humanitarian nightmare of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia, a vast election and infrastructure rebuilding exercise in Cambodia, and the tensions of fledgling democracy and economies in transition in former Soviet republics, a main goal of UN reform has been to realize an organization which views its economic, social and development aims "with the same sense of urgency as its political and security commitments", the Secretary-General's Special Adviser, Kenneth Dadzie, told the Fifth Committee on 30 March.

Far-reaching administrative reform has been implemented by the Secretary-General to eliminate duplication and refocus the work of all parts of the UN on its original, basic mandate.

In June 1992, the Secretary-General issued a wide-ranging strategy for the future work of the Organization, entitled "An Agenda for Peace", in which he set out proposals for strengthening UN effectiveness in discharging its responsibilities. The proposals, which concentrate on UN activities in the areas of peace-keeping, preventive diplomacy and post-conflict peacebuilding, form what Mr. Boutros-Ghali has described as "a consistent and integrated set of measures to address human security in all its aspects". (For a detailed account of "An Agenda for Peace" and its follow-up, refer to UN Chronicle, No. 3, September 1992, and "The 38th Floor" sections in subsequent issues.)

In his "Agenda", Mr. Boutros-Ghali proposed that the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) report to the Security Council on economic and social developments which might pose threats to international peace and security. He also urged that a flexible high-level, intersessional mechanism be introduced to enable ECOSOC to react in a timely way to new developments.

The Secretary-General's restructuring efforts also aimed to promote coordination and decentralization within the UN system, foster greater cooperation with non-governmental organizations and regional bodies, and create more effective UN financing and budget-making mechanisms.

Dramatic demands

Just as the UN is working to adapt its structures in the economic and social sectors to the new challenges before the global community, the operational, field-oriented arm of those sectors is adapting as well.

In particular, reform of the governance and financing of UN operational activities for development is currently at the forefront of UN efforts.

As the Secretary-General stated in his annual report on the work of the organization (A/48/11), "a new, workable and widely-agreed concept of development still eludes us".

Moreover, the vast challenges of famine, drought, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), civil wars, uprooted and dislocated populations, and deepening human misery in many parts of the world "make dramatic demands on the UN system to strengthen significantly its field presence, as well as its operational capabilities and responsiveness", the UN joint Inspection Unit reported (JIU/REP/92/6/PART II) in 1992.

"Never before have...