UN Reform

Excerpt from the Secretary General's comments on UN Reform in 2005 General Assembly:

"Proposals for making the Organization the instrument through which all its Member States could agree on the strategies outlined in the first three parts, and help each other to implement them.  First, he was asking heads of State and government to adopt a comprehensive package of reforms to revitalize the General Assembly, which had in recent times suffered from declining prestige and had not made the contribution that it should.

He also urged Member States to make the Security Council more broadly representative of the international community as a whole, as well as of the geopolitical realities of today.  Member States should agree to take a decision on it -- preferably by consensus, but in any case before the September summit -- making use of one or other of the options presented in the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.  Also, the renewed Security Council should make clear, in a resolution, the principles by which it intended to be guided when deciding whether to authorize or mandate the use of force.

He also made proposals for enabling the Economic and Social Council to play the leading role that should be expected of it, in making and implementing coherent United Nations policies for development.  In addition, he asked Member States to create a new Council to replace the present Commission on Human Rights, whose capacity to perform its tasks had been undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism.  The Human Rights Council, he suggested, should be smaller than the Commission, and elected directly by two-thirds majority of the Assembly. "

- Official Source: Secretary General's comments on UN Reform in 2005 General Assembly (Link).