U.N. agency needs reform to reflect new global reality

U.N. agency needs reform to reflect new global reality

Miami Herald: The world that created the United Nations in 1945 has been swept away in the post-war years. A political revolution has reshaped the colonial map, creating new nations and nearly quadrupling U.N. membership from the original 51 countries to 192 today. Through it all, the Security Council has remained frozen in time, its size and permanent membership shamefully the same.

The five permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France. It can be argued that at least the first three remain the most powerful countries in the world in terms of combined military and economic might and deserve permanent representation. It is absurd, however, to argue that the victors of World War II should continue to exercise such a disproportionately high degree of power over the rest of the planet.

The unchanging structure of the Security Council is a testament to the difficulty of getting anything done at the United Nations. A body with 192 arms and legs moves slowly, when it moves at all.

Now is the time

Last week, the General Assembly opened yet another round of talks aimed once again at reforming the council, and this time there is no excuse for failure.

Why does any of this matter? Because the U.N. Charter gives the Security Council the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Since its inception, there have been 63 U.N. peacekeeping operations around the world. Today, there are 16 ongoing missions, from Haiti to the South Pacific to UNMOGIP — the Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, created exactly 50 years ago to keep watch on Kashmir.

Competing plans for reform differ on size and composition, but they all aim to make the council more representative and — we hope — more efficient and effective. Some would expand the full membership, possibly to 25 from the present 15, and others would recognize the global importance of countries like Japan, India and Brazil.

Whatever one thinks of the United Nations, it remains an indispensable organization, the only one capable of providing a degree of global governance when global action is needed. It needs truly global leadership.