Külpolitika - A Magyar Külügyi Intézet folyóirata - 1996 (2. évfolyam)
1996 / 2. szám - ESEMÉNYNAPTÁR - Resumé
Resume André Erdős United Nation on the Eve of 21. Century The widening gap between the post-Cold War tasks and requirements awaiting the UN, on the one hand, and its perfoming capacity, on the other, has become more and more palpable. The recognition that a substantive improvement in this field can only be achieved by restructuring the UN and through the maximum use of unprecedented opportunities that only a reinvigorated world organization can accomplish, has been stadily gaining ground. The UN reform is a multifaceted process. Review is warranted as regards the Charter itself, including the composition and the working mechanism of the Security Council. The activities of the General Assembly also ought to be rationalized. One has to carefully scrutinize the workings of the UN secretariat. Overlappings and parallelism among various UN specialized agencies and bodies should be done away. One has to revisit the raison d'etre of by now outdated UN organs. Transparency and accountability in UN development activities must be enhanced. The redress of the financial situation of the world organization has equally become a problem of almost dramatic proportions. The overhauling of the Security Council is in the limelight. While one can justifiably qualify the system of the United Nations as the incarnation of the democratic interaction, based on the equality of rights, of the nations of the world, this is hardly applicable to its Security Council. Innovations have been introduced into the everyday working so this body, but it is obvious that its reform presupposes a deeper, more substantial and more multidirectional process. Efforts seem to have stalled as regards the change in the number of the Security Council members. Whatever the landscape of a new Security Council will be, the increase in its membership should be regarded not as the ultimate objective but as a means to enable this body to fully live up to the tasks assigned to it in the Charter. Hence, it should be conditioned by the overriding necessity of preserving effectiveness. Nowadays, even the present permanent members of the Security Council do not oppose the idea of reform, aware as they are that, if kept within certain limits, it would not curtail their prerogatives but would, at most, make their enjoyment somewhat more elaborate. UN reform has proved to be a lengthier and more controversial process than expected. Modernization of the world organization should come in the form of an overall package. We 136 Külpolitika
