UN:The clamour for UN reform grows louder every year, writes Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
IN THE corridors of UN headquarters, there is something of a bad mood rising. You could feel it last week during the first sessions of the 63rd general assembly debate when, for every leader, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that urged an overhaul of the global financial system in the midst of the turmoil on Wall Street, there were many more issuing what has become a perennial call for reform of the UN's own creaking machinery.
You could feel it during UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon's particularly gloomy opening remarks during which he reeled off the challenges facing the world - from financial, energy, food, and climate change crises to fresh outbreaks of war and violence - before warning of nations "looking inward rather than toward a shared future" and the danger of "retreating from the progress we have made".
On Thursday evening, the news that some $16 billion worth of pledges had been raised at that day's summit convened by Ban to galvanise members around the Millennium Development Goals failed to shake a growing sense that the ambitious targets to halve poverty and tackle education and health needs in the world's most destitute corners by 2015 are not likely to be achieved.
Critics argue that this lack of progress on the much vaunted MDGs epitomises what they consider to be a widening gap between expectations and realities at the UN.
Before the general assembly debate kicked off, there was ominous talk of tensions reminiscent of the old cold war days within the security council, with fears that the chill between the US and Russia over the latter's invasion of Georgia last month could paralyse the organ.
With the passing on Saturday of a new resolution reaffirming the council's previous sanctions on Iran, it appears those fissures have been papered over - for now.
Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon has tried to counter growing disillusionment with his leadership - a common refrain among UN staff is that the former South Korean foreign minister is more secretary than general.
In an interview last week Ban lamented that he is perceived as "invisible" and that the UN is "underappreciated". But at a retreat for senior UN officials in Turin in August, he railed against the institution's resistance to change, telling attendees that on assuming his position at the beginning of 2007 he discovered "there is bureaucracy . . . and then there is the UN".
He later told a press conference he wanted to see the body "re-energised" and "recharged" to better confront challenges. "The world is changing around us," Ban warned, " . . . the UN must also change with it."
The thorny issue of UN reform is nothing new, of course, but the clamour surrounding it grows louder every year. While the reform issue encompasses many aspects of the body's organisation, the most pressing element by far is expansion of the security council, the current make-up of which, critics charge, fails to reflect current global realities and affords disproportionate power to its five permanent members - Britain, France, China, Russia and the US.
After hours of heated debate on the final day of the 62nd general assembly earlier this month, members passed a resolution agreeing that inter-governmental negotiations on enlarging the council would begin before the end of February.
In its fiery new president, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, the general assembly has found a strident champion of reform. The priest and former Sandinista foreign minister vowed in his first speech that the "central and overarching objective" of this year's assembly would be to "democratise" the UN.
Among those lining up at last week's debate to decry the current status quo were Robert Mugabe, who was applauded in the general assembly when he reiterated his support for the Ezulwini Consensus, which calls for Africa to have two permanent and two non-permanent seats on the security council, and the prime ministers of India and Japan.
The two latter countries joined Germany and Brazil in the so-called Group of Four in a failed push in 2005 to join the council as permanent members - along with two African countries - but without veto rights. Also calling for reform was Indonesia's foreign minister who argued that the world's estimated 1.4 billion Muslims deserve their own representative on the council.
US president George Bush also addressed the issue in his valedictory speech to the UN last week, telling delegates the US is "open" to adding more permanent members to the council and mentioning Japan as a "well-qualified" candidate.
UN staffers watching his address smiled at the irony of Bush hailing the body's "extraordinary potential" six years after he warned it risked irrelevance for not backing the invasion of Iraq.
But he made some swipes too, warning that "inefficiency and corruption", bloated bureaucracy, and dithering on human rights served to blunt UN promise.
That promise and potential, even its most ardent supporters agree, is something the embattled UN will have to work hard at over the next 12 months.