In a tribute to Ireland's involvement in and commitment to the United Nations, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has been chosen by Mr Kofi Annan to be one of four special envoys in the lead-up to September's decision-making summit on the secretary-general's reform plans.
Mr Ahern will concentrate on Europe and has the demanding task of engaging political leaders and representatives of civil society and the media to respond to those plans so that timely decisions may be taken on them. He is the only serving minister of the four.
In a world where political, economic, security and environmental pressures are felt more and more at global levels there can be no more important task than to ensure that international organisations are capable of taking on these challenges. The United Nations is pre-eminent among these. Its structures are badly in need of reform to bring them into line with international realities in the early 21st century, as Mr Annan has argued ceaselessly over the last couple of years, including in Dublin last November.
His proposals were put forward two weeks ago in a report entitled "In Larger Freedom", an apt phrase drawn from the UN's founding charter in 1945. It referred to the need for the UN to ensure respect for fundamental human rights, political justice and the rule of law, but also for social progress and better standards of life, if future generations were to be saved from the scourge of war.
Mr Annan's plans are the most far-reaching put to the UN since then and they are similarly structured. He has drawn on two major reports from groups of experts, who themselves consulted widely among the UN's members and stakeholders. One deals with how to achieve the Millennium Goals for human development by 2015. These are concerned with eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, gender equality, reduced child mortality and environmental sustainability. Everything we know about these subjects reinforces the urgency of achieving them and the possibility of doing so - not least in Ireland's case by restoring the commitment to the UN's 0.7 per cent aid guideline.
The political plans seek changes in the Security Council's membership and structures, a radical shake-up of its human rights commission, a new working definition of terrorism, better controls on weapons of mass destruction and effective ways of enhancing the rule of law, human rights and democracy in a much more interdependent world. Ireland has a good record in each of these areas.
Mr Annan has put forward two models for reform of the Security Council, the trickiest and most sensitive item on the agenda, since this is where most of the UN's legal power resides. Mr Ahern's key task will be to steer European leaders towards deciding between them. One model would create six new permanent seats and three non-permanent ones; the other no new permanent seats, but eight renewable ones representing major world regions.