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INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS | SG Announces High Level Panel

UN SECRETARY GENERAL ANNOUNCES HIGH LEVEL PANEL ON THREATS, CHALLENGES AND CHANGE

On September 23, 2003, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, Secretary General Kofi Annan challenged the member states of the UN take "a hard look at fundamental policy issues, and at the structural changes that may be needed in order to strengthen them." He announced the creation of a high-level panel to review the peace and security challenges facing the UN in the next century and make recommendations.

The Secretary General announced that he was creating a "High-Level Panel of eminent personalities, to which I will assign four tasks:

"First, to examine the current challenges to peace and security;
"Second, to consider the contribution which collective action can make in addressing these challenges;
"Third, to review the functioning of the major organs of the United Nations and the relationship between them; and
"Fourth, to recommend ways of strengthening the United Nations, through reform of its institutions and processes" Click here for panel's terms of reference (in PDF format).

He noted that the panel, known as the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, will focus on peace and security but will by necessity also have to look at other global challenges. The report, which is due back to the General Assembly before its 2004 session beginning in September, may include major institutional reforms to the UN. The panel is composed of sixteen eminent personalities and is chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand.

Stephen Stedman, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS), has been appointed research director for the panel. In a November 2003 interview with the Stanford Report, Stedman said his biggest challenge will be producing a report "that is both hard-hitting and has the potential for leading to change. There is a general sense within the U.N. that, basically, the effectiveness and legitimacy of the organization has been called into account. When Kofi Annan announced his intention to create the panel, he declared that the U.N. was at a crossroads where it needed to rethink how it can effectively provide collective security in today's world."

Annan seemed to challenge the member states of the United Nations to tackle the most fundamental questions in his speech to the General Assembly, stressing that "History is a harsh judge: it will not forgive us if we let this moment pass."

Annan said, "Excellencies, we have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded. At that time, a group of far-sighted leaders, led and inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, were determined to make the second half of the twentieth century different from the first half. They saw that the human race had only one world to live in, and that unless it managed its affairs prudently, all human beings may perish.

"So they drew up rules to govern international behaviour, and founded a network of institutions, with the United Nations at its centre, in which the peoples of the world could work together for the common good.

"Now we must decide whether it is possible to continue on the basis agreed then, or whether radical changes are needed. And we must not shy away from questions about the adequacy, and effectiveness, of the rules and instruments at our disposal."

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