The Discomfort of the Run-in with Reform

Abstract

If Childers and Urquhart have calculated right, then the reform package put forward by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July 1997, was the twelfth time that the financing and management of the UN has been under evaluation and reform. Member governments have initiated eight and secretaries-general four.¹ It is never quite that clear-cut and for that reason Annan stated that what he was initiating, as reform, was a process and not an event. Indeed, the current process of change could be dated back to 1991–2 under Boutros-Ghali who recognized that in the changing global circumstances at the end of the Cold War, the UN both had and must play a different role. Whether he misjudged that role, despite his thoughtful writings in a series of Agenda reports, has been extensively debated elsewhere.