India’s
nominee for the post of Secretary General Shashi Tharoor has said the greatest
problem for the world body is that it does not have one big issue to deal with
but a host of them shouting for attention.
An international institution like the United Nations with
"impressive achievements" and "haunting failures" has
changed but needs to change further, Tharoor said in an article in the
forthcoming issue of a news magazine while suggesting a four-point plan to
revamp the UN.
His reform proposal focuses on four priority areas mainly
making democracy a priority; bolstering the ranks; prioritizing and
streamlining in addition to healing wounds.
"The single greatest problem facing the United Nations
is that there is no single greatest problem, rather, there are a dozen
different ones each day clamouring for attention," Tharoor said.
"Some, like the crisis in Lebanon, the Palestinian
situation and the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, are obvious and
trying," he said, going on to talk about "problems without
passports" -- issues like climate change, drug trafficking, human rights,
terrorism, epidemic diseases, and refugee movements.
Tharoor, who is now a leading candidate to succeed Kofi
Annan said finding solutions to these issues were beyond the ability of one
nation or a group of countries and the key was "strengthening the
capacities of both the united nations and its members".
He also emphasized on need for more efforts to promote
democracy and good governance as key ingredients of development.
In the process of prioritizing and streamlining, the world
body should be more sharply focused on areas like humanitarian disasters,
peacekeeping and administering territories.
Regarding his last point - healing wounds, Tharoor argued
that there was a great danger of the east-west divide of the cold war being
replaced by a north-south divide at the UN.
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