New United Nations: continuous change and reform: ... the UN hopes to secure for itself a central place in the future of multilateral diplomacy.

My aim in this brief article is to put into perspective the current process of reform and renewal that is transforming the United Nations. Critics of the UN all too often equate reform with downsizing: cuts in budgets, staff size, and programmes. And indeed the UN has instituted such changes within the last year: the current budget is lower than that of the last biennium; posts have been eliminated; and secretariat units have been consolidated.

But reform has to be seen as more than the sum of its cuts. It has to express a commitment to making the UN as effective as we know how. And the process must be guided by a vision of the world's needs, today and tomorrow. That is how the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, views the challenge of reform.

We live in an era of realignment. Fundamental forces are reshaping our societies and our lives, thrusting new challenges onto the international agenda and providing the primary impetus for and the context of ongoing UN reforms.

The end of the cold war is one such force. Nearly a decade after the Berlin wall came down, the world is still struggling to undo the social, economic, and political distortions of superpower rivalry. Cases in point include interethnic conflicts in central Asia and the former Yugoslavia and instability in former proxy battlegrounds of Africa and Asia. With nuclear tests in India and Pakistan this year, the nuclear weapons equilibrium has entered a new and potentially destabilizing phase.

Globalization is a second fundamental force reshaping the world today. It is perhaps the most profound source of international transformation since the industrial revolution. The globalization of finance and production has generated a sustained period of economic expansion and created vast new opportunities for some. But some globalization also poses risks - an obvious instance being the tightly coupled and largely unregulated international financial markets that have battered east and Southeast Asian economies in recent months. Also, the benefits of globalization still reach relatively few developing countries - less than four per cent of direct foreign investment goes to Africa, for example, and twelve countries account for 80 per cent of all investment flows to the developing world.

Globalization rests on and is sustained by yet a third transformative force: the remarkable revolution in information technology. It has unfolded most extensively in the industrialized world, but also holds enormous potential for developing countries in areas ranging from education to medicine, from agricultural production to more effective public sector management.

Fourth is the intensification of global environmental interdependencies. Environmental degradation is the quintessential problem without a passport, transcending the power of any single state to redress on its own.

Fifth, there is a growing trend towards democratization in the world. Some 120 countries now hold generally free and fair elections, the highest total in history. The social, economic, and political benefits of basing systems of rule on the principle of the will of the people have resulted in both greater peace and greater prosperity, though the transition to democracy is often slow and at times fraught with difficulty and conflict. Moreover, elections are only the beginning of the process; and holding the second election is as important, if not more so, than holding the first.

The growing influence of civil society is another factor that has transformed the way the world works: women's associations, human rights groups, humanitarian organizations, parliamentarians, the business community, and others. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become indispensable to the execution at the field level of UN projects in human rights, humanitarian affairs, peace-building, environment, and development. And business is deeply engaged with the UN in a variety of technical areas, such as standard setting, and increasingly at the policy level as well.

However, there has been a simultaneous growth of a global `uncivil society' - drug-traffickers, terrorists, criminals, and money-launderers, who take advantage of the same openness of borders, markets, and communications that fosters globalization, and who thrive especially where institutions and laws are weak.

For example, the trade in illegal drugs is estimated at some US$400 billion annually - larger than world trade in oil and gas, larger than the chemicals and pharmaceuticals business, and twice as large as the motor vehicles industry. Perhaps even more startling, during the past 20 years some 30 million women and girls have become victims of an orchestrated global sex trade, involving indentured prostitution and outright slavery.

These forces are all integrative, for better or for worse. But there is also an opposite trend - of differentiation and fragmentation. The phenomenon of `failed states' is well known. Ethnic strife and conflicts have proliferated - instances of genocide have recurred. They are expressions of particularistic, exclusionary identities - whether ethnic, national, religious, or tribal - which we must learn to replace with more benign and pluralistic civic cultures.

In short, these are some of the major trends that are leading the United Nations to redefine not only how it does things but also what it does and in some cases why it exists. The United Nations is adapting to these new challenges in many ways.

To cope with conflicts that were the most obvious fallout from the cold war, UN peacekeeping forces were sent into the field in unprecedented numbers and with unprecedented mandates, typically with extensive help from Canada. Successes in places such as El Salvador and Mozambique gave those countries new leases on life. But we also experienced major setbacks, for example, in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. We are now working to assimilate the lessons of those experiences and to modernize peace-keeping as a vital instrument for maintaining international peace and security.

Those lessons touch on such issues as the practicability of mandates; the need for rapid deployment through stand-by arrangements and rapidly deployable mission headquarters; and the need for improved co-ordination among the many UN agencies and NGOs that routinely get involved in complex emergencies.

To deal with the diverse and longrange challenges of globalization, a cycle of landmark world conferences has enabled member states of the UN to address the leading developmental, economic, social, and environmental problems of our day. The UN is serving as an indispensable forum in which the international community can reach political consensus on international norms, best practices, and programmes of action.

With respect to the environment, the United Nations has long led global efforts to safeguard the planet's ecosystems and life-forms. It convened the first global conference on the environment, in Stockholm in 1972. Twenty years later, as our understanding of environmental challenges evolved, it staged the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to advance the new concept of sustainable development. Conventions on climate change, biodiversity, and desertification, as well as monitoring and advocacy by the UN Environment Programme and other UN entities, are carrying the process, and our thinking, still further.

The United Nations is harnessing the power of the new communications technologies in a variety of ways. Video-conferencing enables senior officials in Geneva, Vienna, Rome, and Nairobi to take part in weekly meetings of a newly created cabinet-style senior management group chaired by the secretary-general. Remote translation saves travel and conference-servicing costs. And our home page on the World Wide Web receives 25 million or more hits each month from some 130 countries.

The UN library is increasingly a `library without walls,' stressing remote access and the provision of on-line services. An integrated management information system brings personnel, budget, and procurement information to desk-tops system-wide. An electronic UN is quickly becoming a reality.

The UN's work in support of democratization has joined peace and development as a core mission. The United Nations has provided electoral assistance on no fewer than 80 occasions in the past five years, and not merely in the form of observation and verification but also of drafting electoral laws and advising on the formation of political parties. As part of our concern with good `governance,' UN technical assistance programmes focus increasing attention on creating and supporting effective judiciaries, civil services, and human rights bodies. Support for such activities now constitutes about 30 per cent of the efforts of the United Nations Development Programme.

The UN has responded to the increased significance of non-governmental actors by embracing them. It is responding to the growth of uncivil society by seeking to suppress it. The General Assembly has renewed its attack on the scourge of illegal drugs with a recent `drug summit' - the largest multilateral gathering ever held on this subject. The session agreed to the first truly global strategy to control drugs; the first international agreement on reducing demand; and on the goal of eradicating the illicit cultivation of opium, coca, and other narcotic crops within the next ten years. It also agreed on ways to strengthen and harmonize laws on money-laundering, to extradite drug traffickers, and to share information on drug cartels.

As a result of progress in these and other areas, the UN is in fundamental respects becoming a new institution. The General Assembly has adopted major aspects of the secretary-general's reform proposals and is discussing further far-reaching measures, including a new results-oriented budgetary system and time limits on new programmes.

Moreover, the agreement reached by the secretary-general during his February 1998 mission to Baghdad reminded the world just how much a united and determined international community can achieve through the United Nations. Rarely has the institution and its secretary-general received such tremendous support and acclaim from around the world. As Kofi Annan has said, what we achieved through reason and diplomacy in Iraq we must also strive to achieve across our entire agenda.

Our progress in transforming the UN is fragile, however. With so much at stake, the international community has an obligation to itself and to succeeding generations to strengthen the available multilateral mechanisms, above all the United Nations. The Millennium Assembly, to be convened in the autumn of 2000, will address this challenge comprehensively.

Another secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold, said almost forty-five years ago: `One of the many contradictions of life is the frequency with which we refer to ourselves as living in a period of change ... while we are so often reluctant to acknowledge the need for adjustment in our ways of responding to the changes which actually take place.'

If that is true, then perhaps the most profound change taking place at the United Nations today is the acknowledgment that adjustment must become part of organizational routine; that adjustment is not episodic, but permanent; that it is a friend, not a foe.

If we keep our goals in focus, if we anchor our work in today's realities and tomorrow's opportunities, and if we align our resources and structures with the priorities we identify, I believe the United Nations can and will accomplish great things in the century ahead.

John Gerard Ruggie is a special advisor to Kofi Annan, at the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. He is on leave of absence as the Burgess Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University.