What the United Nations needs.(Viewpoint essay)

Byline: Shashi Tharoor (Tharoor is under-secretary-general of the United Nations)

The United Nations is a 20th-century organization facing a 21st-century challenge--an institution with impressive achievements but also haunting failures, one that mirrors not just the world's hopes but its inequalities and disagreements, and most important, one that has changed but needs to change further.

This is the preeminent task that will confront the next U.N. secretary-general, a post for which I and three others so far are candidates. We need reform not because the United Nations has failed, but because it has succeeded enough over the years to be worth investing in. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." The United Nations, where I have worked for the last 28 years, is no exception. If we want to change the world, we must change too.

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 clamoring for attention. Some, like the crisis in Lebanon, the Palestinian situation and the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, are obvious and trying. Others we call "problems without passports"--issues that cross all frontiers uninvited, like climate change, drug trafficking, human rights, terrorism, epidemic diseases, and refugee movements. Their solutions, too, can recognize no frontiers because no one country or group of countries, however rich or powerful, can tackle them alone. The key to all of them is strengthening the capacities of both the United Nations and its members. Here's how:

Make Democracy a Priority: There is much at the United Nations that must continue--our excellent work in humanitarian relief and crisis response, and in social and economic development, to take a few examples. But we must make a greater effort to promote democracy and good governance as key ingredients of development. We now have a Democracy Fund to help us do that, financed not just by the rich West but by countries like India. To that end the United Nations must also stand up for human rights everywhere, ensuring that the new Human Rights Council fulfills its responsibilities more effectively than the over-politicized Human Rights Commission it replaced. And we must not let conflicts reignite when peacekeepers have left: we must strengthen the newly created Peacebuilding Commission to ensure that conflict gives way to development and the creation of democratic institutions so that peace is truly sustainable.

Bolster the Ranks: We have to make a difference where it counts--in the field, not just in the conference rooms in New ...