A fork in the road or a roundabout?

This report is an independent narrative review of the UN reform process that culminated with the High-Level Summit in New York, 14–16 September 2005, plus its early implementation. The purpose of the project has been to gather relevant material, and to find, systematize and maintain knowledge and experiences from the reform process. The general thrust of the report derives from
interviews with 45 respondents in and around the UN Secretariat, the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and its Secretariat, the Office of the President of the General Assembly,
as well as with representatives from selected Member States. Most respondents were directly involved in the reform process; however, for methodological and substantial reasons, interviews were also made with a selected number of respondents who had been observing the process from the outside. In addition, the report also draws on statements, speeches, reports and articles where these have specific relevance for explaining or shedding light on issues pertinent to the overall process.

For the sake of brevity, this report focuses on the Secretariat and the reform process debate that followed from the Iraq War in 2003, channelled through the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges
and Change, which submitted its report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility in December 2004. The Millennium Project, commissioned by the Secretary-General in 2002 and headed by Jeffrey Sachs, ran parallel to this process, delivering its report, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals in January 2005. The latter report dealt solely with development, whereas the former focused on security but also incorporated elements of development and institutional reform. This fact, combined with time constraints, has led us to focus primarily on the processes surrounding the High-Level Panel. However, the two reports were synthesized in the Secretary-General’s report, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All issued in March 2005. Thus, the chapters that deal with the period from early 2005 until the High-Level Summit in September 2005 encompass the outcome of both processes, and consequently cover more issues than the earlier chapters.

Most interviews were conducted jointly by the research team, face to face with respondents, in New York, 17–21 October 2005. A few interviews were conducted singly, also face to face, during the same week, and the remainder were conducted singly face to face or by telephone in the following weeks. Apart from two interviews that were conducted simultaneously, all interviews were recorded to ensure the internal reliability of the data. All respondents were provided with a set of ethical guidelines5, and while some comments made were understood to be off the record, no respondent refused to be recorded. As soon as the report had been written up, all recordings were erased.

The report has been prepared within the UN programme at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo, financed in its entirety by NUPI.