ABSTRACT
In late 2004, a high-level panel on UN reform appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a report that advocated the most radical reorganization of political relations among states since the UN was founded in 1945 (United Nations 2004). As Anne Marie Slaughter (2005: 620) argues, this report seeks nothing less than revising the 1945 consensus underlying the UN Charter, by posing a challenge to the post-World War II concepts of sovereignty, responsibility, and collective security. “Membership in the United Nations is no longer a validation of sovereign status and a shield against unwanted meddling in a state’s domestic jurisdiction,” Slaughter (2005: 627) holds. “It is rather the right and capacity to participate in the United Nations itself, working in concert with other nations to sit in judgment and take action against threats to human security whenever and wherever they arise.” The “new security consensus” advanced in the report “embraces an expanded global solidarity” requiring UN action in alleviating “disease, hunger, illiteracy, environmental degradation, internal conflict, systematic human rights violations, weapons proliferation, and terrorism.”
