Introduction

This chapter focuses on the United Nations (UN) is both a political and structured approach to the working and the future of the Organization. It is not primarily directed at examining the administrative functioning of the UN, but rather at how the UN, in a transition process, is managing the future. In September 1990, Malta was entrusted with the Presidency of the forty-fifth session of the UN General Assembly, the first post-cold war session – a session witnessing the gripping concept of democracy extending over the entire Soviet bloc and heralding the break-up of the Soviet Union. The founding fathers of the UN, in charting the future, hitched their wagon to a star. They wanted to assert the equality of all nations large and small; they set as their compass the universal character of human rights; they beckoned for economic development and advancement, making peoples participants thereof.