The United Nations system embarks on its second half-century with a record of achievements unique among international institutions. Time and again in the past 50 years, it has upheld its primary goals of reducing conflict among States and promoting world peace, security and progress. Today, the United Nations founding principles are even more relevant to humanity's condition than they were in 1945. Yet, both the world and the United Nations have changed significantly in recent decades; it stands to reason that the interaction between them must also evolve. If the United Nations expects to remain effective in the twenty-first century, it must build on the foundation of its legacy and lessons from the twentieth century.

While UN goals remain consistent and valid, the world in which it operates has changed substantially: the dual-superpower world model is gone; UN membership comprises almost three times the number of independent countries as in 1945, many with pressing socio-economic, environmental and political domestic challenges, and most regional conflicts are now local disputes that do not immediately or overtly threaten wider world stability. This is partly a sign of the UN successes in preventive diplomacy, conflict-resolution and peacekeeping, but it also signals the need for a change in the United Nations role.

Throughout its history, when its Member States have given it the mandate and authority to do its job, the United Nations has on many occasions succeeded. Such successes include diplomacy for preventing or reversing aggression, peacekeeping operations that cement negotiated agreements between States, peaceful transitions from colonialism to independence, and the establishment of judicial mechanisms to punish individuals convicted of having committed the most heinous of crimes, and thus deterring the future commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. And it is in this last area -- the search for international justice -- that the UN could potentially make the greatest contribution.

From the very beginning, the UN Charter provided, in Article 7, for the establishment of an International Court of Justice, so States could resolve their disputes by recourse to the law. Most of the cases brought subsequently before the Court were, however, of a jurisdictional nature relating to the rights of "States"and not "individuals". The General Assembly's adoption, over 50 years ago, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions provided the foundations for what would be regarded increasingly as a normative standard, whenever "the rights of the individuals", whether in times of peace or war, would be invoked.

The recent establishment by the Security Council of the two ad hoc war crimes tribunals moved all of this forward: international criminal law would no longer remain an esoteric subject, confined to the teachings of a few law professors, but actually be practised against those individuals who, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Rwanda, indulged in a behaviour so barbaric the world was forced into action. The soon-to-be operational International Criminal Court, the statute of which was negotiated and adopted under the auspices of the General Assembly, should also have a profound effect. The Court will be both permanent and independent and, once the Rome Statute comes into force, it will have the potential to revolutionize the conduct of human affairs for the better: to deter the commission of the most cruel acts and, by doing so, distinguish the century awaiting us from preceding centuries. For this to happen, all States must remain committed to the process we call "multilateralism", and the United Nations, as the expression of that will, must therefore remain strong. The relevant organs of the United Nations must safeguard their credibility as a neutral forum where all countries -- big and small, from North or South, powerful or of modest means -- can meet, debate, present their cases, lobby for support and finally vote to express the collective will of the international community.

With the proliferation of independent, often small States, such a forum is more important than ever. If the United Nations itself is not a model of fairness among nations, it cannot realistically expect to promote equity within nations, a task it has taken on more and more of late as the threat of global conflict is superceded by internecine strife. In equal measure, Member States must allow that if they expect the benefit of UN protection or expect to influence its decisions, they must abide by its resolutions -- even those with which they individually disagree.

An equally important but more recent consensus that has grown from the UN experience is the conviction that peace and security among nations are best achieved by ensuring basic needs and dignity of the people within them. Through a ground-breaking series of international conferences on issues such as population, social development, women's and children's rights, water and environment, and others, the United Nations has defined global norms of fundamental human rights and needs. Empowered by this consensus, it has expanded its range of action into a variety of fields, creating new agencies in such areas as environment, housing, employment, governance, human rights, education, gender equity and health.

These are valuable lessons, but the UN's expansion into new regions and fields of action is not sustainable indefinitely, given its funding constraints and the limits of its management capacities. In the twenty-first century, therefore, the United Nations must make fundamental choices on which combination of its many modes of action most effectively meets the new global challenges. As it decides on how it will operate in the world in the new century, the UN should and probably will continue the slow transition it has been making over the past two decades. It will remain a unique forum for the peaceful prevention or resolution of conflicts between States, and will field peacemaking or peacekeeping operations as required, even as it develops the most effective techniques to use them.

Yet, the UN's most useful contribution to world peace and stability in the long run may be to promote those conditions within countries, primarily democracy, human rights and quality education for all, that tend to enhance progress and minimize disparity and conflict. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed this idea most eloquently when he recently wrote that "non-violent management of conflict is the very essence of democracy" (The World in 2000, The Economist, London, 1999, page 77). And to take the idea further, we might add that democracy -- of individuals and of nations -- is the very essence of the UN mandate. It underpins the global consensus on norms for basic human rights and needs; it is based on the premise that individual human dignity must underpin socio-economic progress, national integrity, regional stability and world peace. A universal prerequisite for achieving this goal-democratic good governance-is the most effective long-term agent for prosperity and the most potent antidote to conflict. With the authority of international consensus, the United Nations has already begun to focus on ensuring peace by expanding good governance and respect for fundamental human rights, rather than primarily through intervening in active battle zones. And by practising democracy and concord rather than conflict in its own workings on a global level, the United Nations can make itself an active model for the kind of governance and respect for individual rights it hopes to see in its Member States. Conflict prevention, through democracy and equity, rather than conflict resolution, is the way forward for the United Nations in the new century.