The adoption of the United Nations Pact for the Future in September 2024 was intended to reaffirm international cooperation at a moment of mounting global crisis. The Pact addressed sustainable development, peace and security, science and technology, future generations, and global governance. Yet for those who hoped that the Summit of the Future might open the door to more fundamental reform of the United Nations, the result was disappointing.

The Pact largely reaffirmed the principles and structures of the existing UN. That was not insignificant at a time when multilateralism itself is under pressure. But it left largely untouched a deeper question: whether institutions created in 1945 remain adequate to govern an international system transformed by globalization, environmental degradation, nuclear weapons, technological change and growing demands for democratic representation.

This was, in that sense, a missed opportunity.

The limits of intergovernmental reform

The difficulty is partly structural. The United Nations is an organization of sovereign states. Governments negotiate and governments decide. Civil society organizations may contribute ideas and expertise, but they have little formal standing in decisions about the constitutional architecture of the international system. This matters because some of the most imaginative proposals for UN reform have emerged precisely from civil society.

In preparation for the Summit of the Future, organizations such as the Stimson Center advanced proposals for strengthening peacebuilding, international justice, climate governance, cybersecurity, conflict prevention and the participation of civil society. Other reformers have gone further, questioning whether the structure of the United Nations itself needs reconsideration.

Yet few such proposals found their way into the Pact for the Future. Small and medium states, which collectively constitute the great majority of UN members and might benefit substantially from a more representative and rules-based international system, did not coalesce around an ambitious reform agenda. Many were understandably preoccupied with protecting commitments to development assistance and the Sustainable Development Goals. The result was recommitment rather than transformation.

A richer agenda for reform

The absence of structural reform from the Pact does not mean there is a shortage of ideas. Over recent decades, scholars and advocates have developed increasingly sophisticated proposals for strengthening the democratic legitimacy and effectiveness of the United Nations. Among them are Joseph Schwartzberg’s proposals for transforming the UN system; Andreas Bummel and Jo Leinen’s work on a world parliament; Mahmoud Sharei’s examination of Article 109 of the UN Charter; and the proposals developed by Augusto Lopez-Claros, Arthur Dahl and Maja Groff in Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century and subsequently the proposals put forth by the Global Governance Forum in A Second United Nations Charter.

Despite important differences, these proposals share a conviction that international governance must eventually become more representative of people as well as states. One recurring idea is the creation of a parliamentary body within the United Nations. Initially, such a body could be advisory, perhaps established by the General Assembly under its authority to create subsidiary organs. Over time, if experience demonstrated its usefulness and legitimacy, its responsibilities could evolve.

The underlying principle is important. National political systems generally derive legitimacy not merely from relations among governments or administrative authorities, but from representation of citizens and institutions governed by law. Yet at the international level, individuals remain largely outside the formal structures through which global decisions are made.  Legally, individuals do not have “standing under international law.”

A parliamentary assembly would begin to address this democratic deficit. Experience with the European Parliament, while arising from a very different political and historical context, demonstrates that international institutions can gradually develop forms of direct democratic representation.

Other proposals are equally significant. They include reform of voting arrangements in UN bodies; changes to the Security Council and the veto; stronger international capacities for maintaining peace; more effective protection of human rights; improved governance of the global environment and economy; and a more reliable system for financing the United Nations. The objective is not reform for its own sake. It is to equip international institutions with the capacity to address problems that individual states, acting alone, cannot solve.

The democratic challenge

There is, however, a profound obstacle to such reforms: the weakening of democracy itself. International institutions do not exist independently of the political systems of their member states. If democratic governments lose public confidence, if authoritarianism expands, and if citizens become increasingly skeptical of institutions at home, ambitious proposals for democratic global governance will inevitably encounter indifference or hostility.

This suggests that UN reform and the renewal of national democracy are not separate projects. They are connected. Democratic states are the natural constituency for a stronger international rule of law because they already accept, domestically, the principle that political power should be constrained by law and subject to representative institutions. A more democratic international order ultimately depends upon healthy democratic societies willing to extend some of these principles beyond national borders.

Civil society therefore has an indispensable role, even though it possesses little formal power under international law. Ideas developed outside government can shape political possibilities over time. Reform movements educate citizens, influence policymakers, build coalitions and prepare proposals that may suddenly become relevant when political circumstances change.

History suggests that major institutional transformations rarely occur through gradual reasoning alone. They often emerge when crisis creates political possibilities that previously seemed unrealistic.

Article 109: an unused opportunity

One particularly important possibility already exists within the UN Charter itself. Article 109 provides for a General Conference of UN member states to review the Charter. Such a conference could open the entire institutional architecture of the United Nations to serious examination.

Mahmoud Sharei has recently drawn attention to the continuing relevance of this provision and to possible legal and political pathways for reviving the Charter review process. A review conference would not guarantee agreement on ambitious reforms. Nor would it eliminate the influence of the great powers. But it would create a legitimate forum in which questions that have largely remained within civil society could finally enter formal intergovernmental debate. Here small and medium states could play a particularly important role.

They constitute the overwhelming majority of the international community. Their security depends more heavily than that of the great powers on functioning international law and effective multilateral institutions. They therefore have a strong interest in a United Nations in which rules matter, institutions work, and power is constrained by law.

Rather than waiting for the permanent members of the Security Council to initiate reform, small and medium states could begin building a coalition around the proposition that, after more than eighty years, a comprehensive review of the Charter is reasonable and overdue.

From idea to political leadership

The Pact for the Future did not produce the transformation some reformers hoped for. But it need not be the end of the discussion. The proposals developed by civil society constitute a valuable reservoir of institutional ideas. Some are ambitious; others could be introduced incrementally. Not all will ultimately prove politically feasible. But history repeatedly demonstrates that ideas dismissed as unrealistic in one period can become indispensable in another.

The challenge now is to move these ideas from the margins of international politics toward serious consideration by governments and citizens. That will require stronger democracies, sustained civil society engagement, and political leaders willing to think beyond the immediate constraints of national politics. Above all, it will require small and medium states to recognize the influence they could exercise collectively.

The United Nations emerged from an earlier period of profound international crisis. It incorporated lessons drawn from the failures of the League of Nations and represented a major advance in international organization. Eight decades later, the task is not to abandon that achievement but to build upon it.

The choice is not between preserving the United Nations exactly as it is and constructing an entirely new international order. The more practical question is whether states and peoples can progressively adapt the institutions they already possess to the realities of the twenty-first century.

Article 109 offers one pathway. Civil society has supplied many of the ideas. What is still missing is the political coalition—and the global leadership—to turn the possibility of reform into a serious international project.

This article is an abridged and adapted version of a longer essay, “United Nations Reform: Opportunity for Small and Medium States” originally published in The Journal of Social Encounters, Vol. 10, Issue 2 (2026).