Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations during the critical decade following the end of the Cold War, discusses how one might enhance the efficiency of the United Nations Security Council by limiting the use of the veto powers conferred by the UN Charter.

Reforms are needed to more fully align the Council with the most basic principles of sound governance embedded in the Charter and, along the way, to more actively promote its role as a problem-solving institution, better able to deal with threat multipliers—from climate change to the unraveling of our nuclear order to the persistence of poverty and lack of opportunity in many parts of the world. The Security Council should stand at the center of reforms aimed at facilitating the emergence of full democracies governed by the rule of law.