Sixty-five years after its foundation, the United Nations is in need of an overhaul to make it more relevant, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende told the international organisation’s general assembly at the weekend.

‘We need the UN as an organisation uniting us, more than ever before,’ Balkenende said. But, he continued, the UN is losing its power as a global forum.
For example, the UN has been too passive in tackling major problems in recent years. In terms of the economy, the UN has left too much up to the G20 group of leading industrialised countries, the prime minister said.
And the UN has achieved great success in terms of human rights, but still falls short in enforcing its standards, he said. ‘It is unacceptable that people, often women, are still being stoned to death in 2010,’ Balkenende said, in his last speech to the UN as Dutch prime minister.