Intervention across borders of other states with the intention of protecting the civilian population from atrocities committed against them is not a new phenomenon. According to Thomas Weiss, 1 the evolution of humanitarian intervention precedes the appearance of the current generation of international institutions. After the Second World War, the United Nations Charter under Article 2(1) stipulated that the UN be based upon the sovereign equality of all its members.

The protection and shelter of millions of Afghans on Pakistan soil for over three decades has amplified the image of UNHCR as a humanitarian institution, which has worked along with the government of Pakistan to manage the burden of the largest caseload of refugees in the world. The office is credited with having carried out the largest repatriation of Afghans (approximately 3.6 million) to their home country since 2002. This operation has greatly enhanced the credibility and esteem of the UNHCR both within Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Nepal has conducted a slew of political experiments since 2006. By inviting the Maoists into the mainstream and collectively deciding to dump the Constitution of 1990, there was hope that a new era of peace and stability would begin with the end of the decade-long armed insurgency. The Constituent Assembly (CA) elections of 2008 saw the emergence of the Maoists as the largest party—which was a totally unexpected and surprising outcome for the international community.

Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top.

Edmund Hillary (on scaling Mt Everest)

Some have compared the goal of a nuclear weapons free world to scaling an incredibly high mountain—and the mountain is covered in cloud making the peak invisible. Thus, they argue, all we can do is take small steps up the lower slope—hoping for better conditions in the future that might make it possible to climb higher.

The world has changed significantly since the founding of the United Nations and so have its conflicts. During the mid-twentieth century, the pre-eminent challenge for multilateral cooperation was the awesome prospect of a Third World War. Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we see a more elaborated focus on the prevention of conflict and the protection of communities and peoples—both as a sovereign responsibility of the modern nation-state as well as a central focus of the United Nations peace engagements.

Does the changing nature of the international order in the 21st century influence the nature and forms of multilateralism? And if yes, how does it impact the United Nations, an institution at the apex of the multilateral process, but which in some crucial respects still reflects the international order of the mid-twentieth century? This is the question that this paper attempts to explore.

Any organisation established in the aftermath of the Second World War obviously cannot fulfil its functions, in a world that has changed so dramatically, without adapting itself to the contemporary realities of international politics and economics.

When the United Nations Charter was promulgated on 26 June 1945, it reflected the immediate post-war situation and most importantly the international political balance of power that existed in 1945.

The title of this article is derived from a famous speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, at the United Nations in December 1956. Over the previous decade, Nehru, together with his sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and Mahatma Gandhi, had been working to build the UN into a form of global government. They termed their vision One World, and it had democracy and human rights as its basis.

To paraphrase the mantra of realism—international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for normative ascendancy: the establishment and maintenance of the dominant normative architecture of international order created and maintained by the interplay of power and ideas. As China, India and Brazil emerge as important growth centres in the world economy, the age of the West and its disrespect for the role, relevance and voice of the rest of the world is passing.