By Mehru Jaffer

The world often looks upon Kofi Annan as if the United Nations secretary  general was a fairy godmother. Even a reluctant fairy godmother who refuses to use the magic wand to will away all the ills of the world.

We listen to him list his dream of seeing a world that is free from want  and fear. He is for the immediate reduction of greenhouse gases responsible  for global warming. He is against the plundering of our children's heritage  to pay for unsustainable practices. He wants free access to markets for  goods from poor countries, an expansion of debt-relief programs for the  most heavily burdened and cooperation with pharmaceutical companies to  develop an affordable vaccine for AIDS.

He is desperate to strengthen the capacity of the UN to conduct peace operations, to target sanctions against delinquent rulers instead of  innocent populations and to curb the illegal traffic in small arms that  fuel innumerable wars.

He would like to put people at the center of everything done. He says that  no calling is more noble and no responsibility greater than that of enabling  men, women and children in cities and in villages around the world to make  their lives better. He wants to redefine the goals of the UN on a planet  where population has more than doubled since 1945 from fewer than 2.5  billion to 6 billion people.

But then what holds Annan from realising all his dreams and making life a  little more attractive than it is at the moment for the world? The fact  that Annan is the head of a strictly non-authoritarian international family  that is made up of 191 countries may have something to do with it? What  delays his dream from being realised is the fact that he must get consensus  from member countries that are made of a multitude of different beliefs,  customs, systems of law and powerful self interests that are often put before the interest of others in the world.

The UN can not do much when member countries agree but do not put into  practice or honor treaties concerning arms control and international human  rights law for example. The stature of an international criminal court is  collecting dust and it is impossible to put it into force as too few  countries have so far ratified it. In the name of national sovereignty  many states continue to protect and shield terrible crimes against humanity.

Many harsh words are pelted at the UN's role in the conflict in Angola for  example. In 1945 wars were fought with another country and Angola's civil  war is not the kind of human behavior that the founders of the UN expected  the organisation would have to deal with. It is an unrealistic expectation  to put a peacekeeping force like the UN in the center of wars like in  Bosnia and Somalia. The mandate of the UN allows it to stop war and not to participate in one.

Besides no war can ever end if the two sides want to continue to fight over  more territory and more wealth. There are governments today that refuse to  share the wealth of a country with the poorest. They would rather fight,  kill and persecute. The wars today are over oil and diamonds and not  against mass poverty and ill health that ails the majority on this earth.

And the UN is nothing but clay in the hands of the international community.  It is we who can mold it in whatever way we want to. We have the power to  sculpt it into a monster or a madona. It is not the magic wand of Annan  that will make the world a better place but our own, personal integrity and  commitment to do so as individuals, as head of families and head of state. 

For I dont believe that Annan even has a magic wand.