Despite the difficulty of pushing through reform, the stakes are high. Poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degradation join with conflicts between and within states as sources of insecurity, and the rising importance of non-state actors requires a UN capable of dealing with an environment far removed from that which it was designed to operate in. This pamphlet makes several recommendations for the way head. Not least, Dr Imber asserts the growing importance of the UN to those without a powerful state to represent their interests — the global poor, the dispossessed and displaced. The author calls on all parties to ensure that the obstacles posed by vested interests, exemplified by the US ‘double veto’, should not be allowed to stand in the way of turning the UN towards much more effective multilateralism.