Feature: UN's power brokers need to address global inequality, enhanced transparency

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations and Monday will see some of the world's leaders convene at the 70th session of the UN general assembly in New York to lay out their ideas on global governance, future peacekeeping operations and pledge of more troops or fiscal aid, and debate strategies to defeat violent extremists such as Islamic State.

Indeed, the annual spectacle sees far-reaching geopolitics play out in a single location for the world to see, fused with sideline meetings between countries' leaders where perhaps rhetoric is surrendered for exchanges straight from the shoulder, and diplomacy gives way to guileless pacts being made.

But for all intents and purposes the United Nations over the past 70 years has achieved some remarkable things, and most political authorities maintain that if such an international organization hadn't emerged from the ashes of World War II, it would have only been a matter of time before a similar global entity did.

Between its numerous agencies, some of the UN's biggest accomplishments include negotiating more than 170 peace agreements, preventing a major Cold War from turning hot, seeing the number of people killed in war decrease since 1945, and witnessing a single peacekeeping mission in Suez in the 1950s expand to around 16 globally coupled with ongoing monitoring operations.

The UN has also been a major driving force behind global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, and its agencies, including the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, UNESCO and UNICEF, are among the most powerful and altruistic of its organizations, employing some of the world's leading members in their respective fields, and perspicacious thinkers, to design and actualize lasting humanitarian support and ongoing aid for countries suffering from famine, armed conflict or from the devastating effects of natural disasters.

But the last 70 years haven't all been smooth sailing, and since its inception to date, the UN has, while being praised for its outwardly efforts to uphold its declarations and global missions in a democratic fashion, has been internally mired by the dictatorial influence of economically, politically and militaristically strong countries and their abilities to influence the decisions of smaller countries, in arenas spanning its main organs of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Secretariat, International Court of Justice to the now defunct UN Trusteeship Council.

While striving to uphold its democratic ideals, the UN has been described by scholars as the exact opposite, as in the General Assembly each member is represented and has equal voting power, but the key votes or potentially crippling vetoes from the more powerful permanent Security Council members, for example, can mean the difference between intervening in a humanitarian crisis, stepping up nuclear weapons disarmament measures, or preventing genocides on a holocaust level.

The UN was also called into question for its slow response in other conflicts. Syria's ongoing civil war, which has seen more than 4 million refugees flee the country since 2011, with the situation intensifying of late as clashes between President Bashar al-Assad's government and rebel forces escalate as Islamic State's influence in the region grows, has yet to see the UN broker successful peace talks despite five years of trying.

For all the good it does, with UNICEF's efforts, for example, which has seen the deaths of children under the age of five decline from nearly 12 million in 1990 to 6.9 million in 2011 and the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, which has helped 17 million asylum seekers and refugees and has earned two Nobel Peace Prizes for its efforts, not to mention the World Food Program which gives essential aid to 80 million people in 75 countries each year, and the stellar efforts of UNESCO to preserve the world's most beautiful sites, there are calls for the UN, and in particular its Security Council, to be more balanced and transparent in its dealings.

One point all experts on the matter agree on, however, for the Security Council and for the UN in general, for the enhancement of peace and stability in the world, is the UN, at a bare minimum, to remain relevant and to ensure it remains on path of positive change, rather than one of insular, Cold War-esque, East versus West, archaic and institutionalized rumpus, sorely needs more transparency on its decision making process in the 70 years ahead and beyond, across all its agencies and bodies. Endi