UN General Assembly
1997

believe that today no one has any doubts that changes in the United Nations are urgent and are objectively required. I hope that the current session will make a substantive contribution to this important cause and that we will have all due reason to refer to it as “the session of reforms”. The well-known seventeenth-century Ukrainian philosopher and educator Hryhoriy Skovoroda once said that “You do your best work and save yourself when you firmly embark upon the road of common sense”. This, in our view, is the path that the process of United Nations reform should also take. Ukraine is actively supporting measures aimed at bringing the structure and tasks of the Organization in line with new realities. It is from this perspective that we are now considering a package of proposals by the Secretary-General aimed at a wide-scale reorganization of the United Nations structure and its programme activities. While these proposals may not fully coincide with the interests of some countries or regions, they have been elaborated on the basis of