IN the face of increasing criticism that the United Nations has become irrelevant, top UN and Jamaican officials have urged renewed respect for the UN’s principles and goals.

The occasion was the UN’s 58th anniversary, which on Friday evening brought together more than 200 guests into a cavernous ballroom of the Hilton Hotel.

Amid rotating disco lights and four giant video screens showing UN officials at work in Third World countries, there was free-flowing liquor, food, conversation, and speeches.

The evening was mostly upbeat, but there were serious moments, too.

The UN’s top Kingston-based official said the organisation was now being put to the test.

“Today, the UN is at a crossroads,” said Gillian Lindsay-Nanton, in her welcoming remarks. “Earlier this year, we all witnessed serious questioning of the UN’s relevance during the Security Council debates before the war in Iraq.”

And earlier this month, she said, the UN’s neutrality was attacked for the first time when its Baghdad headquarters was bombed.

Despite such problems, she said, “there can be no alternative to the multilateral platform provided by the UN” when dealing with conflicts, poverty, human rights abuses, and threats of terrorism.

At the same time, Lindsay-Nanton called on UN members to renew their commitment to promoting the ideals enshrined in the UN charter, which emerged from the ashes of the Second World War.

“Let us advocate and put in place the essential building blocks for a world in which the dignity and human rights of every person in every country, Jamaica included, are universally respected.

“In essence, this entails democratic governance, poverty eradication, and conflict preservation,” she said.

Lindsay-Nanton’s comments — and reference to Jamaica — come weeks after the Patterson administration twice ran afoul of the UN’s rules, despite its professed commitment to the UN charter.

One UN official, who visited Jamaica earlier this year on a fact-finding mission, issued a scathing report charging that Jamaica’s security forces were carrying out extra-judicial killings. And the UN High Commission on Refugees recently accused Jamaica of illegal treatment of a group of Cuban asylum seekers, who, it was alleged, were treated more like criminal refugees.

Criticism that the UN needs major reform has been fuelled, in the past, by complaints that many of the organisation’s members fail to obey the UN’s rules.

Lindsay-Nanton, on another front, warned that the UN’s development goals, which have a target date of 2015, have put an onus of responsibility on both rich and poor nations.

Goals to ease poverty would be undermined, she said, unless rich nations meet their commitments by fairly opening trade, increasing aid, and providing faster and deeper debt relief.

“With greater political commitment on all sides,” the development goals could be achieved, she said.

Delano Franklyn, minister of foreign affairs and trade, said Jamaica and other nations were firmly committed to “multilateralism”.

“We firmly believe that the current trend toward unilateralism is untenable and erodes the very principle of collective security on which the organisation was built,” he said.

He noted, as well, that the UN could boast “a proven track record” of major development projects.

“Jamaica, therefore, believes that the most important issue facing the United Nations today is not so much the question of its relevance, but the urgent process of reform of its institutional infrastructure, in order to improve the overall effectiveness of the organisation in responding with urgency to the challenges of the global environment,” Franklyn said.

Jamaica, he added, was “on track” with its development goals, including targets to improve education and reduce poverty.