The United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization created in 1945 to promote international

cooperation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was created

following World War II to prevent another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states;

there are now 193.

Basic Principles and Changing Interpretation

The United Nations was founded on three fundamental principles

1) Sovereign equality of states

2) Only international problems are within U.N jurisdiction

3) Primarily concerned with international peace and security

1) Sovereign equality of states

First United Nations is based on the notion of the sovereign equality of member states ,

consistent with the Westphalian tradition.

Each states, USA, India, Turkey or Suriname, irrespective of size or population is legally

equivalent of every other state

Each states having one vote in the General Assembly.

However, the actual inequality of states is recognized in the veto power given to the five

permanent members of the security council( China, France, Russia, The United kingdom,

and The United States), The special role reserved for the wealthy states in budget

negotiations and weighted voting system used by the World Bank and the International

Fund.

For many of the newer states, The United Nations serves as a badge of international

legitimacy, a voice for small states.

2) Only international problems are within U.N jurisdiction

Second is the principle that only international problems are within the jurisdiction of the

United Nations.

As in (Article 2, Section 7) ”Authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which

are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”

Over the life of United Nations, the once rigid distinction between domestic and international

issues has weakened and led to an erosion of sovereignty.

Global telecommunications and economic interdependencies, international human rights,

election monitoring and environmental regulation are among the developments inferring on

traditional areas of domestic jurisdiction and hence on states sovereignty,

In reaction to the international ramification of domestic and regional conflict, a growing body

of precedent has developed for humanitarian intervention without the consent of host

country.

3) Primarily concerned with international peace and security

The third is that the United Nations is designed primarily to maintain international peace and

security.

The foundation of both leagues of nations and United Nations focused on security in the

realist, classical sense –protection of national territory.

Structure of United Nations

The structure of United nations was developed to serve the multiple roles assigned by its

charter, but incremental changes in the structure have accommodated changes in the

international system, particularly the increase in the number of states.

Principle organs of the United Nations

1) Security council

The Security Council responsible for ensuring peace and security and deciding enforcement

measure was very active during the 1940s.

As the Cold War hardened between East and West, use of Security Council diminished

because of Soviet Union’s frequent use of the veto to block action. with the demise of the

cold war, the security council has again grown in power.

2) The General Assembly

The General Assembly, permitted to debate any topic under the purview of the charter, has

changed its method of operation in response to its increased membership. The bulk of the

work of the General Assembly is done in six functional committees: Disarmament and

Security; Economic and financial; Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural; Political and

Decolonization; Administrative and Budgetary; and Legal. These committees annually

bring about 325 resolution to the floor of the whole body.

3) Secretariat

The United Nations Secretariat is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations and it is

headed by the United Nations Secretary-General, assisted by a staff of international civil servants

worldwide. It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for their

meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly,

the UN Economic and Social Council, and other U.N. bodies. The United Nations Charter provides

that the staff be chosen by application of the "highest standards of efficiency, competence, and

integrity," with due regard for the importance of recruiting on a wide geographical basis.

The Charter provides that the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any authority other than

the UN. Each UN member country is enjoined to respect the international character of the Secretariat

and not seek to influence its staff. The Secretary-General alone is responsible for staff selection.

4) Economic and Social Council

Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) constitutes one of the six principal organs (one is

not active, as of 2011) of the United Nations. It is responsible for coordinating the economic,

social and related work of 14 UN specialized agencies, their functional commissions and five

regional commissions. ECOSOC has 54 members; it holds a four-week session each year in

July. Since 1998, it has also held a meeting each April with finance ministers heading key

committees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The ECOSOC

serves as the central forum for discussing international economic and social issues, and for

formulating policy recommendations addressed to member states and the United Nations

System

5) Trusteeship Council

Trusteeship Council is fifth principal organ of the United Nations, was established to help

ensure that trust territories were administered in the best interests of their inhabitants and of

international peace and security. The trust territories—most of them former mandates of the

League of Nations or territories taken from nations defeated at the end of World War II—

have all now attained self-government or independence, either as separate nations or by

joining Neighbouring independent countries. The last was Palau, formerly part of the Trust

Territory of the Pacific Islands, which became a member state of the United Nations in

December 1994.

6) International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is

based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Its main functions are to settle legal

disputes submitted to it by states and to provide advisory opinions on legal questions

submitted to it by duly authorized international organs, agencies, and the UN General

Assembly

Key Political Issues

The United Nations has always mirrored what was happening in the world and the world

has, in turn, been shaped by the UN and its organs

UN played a key role in the decolonization of Africa and Asia,

The UN Charter endorsed the principle of self-determination for colonial peoples and former

colonies such as India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Latin American states seized on the UN as

a forum to push the agenda of decolonization.

By the mid-1960s, most of the former colonies had achieved independence with little threat

to international peace

The emergence of the newly independent states transformed the UN and international

politics more generally. These states formed a coalition of the South or Group of 77—

Developing states whose interest lie in economic development

Peace keeping

Of the issue the UN confronts none is as vexing as peace and security. During the cold war,

the structure of the Security council (requiring unanimity among the five permanent

members) preventing the united nations from playing a major in issues directly affecting

those members. A new approach labeled peacekeeping evolved as a way to limit the scope

of conflict and prevent it from escalating into a Cold War confrontation. Peacekeeping

operations fall into two types or generations.

1) First Generation Peacekeeping multilateral institutions such as UN seek to contain

conflicts between two states through third-party military forces. Ad hoc military units,

drawn from the armed forces of nonpermanent members of the UN

2) Second Generation Peacekeeping activities respond to civil war and domestic unrest

much of it stemming from the rise of ethnonationalism

To deal with these new conflicts, second-generation peacekeepers have taken on a

range of both military and nonmilitary functions

Military, they have aided in the verification of troops withdrawal and have separated

warring factions until the underlying issues could be settled. Sometimes resolving

underlying issues has meant organizing and running national elections such as in

Cambodia and Namibia; sometimes it has involved implementing human rights

agreements such as Central America. At the other times UN peacekeepers have tried to

maintain law and order in failing or disintegrating societies by aiding in civil

administration, policing and rehabilitating infrastructure, as in Somalia. And

peacekeepers have provided humanitarian aid, supplying food, medicine and secure

environment in part of an expanded version of human rights, as followed in several

missions in Africa.

Second Generation Peacekeeping vastly expended in the post-Cold War period.

Enforcement and Chapter VII Since the end of the cold war the security council has intervened in situations deemed

threatening to peace and acts of aggression and take enforcement measure (economic

sanctions, military force) to restore been invoked two times e the International Peace.

Previously such actions had only been invoked two times, the UN preferring the more

limited first-generation peace keeping. Enforcement of chapter VII include the use of

economic, diplomatic and financial sanctions as well as directly military actions to

prevent or deter threats to international peace or to counter acts of aggression.

The 1991 Gulf war was an enforcement action under chapter VII

Economic sanctions against Iraq during 1990s were also enforcement actions under

Chapter VII.

Possibilities for Reform Faced with escalating demands that challenge the very principle on which the

organization is founded, and saddled with structures that no longer reflect the power of

the international system, the united nations has, not surprisingly, been confronted with

long and persistent calls for Reform.

Reforming the UN so that it can participate more effectively in peace and security issues

requires reorganization of both the Security Council and the office of the secretary-

general.

The ”report of panel on UN peace operations” (popularly known as the Brahimi Report,

2000) is the latest high level attempt to evaluate peace and security operations.

Among the proposals are calls for member state to form bridge-sized forces (about 5000

troops) that could be deployed in the space of thirty to ninety days,

The UN also faces reform dilemmas in the promotion of sustainable developments.

All the UN reforms begin and end with the willingness of states to commit financial

resources to the organization. Getting enough money in the regular budget and making

states pay for special operations has been a persistent problem. For example during the

Congo crisis of the early 1960, the refusal by the Soviet Union and the France to fulfill

their financial obligation to the UN almost let to the end of the organization.

A Complex network of Intergovernmental Organizations