The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. The UN was founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between nations and provide a platform for dialogue.
There are now 192 member states, including almost every recognized independent state. From its headquarters on international territory within New York City, the UN and its specialized agencies decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout the year. The organization is divided into administrative bodies, primarily:
Additional bodies deal with the governance of all other UN System agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children\'s Fund (UNICEF). The UN\'s most visible public figure is the Secretary-General, currently Ban Ki-moon of South Korea.
The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states, and has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Aims
The stated aims of the United Nations are to maintain international peace and security, to safeguard human rights, to provide a mechanism for international law, to promote social and economic progress, improve living standards, and fight diseases.[Charter of the United Nations. United Nations. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.] It provides the opportunity for countries to balance global interdependence and national interests when addressing international problems. Toward these ends it ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.[Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.]
The organization occupies itself at present in the fields of economic development, world health, the state of the environment, the health of animals, education, and refugee work. The organization also discusses and deliberates global conflicts, wars, disarmament and peace efforts.
History
-
For more details on the United Nation\'s predecessor organization, see League of Nations.
East German stamp from 1985 commemorating the UN.
The United Nations was founded as a successor to the League of Nations, which was widely considered to have been ineffective in its role as an international governing body, in that it had been unable to prevent World War II. Some argue that the UN\'s major advantage over the League of Nations is its ability to maintain and deploy its member nations\' armed forces as peace keepers.
Others see such "peace keeping" as a euphemism for war and domination of weak and poor countries by the wealthy and powerful nations of the world.["Evidence mounts of a UN massacre in Haiti", Haiti Information Project, 2005-07-12. (English)]
The term "United Nations" (which appears in stanza 35 of Canto III of Byron\'s Childe Harold\'s Pilgrimage) was decided by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill[David, Wilton. United Nations. Etymologies & Word Origins: Letter U. WordOrigins.org.] during World War II, to refer to the Allies. Its first formal use was in the 1 January 1942 Declaration by the United Nations, which committed the Allies to the principles of the Atlantic Charter and pledged them not to seek a separate peace with the Axis powers. Thereafter, the Allies used the term "United Nations Fighting Forces" to refer to their alliance.
The idea for the UN was espoused in declarations signed at the wartime Allied conferences in Moscow, Cairo, and Tehran in 1943. From August to October 1944, representatives of France, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union met to elaborate the plans at the Dumbarton Oaks Estate in Washington, D.C. Those and later talks produced proposals outlining the purposes of the organization, its membership and organs, and arrangements to maintain international peace and security and international economic and social cooperation.
On 25 April 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco. In addition to the governments, a number of non-governmental organizations were invited to assist in drafting the charter. The 50 nations represented at the conference signed the Charter of the United Nations two months later on 26 June. Poland had not been represented at the conference, but a place had been reserved for it among the original signatories, and it added its name later. The UN came into existence on 24 October 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the Republic of China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. That these countries are the permanent members of the Security Council, and have veto power on any Security Council resolution, reflects that they are the main victors of World War II or their successor states: the People\'s Republic of China replaced the Republic of China in 1971 and Russia replaced the Soviet Union in 1991.[The United Nations: Organization. United Nations. Retrieved on 2007-05-14.]
Initially, the body was known as the United Nations Organization, or UNO. However, by the 1950s, English speakers were referring to it as the United Nations, or the UN.
Membership
-
With the addition of Montenegro on 28 June 2006, there are 192 United Nations member states, including virtually all internationally-recognized independent states.[United Nations Member States. United Nations. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.]
The United Nations Charter outlines the rules for membership:
- Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
- The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Group of 77 (G77)
Member states of G77.
The Group of 77 at the UN is a loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members\' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations. There were 77 founding members of the organization, but the organization has since expanded to 130 member countries. The group was founded on 15 June 1964 by the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries" issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The first major meeting was in Algiers in 1967, where the Charter of Algiers was adopted and the basis for permanent institutional structures was begun.[About the G77. Group of 77. Retrieved on 2007-09-30.]
Headquarters
-
The United Nations headquarters is a golden rectangled building in New York City. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River. Though the building is in New York City, the land occupied by the United Nations Headquarters is considered international territory. FDR Drive passes underneath the Conference Building of the complex. There are also major UN agencies in Geneva, The Hague, Vienna, Montreal, Copenhagen, Bonn, and elsewhere.
Financing
The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by their Gross National Income (GNI), with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income.[Fifth Committee Approves Assessment Scale for Regular, Peacekeeping Budgets, Texts on Common System, Pension Fund, as it Concludes Session (Press Release). United Nations (2006-12-22).]
The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a \'ceiling\' rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly revised the scale of assessments to reflect current global circumstances. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25% to 22%. The U.S. is the only member that has met the ceiling.In addition to a ceiling rate, the minimum amount assessed to any member nation (or \'floor\' rate) is set at 0.001% of the UN budget. Also, for the least developed countries (LDC), a ceiling rate of 0.01% is applied.
The current operating budget is estimated at $4.19 billion
A large share of UN expenditures addresses the core UN mission of peace and security. The peacekeeping budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year is approximately $5 billion (compared to approximately $1.5 billion for the UN core budget over the same period), with some 70,000 troops deployed in 17 missions around the world.[citation needed] UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular funding scale, but including a weighted surcharge for the five permanent Security Council members, who must approve all peacekeeping operations. This surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. As of 1 January 2007, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain and South Korea.[[1]]
Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF and UNDP) are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments. Most of this is financial contributions, but some is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations.
Languages
Under the Charter, the official languages are Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Later the Arabic language was added as a language of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. ["Basic Facts About The United Nations",
]
By United Nations (2004) ISBN 9211009367 Five of the official languages were chosen when the UN was founded (the languages of the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Spanish, which was the official language of the largest number of nations at the time). Arabic was added in 1973; the number of Arabic-speaking member states had increased substantially since 1945, and the 1973 oil crisis provided the catalyst for the addition. The Secretariat uses two working languages, British English (not American English) and French.
The UN standard for English language documents (United Nations Editorial Manual) follows British usage and Oxford spelling (en-gb-oed). The UN standard for Chinese (Standard Mandarin) changed when the Republic of China (Taiwan) was succeeded by the People\'s Republic of China in 1971. From 1945 until 1971 traditional characters were used, and since 1972 simplified characters have been used.
Organizational structure
-
The United Nations system is based on five principal organs (formerly six - the Trusteeship Council suspended operations in 1994);[Membership of Principal United Nations Organs in 2005. United Nations (2005-03-15).] the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice.
General Assembly
UN General Assembly.
-
The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the United Nations. Composed of all United Nations member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions under a president elected from among the member states. Over a two-week period at the start of each session, all members have the opportunity to address the assembly. Traditionally, the Secretary-General makes the first statement, followed by the president of the assembly. The first session was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Westminster Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.
When the General Assembly votes on important questions, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required. Examples of important questions include: recommendations on peace and security; election of members to organs; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; and, budgetary matters. All other questions are decided by majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under Security Council consideration. Conceivably, the one state, one vote power structure could enable states comprising just eight percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote.[citation needed]
Insert non-formatted text here
Security Council
Interior of the Security Council chambers.
-
- Further information: Reform of the United Nations Security Council
The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the United Nations only make recommendations to member governments, the Security Council has the power to make decisions that member governments must carry out under the United Nations Charter.[citation needed] The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The Security Council is made up of 15 member states, consisting of five permanent seats and ten temporary seats. The permanent five are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These members hold veto power over substantive but not procedural resolutions allowing a permanent member to block adoption but not to block the debate of a resolution unacceptable to it. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms with member states voted in by the General Assembly on a regional basis. The presidency of the Security Council is rotated alphabetically each month. [http://www.un.org/sc/members.asp][citation needed]
The Security Council has been criticised for being unable to act in a clear and decisive way when confronted with a crisis.
Economic and Social Council
-
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, all of whom are elected by the General Assembly for a three-year term. The president is elected for a one-year term and chosen amongst the small or middle powers represented on ECOSOC. ECOSOC meets once a year in July for a four-week session. Since 1998, it has held another meeting each April with finance ministers heading key committees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Viewed separate from the specialized bodies it coordinates, ECOSOC\'s functions include information gathering, advising member nations, and making recommendations. In addition, ECOSOC is well-positioned to provide policy coherence and coordinate the overlapping functions of the UN’s subsidiary bodies and it is in these roles that it is most active.
Secretariat
-
The United Nations Secretariat is headed by the 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 UN 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.
The Secretary-General\'s duties include helping resolve international disputes, administering peacekeeping operations, organizing international conferences, gathering information on the implementation of Security Council decisions, and consulting with member governments regarding various initiatives. Key Secretariat offices in this area include the Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter that, in his or her opinion, may threaten international peace and security.
International Court of Justice
-
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, Netherlands, is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. Established in 1945 by the United Nations Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the Court.[Statute of the International Court of Justice. International Court of Justice. Retrieved on 2007-08-31.]
It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, sharing the building with the Hague Academy of International Law, a private centre for the study of international law. Several of the Court\'s current judges are either alumni or former faculty members of the Academy. Its purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states. The court has heard cases related to war crimes, illegal state interference and ethnic cleansing, among others, and continues to hear cases.[The Court. International Court of Justice. Retrieved on 2007-05-17.]
A related court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), began operating in 2002 through international discussions initiated by the General Assembly. It is the first permanent international court charged with trying those who commit the most serious crimes under international law, including war crimes and genocide. The ICC is functionally independent of the UN in terms of personnel and financing, but some meetings of the ICC governing body, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, are held at the UN. There is a "relationship agreement" between the ICC and the UN that governs how the two institutions regard each other legally.[Agreement Between the International Criminal Court and the United Nations. International Criminal Court (2004-10-04).]
Secretary General
-
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations, and acts as the de facto spokesman and leader of the United Nations.
Selection
The UN Charter provides little guidance for the selection of the Secretary General. The Charter states that "the Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council". Over the years the process has changed, but always requires bartering and negotiation on the part of the five veto holding members of the Security Council.[An Historical Overview on the Selection of United Nations Secretaries-General. UNA-USA.]
In practice, a few details have remained consistent:
- the Secretary-General is appointed for a renewable five year term;
- no Secretary-General has served more than two terms;
- candidates are selected using geographic rotation;
- no candidate has been elected from the country of a permanent member of the Security Council; and
- the General Assembly has never rejected a candidate recommended by the Security Council.
List of Secretary Generals
- Trygve Lie (
Norway) - February 1946 until his resignation in November 1952
- Dag Hammarskjöld (
Sweden) - April 1953 until his death in a plane crash over Africa in September 1961
- U Thant (
Burma) - November 1961 to December 1971
- Kurt Waldheim (
Austria) - January 1972 to December 1981
- Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (
Peru) - January 1982 to December 1991
- Boutros Boutros-Ghali (
Egypt) - January 1992 to December 1996
- Kofi Annan (
Ghana) - January 1997 to December 2006
- Ban Ki-moon (
South Korea) - January 2007 to present
Peace and security
UN peacekeeping missions. Dark blue indicates current missions, while light blue represents former missions.
The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure "the least diversion for armaments of the world\'s human and economic resources". The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first resolution of the first meeting of the General Assembly (24 January 1946) was entitled "The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy" and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction."[citation needed]
Disarmament
-
The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly, the UN Disarmament Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament. Items on the agenda include consideration of the possible merits of a nuclear test ban, outer-space arms control, efforts to ban chemical weapons and land mines, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.
Peacekeeping
-
UN peacekeepers are sent to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased (or paused) to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military, peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states of the UN. All UN peacekeeping operations must be approved by the Security Council.
The founders of the UN had envisaged that the UN would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have not been fully realized. During the Cold War (from about 1945 until 1991), the division of the world into hostile camps made peacekeeping agreement extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace, as there are several dozen ongoing conflicts that continue to rage around the globe.
The UN Peace-Keeping Forces (called the Blue Helmets) received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. In 2001, the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."[Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The Norwegian Nobel Institute. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.]
The UN maintains a series of United Nations Medals awarded to military service members who enforce UN accords. The first such decoration issued was the United Nations Service Medal, awarded to UN forces who participated in the Korean War. The NATO Medal is designed on a similar concept and both are considered international decorations instead of military decorations.
Successes in security issues
The Human Security Report 2005,[Human Security Centre. The Human Security Report 2005. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.] produced by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia with support from several governments and foundations, documented a dramatic, but largely unrecognized, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses since the end of the Cold War. Statistics include:
- a 40% drop in violent conflict;
- an 80% drop in the most deadly conflicts; and
- an 80% drop in genocide and politicide.
The report argued that international activism — mostly spearheaded by the UN — has been the main cause of the post–Cold War decline in armed conflict, though the report indicated the evidence for this contention is mostly circumstantial.
In the area of Peacekeeping, successes include:
- A 2005 RAND Corp study found the UN to be successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It also compared UN nation-building efforts to those of the U.S., and found that of eight UN cases, seven are at peace, whereas of eight U.S. cases, four are at peace.
[RAND Corporation. The UN\'s Role in Nation Building: From the Congo to Iraq (pdf).]
Failures in security issues
In many cases UN members have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions. Such failures stem from the UN\'s intergovernmental nature — in many respects it is an association of 192 member states who must reach consensus, not an independent organization.
Other serious security failures include:
Peace enforcement
-
The UN has not only acted to keep the peace but also occasionally intervened in armed conflicts, the first of which was the Korean War (1950-1953). More recently, the UN authorized the intervention in Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Human rights and Humanitarian Assistance
- Further information: United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and Convention on the Rights of the Child
The pursuit of human rights was a central reason for creating the UN. World War II atrocities and genocide led to a ready consensus that the new organization must work to prevent any similar tragedies in the future. An early objective was creating a legal framework for considering and acting on complaints about human rights violations.
The UN Charter obliges all member nations to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights" and to take "joint and separate action" to that end. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though not legally binding, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common standard of achievement for all. The Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues.
The UN and its agencies are central in upholding and implementing the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A case in point is support by the UN for countries in transition to democracy. Technical assistance in providing free and fair elections, improving judicial structures, drafting constitutions, training human rights officials, and transforming armed movements into political parties have contributed significantly to democratization worldwide. The UN has helped run elections in countries with little democratic history, including recently in Afghanistan and East Timor.
The UN is also a forum to support the right of women to participate fully in the political, economic, and social life of their countries. The UN contributes to raising consciousness of the concept of human rights through its covenants and its attention to specific abuses through its General Assembly, Security Council resolutions, or International Court of Justice rulings.
Human Rights Council
-
United Nations Human Rights Council Logo.
The purpose of the Human Rights Council is to address human rights violations. The Council is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which was often criticised for the high-profile positions it gave to member states that did not guarantee the human rights of their own citizens["The Shame of the United Nations", New York Times, 2006-02-26. Retrieved on 2006-08-15.]
The United Nations General Assembly established the Human Rights Council on 15 March 2006.[United Nations General Assembly Resolution 251 session 60 on 15 March 2006 (retrieved 2007-09-19) ] The council has 47 members distributed by region, which each serve three year terms, and may not serve three consecutive terms.[UN Human Rights Council Elections. United Nations. Retrieved on 2007-05-04.] A candidate to the body must be approved by a majority of the General Assembly. In addition, the council has strict rules for membership, including a universal human rights review. While some members with questionable human rights records have been elected, it is fewer than before with the increased focus on each member state\'s human rights record.[Successful UN Human Rights Council Elections Demonstrate UN Members are Taking Reform Effort Seriously.. Open Society Policy Center (2006-05-09).]
Indigenous rights issues
On 17 September 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration outlining the rights of some 370 million indigenous peoples around the world.[[2]]
Following two decades of debate, the "United Nations Declar
