9 The United Nations Organization, Lowe-->notes

9 The United Nations Organization

Summary of events

The UN has come into existence in October 1945, after WW2
It was formed to replace the League of Nations, which was incapable to withstand dictators like Hitler.
The great powers tried to eliminate some of the weaknesses of the League.

The UN Charter was drawn in San Francisco in 45’, and based on proposals made at an earlier meeting between the USA and the USSR, China and Britain held at the Dumbarton Oaks (USA, 44’)

The aims of the UN are:

1. Preserve peace and eliminate war.
2. Remove the causes of conflict encouraging by economic, social, educational, scientific and cultural progress throughout the world, especially in underdeveloped countries.
3. Safeguard the rights of all individual beings and the rights of peoples and nations.



· Although the careful framing of the Charter, the UN was unable to solve many of the problems of international relations, especially those caused by the Cold War.

· UN played a vital role in a number of international crises by arranging cease fires and negotiations and by providing peacekeeping forces. Its successes in non political work, such as refugees, protection of human rights, economic planning and attempts to deal with health and population problems have been enormous.




9.1 The structure of the United Nations Organization

There are 6 main organs of the UN:

The General Assembly
The Security Council
The Secretariat
The international Court of Justice
The Trusteeship Council
The Economic and Social Council




The General Assembly




This is a meeting with the representatives from all member states, each member can send max. 5 representatives, but there is only one vote per nation.

It meets once a year (start in Sept.) and remains in session for about 3 months.
In case of crisis each member state or the Security Council can call special sessions.


The function of the General Assembly:

a) Is to discuss and make decisions about international problems
b) To consider the UN budget, what amount each member should pay
c) To elect the Security Council members
d) To supervise the work of other UN bodies

Decisions do not need a unanimous vote, as the League; sometimes a simple majority is enough. When important decisions have to be taken 66% of the majority is needed.





























2. The Security Council

This sits in permanent session.

The function of the Security Council:

a) To deal with crisis as they arise, by whatever actions seems appropriate. If it is necessary the S.C can call on the member states to take economic or military action against the aggressor.

· The Council began with 11 members:

5 permanent members: China, France, USA, USSR and Britain.
6 temporary members elected by the General Assembly for 2 years terms.
In 1965, the temporary members increased to 10

The permanent members had veto.
Decisions needed at least 9 of 15 members to vote in favor, and must include all the 5 permanent members. So the 5 permanent members can prevent any action being taken.

An unwritten rule in the Charter; the abstention by a permanent member does not count as a veto.




The Uniting for Peace Resolution (introduced under Korean War), was an unwritten rule that secured some action in case of a veto by one of the permanent states.

If the Security Council’s decisions were vetoed, the General Assembly became the right to meet within 24 hours and decide what action to take, even militarily intervention if needed. 66% of the majority of the General Assembly was needed to take such a decision.

A good example was the Korean War, when the UN reacted because of the Russian abstention.










3. The Secretariat

This is the office-staff of the UN, it consists of over 50 000 employees.

The function of the Secretariat is:
a) to look after administrative work
b) preparing minutes, translation and information of meetings

· It is headed by the Secretary General, who is appointed for a 5 year mandate by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. He or she is not from one of the world powers.
· The secretary General acts as the spokesperson fro the UN at the forefront of international affairs.


4. The International Court of Justice of Hague

Has 15 judges of different nationalities, elected for 9 year terms (by the Assembly and the Council )
It has dealt successfully with a number if disputes, e.g. conflict Holland vs. Belgium and a disagreement between Britain and Norway over fishing limits.


5. The Trusteeship Council

The aim of the Trusteeship Council was:

This replaced The League’s Mandates Commissions, which came in existence in 1919. The mandates should keep an eye on the territories taken away from Germany and Turkey at the end of WW1.

Some of these areas had been handed to the victorious powers, and their job was to govern the territories and prepare them for independence.
The TC done its job well until 70’s when most of the mandates had gained their independence
A remaining problem was Namibia, since South Africa refused to give the area independence. South Africa was ruled by a government representing the white minority, she was unwilling to give independence to neighbor state which would be ruled by a government representing the black majority.
In 71’ the Court of Justice ruled that South Africa should withdraw their occupation immediately. South Africa refused the UN order but because of the African pressure and nationalism, South Africa was forced to release its grip on Namibia (90’)







6. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

It has 27 members elected by the General Assembly, with 33% retiring each year

The functions of ECOSOC:

a) Organizes projects concerned with health, education and other social and economic matters.

· Its task was so enormous that it has appointed 4 regional commissions (for some continents),as well as commissions on populations problems (drugs, human rights and women status)
· The scope of ECOSOC expanded so much that by 1980 more than 90% of UN’s annual expenditure was devoted to ECOSOC activities.


9.2 How different is the United Nations from the League of Nations?

a) The UN has been more successful

· The UN spends much more time and resources on economic and social matters and its scope is much wider than of the League. All the specialized agencies, with the exception of the International Labor Organization (19’), were set up in 45’ or later.
· The UN is committed to safeguard individual human rights, which the League did not get involved in.
· Changes in the procedures of the General Assembly and the Security Council (especially the Uniting for Peace resolution) and the increased power and prestige of the Secretary General have enabled the UN, on occasion, to take more decisive action than the League ever achieved.
· The UN has a much wider membership and is therefore more of a genuine world organization than the League. E.g. USA and USSR never joined the League. In 93’ the total members’ number increased to 183.

b) Some of the weaknesses remained
· Any of the permanent members of the Security Council can use its power of veto to prevent decisive action being taken.
· Like the League, the UN had no permanent army of its own.









9.3 How successful has the UN been as a peacekeeping organization?

The UN has been more successful than the League in its peacekeeping efforts, especially in crisis which did not directly involve the interests of the great powers, such as the civil war in the Congo, and the dispute between Holland and Indonesia over West New Guinea.
On the other, it has often been just as ineffective as the League in situations, such as the Hungarian rising of 56’ and the 68’ Czech crisis- where the interests of one of the greatest powers seemed to be threatened, and where the great power decided to ignore or defy the UN.

a) West New Guinea, 1946

· In 46’ the UN helped to arrange independence from Holland for the Dutch East Indies, which became Indonesia, but no agreement about the future of West New Guinea which was claimed by both countries.
In 61’ fighting broke out, after U Thant had appealed to both sides to reopen negations, it was agreed (62’) that the territory should become part of Indonesia. The transfer was organized and policed by a UN force.
In this case the UN played a vital role in getting negotiations off the ground, though it did not itself make the decisions about West New Guineas’ future

b) Palestine, 1947

· The dispute between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was brought before the UN in 47’. UN divided Palestine, so the Jewish got a part.
· This is UN’s most controversial decisions and was not accepted by the majority of Arabs.
· The UN was unable to prevent future wars between these two countries, but it did arrange cease fires, supervisory forces and cared for Arab refugees.

c) The Korean War (50’-53’)

· UN’s only time when it could take action in a crisis directly involving the interests of one of the superpowers.
· This decision was only possible because of the Russian absence.
· Though the decision was claimed by the west as a great UN success, but in fact was very much an American operation (under Mac Arthur) and the US decided to intervene with force the day before UN’s decision.
· The Uniting for Peace was built, which would permit a Security Council veto to be by passed a General Assembly vote.







d) The Belgian Congo War (60-64)

Here the UN mounted its most complex operation to date (except for Korea)
When Congo dissolved into chaos immediately after gaining independence, UN forces restored some sort of precarious order.
A special UN fund was built in order to make the country’s economy to function
When the USSR, France and Belgium refused to pay the costs for the operation, UN was brought close to bankruptcy. The countries that refused to pay, did so because they disapproved UN’s way of handling the situation.
The war caused the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, which was killed in a plane crash in Congo.

g) Cyprus

Cyprus has kept the UN busy since 64’.
The island gained independence in 60’.
In 63’ civil war broke out between the Greeks (80% of the population) and the Turks. About 3000 UN troops came to Cyprus to establish peace. This was not the end of the problem, because in 74’ the Greek Cypriots tried to unite the island with Greece.
This led to a Turkish invasion, that would seize power in North Cyprus and which would expel all Greeks that were unfortunate to live in that area.

Again the UN forces intervened, arranging cease fires. Today the dispute still goes on.
The UN was unsuccessful because it failed in finding suitable compromises and even today does not risk withdrawing its troops.

h) Kashmir

This situation in Kashmir is similar to the one in Cyprus.
After 47’ Kashmir was demanded by both India and Pakistan
Already after 1 year the UN, arranged cease fires and negotiations after outbreak of conflicts
In 1948 India occupied south Kashmir while Pakistan the North, while during the next 16 years the UN policed the cease fire line between these 2 nations

i) The Czechoslovak crisis (68’)

· This was almost a repeat performance of the Hungarian rising, twelve years later.
· When the Czechs showed what Moscow considered being too much independence, USSR was sent to solve the problem.
· The Security Council tried to pass a motion condemning this decision, but the Russians vetoed it, claiming that the Czechs had asked their intervention.
· Although the Czechs denied this, UN could do nothing because the USSR refused to co operate.


j) Recent successes and failures

Successes

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been operating with about 7000 troops in the South Lebanon since 78 in a frontier dispute between Lebanese Christians and Palestines. UNIFIL has had some success in maintaining relative peace in the area, but it is a constant struggle against frontier violations, assassinations, terrorism and the seizing of hostages.
The UN was successful in bringing an end to the long war between Iran and Iraq (80-82). After years of negotiating at last they succeeded a cease fire, but were also helped by the fact that the both countries were close to exhaustion.
UN action during the Gulf War of 91’ was impressive. When Saddam Hussein sent troops to invade Kuwait, the UN Security Council warned Saddam to withdraw or face the consequences. UN did so, but was criticized and blamed that it only helped because of the interest on the oil supplies.
Problems in Cambodia dragged on for nearly 20 years, but UN was able to arrange a solution.
In74 the communist guerilla Rouge government seized power and turn out to be very brutal. This until a Vietnamese army attacked the Rouge (78’). USA intervened in order to get the Vietnamese army out of the country (because they were allies with the USSR).
In 89, Vietnamese forces withdrew and in 93’ elections were held. These were won by Prince Sihanouk’s party.

Mozambique that gained independence from Portugal (75) was torn by civil war for many years. The both sides fought during several years, and there were many violations of cease fires. UN became involved. They demobilized and disarmed both armies and prepared for elections that took place 94’.

Failures

Somalia disintegrated into civil war (91’) when dictator Said Barre was overthrown. A power struggle occurred between this party and their rivals. This created a critical situation that cut off food supplies, and made thousands of refugees flee to Kenya.
The Organization of African Unity asked for UN help, and 37 000 UN troops arrived in December 92 to safeguard the aid and to restore law and order by disarming the warlords.
The warlords did not give up, causing casualties in the UN troops. The last UN troops withdrew 95’, leaving the warlords to fight it out.


9.4 What other work is the UN responsible for?

The majority of UN ‘s work is concerned with its less spectacular aims of safeguarding human rights and encouraging economic, social, educational and cultural progress throughout the world.

a) The Human rights Commission

· Works under supervision of ECOSOC and ensures that all governments treat their people in a civilized way.
· A 30 point Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly, this means that every country, no matter what country it comes from should have the right to certain basic rights, the most important are:
A standard of living high enough to keep him and his family in good health
Be free from slavery, racial discrimination; arrest and imprisonment without trial, and torture
Have a fair trial in public and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty.
Move about freely in his country and be able to leave the country
Get married, have children, work, own property and vote in elections.
Have opinions and express them freely

· Later the Commission, concerned about the plight of the children, so they produced a Declaration of the Rights of the Child (59’):


Adequate food and medical care
Free education
Adequate opportunity for relaxation and play (against child labor)
Protection from racial, religious, and any other type of discrimination


· All members governments are expected to produce a rapport every 3 years, on the state of the human rights in their country.
· The problem is that many countries do not produce these rapports
· The only thing UN can do is to publicize countries with the most flagrant violations of the human rights and hope that the pressure of world opinion will influence the governments concerned.

b) The International Labor Organization (ILO)

This operates from Geneva, its principles are:

Every person is entitled to a job
There should e equal opportunities for everybody to get jobs, irrespective of race, sex, or religion
There should be minimum standards of decent working conditions
Workers should have the right to organize themselves into unions and other associations in order o negotiate for better conditions and pay
There should be full social security provision for all workers (unemployment, health and maternity benefits)

The ILO does excellent work providing help for countries in necessity and was awarded The Nobel Prize of Peace (69’)
This organization sends experts out to demonstrate new equipment and techniques, sets up training centers in developing countries and runs the International Center for Advanced Technology and Vocational Training in Turin, which provides high level training for people from all over the Third World.
ILO gets problems when countries do not accept the rules and when it refuses to cooperate.

c) The World Health Organization (WHO)

· This is one of UN’s most successful agencies
· Its aims is to bring the world to a point where all its peoples are not just free of disease, but are at a high level of health.
· The organization faces malaria, cholera, tuberculosis etc.
· WHO provides money to train doctors, nurses and other health workers fro developing countries, keeps governments informed about new drugs, and provides free contraceptive pills for women in Third World Countries

d) The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

· This aims to raise living standards by encouraging improvements in agricultural production.
· It was responsible for introducing new varieties of maize and rice which have a higher yield and are less susceptible to disease.
· FAO experts show people new techniques that can increase food production by use of fertilizers and new machinery and cash is provided to fund new projects.
· Its main problem is to deal with sudden problems such as: floods, civil war and other disasters, when food supplies need to be rushed into a country as quickly as possible.

e) The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)


· Operating from Paris, UNESCO does its best to encourage the spread of literacy. It also fosters international cooperation between scientist, scholars and artists in all fields, working on the theory that the best way to avoid war is by educating people’s minds in the pursuit of peace.
· Much of its resources are spent setting up schools and teacher training in underdeveloped countries.
· In 68’ after the floods in Florence UNESCO played an important role in repairing damaged art treasures and historic buildings
· It was criticized by some western powers for being to politically motivated









f) The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF)


Was originally founded to help homeless children after WW2. It dealt with problems so efficiently that it was decided to make it a permanent agency.
Its new function was to help improve the health and living standards of children all over the world, especially in poorer countries.
It works closely with WHO, setting up health centers, running health education and sanitation schemes.
Despite its efforts in 83’, 15 million children died under the age of 5. In that year UNICEF launched its child health revolution campaign to reduce child death rate by simple methods such as encouraging breast feeding (more hygienic than bottle feeding) and immunizing babies against common diseases


g) The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

This was set up in 50’ to deal with the Arabs refugees from Palestine who were forced to leave the country when Palestine was divided (resolution 181)
UNRWA did a remarkable job providing food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies. Later it became clear the refugee camps were to be permanent, it began to build up schools, hospitals, training centers, houses to enable refugees to get jobs and make the camps self supporting.


h) Financial and economic agencies

1: The international Monetary Fund (IMF)

Is designed to increase cooperation between countries, the growth of trade and full development of nations’ economic potential.
It allows short terms loans to countries in financial difficulties, provided that their economic policies meet with the IMF’s approval and that they are prepared to change policies if the IMF thinks that’s necessary.
During the 70’s an emergency fund was made, something that had a lot of western influence on these nations’ governments and policies.


2. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (The World Bank)

This provides loans for specific developments projects, such as building dams to generate electricity, introducing new agricultural techniques and family planning campaigns.
Again though, the USA that provides the largest share of cash controls its decisions. During the 50’s Poland and Czechoslovakia applied for loans, but were denied because they were communists. Because of their disgust they resigned from the Bank and the IMF.



3. The General Agreement on Tariffs on Trade (GATT)

· Was first signed in 47’ when member states of the UN agreed to reduce some of their tariffs (taxes on imports) in order to encourage international trade.
· Members continued to meet under the supervision of ECOSOC and tried to keep tariffs as low as possible

4. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Was first met in 64’ and soon became a permanent body.
Its role is to encourage the development of industry in the Third World and to pressurize rich countries into buying Third World products.



9.5 Verdict on the United Nations Organization

In October 95, the UN celebrated its 50th anniversary, and was still far away by achieving its basic aims. The UN’s failures were caused to some extent by weaknesses in its system.

a) The lack of permanent UN army

This means that it is difficult to prevail upon powerful states to accept its decisions
This showed the impossibility of the UN being able to stop a war when the warring parties were not ready to stop fighting. This happened in: Hungary 56, Afghanistan 80, Somalia 92-95, Bosnia 92-95-

b) When the UN should became involved?

There were problems with the decision when to interfere, sometimes it could be to late and sometimes it could be to late

c) The Increased Membership of the UN during the 70’s

This brought new problems. By 70’ members from the Third World (Africa and Asia) were in clear majority. As these nations began to work more and more together, it meant that only they could be certain of having their resolutions passed, and it became difficult for the USA and the USSR to get their resolution passed through the General Assembly.
This caused arguments and disunity, for example USA accused UNESCO of being too political, as a result of this and other major arguments the US withdrew from UNESCO (85’), and one year later Britain and Singapore did the same thing



d) There is a wastage of effort and resources among the agencies

· These sometimes seem to duplicate each other’s work. Critics claim that the WHO and the FAO overlap too much
· The FAO was criticized in 84 for spending too much on administration and not enough on improving agricultural systems.
· GATT and UNCTAD even seem to be working against each other. As an example GATT tries to eliminate tariffs and anything else which restricts trade, whereas UNCTAD tries to get preferential treatment for the products of Third World Countries.

e) The UN has been short of funds

· The vast scope of its work means that it needs incredibly large sums of money to finance its operations. It is entirely dependent on contributions from member states.

· Each state pays a regular annual contributions based on its general wealth and ability to pay. In addition, members pay a proportion of the cost of each peace keeping operation and they are also expected to contribute towards the expenses of the special agencies.


· Many member states have refused to pay from time to time, either because of financial difficulties or as a mark of disapproval of UN policies.

· The Americans wanted the countries which gave most money to have more to say in how it was spent, but smaller nations rejected this as undemocratic.

· In 87’ changes were introduced, giving the main financial distributors more control over spending, and the financial situation soon improved.


· In 93’ it was announced that UN is in need of money and that the rich states should pay more. The US and the European states and Japan that together paid about 77% felt that there were other rich states that were able to pay

· At that time UN’s organizations were to some extent in danger












· In spite of all these criticism, it would be wrong to count the UN as a failure and there is no doubt that the world would be a far worse place without it!

a) It provides a world assembly where representatives of over 180 countries can come together and talk to each other. Even the smallest nation has a chance to make itself heard in a world forum

b) Although it has not prevented wars, it has been successful in bringing some wars to end more quickly and has prevented further conflict. The UN prevented a lot of conflicts
c) The UN has done valuable work investigating and publicizing human rights violations under repressive regime. In this way it has slowly influenced these governments with the help of the world pressure

d) Perhaps its most important achievement has been to stimulate international cooperation on economic, social and technical matters
It continues to involve itself in current problems: UNESCO, the ILO, and the WHO are running a joint project to help drug addicts and there has been series of conferences on Aids.


9.6 What about the United Nations in the future?

· Many people thought that with the end of the Cold War, the world’s problems would disappear
· This did not happened, in fact during 90’ there seemed to be more conflicts then even before and the world seemed less stable
· Many people wanted that the UN should become a more stronger organization then before, one of them is the British Prime Minister, Sir Heath (70-74) that suggested the following reforms that would make Un a better organization:

The UN should develop a better system of intelligence to enable it to prevent conflicts braking out, instead of waiting until things got out of control. The intelligence services of the great powers could give the UN regular information about possible “trouble spots”

Peace keeping operations needed to be speeded up. Special trained units for peace keeping services were needed for rapid deployment (=use)


All troops need to be trained at the same high standard

The UN could make more use of other regional organizations such as NATO or the Arab league. For example it could authorize the Arab League to police the frontier between Iraq and Kuwait, thus reducing the pressure on the UN troops and the expense



The UN should restrict the flow of arms to potential trouble spots.-à The UN
should limit the international sale of arms, through the adoption of a unified Code of Conduct for the major arms exporters.


6. The permanent membership of the Security Council should be widened. The inclusion of other permanent members would restore harmony and ensure wider cooperation and goodwill.