United Nations

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

United Nations Nations Unies (French) Naciones Unidas (Spanish) Организация Объединённых Наций (Russian) الأمم المتحد (Arabic) 联合国 (Chinese)
Flag
Map of UN member states and their UN-recognized dependencies.
Headquarters		International territory in Manhattan, New York City
Official languages		Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish
Membership		192 member states
Leaders
-	Secretary-General	Ban Ki-moon
Establishment
-	United Nations Charter	June 26, 1945
Website http://www.un.org/

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 to 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:

• The General Assembly (the main deliberative assembly);
• The Security Council (decides certain resolutions for peace and security);
• The Economic and Social Council (assists in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development);
• The Secretariat (provides studies, information, and facilities needed by the UN);
• The International Court of Justice (the primary judicial organ).

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. 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

The United Nations Charter outlines the rules for membership:

1. 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.
2. 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.

—United Nations Charter, Chapter 2, Article 4,  http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/

Group of 77 (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.

Headquarters

The United Nations headquarters is a golden rectangled building in New York City. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighbourhood, 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

Major contributors to the regular
UN budget for 2006

Member Nation (the list is not complete)	Contribution (% of total UN budget)
United States	22.00%
Japan	19.47%
Germany	8.66%
United Kingdom	6.13%
France	6.03%
Italy	4.89%
Canada	2.81%
Spain	2.52%
China	2.05%
Mexico	1.88%
Australia	1.59%
Brazil	1.52%

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.

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 (refer to table for major contributors).

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. 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.

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. 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); the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice.

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. However, as no more than recommendations, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a recommendation by member states constituting just eight percent of the world's population, would be adhered to by the remaining ninety-two percent of the population, should they object.

Security Council

The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the United Nations can only make 'recommendations' to member governments, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member governments have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Secretaries-General

No.	Name	Country of Origin	Length of Service	Note
1	Trygve Lie	Norway	February 1946-November 1952	Resigned
2	Dag Hammarskjöld	Sweden	April 1953-September 1961	Died in a plane crash while over Africa
3	U Thant	Burma	November 1961-December 1971	First non-European leader of UN
4	Kurt Waldheim	Austria	January 1972-December 1981
5	Javier Pérez de Cuéllar	Peru	January 1982-December 1991	First Secretary General from South America
6	Boutros Boutros-Ghali	Egypt	January 1992-December 1996	First Secretary General from Africa
7	Kofi Annan	Ghana	January 1997-December 2006
8	Ban Ki-moon	South Korea	January 2007-Present

Peace and security

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."

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."

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, 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 policide.

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.

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:

• Failure to prevent the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which resulted in the killings of nearly a million people, due to the refusal of Security Council members to approve any military action.
• Failure by MONUC (UNSC Resolution 1291) to effectively intervene during the Second Congo War, which claimed nearly five million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 1998-2002, and in carrying out and distributing humanitarian aid.
• Failure to intervene in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre: despite the fact that the UN designated Srebrenica a "safe haven" for refugees and assigned 600 Dutch peacekeepers to protect it, the peacekeeping force was not authorised to use force.
• Failure to successfully deliver food to starving people in Somalia; the food was instead usually seized by local warlords. A U.S./UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.
• Failure to implement provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolutions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Failed to prevent or help sufficiently in the area of Darfur genocide: a crisis still exists in that area.

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

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

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 United Nations General Assembly established the Human Rights Council on 15 March 2006. The council has 47 members distributed by region, which each serve three year terms, and may not serve three consecutive terms. 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.

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.

Following two decades of debate, the "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" was approved. The Declaration outlines the individual and collective rights to culture, language, education, identity, employment and health, thereby addressing post-colonial issues which had confronted Indigenous peoples for centuries. The Declaration aims to maintain, strengthen and encourage the growth of Indigenous institutions, cultures and traditions. It also prohibits discrimination against Indigenous peoples and promotes their active participation in matters which concern their past, present and future.

The declaration was approved when 143 member states voted in its favour. Eleven member states abstained and four voted against the text: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

Treaty bodies

The United Nations linked human rights treaty bodies are committees of independent experts that monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties. There are now seven UN-linked human rights treaty bodies, including the Human Rights Committee and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Secretariat services are provided regarding all of those by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Humanitarian assistance

In conjunction with other organizations such as the Red Cross, the UN provides food, drinking water, shelter and other humanitarian services to populaces suffering from famine, displaced by war, or afflicted by other disasters. Major humanitarian branches of the UN are the World Food Programme (which helps feed more than 100 million people a year in 80 countries), the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees with projects in over 116 countries, as well as peacekeeping projects in over 24 countries.

At times, UN relief workers have been subject to attacks.

Social and Economic Development

The UN is involved in supporting development, e.g. by the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is the largest multilateral source of grant technical assistance in the world. Organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS, and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are leading institutions in the battle against diseases around the world, especially in poor countries. The UN Population Fund is a major provider of reproductive services. It has helped reduce infant and maternal mortality in 100 countries.

The UN also promotes human development through various related agencies. The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, are independent, specialized agencies and observers within the UN framework, according to a 1947 agreement. They were initially formed as separate from the UN through the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.

The UN annually publishes the Human Development Index (HDI), a comparative measure ranking countries by poverty, literacy, education,