International law and development and Collaps of League Of

Aims facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social
progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace.

The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between
countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue.

It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.There are currently 192 member
states, including every internationally recognised sovereign state in the world but the Vatican City. From
its offices around the world, the UN and its specialized agencies decide on substantive and administrative
issues in regular meetings held throughout the year. The organization has six principal organs: the
General Assembly (the main deliberative assembly); the Security Council (for deciding certain
resolutions for peace and security); the Economic and Social Council (for assisting in promoting
international economic and social cooperation and development); the Secretariat (for providing studies,
information, and facilities needed by the UN); the International Court of Justice (the primary judicial
organ); and the United Nations Trusteeship Council (which is currently inactive). Other prominent UN
System agencies include the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP) 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, who attained the post in 2007. The organization is financed from
assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, and has six official languages: Arabic,
Mandarin Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.[2]

History The Chilean delegation signing the UN Charter in San Francisco, 1945 The League of Nations
failed to prevent World War II (1939–1945). Because of the widespread recognition that humankind
could not afford a Third World War, the United Nations was established to replace the flawed League of
Nations in 1945 in order to maintain international peace and promote cooperation in solving international
economic, social and humanitarian problems. The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization was
begun under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt first coined the term
'United Nations' as a term to describe the Allied countries. The term was first officially used on 1 January
1942, when 26 governments signed the Atlantic Charter, pledging to continue the war effort. [3] On 25
April 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco, attended by 50
governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the Charter of the
United Nations. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 upon ratification of the
Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the
Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.
The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, and the Security Council, took
place in Westminster Central Hall in London in January 1946.[4]

The organization was based at the Sperry Gyroscope Corporation's facility in Lake Success, New York,
from 1946–1952, before moving to the United Nations Headquarters building in Manhattan upon its
completion.

Since its creation, there has been controversy and criticism of the United Nations. In the United States, an
early opponent of the UN was the John Birch Society, which began a "get US out of the UN" campaign in
1959, charging that the UN's aim was to establish a "One World Government." After the Second World
War, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the US as the
government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that aimed at
creating the new organization. Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it le machin ("the
thing"), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring
direct defence treaties between countries.
ORIGIN OF THE UNITED NATIONS, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING

The name “United Nations” was devised by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was first
used in the “Declaration by United Nations” of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when
representatives of 26 nations pledged their governments to continue fighting together against the Axis
Powers. The United Nations Charter was drawn up by the representatives of 50 countries at the United
Nations Conference on International Organization, which met in San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June
1945. Those delegates deliberated on the basis of proposals that had been worked out by the
representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States at Dumbarton
Oaks in August-October 1944. The Charter was signed on 26

June 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. Poland, which was not represented at the
Conference, signed it later and became one of the original 51 Member States. The United Nations
officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France,
the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and a majority of other signatories. United
Nations Day is celebrated on 24 October each year.

Prior to the United Nations (UN), the League of Nations was the international organization responsible for
ensuring peace and cooperation between world nations. It was founded in 1919 "to promote international
cooperation and to achieve peace and security." At its height, the League of Nations had 58 members
and was considered successful. In the 1930s its success waned as the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and
Japan) gained influence, eventually leading to the start of World War II in 1939. The term "United
Nations" was then coined in 1942 by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Declaration by
United Nations. This declaration was made to officially state the cooperation of the Allies (Great Britain,
the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and other nations during World War II.
The UN as it is known today however was not officially founded until 1945 when the Charter of the United
Nations was drafted at the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, California. The
conference was attended by 50 nations and several non-governmental organizations - all of which signed
the Charter. The UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945 after ratification of the Charter.
The principles of the UN as explained in the Charter are to save future generations from war, reaffirm
human rights, and establish equal rights for all persons. In addition it also aims to promote justice,
freedom, and social progress for the peoples of all of its member states.

The structure of the United Nations

The structure of the United Nations is based around its charter. The United Nations Charter consists of
111 articles. These articles explain how the United Nations works.sThe charter established six parts of
the United Nations:

 General Assembly
 Security Council,

 Economic and Social Council ,

 Trusteeship Council,

 International Court of Justice ,

 Secretariat

The General Assembly has the brief to discuss and decide on issues of international peace and security.
All members of the United Nations are represented in the General Assembly. It can make
recommendations to promote international peace; international economic and social co-operation and it
can promote human rights. The General Assembly is expected to meet on a regular basis and when a
vote is taken it needs a two-thirds majority for it to be passed.
The Security Council consists of eleven members. Five of these are permanent (USA, USSR, GB,
China, France). The General Assembly appoints another six members who are non-permanent members.
The Security Council is given the primary task by the United Nations of maintaining peace and security at
an international level. Each member of the Security Council is given one vote and a vote of seven
members is needed for action to be taken. All five permanent members have to agree with the course of
action. The Security Council can recommend the use of a blockade or other financial impositions for any
nation that is deemed as breaking international law. If these do not work, then the Security Council can
call on the United Nations to use military force to enforce its will. This is the major difference to the
League of Nations – the United Nations has the ability to enforce its decisions as each member state has
to pledge to provide a military component dependent on its national wealth and capability.

Economic and Social Council is to promote and improve the economic and social well-being of those
living in the member states. This council deals with human rights and seeks to develop a greater
understanding of cultures throughout the world. An improvement in world health is also in its remit. Article
57 gives a clear indication of the areas this council covers: health, education, economic, social and
cultural issues and the promotion of the position of women in the world. Each member of the Council has
one vote.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main judicial body of the United Nations. All members of
the United Nations are party to the International Court. The ICJ consists of 15 members and only two
members come from the same country at any one time. All members of the United Nations have to agree
to abide by the decisions of the ICJ.

The Secretariat comprises of a Secretary-General and it is the body that runs the United Nations. The
Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly which receives recommendations from the
Security Council. The Secretary-General is the United Nations’ chief administrative officer.

Since 1945, the United Nations has been involved as a peacekeeper in Iran and the Balkans, Indonesia,
Palestine and the Middle East in general, Korea and the Congo.

Functions of the United Nations

 The main function of the UN today is to maintain peace and security for all of its member states.
Though the UN does not maintain its own military, it does have peacekeeping forces which are
supplied by its member states.
 On approval of the UN Security Council, these peacekeepers are often sent to regions where
armed conflict has recently ended to discourage combatants from resuming fighting.

 In 1988, the peacekeeping force won a Nobel Peace Prize for its actions.

 In addition to maintaining peace, the UN aims to protect human rights and provide humanitarian
assistance when needed. In 1948, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights as a standard for its human rights operations.

 The UN currently provides technical assistance in elections, helps to improve judicial structures
and draft constitutions, trains human rights officials, and provides food, drinking water, shelter,
and other humanitarian services to peoples displaced by famine, war, and natural disaster.

 Finally, the UN plays an integral part in social and economic development through its UN
Development Program.

 This is the largest source of technical grant assistance in the world. In addition, the World Health
Organization, UNAIDS, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the UN
Population Fund, and the World Bank Group to name a few play an essential role in this aspect of
the UN as well. The UN also annually publishes the Human Development Index to rank countries
in terms of poverty, literacy, education, and life expectancy.

 For the future, the UN has established what it calls its Millennium Development Goals.
 Most of its member states and various international organizations have all agreed to achieve
these goals relating to reducing poverty, child mortality, fighting diseases and epidemics, and
developing a global partnership in terms of international development by 2015.

 Some others have reached none. However, the UN has been successful over the years and
only the future can tell how the true realization of these goals will play out.
Peaceful Settlement of Disputes by the United Nations and Other Intergovernmental
Bodies

The resolution of dangerous conflicts is among the most important tasks entrusted to the UN and other
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Arguably, their performance in this field is declining.
Nevertheless, these organizations have at their disposal a range of instruments for peaceful settlement of
disputes: Public appeals, channels of communication, mediators, fact-finding commissions, peacekeeping
forces, humanitarian aid programs, and international courts. The effect of each of these instruments, or
combinations of them, is often, but not always, disappointing. There are cases where public appeals are
heeded to; fact-finding commissions often succeed in dispelling fear based on rumors, and peacekeeping
forces by and large accomplish their mission. The success of the UN and other IGOs hinges on a number
of factors, including the size of their membership, the political divisions among their members, and the
economic resources available. Conflicts between major members tend to paralyze all IGOs, while it is
easier to cope with conflicts between smaller states. Neither the UN nor regional IGOs are supposed to
intervene in domestic conflict. This rule limits their effectiveness in those interstate conflicts where
domestic strife is an important element.

The role of the United Nations in conflict resolution and peacekeeping

The end of the 1980s witnessed the negotiated settlement of some major regional conflicts which had
plagued the Third World throughout the 1970s and 1980s.1 The Soviet Union withdrew its forces from
Afghanistan. The Iran-Iraq war, which had persisted for the better part of a decade with enormous loss of
life to both countries, ground to a halt. A peace agreement was hammered out between Cuban, Angolan
and South African representatives under United States mediation to end 13-year old war between South
Africa and Angola and allowing for Namibia's independence. Sino-Soviet efforts to normalize relations
from Cambodia. The countries of Central America agreed to a peace plan proposed by Costa Rican
President Oscar Arias Sanchez calling for a cease-fire, a halt to foreign aid to insurgents, a commitment
to national reconciliation, and free and democratic elections. Many see a direct linkage between the
settlement of these regional disputes and the new detente in superpower relations coupled with the rise of
a new leadership in the Soviet Union. There is certainly strong circumstantial evidence to support this
view. However, it is also true that these conflicts could not have been resolved, or progress achieved in

negotiations aimed at dispute settlement, without the active and direct involvement of the United Nations.
Once again, the international community seems to be rediscovering the value of the UN in conflict
resolution and dispute settlement. Or, in the words of former UN Under-Secretary-General for Special
Political Affairs, Sir Brian Urquhart, «the UN is improvising its way back towards a position of influence».

This paper addresses four questions. First, where has the UN been involved in peacemaking and what
has been the nature of this involvement? Second, what accounts for or explains this recent round of
activity by the UN in the settlement of regional disputes? Third, what role can (or should) the UN play in
the future settlement of regional disputes? Fourth, how might the UN's role in conflict resolution and
peacekeeping be strengthened or expanded?

Peaceful Settlement of Disputes by the United Nations and Other Intergovernmental Bodies

The resolution of dangerous conflicts is among the most important tasks entrusted to the UN and other
intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).

Arguably, their performance in this field is declining. Nevertheless, these organizations have at their
disposal a range of instruments for peaceful settlement of disputes: Public appeals, channels of
communication, mediators, fact-finding commissions, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian aid programs,
and international courts.
 The effect of each of these instruments, or combinations of them, is often, but not always, disappointing.
There are cases where public appeals are heeded to; fact-finding commissions often succeed in
dispelling fear based on rumors, and peacekeeping forces by and large accomplish their mission.

The success of the UN and other IGOs hinges on a number of factors, including the size of their
membership, the political divisions among their members, and the economic resources available.

Conflicts between major members tend to paralyze all IGOs, while it is easier to cope with conflicts
between smaller states.

Neither the UN nor regional IGOs are supposed to intervene in domestic conflict. This rule limits their
effectiveness in those interstate conflicts where domestic strife is an important element.

Recent UN involvement in peace-making : The means and methods of UN involvement in regional

conflict have taken a number of different forms: public appeals in the form of UN resolutions asking
parties to stop armed hostilities, to restore the status quo ante, to start negotiations, or to use the good
offices of the Secretary-General or other representative of the Secretariat; provision of channels of
communication between adversaries (formal and informal); provision of mediation services, good offices,
and other forms of intermediary assistance; provision of fact-finding and observation commissions;
provision of peacekeeping forces; and the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance.2 The UN has
been involved in all of these ways in a number of recent major regional conflicts where the belligerents
have sought to find a negotiated solution to their differences.

In the summer of 1988 Iran accepted UN Resolution 598 as the basis for talks with Iraq to end the Iran-
Iraq war. The provisions in the Resolution include a UN supervised cease-fire, withdrawal of forces to
internationally recognized boundaries, prisoner exchanges, the establishment of a panel to determine
responsibility for the war, and the negotiation of a comprehensive settlement. The cease-fire formally
commenced on August 20, 1988, and both parties agreed to send their representatives to Geneva for
negotiations under UN auspices. The UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIMOG) was established
by the Security Council, providing for a force of 350 observers from 24 countries to monitor the cease-fire.

There have been several rounds of talks. None as yet has seen significant progress in implementing
Resolution 598. Outstanding difficulties include the failure of Iran and Iraq to establish a joint cease-fire
monitoring group, continuing differences over navigation rights in the Shatt al’ Arab waterway, unresolved
boundary disputes, and unresolved differences over exchange plans for prisoners of war.

Afghanistan. In April1988, agreement was reached by Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the Soviet Union
and the United States as guarantors, for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan under a UN
observer mission. Immediately after the accords went into affect, the United Nations Good Offices Mission
for Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP) was sent to the region to begin monitoring the Soviet
withdrawal. Coordination of economic and humanitarian assistance programs was also initiated on behalf
of the UN Secretary-General by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan in May 1988. On February 15, 1989, the last
Soviet forces left Afghanistan.

Angola-Namibia-South Africa. A peace agreement was concluded in Geneva in November 1988

between representatives of Angola, Cuba, and South Africa under US mediation, calling for the
implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435 and leading to full independence for Namibia by
April 1990. (Resolution 435 calls for a ceasefire, a UN peacekeeping force, and UN-sponsored elections
in Namibia). In February 1989 the UN Security Council authorized the deployment of a United Nations
transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) composed of nearly 5,000 peacekeeping troops and police officers
and 1000 civilian election monitors. To oversee Cuban troop withdrawals, a 70-member UN Angola
Verification Mission (UNAVIM) was established in December 1988 by the Security Council.

Western Sahara o The conflict in the Western Sahara between the Kingdom of Morocco against the
Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el-Hamra y Rio do Oro (Polisario) has been an ongoing one
for some 13 years. In 1988, however, a UN-brokered peace plan calling for a cease-fire and referendum
on self-determination of the Western Sahara was accepted inprinciple by Morocco and the Polisario
Front. In September 1988 the Security Council voted for the appointment of a UN Special Representative
for Western Sahara to oversee the implementation of the peace process. The post was assumed by
Hector Gros Espiell of Uruguay who began his mission earlier this year.

Cyprus. The UN has maintained peace-keeping forces in Cyprus (UNFICYP) for many years. In 1988 UN
Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar launched a peace initiative that secured the agreement in
August 1988 of Greece and Turkey to hold new talks on unifying the island. After an initial round, talks
were temporarily suspended with a commitment to resume in the future.

Central America. UN peace-keeping and observer forces will also play a role in the Central American
peace process. The Central American Peace Plan proposed by Costa RicanPresident Oscar Arias
Sanchez, signed on August 7, 1987, by the presidents of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala,
and Honduras, calls for a national reconciliation with opponents, a cease-fire within existing constitutional
frameworks, democratization in each country, efforts to halt aid to insurgents, a commitment to provide no
assistance to groups aimed at destabilizing other governments, and free and democratic elections. After
several fitfull starts, the Arias Plan was «reactivated» by the five countries in February 1989. The same
month the five also requested from the Secretary-General that a team of unarmed military observers from
Canada, Spain. and West Germany, as well as from an unnamed Latin American country, be sent to
Central America to verify that none of the countries involved in the peace process supports any
subversive activities in neighboring countries, to report on cross-border guerrilla movements, and to
observe the 1990 Nicaraguan elections. A UN fact-finding mission to assess peacekeeping requirements
has just reported to the Secretary-General. Following approval by the Security Council and General
Assembly, a UN peacekeeping and observer force (ONUCA) will be deployed in the region. The UN has
also been active in the refugee issue, sponsoring a conference on Central American refugees in April
1989 in Guatemala City

Indochina. The United Nations has presented a variety of proposals that could provide the basis for a
comprehensive settlement in the conflict in Cambodia. The withdrawal of Vietnamese occupying .forces
has helped ease tensions although the major parties to the conflict, the Soviet-funded, Vietnamese-
backed People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) led by Prime Minister Hun San, and the Coalition
Government of Democratia Kampuchea (CGDK) under the titular leadership of Prince Norodom
Sihanouk, continue to remain at loggerheads, in April 1989, Vietnam formally asked Canada, Poland, and
India to form a monitoring commission to verify the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia
scheduled to end in September 1989. Canadian conditions for participation are a Vietnamese agreement
for withdrawal, UN Security Council endorsement of the plan, a clear peacekeeping mandate with a set
lifespan, proper funding, and evidence that this would be part of a comprehensive solution to the
Cambodean problem. In July 1989, the ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) foreign
ministers meeting in Brunei declared that a UN-monitored Vietnamese troop withdrawal, and subsequent
elections, would have to be part of a comprehensive political settlement in Cambodia
Role of Great powers

A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers
characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause small
powers and small states to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own.
International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power
capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions. Sometimes the status of great powers is formally
recognized in conferences such as the Congress of Vienna or an international structure such as the
United Nations Security Council.

The term "great power" was first used to represent the most important powers in Europe during the post-
Napoleonic era.The formalization of the division between small powers and great powers came about with
the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. Since then, the international balance of power has shifted
numerous times, most dramatically during World War I and World War II. While some nations are widely
considered to be great powers, there is no definitive list of them.

Power dimensions

As noted above, for many, power capabilities were the sole criterion. However, even under the more
expansive tests, power retains a vital place. This aspect has received mixed treatment, with some
confusion as to the degree of power required. Writers have approached the concept of great power with
differing conceptualizations of the world situation, from multi-polarity to overwhelming hegemony. In his
essay, 'French Diplomacy in the Postwar Period', the French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle spoke of
the concept of multi-polarity: "A Great power is one which is capable of preserving its own independence
against any other single power."

This differed from earlier writers, notably from Leopold von Ranke, who clearly had a different idea of the
world situation. In his essay 'The Great Powers', written in 1833, von Ranke wrote: "If one could establish
as a definition of a Great power that it must be able to maintain itself against all others, even when they
are united, then Frederick has raised Prussia to that position."These positions have been the subject of
criticism.

Spatial dimension

All states have a geographic scope of interests, actions, or projected power. This is a crucial factor in
distinguishing a great power from a regional power; by definition the scope of a regional power is
restricted to its region. It has been suggested that a great power should be possessed of actual influence
throughout the scope of the prevailing international system. Arnold J. Toynbee, for example, observes
that "Great power may be defined as a political force exerting an effect co-extensive with the widest range
of the society in which it operates. The Great powers of 1914 were 'world-powers' because Western
society had recently become 'world-wide'."[14]

Other suggestions have been made that a great power should have the capacity to engage in extra-
regional affairs and that a great power ought to be possessed of extra-regional interests, two propositions
which are often closely connected.[15]

Status dimension

Formal or informal acknowledgment of a nation's great-power status has also been a criterion for being a
great power. As political scientist George Modelski notes, "The status of Great power is sometimes
confused with the condition of being powerful, The office, as it is known, did in fact evolve from the role
played by the great military states in earlier periods ... But the Great power system institutionalizes the
position of the powerful state in a web of rights and obligations."

This approach restricts analysis to the post-Congress of Vienna epoch; it being there that great powers
were first formally recognized.In the absence of such a formal act of recognition it has been suggested
that great power status can arise by implication, by judging the nature of a state's relations with other
great powers.

Other important criteria throughout history are that great powers should have enough influence to be
included in discussions of political and diplomatic questions of the day, and have influence on the final
outcome and resolution. Historically, when major political questions were addressed, several great
powers met to discuss them. Before the era of groups like the United Nations, participants of such
meetings were not officially named, but were decided based on their great power status. These were
conferences which settled important questions based on major historical events. This might mean
deciding the political resolution of various geographical and nationalist claims following a major conflict, or
other contexts.

There are several historical conferences and treaties which display this pattern, such as the Congress of
Vienna, the Congress of Berlin, the discussions of the Treaty of Versailles which redrew the map of
Europe, and the Treaty of Westphalia.

Shifts of international power have most notably occurred through major conflicts. [ The conclusion of the
Great War and the resulting treaties of Versailles, St-Germain, and Trianon witnessed Great Britain,
France, Italy, Japan and the United States as the chief arbiters of the new world order In the aftermath of
World War I the German Empire was defeated, the Austria-Hungarian empire was divided into new, less
powerful states and the Russian Empire fell to a revolution. During the Treaty of Versailles the "Big Three"
— France, Great Britain and the United States — held noticeably more power and influence on the
proceedings and outcome of the treaty than Italy or Japan. [27][28][29] The victorious great powers also gained
an acknowledgement of their status through permanent seats at the League of Nations Council, where
they acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly of the League. But the Council began with
only four permanent members — Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan – because the United States,
meant to be the fifth permanent member, left because the US Senate voted on 19 March 1920 against the
ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing American participation in the League.

When World War II started in 1939, it divided the world into two alliances – the Allies (the United Kingdom
and France at first, followed in 1941 by the Soviet Union, the United States, and China); and the Axis
powers consisting of Germany, Italy and Japan.The end of World War II saw the United States, United
Kingdom, and Soviet Union emerge as the primary victors. The importance of the Republic of China and
France was acknowledged by their inclusion, along with the other three, in the group of countries allotted
permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council

The "Big Three" of Europe at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Joseph Stalin.

Since the end of the World Wars, the term "great power" has been joined by a number of other power
classifications. Foremost among these is the concept of the superpower, used to describe those nations
with overwhelming power and influence in the rest of the world. It was first coined in 1944 by William T.R.
Fox and according to him, there were three superpowers: the British Empire, the United States, and the
Soviet Union. But by the mid 1950s the British Empire lost its superpower status, leaving the United
States and the Soviet Union as the world's superpowers. The term middle power has emerged for those
nations which exercise a degree of global influence, but are insufficient to be decisive on international
affairs. Regional powers are those whose influence is generally confined to their region of the world.

During the Cold War, the Asian power of Japan and the European powers of the United Kingdom, France,
and West Germany rebuilt their economies. France and the United Kingdom maintained technologically
advanced armed forces with power projection capabilities and maintain large defence budgets to this day.
Yet, as the Cold War continued, authorities began to question if France and the United Kingdom could
retain their long-held statuses as great powers. [32] China, with the world's largest population, has slowly
risen to great power status, with large growth in economic and military power in the post-war period. By
the 1970s, the Republic of China began to lose its recognition as the sole legitimate government of China
by the other great powers, in favour of the People's Republic of China. Subsequently, in 1971, it lost its
permanent seat at the UN Security Council to the People's Republic of China.
Role of general assembly and security council

The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations. Each of the 192 Member
States has one vote. The Assembly meets every year in regular session commencing in September (the
64th session opened on 15 September 2009). The tendency now is for the session to suspend in late
December, reconvene as required the following year and conclude the day before the next session
begins. Special and emergency special sessions may also be convened in accordance with the Rules of
Procedure of the General Assembly

The following key documents, issued prior to the convening of a regular session, facilitate identification of
major documentation projected for issuance and provide background information on the organization of
the session:

(1) The preliminary list of items to be included in the provisional agenda of the General Assembly, issued
early in the year (usually in February) and assigned the sequential number "50" for the session scheduled
to begin in September. This particular document proposes items to be included in the agenda, some of
which may be deleted or deferred to a later date.

(2) The annotated version of the preliminary list, issued several months later and assigned the sequential
number "100" for the session in question. The annotated preliminary list gives the history of each item
proposed for inclusion on the agenda, lists selected documents from the previous session and projects
major documents (reports, etc.) to be submitted for discussion under the individual items. Until the 65th
session, the annexes to the annotated preliminary list included comprehensive listings of: Presidents and
Vice-Presidents of the General Assembly; non-permanent members of the Security Council; members of
the Economic and Social Council; States Members of the United Nations. The names of officers of the
Main Committees (20th session onwards) were also included.

(3) The provisional agenda, issued at least sixty days before the opening of the session, in accordance
with Rule 12 of the Rules of Procedure of the General Assembly. This document gives a more concrete
definition to the shape the final agenda, once adopted, will take and is assigned the sequential number
"150" for the session in question.

(4) The memorandum of the Secretary-General, submitted to the General Committee, provides
background information on the organization of the session, consolidates the information relating to the
provisional agenda and proposes the allocation of the agenda items to either the plenary or one of the
Main Committees. The memorandum is assigned the sequential number "1" in the documentation series
of the General Committee for the session in question.

Subsequent to the formal convening of the session, the following key documents are issued which give
final shape to the agenda and specify the forum for consideration of the items and primary documentation
already issued or expected to be issued:

(1) The report of the General Committee, to which the sequential number "250" is assigned issued
pursuant to the Committee's review of items contained in the provisional agenda. This report
recommends the items to be included in the definitive version of the agenda which the Assembly will
adopt and assigns the items, on the basis of topic, to either the plenary or one of the six Main
Committees. Since every item listed in the provisional agenda is not subsequently recommended for
inclusion in the final agenda, this report provides "detectives" with clues regarding the fate of "missing"
items. As a consequence of the deletion/deferral of certain items and the subsequent renumbering of all
items, the number under which an item is listed in the provisional agenda may not necessarily be the
same as the one under which it would appear in the report of the General Committee.

(2) The agenda, as adopted by the plenary, assigned the sequential number "251" for the session in
question. This constitutes a listing of all the items which will be considered at a given session of the
General Assembly. Pursuant to the adoption of the agenda, the item number printed on General
 Assembly documents will reflect the number as it appears in the adopted agenda. Some documents
issued immediately after the adoption of the agenda still bear item numbers as they appear in the
provisional agenda since these documents were already in the "pipeline" at the time of adoption of the
agenda. It is generally good policy to check the item number against the agenda item title and not to rely
on the number alone - especially in the transition period shortly after the adoption of the agenda.

(3) The allocation of agenda items to which the sequential number "252" is assigned for the session in
question. This document finalizes the recommendations made by the General Committee regarding the
allocation of items and definitively decides whether the plenary or one of the Main Committees will
assume primary responsibility for a thorough review of the item (e.g., "International Criminal Court" was
allocated to the Sixth Committee, which deals with legal issues).

In order to handle the complex task of getting its member states to cooperate most efficiently, the UN
today is divided into five branches. The first is the UN General Assembly. This is the main decision-
making and representative assembly in the UN and is responsible for upholding the principles of the UN
through its policies and recommendations. It is composed of all member states, is headed by a president
elected from the member states, and meets from September to December each year.

UN Security Council

The UN Security Council is another branch in the organization of the UN and is the most powerful of all
the branches. It has power to authorize the deployment UN member states' militaries, can mandate a
cease-fire during conflicts, and can enforce penalties on countries if they do not comply with given
mandates. It is composed of five permanent members and ten rotating members. The United Nations
Security Council is the most powerful body of the United Nations. The Security Council can authorize the
deployment of troops from United Nations member countries, mandate cease-fire during conflict, and can
impose economic penalties on countries. The United Nations Security Council is composed of
representatives from fifteen countries. Five of the Security Council members are permanent members.
The original five permanent members were the United States, United Kingdom, Republic of China
(Taiwan), Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and France. These five countries were the primary
victorious countries of World War II. In 1973, Taiwan was replaced by the People's Republic of China on
the Security Council and after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the USSR's spot was occupied by Russia.
Thus, the current five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are: United States,
United Kingdom, China, Russia, and France. Each of the five permanent members of the Security
Council has veto power over any matter voted upon by the Security Council. This means that all five
permanent members of the Security Council must agree to endorse any measure for it to pass.
Nonetheless, the Security Council has passed more than 1700 resolutions since its founding in 1946.
The remaining ten non-permanent members of the total membership of fifteen countries are chosen
based on various regions of the world. Almost every United Nations member country is a member of a
regional grouping. The regional groupings include...

 the Western European and Others Group

 the Eastern European Group

 Latin American and Caribbean Group

 the Asian Group

 the African Group

Interestingly, the United States and Kiribati are the two countries which are not members of any group.
Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand are all part of the Western European and Others Group. The
ten non-permanent members serve two year terms and half are replaced each year in annual elections.
Each region votes for its own representatives and the United Nations General Assembly approves the
selections. The division among the ten non-permanent members is as follows: Africa – three members,
Western Europe and Others – two members, Latin America and Caribbean – two members, Asia – two
 members, and Eastern Europe – one member. Current members of the United Nations Security Council
can be found on this listing of Security Council Members. There has been controversy over the
composition of the permanent members and the veto power for decades. Brazil, Germany, Japan and
India all seek inclusion as permanent members of the Security Council and recommend enlargement of
the Security Council to twenty-five members. Any proposal to modify the organization of the Security
Council would require the approval of two-thirds of the United Nations General Assembly (192 UN
member countries as of 2009). The presidency of the United Nations Security Council rotates on a
monthly basis alphabetically among all of the members based on their English name. Since the United
Nations Security Council must be able to act quickly during times of international emergency, a
representative from each Security Council member country must be present at all times at the United
Nations Headquarters in New York City. The United Nations Security Council consists of fifteen UN
member countries.

There are five permanent UN Security Council members and ten non-permanent Security Council
members. The five permanent Security Council members were the primary victors of World War II. The
ten non-permanent Security Council members include two members from each of the regional groupings
of UN member countries:

 the Western European and Others Group

 the Eastern European Group

 Latin American and Caribbean Group

 the Asian Group

 the African Group

The current UN Security Council members are: Permanent Members

 China
 France

 Russia

 United Kingdom

 United States

Non-Permanent Members

Date indicates end of two year term for the ten non-permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council. Country will be replaced by another member of the regional grouping.

 Bosnia (Dec. 31, 2011)

 Brazil (Dec. 31, 2011)

 Colombia (Dec. 31, 2012)

 Gabon (Dec. 31, 2011)

 Germany (Dec. 31, 2012)

 India (Dec. 31, 2012)

 Lebanon (Dec. 31, 2011)

 Nigeria (Dec. 31, 2011)

 Portugal (Dec. 31, 2012)

 South Africa (Dec. 31, 2012)

Role of secretary General in international diplomacy

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics.

At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-
in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the
legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function.

The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every
incumbent. the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and
political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in
response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'.
The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of
states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body.

The Security Council and the Reality of Collective Security

First, the liberal institutionalist instinct for cooperation that created the United Nations extended
into a concrete attempt to help resolve the conflict between Arab countries and Israel following
the latter‘s 1948 declaration of independence. Invoking Chapter VII, the Security Council
ordered a cease-fire and eventually created an observer mission under Chapter VI – The United
Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). The mission was unarmed but its utility to
the belligerents in deterring truce violations is suggested by the fact that six and a half decades
later, UNTSO is still operating. Successfully freezing aspects of the war is one thing, but a
genuine peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and a resolution of the underlying
reasons for the original outbreak of the armed conflict, is quite another.

During the ―hottest‖ phase of the Cold War, regarding conflicts in key divided nations – from
Germany to China and Vietnam – the Security Council was unable to act because a P-5
member actually vetoed or would have vetoed proposed actions. The only time that collective
security arguably was employed took place in divided Korea in 1950. But even here, it was only
because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was temporarily boycotting the
Security Council to protest Taiwan‘s occupying the ―China‖ seat. This international pouting
allowed the United States and its allies to pass a resolution under Chapter VII authorizing
military actions – the first and only time during the period – to ―defend‖ the pro-Western South
Korea from Soviet and Chinese allied North Korea.
Arms control, disarmament and the United Nations

The subject of arms control, disarmament and proliferation is back on the international agenda
with a vengeance. The list of concerns includes the issue of what happened to the weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in Iraq that were the primary stated justification for a war unauthorized by the United
Nations, the proclamation of a weaponized nuclear capability by North Korea, the concerns expressed by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Iran’s nuclear programme, press reports that other
countries may be contemplating developing nuclear weapons or buying them ‘off-the-shelf’, and fears that
the United States is lowering the threshold of normative barriers and developing a new generation of
nuclear weapons that some in the current administration see as ‘useable’.

Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the goal of containing the spread and
enlargement of weapons and arms stockpiles has rested on three pillars—norms, treaties and coercion—
each of which has been under attack in the last few years. Norms are efficient mechanisms for regulating
social behaviour from the family and village to the global setting. They enable us to pursue goals,
challenge assertions and justify actions.

1 One of the most powerful norms since 1945 has been the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons.
Norms, not deterrence, have anathematized the use of nuclear weapons as unacceptable, immoral and
possibly illegal under any circumstance—even for states that have assimilated them into military arsenals
and integrated them into military commands and doctrines. Respect for this norm is evident in the fact that
there have been many occasions since 1945 when nuclear weapons could have been used without fear
of retaliation but were not, even at the price of defeat on the battlefield.

2 There exists a very large number of treaties and conventions regulating the use, spread and
possession of armaments.

The WMD trinity is regulated by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT, the arms control treaty
with the widest adherence of all with India, Israel and Pakistan being the only countries never to have
joined it), the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), several regional nuclear weapons- free zones
(NWFZ), and a whole series of bilateral and multilateral treaties and agreements. It is worth noting that
Article 6 of the NPT is the only explicit nuclear disarmament commitment undertaken by all five nuclear-
weapon states (NWS). There are even more agreements imposing curbs and controls on conventional
weapons including, for example, the Ottawa Convention on anti-personnel landmines—which has the
dual distinction of banning a class of weapons already in widespread use and being a disarmament treaty
rooted in humanitarian concerns.

Although the United States, along with other major mine-producing countries like China and
India, has not signed the Ottawa Convention, it is perhaps even more worrying that it has also retreated
from a series of arms control and disarmament agreements, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)
Treaty and the CTBT. In doing so, the United States contributes to a worsening of the proliferation
challenge. It is difficult to convince others of the futility of nuclear weapons when some demonstrate their
utility by the very fact of hanging on to them and developing new doctrines for their use. Simply put, treaty
setbacks contribute to a weakening of norms, which then sets in train a vicious cycle, since the
heightened risk of proliferation is used to justify a further scaling back of treaty or voluntary commitments
(such as no nuclear weapons testing). A norm cannot control the behaviour of those who reject its
legitimacy. India had argued for decades that the most serious breaches of the anti-nuclear norm were
being committed by the five nuclear powers who simply disregarded their disarmament obligations under
the NPT. The non-fulfilment of treaty obligations (specifically Article 6 of the NPT) by the NWS weakens
the efficacy of the antinuclear norm in controlling the threat of proliferation. It defies history, common
sense and logic to believe that a group of five countries can maintain a permanent monopoly on any class
of weaponry, particularly when they have made promise after promise to nuclear disarmament. Norms
and laws are alternative and, in the normal course of events, complementary mechanisms for regulating
social behaviour. If both should fail, then the question arises of how to enforce compliance on the actors
deviating from the socially prescribed norms and legal obligations. Within countries, there are any number
of social and legal mechanisms to ensure compliance and punish outlaws, from ostracism and corporal
punishment to imprisonment and capital punishment. Among countries, the universe of compliance-
enforcing tools is slighter, more contentious and divisive, and usually less efficacious. Compliance is
especially problematical in relation to the production, exchange and use of arms, for they are at the very
heart of national security. The core of the international law enforcement system is the UN Security
Council.

THE DISARMAMENT COMMISSION

The work of the Disarmament Commission has become so moribund that the 2002 session was
postponed to 2003 and, despite all hopes to the contrary, the Disarmament Commission concluded its
2003 session without concrete proposals to advance either nuclear disarmament or confidencebuilding in
the field of conventional arms-thereby departing from its usual practice of completing consideration of two
items in three years, with the consensus adoption of guidelines and recommendations. In the 2003 First
Committee, a resolution on the Disarmament Commission was adopted without a vote.15 The resolution
requested the Disarmament Commission to continue its work and meet for a period not exceeding three
weeks in 2004 on topics that have yet to be determined. Although the Disarmament Commission went
through reforms of its working practices in 1989 and again in 2000-which resulted in limiting its
substantive agenda to a maximum of two issues for indepth consideration-there are calls for further
reform. In the context of consultations over reforming the First Committee and the CD, options for the
Disarmament Commission are concurrently being discussed.

Roles played by the UN IN Disarmament.

In relation to disarmament and arms control, the United Nations plays three linked but analytically

distinct roles:3

• A funnel for processing ideas into norms and policies and for transmitting information from
national sources to the international community;4

• A forum for discussion and negotiation of common international positions, policies, conventions
and regimes; and

• A font of international legitimacy for the authoritative promulgation of international norms,

appeals for adherence to global norms and regimes, and coercive measures to enforce
compliance with them.

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A FUNNEL

It could be argued that the United Nations has not been the chief architect of arms control and
disarmament. Most of the key treaties and regimes—not just bilateral treaties signed by the Soviet Union
and the United States during the Cold War on intermediate range and strategic forces, but even
multilateral regimes like the NPT, CWC, BTWC and the various regional NWFZ—were negotiated outside
the UN framework, such as in the Conference on Disarmament.

At one level, this is of course true. At another level, the literal truth masks a deeper underlying reality. The
ideas behind many of the existing regimes were often first funnelled through the UN system. Thus the
idea for a total cessation of nuclear testing was proposed by India at the General Assembly in December
1954, although not put to a vote.5 In January 1957, the United States submitted a five-point plan to the
General Assembly proposing an end to the production of nuclear weapons and testing. Throughout the
1980s to the mid-1990s, pressure for a comprehensive test ban was funneled through the General
Assembly.6 Similarly, the idea of negotiating a South Pacific NWFZ was submitted to the General
Assembly for endorsement in 1975 under the joint sponsorship of Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New
Guinea, and the Rarotonga Treaty (1985) links the regional verification system for the South Pacific to the
global IAEA inspections regime within the UN system. Indeed the closest approximation to a widely
accepted definition of the NWFZ concept was contained in criteria identified in 1975 by a Group of
Experts commissioned by the General Assembly.7 The United Nations has thus historically been the
funnel for processing arms control and disarmament proposals and this role continues today. The New
Agenda Coalition (NAC), a group which cuts across traditional regional groupings, has used the United
Nations essentially as the funnel through which to advance the twin agendas of non-proliferation and
disarmament. The basic policy positions are agreed among the NAC countries (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland,
Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden), and then are taken to the international community
through the structures of theUnited Nations.As described in detail below, treaty negotiations may well be
held in forums outside the United Nations, however this should not take away due credit from the
Organization for its invaluable funnel role.

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A FORUM

The United Nations is the chief expositor of international norms. The international moral code is embodied
in its Charter. General Assembly resolutions are the most commonly cited and widely accepted code of
conduct, litmus test of international progress and metric of state compliance with internationally
prescribed behaviour. The reconciliation of divergent interests by the UN has procedural as well as
representational legitimacy: it is authenticated by the procedures that have been accepted by the
authorized representatives of states. The General Assembly is the arena where contested norms can be
debated and reconciled. Such a role was true historically for the General Assembly in delegitimizing
colonialism, even though decolonization resulted from policy decisions taken in the national capitals of the
colonial powers. It was the United Nations more than any other institution or organization which
proclaimed racial equality as a global norm and delegitimized apartheid as an ideology and system of
government. The Organization has been at the forefront of the universalization of the human rights norm
and the internationalization of the human conscience. And it is the General Assembly that civil society
actors look to and Member States go to when they wish to proclaim and reaffirm arms control and
disarmament norms. This is the

chief explanation why so many declarations and resolutions are first adopted in the United Nations before
producing conventions and treaties—norms followed by laws—in UN as well as non-UN forums. If the
General Assembly is the Organization’s normative centre of gravity, the Security Council, the only
enforcement part of the Organization, is its geopolitical centre of gravity. Faced with a challenge to the
norms and laws governing the acquisition, production, transfer and use of arms, the five permanent
members of the Security Council (P5) may have to resort to measures of coercion ranging from diplomatic
and economic to military. The non-proliferation norm became potentially enforceable in January 1992
when, in the context of the discovery of an advanced clandestine nuclear weapons programme in Iraq
and threats and defiance from North Korea, the UN Security Council declared proliferation to be a threat
to international peace and security (which can trigger enforcement action under Chapter 7 of the
Charter).With the General Assembly having little substantial power and the Security Council often
deadlocked, the weight of UN decision-making frequently falls on the shoulders of the Secretary- General.
He may be ignored, but he is not easily delegitimized. However, on the issue of armaments and weapons
platforms involving national security, the Secretary-General is not able to issue judgments and edicts
against Member States, unless perhaps they have violated specific and binding obligations. The
remaining two structures within the United Nations to tackle disarmament and security issues are the First
Committee of the General Assembly and the Disarmament Commission.

The First Committee is charged with considering disarmament and international security. In the latter part
of each year, Member States gather together to discuss resolutions put forward by one or more states.
The resolutions cover the gamut of disarmament and security issues—landmines, small arms, terrorism,
biological weapons, information technology security and nuclear weapons. Many resolutions are mere
repeats of previous years’ resolutions, but new resolutions are introduced every year and serve as a
gauge of progress or lack of it, and weathervanes of current international thinking on disarmament and
international security. Voting is by a simple majority. Resolutions may be adopted by acclamation, without
objection or without a vote, or the vote may be recorded or taken by roll-call.
After the committee has completed its consideration of items and submitted draft resolutions, all issues
are voted on through resolutions passed in plenary meetings of the General Assembly, usually towards
the end of the regular General Assembly session.

The UN Disarmament Commission is the body where all Member States can come together to set the
framework for disarmament. It is a deliberative body, an intersessional organ of the General Assembly,
mandated to consider and make recommendations in the field of disarmament and to follow up the
decisions and recommendations of the first UN Special Session on Disarmament (SSOD I) held in 1978.
Unlike the First Committee, the Disarmament Commission does not pass resolutions. It focuses on a
limited number of agenda items each session to allow for in-depth discussion. There are several
international bodies set within the UN framework as part of the implementation mechanism for
disarmament: the IAEA (Vienna), the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW, the
Hague) and the Preparatory Commission of the CTBT Organization (Vienna). Finally there is the United
Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) (and before that the United
Nations Special Commission, UNSCOM) charged with the disarmament of the WMD in Iraq under
Security Council resolutions 687, 715, 1284 and 1441 among others. In addition, although not a UN body
per se, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) is serviced by the UN Secretariat and is based at the UN in
Geneva. The Final Document of SSOD I described the CD as the world’s ‘single multilateral disarmament
negotiating forum’. Its origins lie in the Ten-Nation Committee on Disarmament of 1959 (five members
each from NATO and the Warsaw Pact), which was subsequently expanded to include eight neutral and
non-aligned countries and then further enlarged to its present strength of sixty-six, recognizing the
increasing number of independent states that wished to participate in the CD. Nevertheless, its budget is
included in the UN budget, its meetings are serviced by the UN, its Secretary-General is the Director-
General of the UN Office in Geneva, its Deputy- Secretary-General is the head of the Geneva Branch of
the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs, and it submits its annual report to the General Assembly.
However, the CD does not follow UN procedures—it has its own rules and procedures. For example, the
CD operates by consensus; there is no voting procedure. In addition, the political groupings—the
machinery that is in place to assist decision-making—have not changed since the end of the Cold War.
There is a Western Group (which includes Japan and Israel), an Eastern Group (which includes some
NATO states) and the G21 (comprising countries from the Non-Aligned Movement and now including two
self-declared nuclear powers, India and Pakistan). Reaching agreement within each of these groups is
often impossible. This means that the group chairpersons report to the CD presidency (which rotates
alphabetically by country on a monthly basis) and state week in and week out that there is no agreement
in the group, without having to expose the states that are causing/having difficulties. The United Nations
also serves as a forum for a number of processes such as the UN Programme of Action on the illicit trade
in small arms and light weapons. Negotiated in July 2001, the Programme of Action has the full support of
all Member States, the support of the UN and the UN family of organizations, and a large group of NGOs
under the umbrella of the International Action Network on Small Arms. The Programme of Action divides
its work into global, regional and national arenas and has an effective means of follow-up. The first
Biennial Meeting of States to report on the implementation of the Programme of Action was held in July
2003. Of particular note at the first Biennial Meeting of States was the large number of reports made by
states, NGOs and international organizations; thedegree and scope of partnership between the three
sectors; and the volume of work that had beencarried out within two years In addition to the UN
Programme of Action, the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their
Parts and Components and Ammunition, supplementing the United Nations Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime was also agreed upon in 2001.11 This

instrument covers solely commercial transactions, not state-to-state transactions and thus does not
address military weapons. However, it puts in place a system of authorizations for commercial
transactions and a mechanism for tracing and marking firearms. Following in its lead, the UN Programme
of Action, which does deal with military weapons, will beget a negotiation on the tracing and marking of
small arms and light weapons, to begin in February 2004. Plans for international instruments on the
regulation of brokering and trading and on arms exports are also under discussion. Multilateral treaties do
not have to be negotiated within standing international machinery. They can just as usefully be negotiated
at conferences called specifically for the purpose. Unfortunately major world summits have become
increasingly discredited in recent years, becoming battlegrounds for carrying out political trench warfare
by other means, occasions for finger-pointing rather than problemsolving. Better focused, practical
meetings to negotiate a specific instrument often have more success.

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A FONT

Treaties, even if negotiated outside UN forums, are often submitted to the UN machinery for formal
endorsement, which has no bearing on the legal standing of the treaty but does substantially enhance its
moral weight. This has been true, for example, of the various regional NWFZ. India’s protestations
notwithstanding, probably the clearest example of the United Nations as a font of authority for global arms
control treaties came with the CTBT in 1996. When India vetoed the final product in the CD in Geneva,
Australia took the initiative to use a constitutional manoeuvre to move the text from the CD in Geneva to
the General Assembly in New York. On 10 September 1996, the General Assembly approved the text of
the CTBT by a vote of 158–3. Only Bhutan and Libya supported India in rejecting it. In September 1997,
nearly 100 ‘like-minded’ states meeting in Oslo agreed on a text of a treaty banning anti-personnel
landmines; the signing ceremony was held in Ottawa in December 1997. The four countries most active in
the Ottawa Process—Austria, Belgium, Canada and Norway—are members of the CD and indeed played
an active role in taking the landmine negotiation out of the CD. The States Parties to the Ottawa
Convention are careful not to organize the treaty’s intersessional meetings or the Meetings of States
Parties along UN lines. In so doing, they are keen to establish a modus operandum in which states,
NGOs and international organizations can work in partnership with no barriers between them in terms of
legitimacy and the right to speak. Although the treaty is integrated within the UN system through
depositary functions and conference services, the States Parties set up an Implementation Support Unit
that operates under the wing of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (an
independent foundation), not within the United Nations. Calling on the moral authority of the United
Nations to ensure compliance with global norms is particularly needed when behaviour considered to be
unacceptable is not in fact proscribed by any treaty to which a state may be party. In May 1998, India and
Pakistan conducted nuclear tests. In doing so, they broke no treaty commitments, for neither had signed
the NPT. But they violated the global anti-nuclear norm, and were roundly criticized for doing so. But the
Security Council was in a peculiarly difficult position, for the simple reason that the P5 are caught in a
particularly vicious conflict of interest with regard to nuclear non-proliferation, in that they are also the
NPT-defined NWS. The P5 nuclear powers, who preach non-proliferation but practice deterrence, have
diminished moral authority to oppose proliferation. In these circumstances, for the Security Council to
condemn the 1998 Indian and Pakistani tests—when not one of the over 2,000 previous tests had ever
been so condemned by the Council—inflamed opinion in the subcontinent. The Security Council’s
presidential statement of 14 May 1998, strongly deploring India’s tests, was rejected by the Indian
government as ‘completely unacceptable’.12 Security Council Resolution 1172 of 6 June 1998,
condemning India’s and Pakistan’s tests and demanding that they stop, was similarly dismissed by Indian
spokesmen as ‘coercive and unhelpful in respect of the objectives it seeks to address.’
Importance and role of the specialized agencies of UN

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations constitutes one of the six principal
organs of the United Nations and it is responsible for the coordination of the economic, social and related
work of 14 UN specialized agencies, its functional commissions and five regional commissions. ECOSOC
has 54 members and holds one substantive session each year, in July, for a duration of four weeks. 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.

The current president of ECOSOC is Ambassador Lazarous Kapambwe of Zambia. The president is
elected for an one-year term and chosen among the small or middle powers represented on ECOSOC

Members

The Council has 54 member states which are elected by the United Nations General Assembly for
overlapping three-year terms. Seats on the Council are based on geographical representation with
fourteen allocated to African States, eleven to Asian States, six to Eastern European States, ten to Latin
American and Caribbean States, and thirteen to Western European and other States.

Functional commissions

 UN Commission for Social Development

 UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR): Disbanded 2006, replaced by the United Nations
Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly.

 Commission on Narcotic Drugs

 Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

 Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD)

 Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)

 UN Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW)

 Commission on Population and Development

 UN Statistical Commission

 United Nations Forum on Forests

Regional commissions
 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE)
 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)

 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)

 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)

Specialized agencies

The Specialized Agencies are autonomous organizations working with the United Nations and each other,
inter alia through the coordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council.
  International Labour Organization (ILO)
 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

 World Health Organization (WHO)

 World Bank Group

o International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)

o International Development Association (IDA)

o International Finance Corporation (IFC)

o Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)

o International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)

 International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)

 International Maritime Organization (IMO)

 International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

 Universal Postal Union (UPU)

 World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

 United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

 United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

 United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS)

 International Refugee Organization (IRO – ceased to exist in 1952)

 International Narcotics Control Board (INCB

1. In the last five years, following the World Conference on Education for All at Jomtien, Thailand, 1990,
four United Nations sponsored world conferences have taken place, each underscoring basic education
as a corner stone for human development. These conferences in addition to those held at sub-regional
and regional levels have resulted in a multitude of recommendations, declarations and action plans to
achieve education for all. The time has come for the United Nations system and the specialized agencies
to strengthen inter-agency co-ordination in order to improve the effectiveness of their contributions
towards making education for all a reality.

2. Basic education is considered to be the essential learning required by all members of the community
to ensure social and economic progress. The ICPD Programme of Action recognizes basic education as
an urgent priority and draws attention to its links with demography and social and economic development.
It states that "Everyone has a right to education, which shall be directed to the full development of human
resources, and dignity and potential, with particular attention to women and the girl child.".... Recognizing
that the effectiveness of the implementation of the Programme of Action depends on an inter-disciplinary
approach and must fit into a national development context, paragraph 10 of the General Assembly
Resolution 49/128, Report on the International Conference on Population and Development, "calls upon
the organs of the United Nations system and the specialized agencies to undertake the actions required
to give full and effective support to the implementation of the Programme of Action." In response to the
resolution, the inter-agency Task Force on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action
proposed that its basic education goals be pursued within the United Nations co-ordination system led by
the Resident Co-ordinator, and within the context of the World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien),
the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio), ICPD (Cairo), the World Summit
on Social Development (Copenhagen) and the upcoming Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing).

3. The Resident Co-ordinator is expected to establish a modality for inter-agency co-operation which
would serve as a catalyst for national initiatives in basic education. Such a strategy would recognize
UNESCO as the lead agency and the complementary roles of other agencies, foremost among them,
UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank. The guidelines are not intended to be prescriptive
and will not hinder individual agencies from pursuing their respective mandates but rather will enhance
the complementarity of their programmmes and allow the UN system to contribute more appropriately to
the achievement of basic education. In essence, it will facilitate more integrated planning of UN inputs to
basic education within a national development framework and will help foster a dialogue between the UN
system and governments inachieving the targets forbasic education for all

4. Eliminating disparities between male and female is essential to achieving basic education for all.
There is consensus among governments and agencies on the importance of educating girls and women.
However, there is still some reserve about committing resources to make this objective a reality. The
Resident Co- ordinator should be committed to the elimination of disparities between male and female in
basic education. He/she is expected to keep the education of girls and women high on the national
agenda through support to advocacy, national dialogue and programmes and projects intended to
improve girls' and women's access to good quality basic education. In addition to disparities between
male and female, there are disparities associated with poverty, geographical location and ethnicity. It
should be recognized that basic education must aim to eliminate inequalities in the society and to promote
peace and tolerance among all peoples.

5. The interplay between culture and education influences achievements in basic education,
particularly among cultural minorities and disadvantaged groups. Strategies for basic education should
seek to capture those aspects of the culture which can be utilized to enhance learning. Support should be
given to programmes which allow for the expression and understanding of diverse cultures and the
acceptance of cultural differences as they relate to basic education for human development.

The Strategies for Co-ordinating Basic Education

6. Already the Statement on the Role and Functioning of the Resident Coordinator System provides a
framework in which the co- ordination of substantive areas, such as basic education can be
accommodated. The Resident Co-ordinator needs to harmonize three inter-related aspects of planning
and programming. They concern:
a) governments and national Education For All (EFA) mechanisms,
b) theactivities/programmes of the various agencies, and
c) the inter-national and global priorities for basic education.

a) Relationship to government and national EFA mechanisms

1. The primary responsibility for co-ordinating basic education as well as the inputs from bilateral
and multilateral organizations rests with the government. But, a co-ordinated, inter-agency group
can encourage governments to increase resources to education and to give priority to
programmes directed towards improving educational opportunities for girls. Special support
would be given to programmes designed to reduce drop-out rates among girls as well as increase
their access to good quality education.

2. The Resident Co-ordinator is expected to plan joint working/training sessions with national
officials and UN agencies on selected themes/issues related to basic education. This will allow
for the exchange of ideas, the consolidation of objectives, the rationalization of activities and the
identification of investment priorities. This is particularly critical in the case of major education
reforms, policy discussions or major joint-agency initiatives in basic education, which may provide
a good opportunity for integration of reproductive health considerations. The United Nations
 System can play an important role in raising education above narrow sectarian interests and in
keeping with a changing socio-economic and cultural environment.

3. The development of practical cost-effective policy and plans for the achievement of quality
education for all must be seen as a priority activity in which the United Nations System can assist
countries. Whilst the drawing up of such a blue print for achievement of good quality education
for all may be seen as a largely technocratic process, the wide acceptance of the blue print as a
national programme by a wide spectrum of professional, business and other interests is
absolutely essential.

b) Relationship to the agencies - the Resident Co-ordinator as a team leader

The leadership of the Resident Co-ordinator will be essential in identifying the inter-related
areas for support by the UN agencies. Given the various disciplines of the United Nations, an inter-
agency approach can create an enabling environment by promoting inter-agency supported studies,
programmes and evaluation exercises. It will allow for the timely sharing of experiences, discussions of
problems and solutions and the review of progress made. The Resident Co-ordinator should also facilitate
inter-change of staff expertise between and among programmes and activities.

c) Relationship to basic education - achieving national and global priorities

11. Keeping in mind that the "primary objective of the operational activities for development within the
United Nations system is to promote the self-reliance of recipient countries through multilateral
cooperation", co-ordination for promoting basic education should seek to release "national energies", to
sustain good quality basic education which is accessible to all citizens and which uses local
organizations wherever possible. This goes beyond identifying national resources. It requires the
creative and imaginative use of such resources to increase the demand and supply of basic education as
well as to promote learning achievement which will help learners to understand better and cope with a
changing socio-economic environment. It is essential to personal and national development that the
expected outcomes of basic education be defined within the national context.

12. An underlying objective for basic education improvements is to bring about change and innovation in
the education system. Traditionally changes in education tend to be evolutionary and somewhat slow.
Under the leadership of the Resident Co-ordinator, the inter-agency group can be a catalyst for change.
Changes forimprovements can be put into three categories, those which will:

a) need few inputs and are not costly. Normally such changes can be effected through policy and
policy dialogue, (for example,increasing the proportion of female teachers recruited to the
teaching profession requires a policy decision);
b) need small scale funding;
c) require large scale financing and for which much programming and planning must be done.
Having identified the categories of change, the inter-agency group can assist the government to
address them in a timely manner and at a pace which allows development to be sustained by
national resources.

13. Education for all is the business of all. Partnerships should be encouraged and simultaneously
basic education monitoring mechanisms should be established or strengthened to ensure that standards
are maintained. The contribution of the private sector and NGOs should be assisted and encouraged.
The active participation of Communities in the provision of their education is of paramount importance
and every effort should be made to encourage and recognize their role. At the same time efforts need to
be made to bring the quality of education in poor communities on a par with that of more affluent ones.

14. Expanding access to basic education to unserved and under- served groups in ways that are more
responsive to local needs (e.g. the establishment of small multigrade schools in remote areas and the
provision of good quality non-formal education for youths) should be addressed. Alternative delivery
systems for the education of the school age-group should articulate with the education mainstream.
Everyone should have access to good quality basic education regardless of their social, cultural,
geographic and economic situations.

15. Improving basic education quality has continued to challenge governments and agencies. Basic
education is expected to help young people to develop decision-making skills needed for them to
function effectively as adults. The implications are that their education must meet their basic learning
needs and the teaching and learning process should be participatory so that attitude formation and
learning can take place in a meaningful context. The Multi- channel approach (expanding educational
opportunities through arange of delivery options - distance learning schemes, traditional media, radio,
television, audio tapes, etc.) may be utilized to enrich educational programmes and reach remote and
deprived groups. Multi-channel approaches are most effective when there is a supportive environment -
one in which the individual is ready to learn and the channel or channels can be maintained.

16. Basic education strategies must be informed by good quality data, an important area for institutional
strengthening in the improvement of basic education data management. It is one of the
most complex and challenging problems to be addressed in the education sector. Efforts should be
made to strengthen the national capacity to improve data sources (starting at the classroom level) and
management information systems. All data should be disaggregated according to sex (male and female)
to allow for the monitoring of progress on the education of girls and women. Other examples of key areas
for strengthening are research and evaluation, supervision and management, and the training of all
levels of educational personnel. In all these efforts, attention should be paid to adequate representation of
women personnel as well as the elimination of traditional gender biases.

17. Information sharing, the transfer and adaptation of successful experiences within the country would
help to promote programmes for the unserved and under-served groups. It is important that
information be disseminated through various channels including traditional means and packaged in
various forms to allow both literate and illiterate persons to understand the key messages.

18. Adult literacy, skills training and continuing education should be given priority. The Resident Co-
ordinator can exercise leadership in supporting the convergence of services, that is, the "bringing
together" of health, education, social welfare and agricultural services in a comprehensive whole at the
community level. Early childhood care and education should be addressed at the community level with
emphasis on the education of parents or caregivers to enhance the overall development of young
children.

19. Rigorous monitoring, evaluation and reforms needed to create the required dynamism to achieve
education for all targets should be encouraged. A manageable number of key indicators should be
identified for assessment. Some areas of concern may be evaluated through sample research. Special
attention needs to be given to progress in reaching excluded groups (among them girls and women),
educational achievement and non-academic areas such as values and attitudes. It is important to
recognize those strategies which have reached their threshold of usefulness and which must be changed,
sometimes radically, to foster further improvements.
UN system in changing context of global politics.
The United Nations plays a distinctive role in conflict resolution in divided societies, which we critically
examine in three ways. The first offers an overview in theory of relevant UN bodies and mechanisms;
particular attention is devoted to the roles and powers of the Security Council, the General Assembly, and
the Secretary-General and Secretariat. The second surveys these UN entities in the historical practice of
conflict resolution from the Cold War to the post-Cold War and contemporary periods; it highlights the
nature of the international system and problems in each period, and accordingly the evolution in UN
thinking and practice. We end by arguing that the UN has been blessed with a number of strengths as a
conflict resolution instrument but simultaneously plagued by some key structural flaws. This chapter
cannot be comprehensive, but key examples are used to illuminate general points.

UN CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THEORY

The UN‘s work in conflict resolution is part of its overall responsibility for maintaining international peace
and security—the fundamental reason behind the world organization‘s establishment—and thus draws on
two broad mechanisms conferred upon it in Article 1.1 of the UN Charter: peaceful settlement of disputes
and collective security enforcement. This section is not the place to determine whether outsiders could
truly resolve any armed conflict, and so for us the distinction between ―management‖ and resolution‖ is
blurred (Zartmann 2007). For the UN in practice, they are linked and often pursued simultaneously.

Peaceful Settlement of Disputes

The UN is not required to resolve any conflicts – the Security Council may address them if they constitute
threats to international peace and security. Indeed, Chapter VI of the Charter urges the conflicting parties
to ―first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial
settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice‖
(Article 33.1) (see Mani 2007: 301-308). These methods and mechanisms have long been used in
international diplomacy and law and are not UN inventions. The UN‘s particular task is to encourage
disputing parties to resort to them. When they are unable or fail to do so, the UN then employs these
mechanisms to assist belligerents to resolve their differences.

Collective Security Enforcement

While a large chunk of its conflict resolution involves the use of peaceful mechanisms, the UN, unlike its
predecessor the League of Nations or any other international organization, has the legal power to use
coercion. The general reason is simple as spelled out in the opening sentences of the Charter‘s
Preamble, namely ―to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime
has brought untold sorrow to mankind.‖

The central idea behind the theory of collective security is that peace can best be preserved or
established when states join together automatically to prevent any of their members from using force
against one another (Gordenker and Weiss 1993: 3-7; Claude 1956). Accordingly, states must be
normatively committed in favor of the peaceful settlement of disputes and against the use of force except
to punish aggression or use it after a Security Council decision—in short, to see the interest of the
international community of states as one‘s national interest. This theory flies in the face of history as well
as the theory of Realism (Mearsheimer 1994/1995: 26-30); but given the ―untold sorrow‖ wrought by two
world wars, collective security in 1945 seemed possible. At the time, states did not view the second
generation of universal international organizations in the form of the UN system as a liberal plaything but
rather a vital necessity for postwar order and prosperity (Plesch 2008).

Nevertheless, given the ugly realities of confrontation that returned almost before the ink dried from state
signatures on the Charter, only a limited version of collective security was put into place with the creation
of the main body for dealing with conflicts – the UN Security Council. We now survey the role and power
of this institution, as well as the other two important UN organs – the General Assembly and the
Secretariat.

International protection of human rights

Human rights are commonly understood as being those rights which are inherent in the mere fact of being
human. The concept of humanrights is based on the belief that every single human being is entitled to
enjoy his or her rights without unreasonable distinction as to race, color, sex, language, religion, political
or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. Human rights are legally
protected under international human rights law, which obliges States to guarantee rights under treaties
which they have accepted or under the norms of customary law which apply to all States. A variety of
mechanisms and procedures has been developed to assist in ensuring that human rights norms are fully
implemented. The following are some of the most important characteristics of human rights:

Human rights are founded on respect for the inherent dignity and worth of each person. Human rights are
universal, meaning that they are applied equally and without discrimination to all people. While the
significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural, and religious
backgrounds should be borne in mind, all States, regardless of their political, economic, and cultural
systems, have a duty to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.Human rights
are indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated. One cannot respect somehuman rights and not others. In
practice, the violation of one right will often affect respect for several other rights, and all human rights
should therefore be seen as having equal importance.

International Human Rights Law

A great number of international human rights treaties and other instruments have been adopted by the
United Nations and accepted by States since 1945. Other instruments have been adopted at a regional
level, reflecting the particular human rights concerns of the region. Every State's domestic constitution or
other laws also formally protect basic human rights. In many States, the language used to proclaim
human rights has been drawn directly from international instruments.

Treaties

The most common way in which a State expresses its agreement to be bound by international law is
through a treaty. A treaty is a formal agreement among States to be bound by particular rules and may be
designated by many different names, such as covenant, charter, protocol, convention, accord, and
agreement. A treaty is legally binding on those States which have consented to be bound by its provisions
– in other words are party to the treaty. Most of the principal international human rights treaties have been
ratified by well over 100 States, and some enjoy near universal acceptance.

A State becomes a party to a treaty by whatever formal means of consent is required under its own law,
as well as by the terms of the treaty itself. Depending on the precise timing and other factors, this process
may lead to ratification, accession, adhesion, or succession to a treaty; all have the same legal effect.
Merely signing a treaty expresses a State's intention to ratify it at a later date but does not by itself bind
the State to the full set of treaty obligations. When ratifying a treaty, a State may enter reservations to that
treaty. These statements indicate that, while it consents to be bound by most of the treaty's provisions,
the State does not agree to be bound by certain specific provisions. If you seek to hold a State
accountable for human rights treaties it has ratified, it is essential to check to see whether the State has
entered any reservations to the treaty which would limit its acceptance of certain obligations.

The legal effect of a treaty in a country's domestic law depends on the State's legal system. In some
countries, treaties are "self-executing" and are considered to be superior to domestic legislation and even
the constitution. In other States, treaties may prevail over domestic law

not over the constitution. In yet other States, a treaty will have no domestic legal effect
unless it is formally incorporated into domestic law by the appropriate legislative process. Whatever a
treaty's status may be domestically, a State is legally bound to observe its at the international level. No. 4
on Human Rights Treaty Bodies gives further information about how the treaty bodies can be used to
promote and protect minority rights. Customary international law Customary international law is the term
used to describe a widely accepted practice followed by States which derives from a sense of legal
obligation. Because customary law is, by , not found by looking at a text, there is a great deal of
disagreement over its exact content. However, most people today would agree that, at a minimum, the
following human rights norms have become part of customary law: prohibition against genocide,
prohibition against slavery, prohibition against torture and prohibition against systematic racial
discrimination (such as apartheid). Customary law is binding on all States (except those that may have
objected to it during its formation), whether or not they have ratified any relevant treaty.

Declarations and resolutions adopted by UN organs

Neither the UN General Assembly nor other UN bodies have the authority to create rules of law that are
legally binding on States, but they have adopted a wide range of declarations, proclamations,
recommendations, guidelines, and principles. These statements, particularly they are adopted
unanimously or by consensus, represent important political and moral commitments by States that may
influence their conduct of international relations. The most important of these statements are usually
designated declarations, such as the 1992 UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National
or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (Declaration on Minority Rights). Another important
declaration is the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (Declaration on Religious Intolerance). Even though they do
not have binding legal effect, such formal statements may be seen as declaratory of broadly Pamphlet
No.1 of the UN Guide for Minorities 8 accepted principles by the international community, and States that
support their adoption may be expected to live up to the political commitments they have freely
undertaken.

Defining human rights

The writing or drafting of human rights standards can be a long and difficult process. The governments
involved represent peoples from all parts of the world, with differing political, economic, and social
systems. Since the most effective instruments are generally those that enjoy a high degree of agreement,
governments generally prefer to have consensus on the text. This makes it more likely that a treaty will be
widely ratified or that a declaration represents a meaningful political commitment by States. However,
even treaties that are adopted by consensus become legally binding on an individual State only after it
ratifies the treaty. Most human rights are not absolute, and they can be limited in specific circumstances.
For , if an individual is found guilty of a crime after a fair trial, the State may lawfully restrict his or her
freedom of movement by imprisonment; freedom of expression does not extend to libel and slander; and
freedom of assembly does not allow you to gather a crowd in a busy intersection. While every treaty has
slightly different provisions, among the legitimate reasons that a State may limit the exercise of certain
rights are to protect the rights of others, national security, public order (ordre public), public health, or
public morality. But any limits

a State places on rights must be provided by law (not simply by executive fiat), necessary to achieve the
stated purpose, and consistent with the concept of a democratic society.

In a legitimate state of emergency that is publicly declared, a State can take measures which suspend or
derogate from certain rights. Again, however, such derogations are permitted only to the extent absolutely
necessary in the specific situation and may never involve discrimination based on race, colour, sex,
language, religion, or social origin. Certain rights -- known as "non-derogable rights" -– may never be
suspended even in situations of war and armed conflict. These include the right to life, freedom from
torture, freedom from slavery, and freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Even in times of armed
conflict, where humanitarian law or the law of war applies, human rights law continues to afford
protection. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has also argued that States may
never derogate from action to protect the "core content of economic, social and cultural rights".
Implementing and enforcing human rights

The obligation to promote, protect and ensure the enjoyment of human rights (more commonly phrased
as the obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights) is primarily a of States and their
governments. Most human rights must be guaranteed by States to all people within their territories,
whether they are citizens, aliens, tourists, or even illegal entrants. Certain human rights may apply only to
particular groups of people; for example, the right to vote in elections may be restricted to those who are
citizens of the State. A State's responsibilities include the obligation to take affirmative measures to
ensure that human rights are protected, as well as abstaining from interfering with the free exercise of
rights. States must provide effective domestic remedies for persons who allege that rights have been
violated. Pamphlet No.1 of the UN Guide for Minorities 9 Ensuring that human rights are observed is also
a legitimate concern of the international community. Under Article 55 of the UN Charter, the UN is to
promote universal respect for and observance of human rights, and all UN member States pledge to take
joint and separate action in cooperation with the UN to achieve this goal. In addition, over 125 States are
party to one of the three main regional conventions on human rights.

Various mechanisms have been created by treaties or by the actions of international organizations to
promote and protect human rights, and the remaining pamphlets in this series describe many of them in
detail. Some mechanisms are based on legally binding obligations that States have assumed under the
various treaties, and it may be possible to invoke one of these formal treaty mechanisms if you believe
that your rights under a treaty have been . Some treaties offer the possibility of filing complaints about
human rights violations, and most enable NGOs to contribute at least informally to examinations of a
country's compliance with its treaty obligations.

Other mechanisms are founded on the inherent authority of international organs to consider matters
within their competence. These mechanisms also may provide an option for individuals or NGOs to file
communications alleging violations in a State (e.g., UNESCO and the "1503 procedure") or for direct
participation in discussions about human rights in more "political" forums within the UN, such as the
Commission on Human Rights. (see Pamphlet No. 3) The Working Group on Minorities of the UN Sub-
Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which is described in Pamphlet No. 2,
provides opportunity for those concerned with minority rights to review the practical realization of the UN
"Declaration on Minority Rights", examine solutions to problems involving minorities and recommend
measures for the promotion and protection of the rights of persons belonging to minorities. Figure 2
summarizes some of the international instruments that are particularly relevant to minorities, setting out
which instruments are legally binding and which are not. It also indicates the possible range of actions
available under each type of instrument, depending on whether or not your country is a party to the treaty
in question. Figure 3 summarizes some of the regional instruments that are particularly relevant
tominorities and indicates the possible range of actions available under the different instruments. Fuller
details of the different regional mechanisms are contained in pamphlets on the Inter-American system,
African Regional Mechanisms, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Framework
Convention for the Protection of the Rights of National Minorities, pamphlets numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8,
respectively.
Reform and restructuring of the UN

On July 14, Kofi Annan released Maurice Strong's initial plan to begin reforming the United Nations.
The 95-page document, entitled Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform, is a step-by-
step program to implement many of the recommendations advanced by the UN-funded Commission on
Global Governance in its 1995 report entitled Our Global Neighborhood. The reform plan comes as no
surprise. Maurice Strong was a member of the Commission on Global Governance and a lead author of
its report. He was the first appointment of Kofi Annan, just days after Annan's selection as UN
Secretary-General. As Executive Coordinator for Reform, Strong was hired specifically to restructure
the sprawling UN system into the mechanism for global governance described in Our Global
Neighborhood.

The reform plan was welcomed in Washington as evidence that the new Secretary-General was serious
about reducing the bloated world-wide bureaucracy. A promise to eliminate 1000 staff positions and
reduce overhead costs from 38 percent to 25 percent were the plan's key features heralded in the
media. Little, if any, attention was focused on the effect of the reform plan on the structure of the
institution. The report itself says: "Reform is not intrinsically an exercise in cutting costs or reducing
staff. It is an exercise to assure the Organizations' relevance in a changing world...." 1

Assuring "relevance" may be the understatement of the century. The plan puts into motion a
fundamental shift of purpose for the existence of the United Nations. The United Nations was created,
and heretofore, has functioned to serve its membership of sovereign nations. The market, or service
area for the United Nations is now shifting away from sovereign nations to focus directly on the citizens
of those nations. The UN is no longer limiting its activities to providing services for nations, but is now
gearing up to provide "security for the people" within those nations.

The UN reform package represents the final step in the evolution of the meaning of the term "security."
The UN Charter refers to "collective security" which is agreement among nations not to use force
against each other and to defend each other from external attack. Collective security evolved into
"comprehensive security" during the 1980s. Comprehensive security embraces the idea of
disarmament, demobilization, and demilitarization. The final step in the evolution is "human security,"
which includes all of the above and "safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and
repression, as well as protection from sudden and harmful disruptions in the patterns of daily life." 2

Is there a conflict between national sovereignty and the UN's determination to provide "human security"
to individual citizens within sovereign states? You bet. But the UN has an answer. Listen to Maurice
Strong and the Commission on Global Governance:

 "...countries are having to accept that in certain fields, sovereignty has to be exercised collectively,
particularly in respect of the global commons."3
 "...the principle of sovereignty...must be further adapted to recognize changing realities." 4

 "...there is a need to weigh a state's right to autonomy against its people's right to security." 5

 "It is time to begin thinking about self-determination in a new context -- the emerging context of a
global neighborhood rather than the traditional context of a world of separate states." 6

 "The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international
relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global
environmental cooperation. What is needed is recognition of the reality that...it is simply not feasible for
sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful." 7

To Maurice Strong, national sovereignty is an obsolete concept. Maurice Strong is the person
responsible for restructuring the UN. The process is now officially underway with changes that will have
immediate consequences, and others that are preparatory for more sweeping changes in the future --
as the world succumbs to the tightening grip of global governance.

Immediate structural changes include the creation of a new International Criminal Court, an "Assembly
of the People," a Petitions Council, and a restructured UN Trusteeship Council. The new International
Criminal Court has been under development for several years. The idea is being presented as a
mechanism to prosecute war criminals. Our Global Neighborhood describes this new UN entity not only
in the context of war criminals, but in the context of international law. The Court will have its own "panel
of prosecutors," who will be free to investigate within the sovereign borders of member states -- without
interference from national, state, or local governments. Considering the rapidly expanding body of
international law -- ranging from the rights of children to the use of fossil fuels and the use of land -- this
Court is a necessary component to give meaning to global governance. "The very essence of global
governance is the capacity of the international community to ensure compliance with the rules of
society."8

The new Assembly of the People is to consist of 300 to 600 selected representatives of NGOs (non-
governmental organizations) accredited by the United Nations. The first meeting is scheduled to
precede a special "Millennium" session of the UN General Assembly in the year 2000. The function of
the Assembly of the People is to provide direct input to the General Assembly from representatives of
"civil society."

Accredited NGOs will also supply five to seven selected representatives to serve on the new Petitions
Council. Their function will be to screen petitions submitted from the network of accredited NGOs in the
field -- the UN's new "early warning system" -- and route the petitions to the appropriate UN agency for
response.

The UN Trusteeship Council, created originally to oversee the transition of colonies to independence, is
to become the trustees of the global commons. Global commons is defined to be "The atmosphere,
outer space, the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and the related environment and life-support
systems that contribute to the support of human life." 9 The United Nations Center for Human
Settlements (HABITAT) is being incorporated into the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
The restructured UNEP will administer all environmental treaties, more than 300 currently, and will
become the implementation and enforcement arm of the UN Trusteeship Council. Programmatic activity
is being shifted to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), into which will also be folded the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The reform program now underway is committed to reducing staff by 1,000, and reducing the overhead
costs from 38 to 25 percent. The reduced costs are not to be returned to the contributing states, but
instead, are to be used to supplement development activity in developing countries. "Reform is not an
event; it is a process. And the process will not end with the present report." 10

The reform process, initially, reorganizes the work of the United Nations into five areas that are "the
core mission of the United Nations: peace and security; economic and social affairs; development
cooperation; humanitarian affairs; and human rights." 11 Executive Committees have already been
organized for each of four areas. The fifth area, human rights, is considered to cross all areas and is
therefore represented on each of the other Executive Committees. Virtually every one of the more than
130 UN agencies, commissions, committees, and funds, has been assigned to one or more of these
four UN "Departments." The heads of these new departments, along with several selected senior staff,
constitute the new Senior Management Group.

In every nation where there is a UN presence, all UN activity will be consolidated under the authority of
a "Special Representative of the Secretary-General." All UN activity will be headquartered in a single,
special facility to be known as "UN House." All services will be delivered under a single flag -- the UN
flag. South Africa is designated to receive the first UN House, with six other nations scheduled to follow
shortly.

The Peace and Security Department includes three sub-departments: Political Affairs; Peacekeeping
Operations; and Disarmament and Arms Regulations. Presently, the UN Charter does not authorize the
UN to maintain its own standing army. Troops must be provided by member nations. This situation is
untenable to the UN. "Troops...are, in some cases not made available by member states or made
available under conditions that constrain an effective response." Amendments to the UN Charter are
being prepared. "Stronger cooperation" is required from nations that have "relevant capabilities" and
"regional or sub-regional organizations" such as NATO. "Global security can be said to exist only if the
[Security] Council can dispatch military forces rapidly and with the requisite predictability and
reliability."12

The UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and the UN Conference on Disarmament, which
meets three to four months each year in Geneva, will be consolidated into the new Department for
Disarmament and Arms Regulation, headed by an Under-Secretary-General located in Geneva. Their
objective is to ultimately control all firearms. "The production and trade in arms should be controlled by
the international community. Military force is not a legitimate political instrument, except in self-defense
or under UN auspices."13

The expanded and restructured UNEP will function under the Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, which will also oversee the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD);
the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention; the United Nations University and several
commissions of various sorts. This consolidation provides straight-line administrative authority from the
Secretary-General to dozens of agencies and hundreds of programs. It is a reform that has nothing to
do with reducing costs and everything to do with the consolidation of power.

These restructuring steps are preparatory for the implementation of the new concept of security of the
people. "The concept of global security must be broadened from the traditional focus of security of
states to include the security of people and the security of the planet." 14 The United Nations, through its
program of reform, is becoming both the protector and provider for the world.

The United Nations has concluded that it is the institution of governance that must be responsible for
the security of people and it is preparing to redefine national sovereignty, demilitarize national
capabilities, and disregard the protest of uncivil society -- read: organizations not accredited by the
United Nations.

The new reformation is underway. It is a reformation, not only of the United Nations, but of global
societies. It is occurring daily with the blessings and staunch assistance of the Clinton/Gore
Administration and many members of Congress. The reformation is not accompanied by black
helicopters delivering UN soldiers. It is being actively promoted through the UN Convention on Climate
Change; the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the
Convention on the Law of the Sea; the Convention on Chemical Weapons; the Convention on the
International Criminal Court; the Convention on the

Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women; The Convention on World Heritage Sites; the
UN World Wide Biosphere Reserve Network; the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands; the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species; the Ecosystem Management Policy; the American
Heritage Rivers Initiative; the Sustainable Communities Initiative -- and a host of other UN policies that
now dominate domestic policy in the United States. These policies -- initiated, implemented, and
enforced -- by the United Nations, are defacto global governance. Global governance is not an event; it
is a process. It is a process that has been underway for years. By the year 2000, enough of the policies
will be in place, and sufficient restructuring of the UN will have been accomplished, to claim that global
governance is the new reality. A reality from which there is no escape
Achievements of the U N and challenges

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the United Nations has been subject to increased criticism that has encompassed its
designated roles, its organisation and its effectiveness. In focusing on the role of the UN in development,
this article argues that flawed though the UN system is, it also plays a role in development in its broadest
sense that could not be fulfilled by any other international body. It is for this reason that it is important to
recognise the achievements of the UN in the past, while at the same time pushing for its reform in the
future. The crucial importance of the UN stems from the fact that its role in development it not limited to its
work on the ground through its specialist agencies, but that it is also an important forum where
international norms on development are generated and debated.

In the public mind, as well as in academic writing, the UN is primarily associated with its key role in
international peace and security and with its high profile peacekeeping missions. Even though the original
broad objectives of the UN set out in its Charter of establishment reflect this focus, the UN was intended
from its beginning to have a role in development. In the aftermath of the Second World War, that agenda
was focused on rebuilding the industrialised states devastated by the war. Later, the UN took a leading
role in promoting development in the global South as the process of decolonisation was rolled out. It was
the UN’s response to decolonisation that created a new layer of activity and a new requirement for
specialist agencies. The UN was also a body within which consensus was sought between Cold War
political adversaries on the nature of the international community’s response to decolonisation, for
example as set out in the resolutions on self-determination and the work of the Special Committee on
Decolonisation.1 Furthermore, the UN played a significant role in the integration of the newly emerging
post-colonial states into the international system. This post-colonial development role became
institutionalised within the UN from the early 1960s onwards, with the creation of the World Food
Programme (WFP) in 1963, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCATD) in
1964 and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1966. Although the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) had been established in 1945, it entered a new phase and re-oriented its
goals to respond to this new context with the launch of the ‘Freedom from hunger’ campaign in 1960.

Currently, the UN system contains a number of key agencies that work in development, and through its
programme of global conferences it facilitates an international discourse on development and related
issues. Neither of these facets of the UN’s work is without problems, but they have also made a lasting
contribution to global development. Given growing global inequality and the failure of development in
Africa this may not seem like much of a claim. However, flawed though the UN is, things would be worse
without it.

CONTRIBUTION OF UN PROGRAMMES AND SPECIALISED AGENCIES

The UN development agenda cuts across a vast array of interlinked issues, ranging from gender equality,
social integration, health, employment, education, the environment and population to human rights,
finance and governance.

The UN Development Programme is the UN’s largest provider of grants for sustainable human
development worldwide,

Many other UN programmes work for development in partnership with governments and NGOs. The
World Food Programme is the world’s largest international food aid organisation for both emergency relief
and development; it is expected to deliver 9.5 million tons of food aid in 2006–7.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is the largest international provider of population assistance. The UN
High Commission for Refugees has assisted an estimated 50 million people over a period of more than
five decades.
 As of 2005, it had a staff of around 6,540 people in 116 countries and a budget of $982 million and
continues to help 19.2 million persons.

The role of the autonomous specialised agencies, under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), also plays a critical part in development cooperation.

The FAO has a budget of US$749.1 million,2 and provides technical assistance, cooperation and
partnerships—including the Technical Cooperation Programme, information and general policy, direction
and administration in the areas of food and agriculture.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), with a budget of US$421 million, carries out essential work in
terms of monitoring disease, promoting research and providing essential services through vaccination
programs. It is widely regarded as the central actor in the eradication of smallpox—a disease that killed
millions until the 1970s. Not only does the UN, through these agencies, focus on long-term development
strategies, it also has a key role in responding to emergencies—however, this paper will focus its
discussion on the long-term development role of the UN.

Criticisms of the UN’s development work focus on the multiplicity of its specialist agencies and the
complexity of the UN bureaucracy.

The manner in which the structure of the UN developed has meant that there is no strong central
coordination to the UN’s development role, which can result in conflicting aims, confusion and wasteful
duplications in the work of the various agencies. According to the UN’s founding Charter, ECOSOC was
designed to play this coordinating role in relation to the specialised agencies.

In practice, the ECOSOC was not allowed to develop in this way. Instead the structure and mandate of
the Bretton Woods institutions meant that it was the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that
came to dominate the international financial system and to play a central role in setting the macro-
economic frameworks for the global economy. Since the 1980s this has also meant that these two
institutions have played a key role in setting the agenda of domestic economic policy for those developing
states reliant on their financial support.

It is widely accepted that the overlapping and sometimes competing work of different UN agencies is a
real problem, but structural issues alone are not responsible for weaknesses in the UN development
activities. Indeed Kofi Annan in his report to the 2005 UN summit stated:

Over the past few decades, responding to steadily growing demand, the system has seen a welcome
expansion in its membership as well as in the scale and scope of its activities. One unfortunate side-effect
of this has been that there is now often significant duplication of mandates and actions between different
bodies within the system.4

But, as he also pointed out, the other major difficulty ‘has been significant shortfalls in necessary
funding’—a problem that has affected all aspects of the UN’s work and has seriously undermined its
credibility.

Since the election of Secretary-General Annan in 1997 there has been a significant internal reform
programme within the UN. This has been conducted in the adverse circumstances of a budget whose real
value is falling, given that the core UN budget has been frozen at approximately $1.3 billion since 1994.
Steps have been taken to improve coordination and efficiency in the UN system: one such effort is the
‘Joint UN programme on AIDS’, which pools the expertise of eight UN agencies and programmes. At
individual country level, Annan has sought to strengthen the role of the ‘UN resident coordinator’—who is
normally also the UNDP representative—to seek to share resources (including office buildings). He has
also sought to plan and coordinate the activities of the various UN agencies in a more integrated manner
—through the ‘common country programming processes’.5 At a central level, the UN Development Group
(UNDG) brings together the operational agencies working on development. It aims to develop common
planning policies, tools and strategies for cost containment.6 In spite of these reforms, Fomerand argues
that UN agencies still seek to prioritise their own specialised activities over the coordinated programme.7
In doing so, the individual agencies are influenced by their direct relationship with donors and by the
competing and uncoordinated approaches of individual donor states in developing countries. Agencies
can secure their own ring-fenced funds from donors, which is outside the control of a UN resident
coordinator at country level or even of the UNDG coordinating mechanism.

Lack of coordination and multiplicity of agencies within the UN is often driven by the competing demands
of donors. Whereas coordination of donor policy has attracted a lot of debate in recent years, this
discussion has largely focused on attempts to coordinate bi-lateral spending in-country and on attempts to
reduce the administrative reporting overload on recipient states.8 There has been little analysis of the
negative impact of competing donor agendas (and ring-fenced funding streams) on the ability to
coordinate or prioritise the work of UN agencies. Moreover, even those schemes often promoted as the
best-practice models of coordination, such as the joint assistance strategy in Tanzania,9 are in reality a
long way from a model that eliminates wasteful and duplicative reporting requirements by donors or that
provide a genuinely coordinated donor support to a recipient state.

Funding shortfalls for UN programmes and the relative decline of the UN’s global influence on
development issues—compared to that of the IMF and World Bank—has also, in Fomerand’s view, led to
a weakening of the UN’s intellectual leadership in development. He argues that the early UN secretariat
had development specialists who were recognised world leaders, including the two Nobel prize winners
Arthur Lewis and Gunnar Mydral, and that the sidelining of the UN secretariat’s role in the management of
the global economy has resulted in an asymmetrical shift of expertise to the World Bank on the one hand
and to the specialist UN agencies such as the UNDP on the other.10 The sidelining of the UN in this way
was an inevitable result of power politics, in that the Washington-based institutions more closely reflected
the interests of the US and its engagement with the global economy than did the UN. The institutional
arrangements within the IMF and World Bank, in particular the dominance of wealthy states in its
shareholder model of governance, meant that these two bodies were not influenced by the needs or
views of developing states. Given the UN’s own ethos and role in the world and the stronger influence of
the General Assembly (and through it the majority of member states) on social and economic issues,
including development, the UN agencies were unlikely to become uncritical proponents of a development
agenda propagated by the developed states or of a world order constructed in their interests. As a result,
powerful interests have promoted the role of the IMF and World Bank at the same time as the role of the
UN has been circumscribed.

In some respects the UNDP has provided an alternative analysis to that of the financial institutions,
through, for example, the promotion of the concept of human development; and the work of UN specialist
agencies has given it a practical knowledge base and an authority that has been hard to dismiss. Kothari
argues that the critical reports of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)
have played a useful role in asserting the ‘relatively autonomous character of the UN’ from the dominant
macroeconomic agendas of the major powers and the Bretton Woods institutions.11 While a multiplicity of
agencies does certainly create problems of efficiency and coordination, the major UN agencies such as
UNDP have used their operational role effectively to assist in the UN’s other development function—that
of seeking to establish international norms and to pressurise wealthy states to increase their financial
commitments. As a small state, Ireland has maintained a positive view of the role of the UN in
international affairs. This is reflected in recent increases in Ireland’s funding for UN agencies. The bulk of
Irish development aid goes to bilateral programmes in Ireland’s priority programme countries, primarily in
sub-Saharan Africa, and to supporting the work of Irish development NGOs, and a much smaller
proportion has gone to EU and UN development programmes. As the development cooperation budget
has grown, the size of Ireland’s contribution to the UN agencies has grown both in absolute and in
percentage terms, and contributions to these agencies are now larger than the contribution to the EU
development programme. In 2004 approximately €66 million was contributed to UN agencies,
representing 13.5% of the overall Irish aid budget and a 50% increase since 2002. Following a ‘peer
review’ of Ireland’s development cooperation programme by the OECD Development Assistance
Committee (DAC) in 1999,12 and the subsequent Ireland Aid review,13 Ireland decided to target
contributions to the UN to a much smaller number of agencies. This was a decision that reflected in some
ways the debate on multiplicity and coordination within the UN itself. Ireland had funded 39 separate UN
agencies in 1999 but decided to focus its contributions on a more limited number thereafter. The criteria
for selection included fit with Irish Aid’s own programmes and a focus on poverty alleviation. While some
small contributions continue, spending is now more focused. Among the larger contributions from
Ireland’s aid programme in 2004, UNDP received €12.9m, UNICEF €8.5m, the UNHCR €7m, WFP
€2.9m, UNFPA €2.5m, WHO €2.9m, UNHCHR €2.5m and UNAIDS €2.3m.14 These eight agencies
therefore receive a total of €41.5m—nearly two-thirds of the overall Irish contribution to the UN. Irish
government development policy therefore places considerable importance on support for UN agencies.

THE US AND THE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US also wanted to build an international
consensus on development that was outside the framework provided by the MDGs. The new National
Security Strategy, although focused primarily on a narrow security response to the threats facing the US,
also set out the American government’s development policy. It argued for promoting global economic
growth through free markets and free trade, and it asserted that policies ‘that further strengthen market
incentives and market institutions are relevant for all economies—industrial countries, emerging markets
and the developing world’.33 The strategy argued that liberal democracy was an essential part of
development and that it was necessary to ‘expand the circle of development by opening societies and
building the infrastructure of democracy’.34

The strategy document justifies the administration’s decision to make military action its priority and
retrospectively defends the US’s comparatively small commitment to development aid by stigmatising
‘decades of massive development assistance’ as having ‘failed to spur economic growth’ and having
propped up ‘failed policies’ while ‘relieving the pressure for reform and perpetuating misery’.35 From the
perspective of the Bush administration, it is the existence of ‘failed states’ that have been following
inappropriate development strategies, rather than the international system, that is to blame for global
poverty. The goal of international development aid therefore—from this viewpoint—should be focused on
changing governments’ objectives and economic strategies towards a neo-liberal model.

A central plank of this new policy on the part of the US was the announcement of a ‘New millennium
challenge account’ that would provide $5 billion (over 3 years) of new spending specifically targeted at
those countries that follow a program of economic and political reform that has the approval of the US.36
The additional aid was linked to what the strategy defined as ‘sound policies’, and it was stated that the
funds ‘will be distributed to developing countries that demonstrate a strong commitment towards’ three
criteria: ‘good governance’, the ‘health and education of their people’ and ‘sound economic policies that
foster enterprise and entrepreneurship’. That final policy area is spelt out clearly as meaning ‘more open
markets, sustainable budget policies, and strong support for individual entrepreneurship’.37

In the words of President George W. Bush, this is a ‘new compact for global development, defined by new
accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be
linked to greater responsibility from developing nations. In return for this additional commitment, we
expect nations to adopt the reforms and policies that make development effective and lasting’.38 The
policies embedded in the National Security Strategy and in the US’s development aid programme,
including the millennium challenge account, reflect what the Bush administration describes as a forging of
a ‘new consensus’. In opposition to the ideas underpinning the MDGs, Bush described that new
consensus as meaning that ‘the objectives of assistance—and the strategies to achieve those objectives
—must change’.39

MONITORING THE MDGS

The UN heads of state and government summit held in New York in 2005 was seen by supporters of the
MDGs as an opportunity to refocus attention on the attainment of the goals. The agenda was broad and
included a five-year review of the MDGs, the place of the UN after the 11 September 2001 terrorist
attacks and the invasion of Iraq, the responsibility of the UN to act in the face of genocide or gross
violations of human rights and UN reform, including the restructuring of the Security Council. Kofi Annan
in his report to the meeting argued that these issues were indivisible, asserting ‘we will not enjoy
development without security, we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either
without respect for human rights’.40 The pre-summit energies of key states became consumed, however,
by the debate on Security Council reform, and the attempt to use the momentum of the summit to build on
the MDGs was lost. In terms of formal outcomes, the 2005 summit failed even to produce any consensus
on UN reform, the issue that had been the focus of attention of the most powerful states.

The summit did, however, create a context and focus for a strong civil society campaign on development
during the summer of 2005. In addition, the South gained a measure of leverage on development policy,
as wealthy states wanted to overcome Southern resistance to the proposed ‘responsibility to protect’
doctrine, which would permit UN Security Council intervention against the wishes of a sovereign
government to prevent gross violations of human rights. The ‘Make poverty history’ campaign running
throughout 2005, the report of the Commission on Africa and the activity around the Live Eight concerts
before the July G8 meeting increased the pressure on OECD states to respond to the core issues of the
MDGs. The G8 meeting in July made some progress on debt relief and announced a small increase in
previous aid commitments. However, the biggest single policy shift during this period was at the European
Council meeting of June 2005, when the EU heads of government committed to a new collective
European Union target of an ODA/GNI ratio of 0.56% by 2010, while member states undertook to achieve
the target of an ODA/GNI ratio of 0.7% by 2015.41 However, other than the EU members (and Norway,
which is moving towards 1%), no other country has announced a firm date to reach the aid target 0.7% of
GNI, and the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and New Zealand remain well below the OECD average.

The impact of the UN as a vehicle to build consensus and pressurise states to agree to implement
development norms is mixed. The New York summit of September 2005 was, in most respects, a failure
on development; yet the increased profile on development policy and the platform created by the summit
is at least associated with significant commitments to increase official development assistance and with
some slight progress on debt relief. Engagement by the UN with civil society can improve the downward
accountability of governments. Governments should be held to account on the promises they make, and
in the era of the Information Society, the role of civil society organisations, including the media, in building
this local–global accountability is critical. Ireland, the MDGs and development norms

Ireland has been a strong supporter of the UN’s millennium development goals. Ireland has given the
goals, and in particular Goal 8, which focuses on the responsibilities of developed states, a central place
in its development policy. The development cooperation agency of the department of Foreign Affairs, Irish
Aid, states:

The overarching objective of Irish Aid is the reduction of poverty, inequality and exclusion in developing
countries…The eight Millennium Development Goals, agreed by the UN at a series of international
summit meetings, identify some of the main causes of extreme poverty in today’s world and underpin the
poverty reduction policies and activities of Irish Aid…The Millennium Development Goals, and the specific
targets set to enable their achievement to be measured, provide the context in which Irish Aid priority
sectors are decided.42The MDGs in Goal 8specify a number of areas for action by developed states—
chief among them being action on debt cancellation, increases in official aid and progress on reform of
the world trade system to make it fairer for poor and developing states. Ireland has supported calls for
debt cancellation for many years. Irish aid, however, is given as untied grants, therefore the government
was not owed any debts that could be cancelled. This made it easy for the Irish government to be on the
side of the angels on this issue and reduced its leverage on those countries who were in a position to
cancel debt. The absence of any tied aid in the Irish programme does mean, however, that Irish aid
scores highly in terms of effectiveness and this allows Ireland to play a role in attempts to persuade other
donors to end the practice of providing tied aid—more than 50% of all OECD aid is still given in the form
of tied aid.43 On trade issues, the main policy contradictions for Ireland are on the question of export
subsidies for agriculture—such subsidies are strongly supported by Irish agricultural interests but are
seen as unfair dumping in developing states. There is a growing acceptance that further cuts in subsidies
will inevitably take place, but Ireland has strongly resisted any attempt to reopen the current agreed set of
agricultural reforms, which are due to be implemented in stages up to 2013.44 One change that is marked
in the Irish context is that the policy of agricultural supports, which was considered a domestic/EU issue,
is now also discussed in terms of its impact on the developing world. However, given the indirect manner
in which Ireland participates in world trade talks, (as the European Commission takes the lead for the
entire EU), and the absence of any debts due to Ireland from developing countries, it is the level of
development aid that has been the key focus of domestic debate on the MDGs.

The focus on aid was signalled by both Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen
speaking at the UN summit and General Assembly in 2000. At the summit, the taoiseach made Ireland’s
first public commitment to reach an aid level of 0.7% of GNP by 2007 and asserted that ‘the specificity of
the language and the timescales [in the MDGs] mean that we can and will be held accountable for
delivery. If we urge policy coherence and precise targets on the UN, we must be individually prepared to
adopt the same 45 Minister Cowen in turn stated that ‘our aid budget is both a test and a reflection of our
commitment to the values and principles set out in the Millennium Summit Declaration’.46 That supportive
attitude to the goals and the focus on the aid target was confirmed by the taoiseach again in 2003 when
he addressed the General Assembly: ‘At the Millennium Summit, I committed Ireland to reaching the UN
target for Official Development Assistance of 0.7 per cent of GNP by 2007. Since then, Ireland has
increased its ODA to 0.41 per cent, and remains committed to reaching the target by 2007’.47 When the
government later announced that it would not, after all, meet the UN target by the deadline of 200748 it
generated a very high level of criticism.49 After a period of internal debate, the government used the
opportunity of the 2005 UN summit to announce a new commitment to reaching the target by 2012—three
years ahead of the deadline adopted by the EU collectively in a decision made earlier in 2005. The
taoiseach’s speech at the 2005 summit also announced an interim target of 0.5% of GNP by 2007. The
opposition parties responded with a promise to underpin the new schedule with legislation—something
that Irish NGO’s had called for to make a future weakening of this goal more difficult.50 While the Irish
state would view itself as pro-development, the MDGs have been useful as a tool for holding the
government to account, and they have also allowed the government to justify increased levels of
development spending to the general public.

CONCLUSION

In spite of the failure of the 2005 summit to advance UN reform, the UN remains at the centre of the
international development effort. In some respects the stalled reform process weakens the capacity of the
UN to play a leadership role into the future. On the other hand, it has to be considered that some options
for reform may be intended to limit the influence of the UN rather than enhance it. So currently, although
the UN can present an intellectual alternative to the development policies and ethos of the financial
institutions, its role in this regard is weakened by its reliance on the compliance of powerful states to
achieve its goals. Its capacity for internal organizational and administrative reform is also limited by the
fact that it is essentially an inter-state organization that requires the negotiated agreement of its members
in order to institute change. Such agreement does not look likely to be achieved in the near future given
the dramatically opposing views that exist among members with regard to the future of development and
the role of the UN. In spite of this uncertainty, the UN has played a critical function in development
through its programs and specialized agencies, and through its role as convener of global conferences. In
fulfilling these roles the UN has had to handle the growing complexity of the thematic policy areas in
which it works, and it has had to operate within a political context in which it relies on the power of
persuasion, rather than sanctions, in order to encourage governments to implement what they promise.
The UN has sought to act as a catalyst for political change and, through the Millennium Declaration and
the MDGs, has tried to provide a sharp and focused set of basic goals against which to measure the
commitment of the wealthy states to development and the results being achieved on the ground. Whilst
this is welcome, future challenges lie ahead, in terms of ensuring that the critical questions of inequality in
the global system remain on the agenda. In the words of one former UN secretary-general, Dag
Hammarskjöld: ‘The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat.
The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never
be relaxed and never abandoned.
Future of the United Nations

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to
2000, which charted Europe’s extraordinary ascendancy to global pre-eminence over the course
of nearly half a millennium.

An assessment of the merely sixty-year-old United Nations would seem to offer a much less
demanding assignment for someone of Kennedy’s demonstrated talent for large-canvas
storytelling.

Kennedy is at his best when describing the changes that have, by various means, been
introduced into the working of the UN. The UN Charter, after all, was but a framework. Member-
states and the UN bureaucracy have had to flesh it out and interpret its meaning, in effect
inventing global governance as they went along, all the while cognizant of the fact that, unlike
national governments, the UN lacked powers of enforcement. In some cases, entirely new
functions were conjured from scratch. Kennedy points out that the word peacekeeping is not
found in the UN Charter, though for many people a soldier in a blue beret is the first image that
springs to mind when they think of the UN. He provides a solid account of the evolution of
peacekeeping doctrine – particularly how the fine line between ‘keeping’ and ‘enforcing’ the
peace has been continuously renegotiated. Trial and error, not necessarily in that order, have
driven the evolution of UN doctrine on humanitarian intervention.

Even so, there are important gaps in Kennedy’s treatment of issues of international security,
particularly how they link to concerns traditionally regarded as peripheral to the UN’s core
mission of maintaining peace.

This may have something to do with the book’s organisational schema. As it happens, perhaps
the most important development in the UN’s work since the end of the Cold War has been the
blurring of the lines between the thematic areas around which Kennedy has structured his text.

This is not to say that the UN’s work has become seamlessly integrated, or even coordinated to
a basic standard of operational functionality. But in a number of ways the UN has found itself
faced with the task – in any given conflict affected country – of simultaneously enforcing peace,
restructuring the security services, promoting economic development, establishing institutions
capable of enforcing (and promoting respect for) the rule of law, reforming service-delivery
bureaucracies, and addressing the concerns of non-governmental organisations.

Not surprisingly, once the UN began exercising the equivalent of governmental power in these
‘transitional administrations’ a phenomenon that admirers call ‘neo-trusteeship’ and critics liken
to ‘neo-imperialism’ a raft of complaints about accountability ensued. These were predictable
enough, but less obvious were questions about whether the UN knew enough about state-
building to ensure that the various actions it undertook in conflict-affected and ‘post-conflict’
countries were compatible with one another, sufficiently prioritized (given severely limited
resources), or sequenced in ways likely to achieve the objective of sustainable peace. Such
questions preoccupy those who fear that the UN’s markedly improved ability to respond to
humanitarian crises has not been matched by an increase in its capacity to coordinate the
various elements of external assistance required to prevent societies that have made the
perilous transition from peace to war from slipping back into violence. Quantitative studies
indicate that more than half of countries that manage to emerge from civil war are engulfed by
armed conflict within five years.
Indeed, it was precisely in order to strengthen the UN’s ability to play this bridging role that
world leaders agreed, at the 2005 UN Summit, to create a new body dedicated to consolidating
the hard-won gains of peace in post-conflict countries.

in this area – it has also increasingly edged its way into discussions of security issues. It is, in
other words, a prime example of the increasing permeability of the boundary between the UN’s
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ faces. Over the past several years the idea of ‘human security’ – once confined
to peace-studies departments in liberal universities

– has emerged with unexpected vigour within UN discourse. As a concept, human security is
less precise than human development, but at its core is the idea that issues of war and peace
must be examined not just in terms of national security, but in terms of the experiences of
individual human beings, for whom national aggregates are not necessarily the most relevant
yardsticks of security.

Indeed human security and human development have of late begun to bleed into one another,
to the point where the terms are frequently used interchangeably by actors within and beyond
the UN system.

The explicit commitment to specific goals also makes both UN agencies and the world’s most
powerful states vulnerable to public shaming by activist groups working for greater social justice.
It is a pity that in Kennedy’s account of the UN’s growing penchant for international summitry,
this highest, most visible peak of all is left substantially unexplored.

To the extent that the UN has evolved as an institution since its founding, the emergence of
human development and human security into the discursive mainstream is paradigmatic of the
nature of what has changed and the means by which change has unfolded. And there are
ample grounds to believe that this and other stories of subterranean organisational change
could be told in ways that would appeal to the general readership that Kennedy and his
publisher seek

Ironically, a far more academic enterprise, the United Nations Intellectual History Project, has
provided an account of this and other transformative ideas and processes – and the people that
propelled them – that makes for much livelier reading than Kennedy’s often perfunctory tour,
despite the fact that the volumes produced by that project are published by a university press
with (almost) none of the commercial imperatives facing Kennedy’s publisher.

Finally, let us consider one other curious oversight in Kennedy’s book, the identification of
which cannot reasonably be dismissed as reflecting either a minority interest or a preoccupation
with very recent history. It is in fact the opposite of neotrusteeship: the UN’s role in promoting
decolonisation during the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

The UN was in fact a crucial actor in the process by which imperial possessions (and territories
placed under the temporary trusteeship of UN member-states)were ushered into the
international community as independent states.

While steering trusteeship territories toward self-government was part of the UN’s mission, as
enunciated in its Charter, the dismantling of Europe’s far-flung empires had not been specifically
entrusted to the new organisation (indeed, had been specifically not entrusted to it).

But as more and more former colonies joined the UN as fullfledged members, and as the cold
war rivalry led the superpowers to grandstand (however inconsistently) on the need for the
curtain to fall on the imperial age, the UN emerged as a key site in the process of hastening the
end of empire. Minor committees, operating far from the limelight of the Security Council,
gradually (almost unnoticeably) extended their de facto power in ways that increased the
pressure on European states to demonstrate their commitment to granting self-determination to
their overseas possessions

The result is a flawed work, perched uneasily between surface formality and an underlying urge
to defy convention – not unlikethe UN itself.

Over 60 representatives of Governments, UN agencies, academia, NGOs, international think-

tanks and private sector companies gathered for three days (18-21 November) at Wilton Park to
deliberate on the future of the UN development system.

The system comprises a loose family of some 30 different agencies and organisations, some of
which have existed for more than 100 years, but which are now facing new and emerging global
challenges.

The conference concluded that a further meeting would be valuable, comprising more
representatives from civil society in developing and developed countries, as a means of
stimulating continuing reform which all agreed was needed. Rocked by scandal and divided by
the smoldering enmities unleashed by the Iraq war, the United Nations faces its most critical
hour. The secretary general and other leaders have offered their recipes for reform; in The
Future of the United Nations, Joshua Muravchik argues that only far more radical reforms can
salvage the UN as a useful institution.

The central cause of the UN’s failure, Muravchik says, is that it was structured as a proto world
government, with the power to make “law” and enforce peace. Member states were asked to yield a
measure of their independence in return for the protections that the UN would offer them. But
Muravchik shows that this global “social contract” was a dead letter from the start, because the
protections were illusory.
Initially, this failure was traced to the Cold War. But in more than fifteen years since the end of the Cold
War, the UN has functioned little better, proving that there is a deeper flaw in its architecture.
If the world has been more peaceful since World War Two it is due to the farsighted international
policies of the United States, not the peacekeeping of the UN. Today, fearful or jealous of America’s
unique superpower status, some countries promote the UN as a counterweight to the United States. If
they succeed, says Muravchik, the world will become a more dangerous place, especially for its most
vulnerable citizens.
Instead of elevating the discredited political functions of the UN, as most other reform proposals aim to
do, Muravchik offers a completely different formula for change: Boost the humanitarian work of the UN,
and reemphasize its role as a place where sovereign nations can exchange ideas and form coalitions in
the face of common concerns, while stripping it of the pretensions of world government.
The Nature and Structure of the UN

The major structural weakness in corralling the world organization‘s strengths is the lack of
overarching central authority. The sum of 192 member states means that decisions too often
reflect the lowest common denominator of national parts rather than any larger common
interest.

In spite of Article 99, the UN has no military of its own, not even a modest ―rapid reaction
force‖; it has no independent funds (the organization often begs, borrows, and steals whatever
personnel it requires, including soldiers); and it cannot refuse to act even when there is a vast
discrepancy between the nature of an assigned task and the resources made available.

Last but not least, a continuing problem with the current UN‘s conflict resolution structure is
ineffective coordination and competition among its various moving parts – something the neat
UN organigram does not convey.

Writing from his own experience in UN conflict resolution, Goulding remaked that in the UN
system ―there are well-known jealousies and competition between its programmes, funds and
agencies, each of which has its own inter-governmental policy-making body, its own mandate,
its own sources of funding and its own chain of command‖ (1999: 166). Jean-Marc Coicaud
goes further and points to ―the tensions between the diplomatic culture shaping UN
headquarters and the demands of the field, the gap between the administrative capacities of the
United Nations in New York and the needs on the ground, and the endemic communication
difficulties with the United Nations itself‖ (2007: 35). The turf battles among DPA, DPKO, OCHA,
and their respective field missions—as well as tensions with other members of the dysfunctional
and decentralized UN family along with international NGOs—are well documents. The silver
lining is that at least some UN organizations will be present in most war zones.