Role of the UN:

Contemporary Challenges
Role of the UN: Contemporary hallenges

• UN: Evolution
• UN: Mission
• UN: Structure
• UN: Achievements
• UN: Challenges
 Evolution of IO
• When we talk of IO, we are indicating towards formal structures that
facilitate international relations between countries, people in various
fields of operation.
• The conception of international relations underlying international
organization is frequently described as idealistic, in the sense that it
minimizes the element of conflict and emphasizes the potentialities of
harmony and cooperation in the relationships of states.
• In these terms, international organization both denies the inevitability
of war and other manifestations of hostility among nations and
expresses a commitment to the harmonization of international relations
 Genesis of the Idea of IO
• In every period of recorded history, there were number of political philosophers who
advocated the ideal of international accommodation and cooperation.
• A broad legacy of ideas for controlling warfare the ultimate goal of present day
international organizations, could be traced back to the Greek philosophers, Plato
(427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC), who deplored and unjustified the war
except in self-defence.
• In this same pattern, the medieval thinkers and the spokesmen for the Church, St.
Augustine (354-430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), also opposed the war as
inhuman and wasteful except against the infidel.
• Ancient Chinese philosophers such as Confucius (551-479 BC) deplored the use of
coercion and advocated good faith and moderation as the key doctrines of interstate
relations.
 Early Materialization of the Idea of IO
• The ancient Greeks could be credited with the first formal
organization, the Amphitryonic League, created in the early sixth
century BC for regulating relations between their city states.
• A confederation, Delos, was created a little later between maritime
states of the Aegean islands who contributed ships and men to
maintain a common navy.
• A little later still, 70 Greek states formed the Achaean League of the
Hellense. These could have been the prototype of the regional
intergovernmental organizations of today.
 Taking the Idea forward
• In 1315, a treaty among the Swiss cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden gave
rise to a confederation.
• As the medieval system disintegrated and new developments—the Reformation,
Renaissance, the scientific innovations, industrial revolution and the consequent
expansion of trade and commerce—that took place in the fifteenth, sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries changed the whole complexion of international relations.
• Political, economic and diplomatic relationship became more widespread. As the
world started becoming closer, new complexities of interdependence emerged that
gave birth to extended diplomacy in the form of international conferences, treaties
and formal peace.
 Towards Modernity
• The first significant event in this context was the Congress of Westphalia (1648)
that closed the Thirty Years' War and readjusted the religious and political
affairs of Europe by creating sovereign and independent states
• In the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant and French
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau broadly outlined the concept of a global
federation of countries resembling today’s UN. However, nations joined the first
intergovernmental organizations in the 19th century.
• Prior to the creation of League of Nations, William Ladd, an American, in his
Essay on a Congress of Nations (1840) advocated the establishment of a
Congress of Nations and a Court of Nations with legislative and judicial
powers to develop and apply international law.
 Congress of Vienna (1814-15)
• Congress of Vienna (1814-15), which was called to re-establish the
territorial divisions of Europe at the end of the Napoleonic Wars after the
downfall of Napoleon, is treated as the first systematic effort to regulate
international affairs by means of regular international conferences.
• The principal architect of the peace settlement devised at the conference,
Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens von Metternich, believed that
the key to making peace durable was the balance of power.
• According to this diplomatic principle, the major nations of Europe should
distribute power relatively evenly among themselves to deter any one of
them from seeking dominance over the continent. If any country were to
attempt to disturb the balance of power, the others would oppose it as an
alliance.
• The central agency to enforce the Vienna settlement was the
Quadruple Alliance of Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and
Russia; it became a Quintuple Alliance in 1818 when France
joined it.
• The Congress of Vienna is to be regarded a milestone in
the evolution of international organizations for several
reasons:
1)Despite the hostilities, the alliance, which was formed in
this conference, continued to enforce peace.
2)There were frequent periodic conferences.
3)Despite the suspicions of the smaller powers it was
generally agreed that the maintenance of peace depended
on this sort of big power collaboration.
 Concert of Europe
• The Vienna Congress set the similar patterns of informal consultations and
conferences and occasional concerted action. Britain, France, Russia, Prussia,
and Austria were now dedicated to a European territorial settlement
maintained by a new mechanism called the Concert of Europe.
• The Concert of Europe preserved the peace until the outbreak of the Crimean
War in 1853. Several other conferences took place right down to 1914.
• The Paris Conference of 1856 and the Berlin consultations of 1871 dealt with
the problems of the Balkans. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 dealt with the
issue of Turkey.
• The concert of Europe, however, was not able to cope with the nationalistic
rivalries and divisive tendencies which led to the World War I
 The Hague Conferences (1899 and 1907):
• Another important events which was regarded as a landmark in the development of
international organizations was the two international peace conferences known as The
Hague Conferences.
• The first conference was called on the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia for the purpose
of bringing together the principal nations of the world to discuss and resolve the problems
of maintaining universal peace, reducing armaments, and ameliorating the conditions of
warfare. Twenty-six countries accepted the invitation to the conference issued by the
minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands.
• The delegates to the conference entered into three formal conventions, or treaties. The
first and most important one set up permanent machinery for the optional arbitration of
controversial issues between nations.
• This machinery took the form of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, popularly known as
The Hague Court or Hague Tribunal. The second and third conventions revised some of
the customs and laws of warfare to eliminate unnecessary suffering during a war on the
part of all concerned, whether combatants, non-combatants, or neutrals. These two
conventions were supplemented by three declarations, to stay in force five years,
forbidding the use of poison gas, expanding (or dumdum) bullets, and bombardment from
the air by the use of balloons or by other means.
 The Creation of the League of Nations

• World War I (1914-18) brought an end to Concert of Europe and a

scheduled third Hague peace conference.
• But following the war, the two concepts reappeared and were merged
into the formation of the League of Nations, which retained the great
power executive committee status of Concert in combination with the
egalitarian universality of the Hague idea.
• However, The idea of the actual League of Nations appears to have
originated with British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey, and it was
enthusiastically adopted by the Democratic U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson and his advisor Colonel Edward M. House as a means of
avoiding bloodshed like that of World War I.
 The creation of the League
The creation of the League was a centerpiece of Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace, specifically
the final point: ‘A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the
purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great
and small states alike."

The Paris Peace Conference accepted the proposal to create the League of Nations on January 25,
1919. The Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the
League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on June 28, 1919..
Successes of the League
• League of Nations was the first international organization which was designed not just to
organize cooperation between states in areas which some have referred to as ‘low
politics’, such as transport and communication, or the more mundane aspects of
economic cooperation as exemplified by the Metric Union, but to have as its specific
aims to guarantee peace and establishment of a system of collective security, following
which an attack against one of the member-states of the
• The first years of existence of the League of Nations were marked by great successes. In
accordance with the provisions of the Pact, several international disagreements – between
Sweden and Finland and between Greece and Bulgaria – were resolved peacefully.
• The Locarno Agreements signed in October1925, which marked the beginnings of a
Franco-German reconciliation, were entrusted to the League. A direct consequence,
Germany, beaten and excluded from the League by the Treaty of Versailles in1919,
became a Member in 1926. In 1929, the delegate from France, Aristide Briand, put
forward to the Assembly the very first political project of a European Federal Union
Failure of the League
• In spite of these early successes, the League of Nations did not manage to prevent neither
the invasion of Mandchuria by Japan, nor the annexation of Ethiopia by Italy in 1936, nor
that of Austria by Hitler in 1938.
• The powerlessness of the League of Nations to prevent further world conflict, the
alienation of part of its Member States and the generation of the war itself, added to its
demise from 1940.
• The failure, politically, of the mission of collective security of the League of Nations must
nevertheless not make one overlook its success in, what was from the beginning to be a
secondary aspect of its objectives: international technical cooperation.
• Under its auspices, in fact, considerable number of conferences, intergovernmental
committees and meetings of experts were held in Geneva, in areas as diverse as health
and social affairs, transport and communications, economic and financial affairs and
intellectual cooperation. This fruitful work was validated by the ratification of more than
one hundred conventions by the Member States.
United Nations
• The concept of international organization was however firmly embedded in mind and on the 1st January
1942, the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, announced the term, United Nations.

• On 26 June 1945, the Representatives of fifty countries meeting in San Francisco adopted the Charter of
the United Nations, founder of the new international organization.

• The United Nations Organization was born officially on 24th October 1945 when the signatory countries
ratified the Charter. Dissolved at a final Assembly held in Geneva in April 1946, the League of Nations
handed over its properties and assets to the United Nations Organization.

• In spite of its political failure, the legacy of the League of Nations at the same time appears clearly in a
number of principles stated by the Charter and in the competencies and experiences developed in the
area of technical cooperation: the majority of the specialized institutions of the United Nations system can
in fact be considered the legacy of the work initiated by the League of Nations.
Mission
• Maintain International Peace and Security
• Protect Human Rights
• Deliver Humanitarian Aid
• Support Sustainable Development and Climate
Action
• Uphold International Law
Structure
• The United Nations is part of the broader UN system, which includes
an extensive network of institutions and entities.
• Central to the organisation are five principal organs established by
the UN Charter:
• the General Assembly (UNGA),
• the Security Council (UNSC),
• the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),
• the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
• and the UN Secretariat.
• A sixth principal organ, the Trusteeship Council, suspended
operations on 1 November 1994, upon the independence of Palau,
the last remaining UN trustee territory.
• Four of the five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters
in New York City, while the ICJ is seated in The Hague.
• Most other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva, Vienna,
and Nairobi, additional UN institutions are located throughout the world.
• The six official languages of the UN, used in intergovernmental meetings
and documents, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian,
and Spanish.
• On the basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the
United Nations, the UN and its agencies are immune from the laws of the
countries where they operate, safeguarding the UN's impartiality with
regard to host and member countries.
UN General Assembly

• Deliberative assembly of all UN member states

• May decide non-compulsory recommendations to states or
suggestions to the Security Council (UNSC);
• Decides on the admission of new members, following proposal
by the UNSC;
• Adopts the budget;
• Elects the non-permanent members of the UNSC; all members
of ECOSOC; the UN Secretary-General (following their
proposal by the UNSC); and the fifteen judges of the
International Court of Justice (ICJ). Each country has one vote.
UN Secretariat

• Administrative organ of the UN

• Supports the other UN bodies administratively (for example, in
the organization of conferences, the writing of reports and
studies and the preparation of the budget);
• Its chairperson—the UN Secretary-General—is elected by the
General Assembly for a five-year mandate and is the UN's
foremost representative.
International Court of Justice

• Universal court for international law

• Decides disputes between states that recognize its jurisdiction;
• Issues legal opinions;
• Renders judgment by relative majority. Its fifteen judges are
elected by the UN General Assembly for nine-year terms.
UN Security Council

• For international security issues

• Responsible for the maintenance of international
peace and security;
• May adopt compulsory resolutions;
• Has fifteen members: five permanent members with veto
power and ten elected members
UN Economic and Social Council

• For global economic and social affairs

• Responsible for co-operation between states as regards economic
and social matters;
• Co-ordinates co-operation between the UN's numerous specialized
agencies;
• Has 54 members, elected by the General Assembly to serve
staggered three-year mandates.
UN Trusteeship Council

• For administering trust territories (currently inactive)

• Was originally designed to manage colonial possessions that
were former League of Nations mandates;
• Has been inactive since 1994, when Palau, the last trust
territory, attained independence.
 Achievements
1. Serves as a platform for countries for deliberation on bilateral, multilateral
and global issues. There has not been any large scale war thanks to the UNO.
2. UNO has rendered a great service in establishing Peace and Security by
solving various problems generally political disputes by Security Council, Legal
disputes by the International Court of Justice and others by special agencies
through peaceful negotiations.
3. It has mediated in many disputes such as Israel and Palestine, Iran and Iraq
and withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
4. It has signed many Nuclear Test Ban treaties like NPT and CTBT .
5. UN has mainstreamed issues such as climate, gender etc. One of the
examples is the conference of environment and development at Rio de Janeiro
in 1992. Another is the Women’s Conferences in 1975,1985,1995 etc,
establishing INSTRAW, UNIFEM.
6. One of the most important issue has been the adoption of -Agenda 21 " a
blueprint to promote economic development and protect natural resources.
7. It creates hope for the future through various initiatives such as MDGs and
SDGs.
 Basic Challenges before the UN
• Conflicts between countries:Conflicts are becoming protracted by
intense rivalries between global powers and regional powers as they
support proxies to wage war overseas. The wars in Ukraine, Syria and
Yemen are prime examples.
• Terrorism by State Actors: This tendency leads to the neglect of the
factors and actors driving conflict and the erosion of space needed to
build peaceThere have been many high-profile cases like Syria, but also
in Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. When leaders use the pretext of
counter-terror to crush dissent and political opposition, it escalates
violent conflict rather than reducing it.
Basic Challenges before the UN
• Terrorism by non-State Actors: Many non-state actors are resorting to
large scale transnational terrorist acts. These have strong organizations,
technological knowledge and popular mobilization skills. It is very difficult
for any single state to confront these. UN also finds it difficult to confront
these as they operate secretly.

• Panic over forced displacement: As desperate people flee conflict zones,

the impact of forced displacement is hitting neighbouring countries hardest
and they are coping as best they can. Meanwhile, Western governments
are making hasty deals to support border and security forces in transit
countries to close their borders and shut the problem out. But this train,
equip and ignore approach – as in the EU’s Khartoum Process – fails to
address the root causes of the problem
Basic Challenges before the UN
• Decision-making problems: UN SC, the most important decision-making body
cannot be called as representing the entire globe. There are also problems of
partisan politics in decision-making as has been seen in many cases.
• Humanitarian Interventions: One of the most debated issues within the UN has
been humanitarian interventions. This has often been used by the developed
western countries to interefere within the internal issues of the non-western
developing/underdeveloped countries.
• Legacies of military intervention and regime change: Framed as interventions to
counter terror, save civilians or remove rogue regimes, in case after case military
intervention and regime change have failed to bring lasting stability or to defeat
fundamentalist groups. On the one hand this has brought deep distrust of
interventionism – but at the same time there are huge risks in simply giving up on
supporting constructive, peaceful change in the face of repression
• Threats from the proliferation of weapons - particularly WMD, but
also conventional.
• threats from poverty, disease, and environmental breakdown (the
threats to human security identified in the Millennium Development
Goals)
• threats from violence and massive human rights violations within
states
• Demands for reconstitution of the Security Council
The Ukraine War’s Impact on the UN
• Russia’s attack on Ukraine has caused turmoil at the UN, but not quite as much as
seemed possible in February and March.
• The Security Council began to discuss signs of an invasion in late January. In the weeks
before and after the launch of all-out hostilities on 24 February, many Council members
worried that the war would not only stir up great friction in its own right – which it did –
but also make Russian-Western diplomacy on other issues in UN forums difficult or
impossible.
• In the event, the impact has been mixed. Major powers have managed to maintain a
modicum of cooperation on non-Ukraine matters at the Security Council. The Secretary-
General has been able to carve out a niche as a humanitarian player in the conflict. As for
the General Assembly – which at first seemed set to play a central role in debates about
Ukraine in the absence of Council action – it has faded diplomatically as the war has
dragged on, with many Assembly members wanting to avoid controversy. In short, the
escalated Ukraine war has seriously disturbed but not decisively transformed work on
peace and security issues at the UN.
Working with the Taliban on Afghanistan’s
Recovery
• The Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021 posed a complicated series of problems for the
twenty-year-old UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), including the basic
issue of how to engage the new de facto authorities. UNAMA was originally designed to
support the previous government, not a Taliban administration that still lacks
international recognition. The Security Council and UN officials had precious little time to
think about how to repurpose the mission in late 2021, as a combination of Western aid
cutoffs and the wartime economy’s collapse plunged the country into the world’s biggest
humanitarian crisis.

• The outlines of a new approach emerged the following March, when the Security Council
renewed the UNAMA mandate.30 Crisis Group has previously described the wrangling in
New York as diplomats coaxed a new mandate from a divided Council, with some
members (including France) opposing aid or engagement that might legitimise the
Taliban; others (notably Russia and China) inclined to work with them; and still others
(among them the U.S. and UK) falling back on slogans such as “help the people but not
the Taliban”, which suggest a capacity to work around the latter that is not realistic.