Andrew Heywood, Chp. 18: International Organisations AND The United Nations

Andrew Heywood, Chp.
18
INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
AND
THE UNITED NATIONS
What are International Organisations?
Institutions with formal procedures and a membership comprising three

or more states.
They can be thought of as instruments through which states pursue their

own interests; arenas that facilitate debate; actors that can affect global
outcomes.
Bases for categorization depend on membership, competence, function

and decision-making authority.
The significance of the phenomenon of international organization is hotly

disputed. Some argue it is a mechanism for traditional power politics;
others claim they contain the seeds of supranational government.
Rise of International Organizations
International organizations differ according to:

Membership- whether they have a restricted or
universal membership.
Competence- whether their responsibilities are
issue-specific or comprehensive.
APPROACHES TO…
INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
REALIST: Deeply sceptical about international

organizations, viewing them as largely ineffective bodies
LIBERAL: Committed supporters of international

organizations: international organization reflects the
extent of interdependence in the global system
CRITICAL: Social constructivists believe that levels of

cooperation depend on how states construe their own
identities and interests, as well those of other states
The UN
Type: Intergovernmental Organisation

Established: 1945
Location: New York
Membership: 193 countries
The UN
The United Nations was established as the successor

to the League of Nations when 50 states met in San
Francisco to agree the terms of the UN Charter.
Major organs of the UN :
 The General Assembly.
 The Security Council.
 The Secretariat.
The Economic and Social Council.
The UN family also includes a range of specialized
agencies, funds and programmes, including the IMF,
the World Bank, the World Health Organization
(WHO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF).
The UN
The principal aim of the UN is to maintain

international peace and security, with
responsibility for this being vested in the
Security Council.
However, the UN has been restricted in carrying
out this role particularly by the veto powers of
the P-5 (of the Security Council) and the lack of
an independent military capacity.
The UN’s mixed performance in the area of
peacekeeping has led to an increasing emphasis
instead on the process of peace-building.
The UN
The UN’s economic and social responsibilities are

discharged by a sprawling and, seemingly, ever-
enlarging array of programmes, funds and
specialized agencies.
Its main areas are human rights, development and
poverty reduction, and the environment.
 Such widening concerns have ensured strong
support for the UN, particularly across the
developing world.
Future of the UN: challenges and reform
Why has there been pressure to reform the UN

Security Council?
Why has such reform been so difficult to bring about?
The UN faces a range of important challenges and
pressures for reform.
These include those generated by the changing
location of global power in an increasingly multipolar
world, those associated with criticisms of the
composition and powers of the Security Council, and
those related to the UN’s finances and organization.
Permanent membership and the power to veto
Council decisions means that the UN is dominated,
as far as the core issue of peace and security is
concerned, by great power politics: Some UN
members are clearly more equal than others.
The requirement of unanimity amongst P-5 states
has also effectively neutered the UN as the basis for
collective security, apart from exceptional
circumstances (Korea and the Gulf War).
Moreover, the membership of P-5 is widely seen to
be outdated, reflecting the great powers of the
immediate post-1945 period, not even the
superpower politics of the Cold War period.
If the Council is to have permanent members, few
would challenge the right of the USA, China or
Russia (at least in terms of its nuclear capability) to
be among them, but France and the UK have long
ceased to be states of first-ranking status.
The existing membership reflects a regional
imbalance, with no representation for Africa or for
Latin America among its permanent members.
The case for a revised membership is that a more
representative and up-to-date Council would enjoy
wider support and influence, helping to make the UN
a more effective peacemaker and peacekeeper.
During the Cold War, the UN was routinely paralyzed by
superpower rivalry that led to deadlock in the Security
Council, a consequence of the veto powers of its permanent
members.
A further difficulty was that the UN was never able to
develop an armed force of its own, so that it has always had
to rely on troops supplied by individual member states.
Its impact on matters of peace and security was therefore
strictly limited.
The end of the Cold War, however, produced
optimism about the capacity of an activist UN to
preside over a ‘new world order’.
The UN approved the US-led expulsion of Iraq from
Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991, and, in a few short
years, the number of UN peacekeeping operations
had doubled, and the annual budget for
peacekeeping had quadrupled.
Hopes for a more effective UN in the post-Cold
War period were, however, dashed, largely by a
declining willingness of states, freed from East–
West tensions, to accept neutral, multilateral
intervention, and by the eroding support, both
financial and military, of the USA.
The capacity of the UN to enforce a system of
collective security is severely limited by the fact
that it is essentially a creature of its members
 Its role has been confined essentially to providing
mechanisms that facilitate the peaceful resolution of
international conflicts.
 Despite some genuine successes in peacekeeping (such as
in Mozambique and El Salvador) and in peace-building
(East Timor), the UN’s reputation was badly damaged by its
failure to prevent large-scale slaughter in Rwanda and
Bosnia in the mid-1990s.
The UN nevertheless continues to exert significant
‘soft’ power, particularly in the developing world,
where it is viewed as the leading institution
providing support for economic and social
development.
However, the UN has been subject to a variety of criticisms.
Most damningly, the UN has been portrayed as entirely non-
legitimate, a proto-world government that has no democratic
credentials and which, over time, has come to pay less respect
to national sovereignty.
Others claim that it is little more than a debating society, due
to the fact that it can do no more than its member states, and
particularly the P-5, allow it to do.
Further criticisms focus on the convoluted and deeply
bureaucratic nature of the organization itself, and its tendency
towards inefficiency and mismanagement, exposed not least
by the 2003 Oil-for-Food scandal.
Debating…
Is the UN obsolete and unnecessary?
FOR
A proto-world government
Irrelevant debating society
Lack of moral compass
Outdated and unreformable

Debating…
Is the UN obsolete and unnecessary?
AGAINST
An indispensable body
Peacekeeping successes
New agendas and new thinking
Mend it, don’t end it

Andrew Heywood, Chp. 18: International Organisations AND The United Nations

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Andrew Heywood, Chp. 18: International Organisations AND The United Nations

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Andrew Heywood, Chp. 18: International Organisations AND The United Nations

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Andrew Heywood, Chp.

Institutions with formal procedures and a membership comprising three

They can be thought of as instruments through which states pursue their

Bases for categorization depend on membership, competence, function

The significance of the phenomenon of international organization is hotly

International organizations differ according to:

REALIST: Deeply sceptical about international

LIBERAL: Committed supporters of international

CRITICAL: Social constructivists believe that levels of

Type: Intergovernmental Organisation

The United Nations was established as the successor

The principal aim of the UN is to maintain

The UN’s economic and social responsibilities are

Why has there been pressure to reform the UN

Irrelevant debating society

Lack of moral compass

Outdated and unreformable

An indispensable body

New agendas and new thinking

Mend it, don’t end it

You might also like