UN at 76: Successes, failures, challenges

Some described the United Nations Organisation (UNO) and short form UN as the symbol of the global village, while others see it as the high level stage where global state actors converge to debate issues central to their interests and aspirations and yet others say it’s a place where the most powerful nations (referring to the 5 veto power-wielding countries hold sway) at the detriment of the less or non-privileged ones, particularly the African continent that has no member in the United Nation Security Council (UNSC).  ATANG IZANG writes

HISTORICALLY, the idea of an international body to promote global peace started with President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom. In August 1941, they signed the Atlantic Charter outlining the goals of war against Germany, Italy and Japan. (See Taylor & Curtis, “The United Nations” in The Globalisation of The World Politics: An introduction to international relations: 2011:312)

The U.S. joined the war effort in December 1941 and on January 1, 1942; the Declaration by United Nations was signed in Washington by 26 allied nations led by the U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union (defunct). The United Nations Charter was finalized in April 1945 in San Francisco, signed by representatives of 50 countries on June 26 and finally became operational on October 24, 1945-76 years ago this year.

The General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the U.N. Secretariat are six main parts of the U.N. The central mission of the U.N. is the maintenance of international peace and security, which is accomplished by preempting and preventing conflict, and by persuading parties in conflict to make peace and improving the conditions to preserve peace.

In many ways, the United Nations was set up to correct the problems of its predecessor, the League of Nations. The League of Nations had been established after the First World War, and was intended to make future wars impossible, but a major problem was the League’s lack of effective power. There was no clear division of responsibility between the main executive committee (the League Council) and the League Assembly, which included all member states. Both the League Assembly and the League Council could only make recommendations, not binding resolutions, and these recommendations had to be unanimous.

Over the past 76 years the U.N. and its agencies have worked on a wide range of issues. They include maintaining peace and security, disarmament, clearing land mines, and the prevention of nuclear proliferation and genocide. The U.N. has also worked on counter-terrorism, the peaceful use of outer space, delivering humanitarian aid, providing food, sustainable development, environmental protection, disease control, human rights, gender equality and the promotion of rule of law in national and international relations.

When the U.N. was established in 1945 and its charter was signed, there were 50 members. The great powers of the time, which was on the winning side of the world war – the U.S., the U.K., France, China and the Soviet Union – became permanent members of the Security Council, which currently includes additional 10 members who are elected by the General Assembly for a two-year term.

Every member of the Security Council, from St. Vincent with a population of 111,000 to China with over 1.3 billion, has one vote, but permanent members have veto powers. The General Assembly is now composed of 193 members.

A few of the challenges facing the U.N. include a burgeoning bureaucracy, creeping unilateralism, the non-representative Security Council with abuse of veto power by permanent members, powerful members ignoring U.N. charter and resolutions and a lack of youth involvement.

A number of ongoing crises are indicative of U.N. inaction and paralysis, including Russia’s takeover of part of Ukraine; China occupying disputed territories in South China Sea; the Iraq War; the Israel-Palestine conflict; civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar, Ughyurs in China and Kashmiris in India.

Still, the U.N. and multilateralism are popular throughout the world. More than a million people U.N. survey and dialogues through global consultation, “UN75: The Future We Want, the UN We Need.” They found that over 87% considered global collaborations vital to facing global challenges and 74% deemed the U.N. essential in tackling those challenges. They showed major concerns for the environment and climate change.

The organization’s mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles. UN membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization beginning in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council. By the 1970s, the UN’s budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.

The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, funds and programmes such as the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Additionally, non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN’s work.

The UN’s chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General, currently Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres, who began his first five year-term on 1 January 2017 and was re-elected on 8 June 2021. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states.

The UN, its officers, and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes, though other evaluations of its effectiveness have been mixed. Some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called it ineffective, biased, or corrupt.

Failures & challenges

Unfortunately, the U.N. also had many failures, such as stopping the Rwandan genocide in 1994. In 2004, the UN faced accusations that it’s recently ended Oil-for-Food Programme  – in which Iraq had been allowed to trade oil for basic needs to relieve the pressure of sanctions – had suffered from widespread corruption, including billions of dollars of kickbacks. An independent inquiry created by the UN found that many of its officials had been involved, as well as raising “significant” questions about the role of Kojo Annan, the son of the late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

In addition, U.N. aid workers were blamed for spreading cholera in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Allegations of sexual misconduct and rape were leveled against U.N. peacekeepers in Republic of Congo, Cambodia, Haiti and other countries. U.N. peacekeepers were unable to stop the Srebrencia massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims who fled to a U.N.-declared safe-zone in 1995.

Critics have also accused the UN of bureaucratic inefficiency, waste, and corruption. In 1976, the General Assembly established the Joint Inspection Unit to seek out inefficiencies within the UN system. During the 1990s, the US withheld dues citing inefficiency and only started repayment on the condition that a major reforms initiative is introduced. In 1994, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was established by the General Assembly to serve as an efficiency watchdog.

In a misquoted statement, U.S. President George W. Bush stated in February 2003 – referring to UN uncertainty towards Iraqi provocations under the Saddam Hussein regime—that “free nations will not allow the UN to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society.”

In 2020, President Barack Obama in his memoir A Promised Land noted, “In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the U.N. had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War, divisions within the Security Council continued to hamstring the U.N.’s ability to tackle problems. Its member states lacked either the means or the collective will to reconstruct failing states like Somalia, or prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka”.

Since its founding, there have been many calls for reform of the UN but little consensus on how to do so. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, while others want its role reduced to humanitarian work.

Representation and structure

Core features of the UN apparatus, such as the veto privileges of some nations in the Security Council, are often described as fundamentally undemocratic, contrary to the UN mission, and as a main cause of inaction on genocides and crimes against humanity.

Jacques Fomerand states the most enduring divide in views of the UN is “the North–South split” between richer Northern nations and developing Southern nations. Southern nations tend to favour a more empowered UN with a stronger General Assembly, allowing them a greater voice in world affairs, while Northern nations prefer an economically laissez-faire UN that focuses on transnational threats such as terrorism.

There have also been numerous calls for the UN Security Council’s membership to be increased, for different ways of electing the UN’s Secretary-General, and for a UN Parliamentary Assembly.

Exclusion of countries

After World War II, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the U.S. as the government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that created the new organization. Future French president Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it a machin (“contraption”), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.

Since 1971, the Republic of China on Taiwan has been excluded from the UN and since then has always been rejected in new applications. Taiwanese citizens are also not allowed to enter the buildings of the United Nations with ROC passports. In this way, critics agree that the UN is failing its own development goals and guidelines. This criticism also brought pressure from the People’s Republic of China, which regards the territories administered by the ROC as their own territory.

Independence

Throughout the Cold War, both the US and USSR repeatedly accused the UN of favouring the other. In 1953, the USSR effectively forced the resignation of Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General, through its refusal to deal with him, while in the 1950s and 1960s, a popular US bumper sticker read, “You can’t spell communism without U.N.”

Bias

Critics such as Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, Robert S. Wistrich, a British scholar, Alan Dershowitz, an American legal scholar, Mark Dreyfus, an Australian politician, and the Anti-Defamation League consider UN attention to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to be excessive. In September 2015, Saudi Arabia’s Faisal bin Hassan Trad was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council panel that appoints independent experts, a move criticized by human rights groups.

Effectiveness

The United States has preferred a feeble United Nations in major projects undertaken by the UN so as to forestall UN interference with, or resistance to, United States policies, according to international relations scholar Edward Luck, former director of the Center on International Organization of the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University. “The last thing the U.S. wants is an independent U.N. throwing its weight around,” Luck said. Similarly, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan explained that “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success.”

In 1994, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN to Somalia Mohamed Sahnoun published “Somalia: The Missed Opportunities” a book in which he analyses the reasons for the failure of the 1992 UN intervention in Somalia, showing that, between the start of the Somali civil war in 1988 and the fall of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991, the UN missed at least three opportunities to prevent major human tragedies; when the UN tried to provide humanitarian assistance, they were totally outperformed by NGOs, whose competence and dedication sharply contrasted with the UN’s excessive caution and bureaucratic inefficiencies. If radical reform were not undertaken, warned Mohamed Sahnoun, then the UN would continue to respond to such crises with inept improvisation.

Model United Nations

The United Nations has inspired the extracurricular activity Model United Nations (MUN). MUN is a simulation of United Nations activity based on the UN agenda and following UN procedure. MUN is usually attended by high school and university students who organize conferences to simulate the various UN committees to discuss important issues of the day. Today, Model United Nations educates tens of thousands on United Nations activity around the world. Model United Nations has many famous and notable alumni, such as former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon.

UN past Secretary General

Trygve Lie (Norway) -Term of Office: 1946-1952

Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden)-Term of Office: 1953-1961

U Thant (Myanmar)-Term of Office: 1961-1971

Kurt Waldheim (Austria)-Term of Office: 1972-1981

Javier Perez de Cuellar (Peru)-Term of Office: 1982-1991

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt)-Term of Office: 1992-1996

Kofi Annan (Ghana)-Term of Office: 1997-2006

Ban Ki-moon (Korea)-Term of Office: 2007-2016

ATANG IZANG a former Diplomatic, Defence & Parliamentary reporter, writes from Jos and can be reached through: atangizang4@gmail.com