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The United Nations, or UN, is an international organization made up of states. Almost all countries are members. It was founded on October 24, 1945 in San Francisco, California, following the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, DC, but the first General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, was not held until January 10, 1946 (held in Church House, London). From 1919 to 1946, there existed a somewhat similar organization under the name of League of Nations, which can be considered the UN's precursor. UN membership is open to all "peace-loving states" that accept the obligations of the UN Charter and, in the judgment of the organization, are able and willing to fulfill these obligations. The General Assembly determines admission upon recommendation of the Security Council. As of April 2004 there were 191 members; see United Nations member states.

Background and history

The idea for the United Nations was elaborated in declarations signed at the wartime Allied conferences in Moscow and Tehran in 1943. United States president Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested the name "United Nations" and the first official use of the term occurred on January 1, 1942 with the Declaration by the United Nations. During World War II, the Allies used the term "United Nations" to refer to their alliance. From August to October 1944, representatives of France, the Republic of China (now on Taiwan), the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR met to elaborate the plans at the Dumbarton Oaks Estate in Washington, D.C. Those and later talks produced proposals outlining the purposes of the organization, its membership and organs, as well as arrangements to maintain international peace and security and international economic and social cooperation. These proposals were discussed and debated by governments and private citizens worldwide.

UN headquarters in New York City

On April 25, 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organizations began in San Francisco. In addition to the Governments, a number of non-government organisations, including Lions Clubs International were invited to assist in the drafting of the charter. The 50 nations represented at the conference signed the Charter of the United Nations two months later on June 26. Poland, which was not represented at the conference, but for which a place among the original signatories had been reserved, added its name later, bringing the total of original signatories to 51. The UN came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council — Republic of China, France, USSR, United Kingdom, and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.

The United States Senate, by a vote of 89 to 2, gave its consent to the ratification of the UN Charter on July 28, 1945. In December 1945, the Senate and the House of Representatives, by unanimous votes, requested that the UN make its headquarters in the United States. The offer was accepted and the United Nations headquarters building was constructed in New York City in 1949 and 1950 beside the East River on land purchased by an 8.5 million dollar donation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. UN headquarters officially opened on January 9, 1951. Under special agreement with the United States, certain diplomatic privileges and immunities have been granted, but generally the laws of New York City, New York State, and the United States apply.

While the principal headquarters of the UN are in New York, there are major agencies located in Geneva in Switzerland, The Hague in The Netherlands, Vienna in Austria and elsewhere.

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UN building in Vienna

On October 25, 1971, UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 was passed by the General Assembly, replacing the government of the Republic of China with the government of the People's Republic of China as the only "lawful" and "legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations" and as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Multiple attempts by the Republic of China on Taiwan to re-join the UN have never passed committee. (For more on the issue of Taiwan, see China and the United Nations.)

The founders of the UN had high hopes that it would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have obviously not been fully realised. From about 1947 until 1991 the division of the world into hostile camps during the Cold War made agreement on peacekeeping matters extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace and co-operation, as several dozen active military conflicts continue to rage around the globe. The breakup of the Soviet Union has also left the United States in a unique position of global dominance, creating a variety of new problems for the UN (See the United States and the United Nations).

Arms control and disarmament

The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure "the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources." The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first resolution of the first meeting of the UN General Assembly (January 24, 1946) was entitled "The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy" and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction."

The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly and the UN Disarmament Commission. Items on the agenda include consideration of the possible merits of a nuclear test ban, outer-space arms control, efforts to ban chemical weapons, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.

The Conference on Disarmament is the sole forum established by the international community for the negotiation of multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. It has 66 members representing all areas of the world, including the five major nuclear-weapon states (the People's Republic of China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States). While the conference is not formally a UN organization, it is linked to the UN through a personal representative of the Secretary-General; this representative serves as the secretary general of the conference. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly often request the conference to consider specific disarmament matters. In turn, the conference annually reports on its activities to the General Assembly.

Peace-keeping

UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular scale, but including a surcharge for the five permanent members of the Security Council (who must approve all peacekeeping operations); this surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries.

In December 2000, the UN revised the assessment rate scale for the regular budget and for peacekeeping. The peacekeeping scale is designed to be revised every six months and is projected to be near 27% in 2003. The United States intends to pay peacekeeping assessments at these lower rates and has sought legislation from the United States Congress to allow payment at these rates and to make payments towards arrears.

Total UN peacekeeping expenses peaked between 1994 and 1995; at the end of 1995 the total cost was just over $3.5 billion. Total UN peacekeeping costs for 2000, including operations funded from the UN regular budget as well as the peacekeeping budget, were on the order of $2.2 billion.

The UN Peace-Keeping Forces received the 1988 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Human rights

The pursuit of human rights was one of the central reasons for creating the United Nations. World War II atrocities and genocide led to a ready consensus that the new organization must work to prevent any similar tragedies in the future. An early objective was creating a legal framework for considering and acting on complaints about human rights violations.

The UN Charter obliges all member nations to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights" and to take "joint and separate action" to that end. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though not legally binding, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common standard of achievement for all. The General Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues. The UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), under ECOSOC, is the primary UN body charged with promoting human rights, primarily through investigations and offers of technical assistance. As discussed, the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the official principally responsible for all UN human rights activities (see, under "The UN Family," the section on "Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights").

The United Nations and its various agencies are central in upholding and implementing the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A case in point is support by the United Nations for countries in transition to democracy. Technical assistance in providing free and fair elections, improving judicial structures, drafting constitutions, training human rights officials, and transforming armed movements into political parties have contributed significantly to democratization worldwide.

The United Nations is also a forum in which to support the right of women to participate fully in the political, economic, and social life of their countries.

See also: United Nations Convention on the Abolition of Slavery

United Nations System

Main article: United Nations System

The United Nations System has six principal organs:

For more information on the organizational structure see the main article.

International conferences

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Secretary-General since 1995: Kofi Annan, from Ghana.

The member countries of the UN and its specialized agencies — the "stakeholders" of the system — give guidance and make decisions on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout each year. Governing bodies made up of member states include not only the General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, and the Security Council, but also counterpart bodies dealing with the governance of all other UN system agencies. For example, the World Health Assembly and the Executive Board oversee the work of WHO. Each year, the United States Department of State accredits United States delegations to more than 600 meetings of governing bodies.

When an issue is considered particularly important, the General Assembly may convene an international conference to focus global attention and build a consensus for consolidated action. High-level United States delegations use these opportunities to promote United States policy viewpoints and develop international agreements on future activities. Recent examples include:

Financing

The UN system is financed in two ways: assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. In the case of the UN, the General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by national income statistics, along with other factors.

The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a 'ceiling' rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly agreed to revise the scale of assessments to make them better reflect current global circumstances.

As part of that agreement, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25 to 22 percent; this is the rate at which the United States is assessed. The United States is the only member that is assessed this rate, though it is in arrears hundreds of millions of dollars;(see also United States and the United Nations) all other members' assessment rates are lower. Under the scale of assessments adopted in 2000, other major contributors to the regular UN budget for 2001 are Japan (19.63%), Germany (9.82%), France (6.50%), the U.K. (5.57%), Italy (5.09%), Canada (2.57%) and Spain (2.53%).

Special UN programs not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR, and WFP) are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments. In 2001, it is estimated that such contributions from the United States will total approximately $1.5 billion. Much of this is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations, but the majority is financial contributions.

Communications

The six official languages of the United Nations include those of the founding nations: Chinese, English, French, Russian. In addition, two widely spoken tongues -- Arabic and Spanish -- were added in 1973. All formal meetings are interpreted at least in these official languages. And all official documents, in print or online, are translated in all six languages.

Successes of the UN

  • Raising consciousness of the concept of human rights through its covenants and of its attention to specific abuses through its resolutions or rulings
  • Health successes such as the World Health Organization's elimination of small pox.

Criticism of the UN

Over the past decade, an increasing number of voices have questioned the overall direction that the UN has taken. Many now see it as ineffective, overly bureaucratic, prone to corruption, and acting outside the intended limits of its original charter (or, on the converse, not acting sufficiently within its charter or that the charter is too weak for present-day needs).

Some respond that much of the blame can only lie with the member states that support it (or fail to support it), including their perceived failure to make needed systemic changes to the institution (whether in its own administrative bureaucracy or in its structure governing member countries). See the reform section below on proposals for addressing the perceived systemic failures of the latter type.

General criticisms of its structure governing member countries:

  • Charges that the UN is increasingly attempting to usurp national sovereignty.
  • Charges that the UN is not doing enough to override national sovereignty.
    • In general, the UN has shown a reluctance to act upon its resolutions, making it weak and evoking comparisons to the League of Nations.
    • Some charge that the UN is powerless should member nations ignore UN resolutions, or also, proceed with actions without UN support. This was especially highlighted with the United States' invasion of Iraq.
    • The UN gives precedence to government authority over individual liberty, regularly seeming reluctant to challenge member states' behaviour regarding their own people.

Some specific complaints are as follows:

Reforming the UN

The Definition of “UN Reform”

In recent years there have been many calls for "reform" of the UN. But there is little clarity, let alone consensus, about what reform might mean in practice. Both those who want the UN to play a greater role in world affairs and those who want its role confined to humanitarian work or otherwise reduced use the term "UN reform" to refer to their ideas. The range of opinion extends from as far as those who want to eliminate the UN entirely, to those that want to make it into a full-fledged world government.

Security Council reform

A very frequently discussed change to the UN structure is to change the permanent membership of the Security Council, which reflects the power structure of the world as it was in 1945. One proposed change is to admit more members: the candidates usually mentioned are India, Japan and Germany. Another is to abolish the United Kingdom and France's seats and give a seat to the European Union: but since the EU is not a state this would require a change to the UN Charter (or it would require that the EU become a state).

Another change frequently suggested is to remove the veto power enjoyed by the permanent members of the Security Council. It is hard to see any of the current members surrendering the veto power. The United States in particular would strongly oppose this on the grounds that it would make the actions of the United States subject to international approval, and would also increase the likelihood of resolutions critical of Israel being passed. (See also Israel and the United Nations.) One of the main drives behind this are situations in which all but one of the fifteen nations on the Security Council vote to support a measure that is relatively unimportant, such as administrative decisions. (This was the case with the battle over re-election of UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.)

Bureaucracy

At another level, calls for reforming the UN demand to make the UN administration (usually called "the bureaucracy") more transparent, more accountable, and more efficient. In the United States, and particularly in the United States Congress, this is linked to demands that the UN adopt policies which encourage the development of free market economies and cease what are seen as socialist and anti-American policies and actions.

Enhancing its democratic nature

Another frequent demand is that the UN become "more democratic." This raises fundamental questions about the nature and role of the UN. The UN is not a world government, rather a forum for the world's sovereign states to debate issues and determine collective courses of action. Since the large majority of the world's states are now democracies, the UN is in a sense an "indirect democracy" already — the majority of countries cast votes at the UN in accordance (at least in theory) with the wishes of the electorates that elected them. A direct democracy would request the election of the UN Secretary-General by direct vote of the citizens of the democratic countries (World presidentialism) as well as the General Assembly (just as cities, states and nations have their own representatives in many systems, who attend specifically to issues relevant to the given level of authority) and the World Court. Others have proposed a combination of direct and indirect democracy, whereby national governments might ratify the expressed will of the people for such important posts as an empowered World Court.

For the UN to become more democratic in a direct sense, four things would presumably have to happen:

  1. Representation would need to be based more on population vote and UN democratic and free elections to the Secretary and Assembly, rather than the present strict one-state-one-vote principle. Another proposal is to establish a consultative United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) as an intermediary step towards a world parliament within the UN structure. An assembly where Liechtenstein has the same voting power as the People's Republic of China is far from equally representational (generally considered a key aspect of democracy).
  2. The veto power of the Security Council would have to be removed. Again, this would remove a form of counter-representationalism, where the permanent Security Council members have their opinions weighted above others.
  3. The UN would have to be given some power of governance over its members, just as a national government has power of governance over its citizens. In other words, it would have to become, to some degree, a world government. This would imply having the power to impose sanctions on members who would not follow the UN's determined courses of action and resolutions (including the human rights' resolutions).
  4. As implied in the previous item, the UN might also exclude from its membership those nations which it determined to be grossly violating the human rights of its people, including the right to periodic democratic, universal, secret-ballot elections (upheld in Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

It is likely that the small countries, which make up the majority of the current members of the General Assembly, would oppose the first of these changes (some of these might oppose the fourth), while the current permanent members of the Security Council would oppose the second, and probably the third as well. However, reformers have proposed that with incremental and simultaneous attention to these points, it is possible that the interests of the large and small nations might be reconciled through compromise in order to avert the anarchy and relative powerlessness of the present system which hamper the interests of both large and small nations. For example, if the veto power were progressively limited while also basing the weighting of the General Assembly more on population, large and small nations might be more trusting of the system to assign more supranational authority to the votes of the General Assembly (and judgments of an empowered World Court).


Diversity and democracy

Implementation of population-based UN voting also raises the problems of diversity of interests and governments of the various nations. The nations in the UN contain representative democracies, absolute dictatorships and every shading in between. Allowing large powers to vote their population's interests en bloc raises the question whether they really represent the interests and desires of their individual citizens and the world community. Anything like direct election would be impossible as well in the many nations where an accurate direct vote would be impossible or where the local government has power to influence the local voters as well as security of the ballot box. Giving the UN any kind of actual governance power raises the question of how these powers could be carried out. What would happen when a vote of the UN general assembly demands changes in the borders or political status of a nation, or requires citizens in some nations to tax themselves in favour of other nations, or demands the arrest of the leader of a nation, and is met by refusal?

Financing reform

On the subject of financing, an interesting proposal has been made by Paul Hawken in his book, The Ecology of Commerce. Hawken's recommendation is to impose an international tariff on arms manufacturers worldwide. By his calculations, 'a tax on missiles, planes, tanks, and guns would provide the U.N. (sic) with its entire budget, as well as pay for all peacekeeping efforts around the world, including the resettlement of refugees and reparations to the victims of war.'

The main problem with implementing such a radical tax is finding acceptance. While most nations of the European Union and Japan would likely be willing to support such a tariff, it would be unpopular among consumers of arms. Nations such as these range from the United States, which spends a huge amount of its GNP on defence, to petty dictatorships who depend on arms to keep themselves in power. Arms producers would also oppose it, because it would increase their costs and reduce their consumer base. Like any large corporation, arms manufacturers have a great deal of political clout in most countries.

International Years

Main article: United Nations International Years

The UN declares and coordinates "International Year of the..." in order to focus world attention on important issues. Using the symbolism of the UN, a specially designed logo for the year, and the infrastructure of the UN system to coordinate events worldwide, the various years have become catalysts to advancing key issues on a global scale.

Model United Nations (MUNs)

There are a number of "Model United Nations" events held each year, in which participants collectively simulated the workings of the United Nations in its various committees and the General Assembly for a short period, typically a weekend or a 5-day week. Prominent amongst these are The Hague International Model United Nations (THIMUN) (for secondary school students from many countries, taking place in The Hague each January), the National High School Model United Nations (NHSMUN), for secondary/high school students from across the world, held each March at the UN in New York City the American Harvard National Model United Nations (Boston each February) and the North American Model United Nations (various United States cities each April).

Countries and the United Nations

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