UN

Question 1

What is the UN?

Answer 1

• Promotes international cooperation to maintain international order - encouraging respect for HR and promoting social progress.
• Replaced the League of Nations with originally 51 members which grew to 193.
• Most largest, familiar, internationally recognised and powerful IGO in the world.

Question 2

What is the UN Charter?

Answer 2

The constitution sets out UN powers within international law, members’ rights, how it carries out its key functions and the organs’ powers.

Question 3

Secretariat

Key institutions of the UN

Answer 3

• Leads the civil service’ elected with a five year mandate.
• Provides studies, information and facilities needed by the UN and itacts as a public spokesperson and sets the UN agenda.
• Limited role but dependent on the geopolitics of the time - struggled to project a distinctive agenda during the Cold War between the USSR and USA.

Question 4

The UN’s Security Council

Answer 4

• Executive committee.
• Issues binding resolutions in IL, economic sanctions and authorise military action - allows coordinated response to maintain peace and security
• Five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA) with veto powers to block any resolutions and ten non-permanent members elected by regional quotas (2 year terms).

Question 5

Powers of UNSC in detail

Resolutions and vetos

Answer 5

• Resolutions = requires no veto from a permanent member and a 2/3 majority of permanent and non-p members.
• Veto = prevent issues of the League of Nations - recognises the importance of powerful countries in the UN and states can also abstain.

Question 6

Powers of the UNSC in detail

The use of the veto

Answer 6

• Russia is the most frequent user, more than other states in the Cold War, followed by the USA as it wasn’t as isolated. Post-Cold War, the USA became the dominant hegemony and user.
• Since 2001, R/China used veto in a more multipolar world - problematic regarding response to the Syrian Conflict, where disagreements have seen frequent veteos.
• France and UK haven’t since 1980 - reflects that as less powerful members, they have fewer national interests at stake.
  + States may not place issues to vote if they knew a perm member would veto (e.g F/R vetoing a UK/US led resolution for the military invasion of Iraq).

Question 7

Successes of UNSC in preventing and resolving conflict

Answer 7

• UN peacekeeping operations can be successful if they are well-resourced, has an effective mandate with achievable goals - organised over 69 globally.
• 1990 = mandated military action to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait - following liberation in 1991, another resolution was passed to stop Saddam Hussein launching attacks upon the Iraqi Kurds,
• 2015 = agreed to extensive financial measures to stop the funding of terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
• All permament members have remained within the UN and has maintained the UNSC as a forum for negotiating and diplomacy since 1945 - more effective than LON.

Question 8

UNSC doesn’t prevent conflict

Answer 8

• Decisions of the permanent five is determined by realist self-interest.
• Unwilling to intervene in the Rwandan Genocide (1994), esp. the USA since the deaths of 18 US servicemen on a humanitarian mission to Somalia in 1993.
• Regardless of agreement on military intervention, UN has no military force and it must request forces from the member states as it has no military force.
• C/R’s geostrategic interest conflict with those of the US, UK and France - difficult to agree on resolution.
• 2013 = demanded the Syrian govt abandon its chemical weaponn programme but conflicted on whether this occured - Trump bombed alleged chemical weapon sites, it was condemned by R for violating Syrian sovereignty.

Question 9

Further example of UNSC failures because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Answer 9

• Russia has assumed presidency of the UNSC in April 2023, despite Ukraine urging members to block the move and he had invaded Ukraine when he last held Pres. in 2022.
• Ironic because Russia’s Pres. Putin is subject to an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes but is unable to be removed because of the UN Charter.
• Sept 2022 = vetoed a resolution calling for the reversal of its illegal annexation of four regions of Ukraine. Brazil, China, Gabon and India abstained.

Question 10

Should the UNSC be reformed - yes

Answer 10

• Power of veto prevents accountability = difficult to achieve a consensus on military action, especially when perm members has a geostrategic interest (R supports Syria/China with Myanmar)
• France and the UK are no longer significant world powers - should be replaced or supplemented with others that emerged since 1945 (Brazil, Germany, India) as the balance of power has changed since WWII.
• More non-perm or perm members w/o veto could be a compromise to allow greater diversity without giving new members too much power. Not powerless - permanent members have to make efforts to persuade them to support the resolution.
• UNSC successfully reformed in 1965 - increased from six to 10 as having just 5 perm members challenges the principle of ‘sov equality’.

Question 11

Should the UNSC be reformed? = no

Answer 11

• 5 perm veto members means a consensus is reached before action is taken, so the case for intervention is very strong (unlike Iraq 2003).
• Impossible for the permament members to agree on new permanent members, having the power of veto - likewise when agreeing new members (Pakistan likely to oppose India’’s membership).
• More countries having veto power would increase the likeliood of resolutions being vetoed - increased likelihood of being in a stalemate.
• Abolishing the veto, or restricting the ability of major powers to protect their national interest could see a return of LON’s - major powers withdrew as they had no facility to defend their national interests.

Question 12

UN General Assembly

Answer 12

• Parliament - all 193 members have an equal voice and vote where NGOS are allowed to attend address meetings, further widening accessibility and inclusivity as a forum - annually meets at New York.
• Not binding resolutions and carries no force in international law - states can ignore these resolutions.
• No authorative voice on matters of international security.

Question 13

Functions and powers of UNGA

Answer 13

• May resolve non-compulsory recommendations to states, or suggestions to the Security Council.
• Elects UNSC’s non-permanent members, the secretary-general (on UNSC’s recomendations).
• Considering and debating reports from ECOSOC and the ICJ.
• Decides the budget and elects ICJ judges.

Question 14

Decision-making

Answer 14

• Challenging and time-consuming as all require a 2/3 majority - difficult to achieve concensus.
• Can take decisive action e.g UDHR in 1945, the foundational and guiding global HR framework, influencing laws. Recently approved the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs and the SDGs.
• Contraversial issues aren’t beyond the UNGA’s powers = granted Palestine non-member observer status in 2012 despite US/Israel opposition - allowed Palestine to sign the Rome Statute and joined the ICC - could investigate Israeli security forces in Palestine territory for alleged war crimes.

Question 15

Strengths of the UNGA

Answer 15

• Only place where nations can engage in geniune global dialogue to highlight important global issues - UN resolutions carry significant global weight and authority as they represent world opinion, especially as equal voting rights means smaller member states’ rights are recognised.
• 2000 = endorsed the MDGs and in 2015 agreed to replace these with SDGs until 2030.
• 2005 = agreed to UN Responsibility to Protect - each states are responsible to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
• 2018 = Presidents of small island states in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian oceans urged the GA to fulfil the terms of the Paris Treaty as they were the first to suffer from climate change.

Question 16

Limitations of the GA

Answer 16

• Unbinding resolutions - lacks coercive power.
• Voting equality - critics argue that it is irrational that a tiny city state like Monaco has as much influence as the USA.
• Nations can advance realist self-interest instead of seeking global consensus.
• World leaders can use the Ga to verbally abuse their enemies and try win global support for themselves - in 2018, P. Trump used his speech to attack Iran’s leadership for spreading ‘chaos, death and destruction’ whilst P. Rouhani then attacked Trump’s ‘weakness of intellect.

Question 17

Economic and Social Councils

Answer 17

• Coordinates the UN’s commitment to economic, social and environmental development.
• GA elects 54 nations that sits for three year terms and seats are allocated to favour representation from the developing world (provides them with greater influence of how development is carried out).
• Monitors the work of the World Health Organisation, UNHCR and the World Food Programme.

Question 18

Strengths of the ECOSOC

Answer 18

• The UN agencies plays important roles in encouraging global development:
• WHO has coordinated global efforts to eradicate polio and combat leprosy and recently COVID-19.
• World Food Programme is the biggest global humanitarian operation, delivering more than 15 billion emergency food rations each year.
• 2017 = 68.5M people displaced globally - the UNHCR plays the leading role in providing support and protection, coordinating assistance to refugees in conflict zones like the Middle East and Syria.

Question 19

Weaknesses of the ECOSOC

Answer 19

• Lacks a policy-making function = critics claim it is primarily a global bureaucracy to which many different agencies report w/o a sense of overall vision.
• Although the developing world is given the most influence, the principle decision-makers are the World Bank, WTO and IMF - developing countries are less influential on these bodies.
• The agencies that report to ECOSOC and operate in the same country means there can be a costly overlapping of responsibility and accountability.

Question 20

The International Court of Justice

Answer 20

• Established in 1945 - judicial arm which attempts to establish global respect for the rule of lawl.
• Arbitrates disputes between members and non-state actors and can request that the ICJ provides advisory opinions on contentious issues.
• To be successful, it’s necessary that states accept ICJ rulings - in 2013, Thailand accepted an ICJ ruling that the disputed Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia and that Thai troops would have to withdraw (liberal example).
• 2019 = ICJ ruled that British control of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean is illegal - UK govt responded that its decision was only advisory and the island was vital to Britain’s defence (realist example - difficult when larger states don’t recognise).

Question 21

The Cold War (1945-91)

Answer 21

• Primary mandate was peacekeeping but military standoffs between the USSR/USA dominated -powerless to influence the conflict and only intervened in conflicts distant from the Cold War.
• Spread of decolonisation (1960s) = membership saw an influx of newly independent nations - 17 joined in 1960 alone, 16 from Africa.
• Oct 1971 = with US opposition and support of many Third World nations, the communist People’s Republic of China was given the Chinese seat on UNSC in place of the Republic of China that occupied Taiwan - seen as sign of waning US influence.
• With an increasing Third World presence and the failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East, Vietnam and Kashmir = increasingly shifted to its secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange.
• By the 1970s, the UN budget of social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget.

Question 22

Post-Cold War (1991-2001)

Answer 22

• 15 new independent states and USA hegemony as Russia was reluctant to oppose its former enemy in UNSC.
• Radical expansion of its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in ten years than it had in the previous four decades. Between 1988-2000, the number of adopted UNSC resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased tenfold.
• Negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In 1991, it authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Question 23

Post-Cold War

Other interventions and were all successful?

Answer 23

• Though the UN Charter was written primarily to prevent aggression, in the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique and the former Yugoslavia.
  + The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after US withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu.
• In the late 1990s and 2000s, international interventions authorized took wider forms. E.G, the UN mission in the Sierra Leone War 1991-2002 was supplemented by the British Royal Marines and Afghanistan 2001 was overseen by NATO (ineffective as US withdrew troops in 2022).

Question 24

War on Terror (2001-9)

Answer 24

• UN was largely sidelined - the US govt was determined to protect its ‘national interest’, having suffered in the 9/11 terror attacks - the most serious attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.
• Authorised a UNSC Resolution = created the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the UN was heavily involved in reconstruction/development in Afghanistan throughout the conflict - but ISAF is under US military command.
• Military action in Iraq 2003 was launched without a UNSC resolution, after France and Russia indicated they wouldn’t support the invasion.
• Some meaningful action - under Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the UN intervened with peacekeepers in crises including the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sent observers and chemical weapon inspectors to the Syrian Civil War.

Question 25

Post-War on Terror: Arab Uprisings (2010-12) and the present

Answer 25

• Arab Uprisings sparked in Syria one of the bloodiest conflicts. Russia decided to intervene unilaterally, without UN consent, with controversial military action in support of the Assad regime. USA and its allies were initially reluctant to intervene. eventually France, the UK and USA began air strikes against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, at the request of the Iraqi government.
• 2013 = an internal review of the UN’s actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War 2009 concluded that the organization suffered ‘systemic failure’.
• Another challenge is the emergence of non-state actor threats from terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State - becoming increasingly difficult.

Question 26

In what ways does the UN protect human rights?

Answer 26

• Based on the Universal Declaration of HR, UN tribunals try human rights abuses committed in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia.
• 2005 = UN World Summit endorsed UN Responsibility to Protect - community has the authority to intervene in nations where systematic HR abuses are carried out.
• UNHCR/HR Council work together to monitor the HR records of member states, highlights abuses and makes recommendations to improve HR protections.
• 2019 = Brunei made homosexuality punishable by death by stoning - condemned by the UN High Commissioner for HR and global celebs like Elton John - such negative global publicity led Brunei to suspend the law.
• UN peacekeeping missions have played a significant role in protecting HR - in 2019, the ‘blue helmets’ operated in 14 areas, including Haitai, South Sudan and the DRC.

Question 27

Obstacles the UN face when protecting HR

Answer 27

• Ongoing importance of state sovereignity - HRs laws is a form of international soft law which nations can ignore. Laws might defy the UDHR - e.g in 2019, 14 nations have the death penalty for homosexuality.
• 2018 = USA withdrew from the UN HR Council, arguing it couldn’t protect HR when its members included states condemned for systemic HR (China, Saudi Arabia and Algeria).
• 2019 = UN commission of inquiry into the killing of protestors on the Gaza strip stated it’s possible that the Israeli Security Forces committed serious HR violations’ who responded that its use of military force was legitimate self defence and the report was ‘hostile and slanted’.
• Peacekeeping missions aren’t doing enough = Darfur was hampered by their limited mandate to protect people from Sudanese government forces and the DRC, they lacked sufficent and trained personnel to effectively intervene to safeguard civilians from warring factions.

Question 28

The UN is making significant progress in addressing environmental issues

Yes

Answer 28

• UN CC conferences (Kyoto and Paris) successfully raised global awareness of the importance of confronting CC.
• UN Environmental Programme sponsored the Montreal Protocol (1987) - established a global agreement to reduce the CFCs, protecting the ozone layer.
• GA provides a form to debate the potential impact of CC. Equal voting means small countries in the developing world which are least likely to cope with CC have as much influence as powerful nations (USA).

Question 29

Little significant progress when addressing environmental issues

Answer 29

• Lacks supranational authority to effectively enforce compulsory cuts on carbon emissions, agreeing on self-imposed INDCs targets - only provides a forum to encourage members as targets aren’t legally enforcable by the UN.
• 2019 = the IPCC criticsed nations for not making significant progress - warning that if greater efforts weren’t made, temp rise would exceed 1.5°C within 12 years.
• Efforts were hampered by the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Treaty (damage the US economy).
• World leaders (Trump and Bolsarno) failed to attend the summit held by Thunberg - absence demonstrates the UN’s inability to compel leading opponents to reconsider their views.

Question 30

Reducing poverty aims

Answer 30

• Founded with the objective of reducing poverty and promoting economic development.
• Provided a constant and powerful message to address poverty, designating 17th October as International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Question 31

Reducing poverty - MDGs

Answer 31

• 2000 = UN Secretary-General published the Millennium Report - necessary that ‘globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world’s people, instead of leaving billions of them behind in squalor.’
• Proposal = to focus the efforts on 8 developmental themes and targets called the Millenium Development Goals which would be timebound, measured annually and delivered by 2015.

Question 32

Succeses of the MDGs in reducing poverty

Answer 32

• Powerful = first time human development objectives was internationally agreed by 189 members and 23 international organisations - able to coordinate effort, so many global and national aid budgets doubled from US $6 billion to US $12 billion in the next five years.
• Clear and measurable and rigioursly monitored by the UN Development Programme which would report progress.
• People living on less than US $1.25 per day reduced from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 billion in 2015.
• HIV infections fell from 3.5 million to 2.1 million, with 13 million receiving antiretroviral treatment in 2015 compared to 0.8 million in 2000.
• People with access to clean drinking water doubled between 1990 and 2015.

Question 33

Limitations of MDGs in reducing poverty

Answer 33

• Sub-Saharan Africa hadn’t met the MDG for extreme poverty reduction - 12.5% behind the MDG target.
• By contrast, economic growth in China distorted the overall global figures - contributed to a reduction in extreme poverty in Eastern Asia, from 61% in 1990 to 4% in 2015 = concluded China and India played a central role in the global reduction of poverty.
• In 2015 = women were still more likely than men to live in poverty, earning 24% less than men in the same year.

Question 34

SDGs in reducing poverty

Answer 34

• Followed up by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.
• Defined sustainable development is as ‘development that balances the needs of today with those of tomorrow, ensuring future generations and resources aren’t put at risk’.
• Increased focus on protecting the environment and reducing climate change.
• Expanded the targets from 8 to 169 - all MDGs have a corresponding SDG to ensure progress continues.

Question 35

Overall effectiveness of the UN in reducing poverty

Answer 35

• MDGs and SDGs are highly effective, coordinated international efforts to tackle poverty, with considerable successes.
• 1 billion people lifted out of extreme poverty and the number of people living on less than US $ 1.25 fell to 836 million.
• Classical liberals argue that the free-market reforms of the World Bank and the IMF (reports to ECOSOC) have been highly significant in reducing poverty - economic globalisation has encouraged greater trade and investment, providing more opportunities.
• Regarding health = WHO helped eradicate smallpox and is close to eliminating polio (coordinated COVID-19 response) and UNICEF dramatically reduced childhood deaths through its extensive immunization programme.

Question 36

Limitations of the UN’s overall success on reducing poverty

Answer 36

• Other factors, such as the rapid growth of China, have been responsible for some of the impressive MDG figures.
• Despite creating greater wealth, global inequality continues to rise because the profits of global capitalism are shared so unfairly (e.g Africa poverty still lags).
• Needs to streamline and hold aid agencies more accountable for reaching targets (e.g WHO criticised for not efficiently dealing with the Ebola breakout in Africa).
• According to the dependency theory, people in the poorest countries lose out from globalisation because when they engage in free trade, they have cheap foreign imports dumped on them - no incentive to industrialise.
• When globalisation encourages rapid industrialisation - reinforcesit poverty by creating a ‘race to the bottom’ as companies seek to maximize profits by tolerating poor working conditions.