Contemporary World, Module 6
Contemporary World, Module 6
Contemporary World, Module 6
Module 6
Author
Leoncio P. Olobia
Olobia, Leoncio. The Contemporary World. Leyte Normal University
Module 6
Institutions Governing International Relations
OVERVIEW
OBJECTIVES
MOTIVATIONAL ACTIVITY
What is the importance of asking help from other people? Relate this to your
experience.
DISCUSSION
United Nations
Some of the general functions of UN are in these areas: military, economic and
environmental issues, and human protection. You will notice that the 17
Sustainable Development Goals as a global doctrine was drafted by UN to address
issues ranging issues of poverty, education, health, climate change among others.
Clearly, its functional role in society is broad extending beyond politics and power.
Furthermore, one of its programs is called UNICEF where its primarily goal is to
help children all over the word ameliorate from abject poverty, provide education
through funds collected from different agencies and institutions.
The UN promotes human rights brought to the realm of international law since its
inception in the 1940s, as explained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, the institution is critiqued mainly because it fails to stop wars raging in
many countries around the world. Apart from this, political meddling of domestic
issues as in the case of the Philippine’s War on Drugs of President Duterte’s
administration has put the institution in ‘hot water’ or is it the other way around.
NATO was also created after World War II and continued to expand well into the
Cold War. Following the collapse of Soviet Union in the 1990s, countries like
Poland, Croatia and former Soviet States joined the alliance threatening Russian
force as a result thereof. Among the countries listed, the United States has the
most advanced military system.
Non-Government Organizations
NGOs are independent organizations that are not tied to the government. These
organizations are usually formed by citizens, private groups that render services
to people and communities during war or natural calamity.
Global citizenship is a moral and ethical disposition that can guide the
understanding of individuals or groups of local and global contexts, and remind
them of their relative responsibilities within various communities (Peski & Baraldi,
2012).
It can be gleaned from the definition that global citizenship is not a single attitude
but a collective force that makes people travel to many boundaries of
consciousness in terms of responsibility in the contemporary setting. The degree
of citizenship, comradeship and shared responsibility is contextualized to local
communities even in the process of global integration.
ASSESSMENT