UN - Rumki Basu

12
The United Nations:

Changing Role
Rumki Basu
Learning Objectives
l To understand the historical evolution of the United Nations (UN) since

1945
l To examine the structure and functions of its main organs
l To revisit the UN role in the maintenance of international security, human
rights, socio-economic development and humanitarian intervention
l To trace the substantive achievements and the limitations to UN action
besides examining major proposals for reform of the organization
Abstract
This chapter traces the historical evolution of the United Nations (UN)
and the changes and challenges that it has faced since its establishment
in 1945. The UN is a multinational voluntary organization, premised on
the notion that states are the primary units in the international system.
This article looks at the major functions of the UN in the spheres of
The United Nations: Changing Role l 293
peace and security, economic and social development, human rights and
humanitarian intervention. Finally, substantive achievements coupled
with limits to UN action are traced with a discussion on the major
proposals that emanate from UN reforms.
The United Nations (UN), established on 24 October 1945 by 51

countries, was a result of initiatives taken by the coalition of states
that had led the Second World War. All de jure states—with the
single exception of the Vatican—today are members of the UN,
each having agreed to accept the obligations of the UN Charter.
According to the Charter, the UN has four objectives:
• To maintain international peace and security

• To develop friendly relations among nations
• To cooperate in solving international problems and in
promoting respect for human rights
• To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations
The UN family of organizations is made up of a group of

international institutions, which include its six principal organs,
the specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization
(WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the
programmes and funds, such as the United Nations Children’s
Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). The Secretary General manages this
sprawling system by means of the Chief Executive Board (CEB)
for coordination—a body comprising of the heads of UN bodies
and agencies which meet twice a year under the Secretary
General’s supervision to discuss common issues.
Membership of the UN is open to all peace-loving nations that
accept the obligations of the Charter and, in the judgement of the
organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
Admission to UN is by a two-third majority vote by the General
Assembly upon the recommendations of the Security Council.
There are six principal organs of the UN: the General Assembly,
the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the
Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the
Secretariat.
294 l Rumki Basu
12.1 The Main Organs of the United Nations:

Structure and Functions
12.1.1 The General Assembly

The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ, akin to a
world parliament and consisting of all the members of the UN.
The UN is the first international organization in history to achieve
near universal membership. Beginning with 51 members at its
inception, the General Assembly now comprises 193 members.
The increase is as much a result of the success of the decolonization
movement of the 1950s and 1960s—which brought in the bulk of
developing countries within its fold—as the end of the Cold War,
which saw the addition of new members from Eastern Europe and
the erstwhile USSR. Each General Assembly member has one vote
and is entitled to be represented at meetings by five delegates and
five alternates. Except the International Court of Justice, all four
organs have to submit annual reports to the General Assembly,
making it mandatory for the General Assembly to play a role in
all UN activities.
Under the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution, adopted in November
1950, the Assembly may take action if the Security Council, due
to a lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise
its primary responsibility in any case where there appears to be a
threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. More
precisely, the Assembly is empowered to consider the matter
immediately with a view to making recommendations to members
for collective measures, including the use of armed force when
necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
If the Assembly is not in session, an emergency special session
may be convened at a very short notice.
The General Assembly has a substantive right of decision
only with regard to the internal affairs of the UN; as a general
rule, recommendations, whatever their political and/or moral
force, have no legally binding character and cannot create direct
legal obligations for members. All members are entitled to equal
voting rights, with decisions on ‘important questions’—such as
recommendations on peace and security, election of members
to organs, admission, suspension and expulsion of members,
trusteeship questions and budgetary matters—being taken by
a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, and

decision on ‘other questions’ by a simple majority.
There are six main committees on each of which every
member has the right to be represented by one delegate. Like
other legislative bodies, it employs a system of standing (i.e.
permanent) committees, wherein delegates debate, review and
vote on issues, which are then presented to the General Assembly
plenary for consideration. The six main committees are as follows:
The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security);
Second Committee (Economic and Financial); Third Committee
(Social, Humanitarian and Cultural); Fourth Committee (Special
Political and Decolonization); Fifth Committee (Administrative
and Budgetary) and Sixth Committee (Legal). In addition, there
is a 28-member General Committee, composed of the president
and 21 vice-presidents of the Assembly and the chairpersons of
the main committees—which meets frequently during sessions to
coordinate the proceedings of the Assembly and its committees
and generally to supervise the smooth running of the Assembly’s
work. The Credentials Committee, consisting of nine members
appointed on the proposal of the president at the beginning of
each session of the Assembly, is charged with the task of verifying
the credentials of representatives. There are also two standing
committees: an Advisory Committee on Administrative and
Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), consisting of 16 members, and
a Committee on Contributions, composed of 18 members, which
recommends the scale of members’ payments to the UN. Many
subsidiary and ad hoc bodies have been set up by the Assembly
in order to deal with specific matters.
12.1.2 The Role of the General Assembly

in World Affairs
The General Assembly deals with three broad areas: (a) definition
of norms that should apply to certain areas of world politics,
(b) commitment of UN resources to various programmes and
(c) management of conflicts between and among nations.
The Assembly is one of the best arenas for discussing general
norms of international behaviour since virtually all states of the
world are represented in it. The Assembly has always devoted
a sizeable part of its time to such discussions, and these have
296 l Rumki Basu
greatly influenced the development of norms of international

behaviour on many issues. Over the years, the Assembly has
played an important role in debates on such questions as the
status and implications of self-determination, the principle of
non-interference of states in each other’s affairs and decisions
regarding participation or non-participation in its activities.
The Assembly is also the best forum for most discussions about
committing UN resources to various programmes. The Assembly
can create new UN bodies and it controls allocation of the UN
budget, giving it the ability to commit the organization to a wide
range of activities. Spending decisions allocate a small but real
set of resources, while assessment decisions determine who
will provide those resources. Arguments about spending have
usually pitted the majority against the minority, though until the
1970s, these arguments operated within a context created by the
realization that no industrial state, Eastern or Western, wanted
the total budget to grow ceaselessly. This realization thus softened
the East–West and the early West–Third World arguments. After
1973, the struggle intensified as the Third World majority sought
to use the regular budget to assure a level of resource transfer
to the developing world that most industrial states refused to
support. The old consensus limiting the regular budget by placing
both peacekeeping and economic activities in voluntary budgets
is also being increasingly challenged.
The charter specifies that member states should first try to
manage conflicts by recourse to non-UN procedures or institutions,
and assigns primary responsibility for UN conflict management
efforts to the Security Council. Even so, the Assembly has tried
to help manage various conflicts. Sometimes, this results from
the Security Council’s failure to find a course of action due to the
veto; at other times, this results from member states’ decisions
that they prefer to bring the conflict to the assembly. In any event,
the Assembly has not been a very effective manager of conflicts.
Despite some noteworthy successes, such as its response to the
Suez Crisis of 1956, the Assembly is too large a body to play an
effective role and seldom controls enough material resources to
do so.
Assembly majorities can influence the UN system in several
ways. They can influence the activities of some principal organs
through the assembly’s power to elect members. They can
directly control activity by the Secretariat or subsidiary organs of

the Assembly. They can use Assembly authority to carry out a
considerable amount of formal and informal restructuring of the
UN system. They can try to influence specialized agency activities
through recommendations.
The history of the General Assembly might be described
as that of a progressive increase in its authority and influence,
especially in relation to the Security Council, between 1945 and
1960, followed by a progressive decline.
In the first few years of its life, the Assembly had its role
enhanced. The Security Council was perpetually frustrated by
the free use of the veto, mainly by the Soviet Union, ways had
to be sought, especially by the Western powers, to bypass the
Council altogether. In 1950, after the outbreak of the Korean War,
a resolution—known as the ‘Uniting for Peace Resolution’—was
passed, enabling a special assembly to be called at any time
when the Security Council found itself frustrated by a veto from
taking effective action on the affirmative vote of seven members
of the Council or by a simple majority of the assembly. This was
done, moreover, to be able to recommend, if necessary, the use of
force—this was the real extension of the Assembly’s powers. The
resolution also created a Peace Observation Commission and a
Collective Measures Committee, under the assembly, to help that
body protect international peace and security, though after the
first two or three years, neither was used.
In the late 1950s, this Uniting for Peace procedure was used
two or three times. It led to the zenith of the assembly’s powers. A
special assembly was called by this means at the time of the Suez
and Hungarian crises in 1956. Over Suez, it led to the creation
of the United Nations Emergency Force by the Assembly. Over
Hungary, the special assembly was able to achieve little, though
it perhaps served to focus public attention on the crisis and to
express the verdict of the majority of world opinion against the
Soviet action. The Uniting for Peace Procedure was used again
during the crisis concerning Jordan and Lebanon in 1958, when a
force of observers (the UN Observation Group in Lebanon) was
sent to defuse the crisis and to deter foreign infiltration. Finally,
during the crisis in the Congo in the early 1960s, though the UN
force was authorized and controlled by the Security Council, the
assembly also kept the situation under close supervision, and
298 l Rumki Basu
played a dominant role in the next two or three years in influencing

UN action in the area.
During the 1950s, therefore, the Assembly had come to play
a major part in determining the UN’s response to a number of
world crisis situations. From 1960 onwards, however, the role of
the Assembly on war and peace questions began to decline. There
were a number of reasons for this. First, the outright opposition
of the Soviet Union and France to the use previously made of the
Assembly, their refusal to contribute to the costs of peacekeeping
operations the Assembly had authorized, and the prolonged
financial crisis resulting from this constitutional difference of view
served to induce some caution among the other major powers
in mobilizing the Assembly. Second, the increasing size of the
Assembly, as well as the change in its composition—Afro-Asian
members came to hold more than two thirds of the votes—meant
that it came to be thought of as a less suitable instrument for use in
such situations by the US as much as by the Soviet Union. Third,
the far less frequent use of the Soviet veto in the Council reduced
the need for an alternative agency. Finally, the desire of the other
permanent members to retain the special influence which they held
in the Security Council encouraged the restoration of the Council’s
supremacy on questions of security. There were still occasional
special assemblies: on Rhodesia (1965), South–West Africa (1967),
on the June War (1967) and on North–South issues in 1974–75.
But later peacekeeping operations in the Congo and Cyprus were
discussed and authorized by the Security Council and not the
Assembly. The prolonged discussions on the settlement of the
Middle East crisis from the autumn of 1967 onwards took place in
the Security Council. So was the main debate on Southern Africa
in the late 1970s. In times of crisis, it was once more the Council,
rather than the Assembly, to which conflicting parties looked for
redress.
On other questions, however, the Assembly has extended its
role. This resulted partly from the change in its membership, both
in numbers and in composition. From a membership of 51 in 1945,
it has grown to 193. This has transformed the regional balance.
Developing countries now represent well over two thirds of the
total membership.
The advent of new members inevitably meant an increased
focusing of attention on their problems. The primarily European
problems, the division of Germany, Berlin, human rights in East

Europe, which had dominated the early years are now rarely
discussed. For a period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, colonial
issues dominated the scene beginning with discussions on
Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria in the early 1950s, and culminating
in debates, often of great intensity, mainly on African questions
in the mid-1960s. Thereafter, questions of Southern Africa
have claimed more time of the Assembly than any other single
problem.
The end of the Cold War has led to a new consensus on major
issues. The views of industrialized and developing countries
have increasingly converged, and this has been reflected in the
voting patterns. Since the 1990s, only 30 per cent of the General
Assembly’s resolutions were adopted without consensus.
It is a forum where the weak and developing countries can
protect their interests, restrain the strong and promote a more
equitable world order. The Third World, which constitutes about
three fourths of UN membership, now enjoys an overwhelming
majority in the world body. They can, acting as a bloc, get any
resolution passed by a simple or, if necessary, two-thirds majority
in the General Assembly. They can use this majority to elect
members of other principal organs of the UN, restructure the
UN system, initiate new areas of activity, assign new tasks to
UN organs and commit UN resources for new programmes. The
developed countries greatly resent this automatic majority of the
developing states, which they feel is being used by them to further
their own foreign policy interests. The single topmost obsession
of the Third World is ‘development’, and these countries would
like to utilize the UN to help in a large-scale transfer of resources
from the developed to the developing world.
As a deliberative body, the General Assembly is concerned
mainly with aggregating interests and making decisions. It also
serves as an important socializer of new governments—whether
of new or old states—by providing for intensive interaction with
virtually all other states, under a well-developed set of formal
and informal rules for transacting business. It has some effect on
the articulation of interests, though more on the choice of place
for expressing them than on content, except in so far as it helps
governments exchange ideas with one another more quickly.
Though the application of rules and implementation of decisions
300 l Rumki Basu
are outside its direct purview, the Assembly seeks to influence

how these are carried out.
12.1.3 The Security Council

The UN Security Council was given the main responsibility for
maintaining international peace and security. It includes five
permanent members, namely the US, Britain, France, the Soviet
Union (later Russia) and China—the so-called P-5—as well as
10 non-permanent members. The non-permanent members are
elected for two-year terms on the basis of equitable geographical
distribution. The decisions of the Security Council are binding and
must only be passed by a majority of 9 out of the 15 members, as
well as each of the five permanent members. These five permanent
members, therefore, have veto power over all Security Council
decisions.
The Security Council’s permanent membership, representing
the power configuration at the end of the Second World War, does
not either reflect today’s distribution of military or economic power
among states or other geographical realities. Germany, Japan and
India have made strong appeals for permanent membership.
Developing countries have demanded a better reflection of their
numbers in the Security Council, with countries such as India,
Egypt, Brazil and Nigeria staking particular claims. However, it
has proved to be impossible to reach agreement on new permanent
members. Should the European Union be represented instead of
Great Britain, France and Germany individually? How would
Pakistan feel about India’s candidacy? How would South Africa
feel about a Nigerian seat? Likewise, it is very unlikely that the
P-5 countries will relinquish their veto even though the use of the
veto has declined in the post–Cold War era.1
1
From 1945 to 2004, the veto had been used 257 times, the largest number (122
vetoes) being used by the erstwhile Soviet Union and the second largest number
(80) by the United Nations. Given the nature of the United Nations, the likelihood
that the P-5 would never accede to limiting their unilateral power of veto is not
likely. From another perspective, it may be argued that ensuring great power
unanimity in all major security decisions of the UN is important if the decisions
are to be implemented in true spirit.
When the Security Council considers a threat to international

peace, it first explores ways to settle the dispute peacefully under
the terms of Chapter VI of the UN Charter, suggesting principles
for a settlement or mediation. In the event of fighting, the Security
Council may try to secure a ceasefire or send a peacekeeping
mission to help the parties maintain the truce.2 The Council can
also take measures to enforce its decisions under Chapter VII of the
Charter. It can, for instance, impose economic sanctions or order
an arms embargo when peace has been threatened or diplomatic
efforts found unsuccessful. On rare occasions, the Security Council
has authorized member states to use ‘all necessary means’ (e.g.
the Gulf War 1990), including collective military action, to see
that its decisions are carried out. It had used collective security
provisions only once before in 1950 to defend South Korea against
North Korea.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001,
the Council created the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) to
monitor implementation of resolution 1373, concerning measures
and strategies to combat the threat of international terrorism.
Under resolution 1535 of 2004, the Council established the Counter-
Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) with a view
to promoting closer cooperation and coordination in the field. The
Council established in the early 1990s the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International
Criminal for Rwanda (ICTR) to prosecute and punish war
criminals from the Balkan and Rwandan wars.
The Council makes recommendations to the General Assembly
on the appointment of a new Secretary General and on the
admission of new members to the UN. Among UN organs, the
Security Council has the authority to execute its mandates and
to require all members to abide by its directives when it imposes
enforcement measures against a state. Security Council resolutions
are legally binding under international law. Despite Chapters
2
Among the tasks discharged by peacekeeping operations over the years are:
• Maintenance of ceasefires and separation of forces in conflict zones.
• Preventive deployment before conflict breaks out.
• Protection of humanitarian operations.
• Implementation of a comprehensive peace settlement includes tasks such
as observing elections, monitoring human rights coordinating support for
economic reconstructions.
302 l Rumki Basu
VI and VII, during the Cold War, when superpower difference

stood in the way of enforcement measures, the Council frequently
authorized ‘peace keeping operations’—not explicitly anticipated
by the UN founders—an evolving method of settling disputes
both within and between states. Peacekeeping functions were later
elaborated to include peacemaking and peace-building measures
as well. Other Council-authorized operations have included the
missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Liberia. The success
of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, guiding the
tiny country to democratic elections and full independence, is well
recorded. Election monitoring operations have perhaps been even
more significant. During the 1990s, UN monitors guided elections
in Cambodia and in various Central American countries. In fact,
in the post–Cold War era, the Security Council resolutions have
addressed tough issues with relative consensus and legitimacy,
leading even the US to seek shelter under the Security Council
umbrella for many of its activities in Iraq. By the summer of 2004,
even the US had returned to the UN to seek help and legitimacy
for the reconstruction of a fractured Iraq—six months after the
US had launched a largely unilateral pre-emptive strike without
Security Council authorization.3
However, the Council’s historical record has often been
disappointing. The Council has passed unimplementable or
irrelevant resolutions. For instance, the so-called safe areas the
Council set up in Bosnia in the mid-1990s—during the devastating
civil wars in erstwhile Yugoslavia—were anything but ‘safe’ for
the Muslim populations that sought refuge there. The Council
refused to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. However,
by the end of the 20th century, the Council found itself handling
new conflict areas such as rehabilitating failed states, managing
ethnic and religious conflict, civil wars, potentially radicalizing
nationalist movements (as in the Middle East, among the Kurds
and in Asia) and terrorism, along with the old problems that
were mandated in 1945, such as combating traditional interstate
aggression.
The Security Council should therefore be seen, above all, as a
bargaining mechanism, permanently available, for negotiating
3
Security Council Resolution 1511, regarding Iraq’s future, passed unanimously
on October, 2003.
agreed courses of action over crisis situations among individual

powers and groups of nations, or at least promoting negotiations
elsewhere. Every decision will therefore be a compromise. The
Council is not—like cabinets within the national states—a unified
and single-minded decision-making body, comprising ministers
who are already close colleagues and committed to a common
policy. It is rather like an ad hoc committee formed among
mutually distrustful parties, in which every decision has to be
negotiated among the adherents of different points of view. Where
interests are not too divergent, it may be possible to achieve a
consensus on some matters at least (as over Cyprus, the Congo
and the Middle East). Over other issues, where there is a direct
conflict affecting permanent members (Hungary, Vietnam), this
may seem improbable.
Whether or not the Security Council develops a greater degree
of political skill is yet to be seen, but over the last two decades, its
primacy within the UN system has been largely restored. It has
even begun to reassert itself. It has, over Rhodesia or in the Iraqi
annexation of Kuwait, made use of sanctions of a stringent kind,
which have been almost universally applied. It has set up several
peacekeeping forces and may establish more. It has claimed the
right to lay down the general terms of a settlement in the Middle
East, something rarely attempted before by an international
organization after an armed conflict. It was the basic focus for
pressures for change in Southern Africa.
But if self-renewal is to be matched by a corresponding degree
of effectiveness, the Council will need to develop further the
techniques of peaceful settlement of disputes, and prompt action
after the outbreak of hostilities in any part of the world.
Lastly, the Security Council must reflect the changing power
composition and roles in today’s world. The number of its
permanent members needs to be increased to give seats to rising
and potentially great powers like Germany, Japan, Brazil, India,
and so on. A more representative Security Council, reflecting
present-day international realities, is an absolute imperative for
the UN in the 21st century.4
4
The discussion on the General Assembly’s role in world affairs is based on
Rumki Basu’s book (2004: 49–61).
304 l Rumki Basu
12.1.4 The Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council, under the authority of the
General Assembly, is the organ responsible for the economic and
social work of the UN and the coordination of the policies and
activities of the specialized agencies and its institutions—known as
the UN ‘family’. It consists of 54 members, 18 of whom are elected
each year by the General Assembly for a three-year term; each
member has one representative and one vote. Retiring members are
eligible for immediate re-election. The Council meets throughout
the year and holds a major session in July. The president is elected
for one year and may be re-elected immediately.
The Economic and Social Council is empowered for the
following actions:
1. To make or initiate studies, reports and recommendations

on international economic, social, cultural, educational,
health and related matters.
2. To make recommendations for the purpose of promoting
respect for, and observance of, human rights and
fundamental freedoms.
3. To call international conferences and prepare draft
conventions for submission to the General Assembly on
matters within its competence.
4. To negotiate agreements with the specialized agencies,
defining their relationship with the UN.
5. To perform services, approved by the Assembly, for members
of the UN and, upon request, for the specialized agencies.
6. To make arrangements for accrediting consultation with
non-governmental organizations concerned with matters
falling within its competence.
Decisions of the Council are made by a simple majority of members

present and voting.
A number of standing committees, commissions and other
subsidiary bodies have been set up by the Economic and Social
Council and meet at UN Headquarters or in other locations.
The functional commissions include the Statistical Commission,
Commission on Population and Development, Commission
for Social Development, Commission on the Status of Women,
Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Commission on Science and

Technology for Development, Commission on Crime Prevention
and Criminal justice and the Commission on Sustainable
Development. The Commission on Human Rights, previously
related to the Economic and Social Council, was replaced, according
to a General Assembly resolution adopted on 15 March 2006, by
a 47-member Human Rights Council as a subsidiary body of the
General Assembly. Each of these commissions is the principal UN
agency in its field, drafting treaties and model legislation besides
monitoring the fulfilment of previous agreements.
Also under the Economic and Social Council’s authority are
the five regional economic commissions, aimed at assisting the
development of the major regions of the world and at strengthening
economic relations of the countries in each region, both among
themselves and with other countries of the world. These are as
follows:
• the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(ESCAP), based in Bangkok;
• the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
(ESCWA), based in Beirut;
• the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), based in Addis
Ababa;
• the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), based in
Geneva; and
• the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC), based in Santiago.
The commissions are responsible for studying the problems of

their respective regions and help finance development projects in
their respective regions.
The Economic and Social Council has made arrangements for
consultation with international non-governmental organizations
and, after consultation with the member countries, with
national organizations. There are over 2,600 non-governmental
organizations, classified into three categories, having consultative
status with the Economic and Social Council; they may send
observers to public meetings of the Council and its subsidiary
bodies and may submit written statements. They may also consult
with the Secretariat of the UN on matters of mutual concern.
306 l Rumki Basu
Finally, the Council itself is a body of very limited powers. It

can only study, discuss and recommend; and even in this, it is
subordinate to the overriding authority of the General Assembly.
However, it is important to note that about 70 per cent of the UN’s
budget funds are ECOSOC-related activities.
12.1.5 The Trusteeship Council

The Trusteeship Council bore prime responsibility for supervising
the administration of territories placed under the International
Trusteeship System established by the UN. The basic goals of the
system—the promotion of the advancement of the inhabitants of
the trust territories and their progressive development towards
self-government or independence—have been fulfilled. The trust
territories, mostly in Africa, have attained independence, either as
separate states or by joining neighbouring independent countries.
The Council acts under the authority of the General Assembly
or, in the case of a ‘strategic area’, under the authority of the
Security Council. Membership of the Council is not based on a
predetermined number, since the charter intended to provide for
a balance between members administering trust territories and
members that did not. At present, the Council, whose size has
progressively decreased, consists of the five permanent members
of the Security Council (i.e. China, France, Russia, the UK and
the US). China, however, did not take part in the work of the
Council until May 1989. The Trusteeship Council, having fully
accomplished its task, no longer holds regular meetings; special
sessions may be convened whenever necessary. Decisions of
the Trusteeship Council are made by a majority of the members
present and voting, each member having one vote. A proposal
has been put forward by the Secretary-General to reconstitute
the Council as the forum through which member countries
exercise their collective trusteeship for the integrity of the global
environment and common areas such as the oceans, atmosphere
and outer space.
12.1.6 The International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ
of the UN. Its statute is an integral part of the UN Charter. All
countries which are parties to the statute of the court can be

parties to cases before it; no private party can present a case.
Other states can refer cases to it under conditions laid down by
the Security Council. The General Assembly, the Security Council
and the specialized agencies can ask for advisory opinion on legal
questions within the scope of their activities. The court consists
of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly and the Security
Council.
The jurisdiction of the court is twofold—contentious and
advisory—and covers all questions which the parties refer to it,
and all matters provided for in the UN Charter or in treaties and
conventions in force. Disputes concerning the jurisdiction of the
court are settled by the court itself. States may bind themselves
in advance to accept the jurisdiction of the court in special cases,
either by signing a treaty or convention which provides for
reference to the court or by making a special declaration to this
effect. From 1946 to 2005, of the 100 cases referred to the court,
the court had delivered 89 judgements. Of the 75 countries that
had been involved in litigation, the US, followed by the UK, was
involved most often. The court had rendered 25 advisory opinions
(till 2005) in various topics, including issues of UN membership,
territorial status of Namibia and Western Sahara, expenses of UN
operations, status of human rights special rapporteurs, and so on.
Today, the International Court of Justice has become a source of
international law and a part of a multilateral framework for the
resolution of disputes, the preservation of peace, rules of war and
protection of human rights.
According to the statute, the court may apply in its decisions
in the following areas: (a) international conventions, establishing
rules recognized by the contesting countries; (b) international
custom as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the
general principles of law recognized by nations; and (d) judicial
decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists
of the various nations, as a subsidiary means for determining
the rules of law. If the parties concerned so agree, the court may
decide ‘exequo et bono’, that is, according to practical fairness
rather than strict law. The Security Council can be called upon
by one of the parties in a case to determine measures to be taken
to give effect to a judgement of the court if the other party fails
to perform its obligations under that judgement. The record of
308 l Rumki Basu
the international court will perhaps not seem impressive. On

issues where international law can be most uncertain or most
contested and which most often gives rise to war—the limits of
permissible external intervention in civil war situations, political
support for revolutionary movements, the right of nationalization
of international waterways or other resources—the rulings of the
international court have not been brought into play at all. A still
more contentious issue concerns the lack of enforcement power
available to the court to secure compliance when it does makes
judgements. The Security Council can, under Article 94, decide
upon measures to be taken to give effect to ‘the judgements’
of the court, but it has never done so. This leads to a situation
where many doubt the utility of bringing disputes to the court,
wondering whether the other disputants involved will accept its
jurisdiction and comply with its judgements.
12.1.7 The Secretariat

The Secretariat carries out the administrative work of the UN and
implements the policies of the General Assembly, the Security
Council and the other organs. At its head is the Secretary-General,
who provides overall intellectual guidance and administrative
directions to lower staff. The Secretariat (in 2004) consists of
departments and offices with a total staff of 9,000 under the
regular budget and nearly 25,000 under special funding, Duty
stations include UN Headquarters in New York, as well as UN
offices in Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and other locations.
On the recommendation of the other bodies, the Secretariat also
performs several research functions and some quasi-management
functions. By the mid-1990s, support for peacekeeping activities
had become a major function. Yet, the role of the Secretariat
remains primarily bureaucratic and it lacks the political power
and the right of initiative of, for instance, the Commission of the
European Union. The one exception to this is the power of the
Secretary-General under Article 99 of the charter, to bring to the
notice of the Security Council situations that are likely to lead
to a breakdown of international peace and security. This article,
which may appear innocuous at first, was the legal basis for the
remarkable expansion of the diplomatic role of the Secretary-
General over the years. Due to this, the Secretary-General is
empowered to become involved in a large range of areas that can

be loosely interpreted as threats to peace, including economic and
social problems and humanitarian crises.
12.2 The Budget
The biennial budget of the UN is initially submitted by

the Secretary-General and reviewed by the committee on
Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), which
is empowered to recommend modifications to the General
Assembly. The programmatic aspects are reviewed by the 34-
member Committee for Programme and Co-ordination (CPC).
The regular budget covers the administrative and other expenses
of the central Secretariat and the other principal organs of the UN,
both at headquarters and throughout the world. Many activities
of the UN are financed mainly by voluntary contributions outside
the regular budget; such activities include United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), the World Food Programme
(WFP), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United
Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA). Additional activities are financed
by voluntary contributions to trust funds or special accounts
established for each purpose.
Contributions of member countries are the main source of funds
for the regular budget, in accordance with a scale of assessments
specified by the General Assembly on the advice of the Committee
on Contributions. The amount of the contribution of a member
country is determined primarily by the total national income of
that country in relation to that of other member countries. In 2000,
the Assembly fixed a maximum of 22 per cent and a minimum of
0.001 per cent of the budget for any one contributor. As a result of
arrears in payments by some members, a serious financial crisis
developed in 1986 and 1987. The US withheld its contributions and
demanded financial reforms and the introduction of ‘weighted
voting’ on budgetary matters. A panel of 18 experts was set up
in December 1985 to review UN administration and finance; the
resulting report was submitted to the Secretary-General in August
1986 and the recommendations were subsequently approved by
310 l Rumki Basu
the General Assembly. The most significant innovation involved

greater control over spending and the adoption of the budget
by consensus, giving major contributors a substantial power,
although the budget itself remained eventually subject to approval
by the General Assembly. In the 1990s, the financial crisis of the
UN continued due to payment defaulters both for the regular
budget and for peacekeeping operations.
In the scale of assessments for 2007, more than 100 countries,
or nearly 60 per cent of the membership of the UN, were each
contributing between 0.001 and 0.03 per cent of the budget. In 2010,
the largest contributors included the US (22 per cent), followed by
Japan (16.6), Germany (8.57), the UK (6.64), France (6.30) and Italy
(4.89). A few other countries (Canada, Spain, China, South Korea,
the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Switzerland and Russia) paid
between 1 and 3 per cent.
12.3 The United Nations and the Maintenance

of International Peace and Security
Since member states could not agree upon the arrangements laid
out in Chapter VII of the Charter, especially with regard to setting
up of a UN army for retaliatory action against an aggressor state,
there followed a series of improvisations to address matters
of peace and security. First, an enforcement procedure was
established, under which the Security Council agreed to a mandate
for an agent to act on its behalf. The Korean conflict in 1950, and
the Gulf War in 1990, when action was undertaken principally by
the US and its allies are instances of this kind.
Second, though no reference to peacekeeping exists in the UN
Charter, classical peacekeeping mandates are based on Chapter
VI of the UN Charter. Traditional peacekeeping involves the
establishment of a UN force under UN command to be placed
between the parties to a dispute after a ceasefire. Such a force only
uses its weapons in self-defence, is established with the consent of
the host state, and does not include forces from the major powers.
This instrument was first used in November 1956, when a UN
force was sent to Egypt to facilitate the exodus of the British and
French forces from the Suez canal area, and then to stand between
Egyptian and Israeli forces. Since the Suez crisis, there have been a
number of classical peacekeeping missions like the ones in Congo,

Cyprus and Lebanon.
Third, there have been innovations in peacekeeping, sometimes
called ‘multidimensional peacekeeping’ or ‘peace enforcement’,
which emerged after the end of the Cold War.5 These forces are
likely to use force to achieve humanitarian ends, sophisticated
military equipment, and more likely to include recruits from
major powers. Such forces were sometimes used in civil wars
and, therefore, addressed intra-state wars as well as international
conflict. A key problem was that the forces found it increasingly
difficult to maintain a neutral position and were targeted by
both sides. Examples include the intervention in Somalia in the
early 1990s and intervention in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-
1990s. The new peacekeeping mandates were sometimes based
on Chapter VII of the UN Charter. By 2005, UN peacekeeping
operations had involved 60 operations since 1948 and accounted
for nearly 70,000 military personnel around the world (at its peak
in 1993). Among the tasks discharged by peacekeeping operations
over the years have been (a) maintenance of ceasefires and
separation of forces; (b) preventive deployment; (c) protection of
humanitarian operations; (d) implementation of a comprehensive
peace settlement. In the early 1990s, nearly 47 operations had been
launched as the UN’s agenda for peace and security expanded
quickly in the post–Cold War era. Secretary General Boutros Ghali
outlined the more ambitious role for the UN in his seminal report
‘An Agenda for Peace’. The report described interconnected roles
for the UN to maintain peace and security in the post–Cold War
context, which included (a) preventive diplomacy; (b) traditional
peacekeeping; (c) peacemaking and peace enforcement and (d)
post-conflict peace-building.
Although the UN peacekeeping presence has proved its worth
in the field, its future is problematic. A Special Committee on
5
The term peacekeeping cannot be found in the UN Charter. Created as a
pragmatic innovation existing legally somewhere between Chapters VI and VII
of the Charter—Chapter VI½ is often invoked to mean fusing these two UN
responsibilities—peacekeeping has evolved from the placement of a neutral force
between consenting combatant governments to a comprehensive project meant
to reconstruct failed states. Second-generation peacekeeping (post–Cold War)
engages in the processes of peacemaking and nation building, that is a central
institution in the construction of domestic societies.
312 l Rumki Basu
Peacekeeping Operations, established during the financial crisis

of 1964–65, has laboured for more than 20 years without resolving
the thorny issues of finance and control. Apart from the merits of
particular operations, the US has favoured an active supervising
role for the Secretary-General, while the Soviet Union would
confer sole power on the Security Council. In practice, since
1973 peacekeepers have followed guidelines prepared by the
Secretary-General and approved by the Council. The expertise of
the Secretariat and a small cadre of peacekeepers in the field is an
international asset of great potential value in future operations.
Several middle powers have been willing to supply needed troops
and have also accumulated valuable experience in the process.
It can be said that though the efforts of UN forces have not
yielded effective results in all cases, it cannot be denied that most
of them did a creditable job. The success of UN peacekeeping
efforts depends on the consent of the host states, cooperation of
the Great Powers, and the suppliers of forces, whether military,
police or civilian. Withdrawal of consent by the host state can
lead either to the termination of the operations or to a period of
severe disturbances. Similarly, without the cooperation of the big
powers UN peacekeeping measures are bound to fail. Finally,
unless the states contributing forces and finances come forward
with necessary forces and finances, UN peacekeeping cannot
succeed.
The UN is getting increasingly drawn into internal conflicts,
resolving which is a much more treacherous undertaking than
monitoring peace on international borders.
The UN and the international community will have to discuss
and define a set of criteria which will trigger appropriate
peacekeeping action if the UN is to be turned into peacemaker
of the first recourse, rather than peacekeeper of the last resort.
In order to bring that about, several reports have suggested the
following6:
6
See the relevant websites for further information on UN Peacekeeping:
• An Agenda for Peace: Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping.
(www.un.org/docs/sg/agpeace.html)
• Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace operations (www.un.org/
peace/reports/peace_operations)
• UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations Best Practices Unit (www.
un.org/depts/dpko/lessons/)
• Establishment of an early warning office that continuously

monitors potential trouble spots around the world.
• Setting up permanent conflict resolution committees in
each region of the world to defuse tensions before violence
erupts.
• Deploying peacekeepers proactively to prevent aggression,
when warranted by an early warning alert or when requested
by a government.
• Creation of a two-tier UN peace force consisting of a
permanent, individually recruited, non-combat force, as
well as a specially trained backup army, made up of troop
of contingents available to the Security Council on short
notice.
• Establishing a regular annual peacekeeping budget, with a
reserve fund to cover unforeseen expenses.
Expenditures on UN peacekeeping grew sixfold between 1987

and 1992, to US$1.4 billion. That might seem like a massive sum,
but during the same period, the nations of the world spent about
US$1 trillion every year on their militaries. And as recently as
1991, governments devoted US$1,877 to military purposes, for
each dollar the UN charged them for peacekeeping.
Traditionally, UN peacekeeping has been effective in the conflict
areas where the warring parties have favoured the presence of
peacekeepers. Even in the case of Cambodia, where the UN had
undertaken a rather difficult job, the blue helmets stepped in after
arriving at a comprehensive peace settlement from the warring
factions. The winning strategy is therefore to be diplomatically
aggressive but militarily passive. Both in Bosnia and in Somalia
there was no such consensus.
Recent experiences suggest that UN peacemaking operations
should be undertaken only when they are absolutely necessary.
The international community has drawn lessons from past
operations, and is working to strengthen the UN peacekeeping
capacity in a number of areas. A blueprint of reform was provided
by the Secretary-General’s Panel on Peace Operations, chaired
by Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, which issued its report in
2000.
The Security Council and other bodies are now tackling the
major issues at stake, which include:
314 l Rumki Basu
• Enhancing preparedness
• Speeding up deployment
• Strengthening the deterrent capacities of peacekeepers
• Ensuring full political and financial support by member
states
12.4 Intervention within States

The ‘new peacekeeping’ increasingly being adopted by the
UN in the post–Cold War period was the product of a greater
inclination to intervene within states. The argument that what
transpired within states was a matter of ‘domestic jurisdiction’
came to be strongly opposed. Many member states believed that
the international community, working through the UN, should
address individual, civil and political rights, as well as basic
human needs like food, healthcare, employment and shelter. This
challenged the traditional belief that national governments should
ignore the internal affairs of states in order to preserve international
harmony and peace. Globally, civil society groups advocated that
violations of individuals’ rights were a major cause of interstate
conflict, that deprivation and denial of basic human rights within
states risked international disorder. The UN reinforced this new
perception that pursuing justice for individuals, or ensuring
‘human security’, was an aspect of national interest and global
concern.
UN actions to further ‘human rights’ or ‘universal values’
within states reflected an increasing concern with questions of
justice for individuals and conditions within states. Yet in the past,
the UN had helped promote the traditional view of the primacy of
international order between states over justice for individuals, so
the new focus on individual rights was a significant change. The
reason for this change was the increasing consensus in the UN that
global peace and security was also threatened by civil wars, gross
human rights violations and severe injustice and deprivation of
citizens within states.
A difficulty with carrying out the new tasks of the UN was
that it seemed to run against the doctrine of non-intervention.
Intervention was traditionally defined as deliberate incursion into
a state without its consent by some outside agency, in order to
change the functioning, policies and goals of its government and

achieve effects that favour the intervening agency.
It was pointed out that the UN Charter did not assert merely
the rights of states, but also the rights of peoples: Statehood could
be interpreted as being conditional upon respect for such rights.
There was ample evidence in the UN Charter to justify the view
that extreme transgressions of human rights could be a justification
for intervention by the international community.
In response to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s request to
the international community to find a new consensus on issues
of external military intervention for the purpose of human
protection, the International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty was established by the Government of Canada
in 2000. Its report, entitled ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, was
presented to the Secretary-General in 2001. The central argument
of the report is that sovereign states have a responsibility to
protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophes such as
mass murder, rape and starvation, but when they are unwilling
or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the
broader community of states. Where a population is suffering
serious harm and the state in question is unwilling or unable to
halt it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international
responsibility to protect.
There is debate about whether the existing Charter of the UN,
relying in particular on the approval of the Security Council,
is adequate for the authorization of new forms of intervention,
or whether further safeguards were necessary, such as a two-
thirds majority in the General Assembly and the supervision of
the International Court of Justice. In most cases, the UN Security
Council has not given explicit approval for such action. Rather, it
uses indirect language, such as authorizing member states to use
‘all necessary means’ under Chapter VII of the Charter to carry
out its decisions.
To conclude, the UN’s record on the maintenance of
international peace and security has been mixed. On the one hand,
there have been varied kinds of interventions and responses since
the end of the Cold War. There has been a stronger assertion of
the responsibility of international society, represented by the
UN, for gross violations of human rights anywhere in the globe.
Intimations of a new world order in the aftermath of the Gulf
316 l Rumki Basu
War in 1991 quickly gave way to doubts about UN efficiency and

activism with what were seen as failures in Somalia, Rwanda,
other parts of Africa, and the former Yugoslavia, and increasing
disagreement about the proper role of the UN in Kosovo and Iraq
in 2003.
12.5 Economic and Social Development
The UN aim of ‘social progress and better standards of life in

larger freedom’ has received growing attention over the past
decades.7 The UN system currently devotes most of its personnel
and financial resources to the economic and social development
of the poorer member countries in which two thirds of the
world’s people live. A wide-ranging international action was
initiated by the UN with the proclamation of the Development
Decades, beginning with the 1960s. The need for a world plan
or ‘strategy’ on the necessary measures became evident before
the First Decade ended. Intensive work, over several years, led
to the agreement on the International Development Strategy for
the Second Decade (the 1970s), intended to cover virtually every
area of economic and social development; among other goals, the
strategy stressed the need for fairer economic and commercial
policies and greater financial resources for developing countries.
However, no substantial progress was deemed to be possible
without a far-reaching modification of the structures and rules
governing international economic and financial relations.
In 1974, the General Assembly held its first special session on
economic problems and adopted a Declaration and a Programme
of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic
Order so as ‘to eliminate the widening gap between the developed
and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating
economic and social development in peace and justice’.8 In
December 1974, a few months after the call for a new international
economic order, the Assembly adopted a Charter of Economic
Rights and Duties of States with a view to establishing ‘generally
7
Quoted from Preamble of UN Charter, last line of first paragraph in the website
www.un.org/aboutun/charter.
8
Quoted from UN resolution 3201 (S-VI) 1st May 1974.
accepted norms to govern international economic relations

systematically and to promote a new international economic
order’.9
The International Development Strategy for the Third
Development Decade was proclaimed by the Assembly in
December 1980. Despite modest progress, the overall situation
in developing countries actually worsened while the proposed
global negotiations between North and South failed to materialize.
The especially critical situation in Africa promoted the General
Assembly to convene in May 1986 a special session devoted to
that region; the session adopted the UN Programme of Action for
African Economic Recovery and Development (UNPAAERD),
1986–90, seeking to mobilize political and financial support for
economic reforms. Also in 1986, the Assembly sought to promote
international cooperation for resolving the external debt problems
of developing countries. In subsequent sessions, the Assembly
broadened the area of agreement of measures to cope with major
problems arising from the persistent external indebtedness of
developing countries. The International Development Strategy
for the Fourth UN Development Decade (1991–2000) was adopted
in 1990 by the General Assembly. The relationship between
economic growth and human welfare became the crucial theme of
development efforts in the 1990s. The General Assembly proclaimed
1997–2006 the International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty
with a view to eradicating absolute poverty and reducing to a
substantial extent overall global poverty through national action
and international cooperation. At the Millennium Summit, held
in September 2000, world leaders committed themselves to halve,
by 2015, the number of people, living on less than US$1 dollar a
day, and set a number of other targets in the fight against poverty
and disease going under the name of Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) (see Box 12.1).
There has been an increased perception that issues of peace
and security encompass traditional threats such as aggression
between states and civil conflict within states. There is the
recognition that conditions within states, including human rights,
justice, development and equality have a bearing on global peace.
The more integrated global context has meant that economic and
9
UN resolution, 1974.
318 l Rumki Basu
Box 12.1: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Goal 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 1-A : Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people
whose income is less than one dollar a day
Target 1-B : Achieve full and productive employment and decent work
for all, including women and young people
Target 1-C : Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people
who suffer from hunger
Goal 2 : Achieve universal primary education
Target 2-A : Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls
alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary
schooling
Goal 3 : Promote gender equality and empower women
Garget 3-A : Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary
education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of
education no later than 2015
Goal 4 : Reduce child mortality
Target 4-A : Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-
five mortality rate
Goal 5 : Improve maternal health
Target 5-A : Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the
maternal mortality ratio
Target 5-B : Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health
5.3 Contraceptive prevalence rate
Goal 6 : Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Target 6-A : Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of
HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
Target 6-B : Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/
AIDS for all those who need it.
Target 6-C : Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence
of malaria and other major diseases.
Goal 7 : Ensure environmental sustainability
Target 7-A : Integrate the principles of sustainable development into
country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of
environmental resources
Target 7-B : Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant
reduction in the rate of loss
Target 7-C : Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without
sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic
sanitation
Target 7-D : By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in
the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers
Goal 8 : Develop a global partnership for development

Target 8-A : Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-
discriminatory trading and financial system; includes
a commitment to good governance, development and
poverty reduction—both nationally and internationally
Target 8-B : Address the special needs of the least developed countries;
includes: tariff and quota free access for the least developed
countries’ exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for
heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) and cancellation
of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for
countries committed to poverty reduction
Target 8-C : Address the special needs of landlocked developing
countries and small island developing States (through
the Programme of Action for Sustainable Development
of Small island Developing States and the outcome
of the twenty-second special session of the General
Assembly).
Target 8-D : Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of
developing countries through national and international
measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long
term.
Target 8-E : In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide
access to affordable essential drugs in developing
countries.
Target 8-F : In cooperation with the private sector, make available the
benefits of new technologies, especially information and
communications.
Source: United Nations.
social problems in one part of the world may have an impact on

other areas. In the decades following 1960 a concept of thematic
diplomacy emerged that emphasized international cooperation
to solve human problems of a global character. These may be
intrastate domestic problems, but with a potential for erupting
into interstate disputes. Often dubbed the other United Nations
during the Cold War—because it addressed ‘peripheral’ issues—
‘thematic diplomacy’ emerged by the close of the millennium
as a central mission of the UN. The UN subsequently identified
some thematic areas critical to world peace such as disarmament,
decolonization and human rights. Many intergovernmental
320 l Rumki Basu
organizations (IGOs) were brought into the UN System besides

specialized agencies to handle thematic issues and concerns.
The number of institutions within the UN system that address
economic and social issues have significantly increased since the
founding of the UN. Nonetheless, the main contributor states
have been giving less and less to economic and social institutions;
mostly well below the 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) that had been promised as part of the UN Development
Decade’s agenda. By the mid-1990s, there was a crippling financial
crisis in the regular Assessed Budget for the UN, and in the budget
for peacekeeping operations. This was only mitigated when the
US agreed, under certain conditions, to repay what it owed the
UN when it returned to full funding in December 2002.
Paradoxically, despite the shortage of funds, the changes in the
economic and social machinery of the UN have been promising,
and the UN’s roles in economic and social areas have been largely
positive. The UN has acquired skills and resources with regard to
key economic and social problems, such as rebuilding failed states,
supporting democratization, promoting human development and
addressing HIV/AIDS, poverty, and disease. These skills have
made the UN an indispensable institution.
Over the past decade, a number of new issues were brought on to
the international agenda and these were reflected in the economic
and social organizations. Several global conferences were convened
to discuss pressing problems, such as environmental issues at a
conference in Rio de Janeiro (1992), human rights at a conference in
Vienna (1993), population questions at a conference in Cairo (1994),
and women’s issues at a conference in Beijing (1995). Follow-up
conferences on the same theme were planned 10 years later to take
stock of progress. Such conferences represented a growing sense of
the interdependence of the globe, and the globalization of human
concerns. They stimulated a renewed interest in translating broad
concerns into more specific and more manageable programmes.
12.6 Humanitarian Assistance and

Human Rights
A number of bodies have been set up by the UN in order to assist

groups needing ‘special help’ in emergency conditions. The
General Assembly created the UNICEF in 1946 and extended its

mandate indefinitely in 1953. The UNHCR was established by
the Assembly with effect from January 1951; the UNRWA began
work in 1950 as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly. The
UN has provided assistance for emergency relief and longer-term
rehabilitation on several occasions. It has assisted in medium and
long-term rehabilitation and development programmes, especially
in the Sudano-Sahelian region through the establishment of the
UN Sudano-Sahelian Office (UNSO) in 1973. Activities are funded
through the UN Trust Fund for Sudano-Sahelian activities,
managed by UNSO. In order to strengthen the coordination of
humanitarian assistance, an Emergency Relief Co-ordinator was
appointed in 1992 to provide leadership for rapid and coherent
response to natural disasters and other emergencies. The co-
ordinator heads the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), which is in charge of the organization and
management of UN assistance in humanitarian crises going
beyond the capacity and mandate of any single agency.
In furtherance of the UN purpose of achieving international
cooperation in promoting and encouraging respect for human
rights and fundamental freedoms for all, regardless of race,
sex, language or religion, the General Assembly adopted on 10
December 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, under
which, for the first time in history, responsibility for the protection
and pursuit of human rights was assumed by the international
community and was accepted as a permanent obligation.
The Universal Declaration covers not only civil and political
rights but also economic, social and cultural rights. Another
important accomplishment was the coming into force in 1976 of
legally binding international agreements for the protection and
promotion of human rights. These are the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the latter including an
Optional Protocol, all adopted by the General Assembly in 1966.
An additional protocol (Second Optional Protocol) to ban capital
punishment, under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1989.
The General Assembly established in December 1993 the Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as the
official with principal responsibility for the Organization’s human
rights activities.
322 l Rumki Basu
The principle that the individual is to be held responsible for

serious violations of human rights—recognized in the Charter
of the Nuremberg Tribunal for the trial of the major Second
World War criminals—has led the Security Council to establish
international tribunals (the aforementioned ICTY and ICTR)
dealing with serious violations of international humanitarian
law.
Besides torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment, attention is being given by the UN to
other human rights questions such as slavery and slave trade,
genocide, statelessness, religious intolerance and the treatment of
migrant workers. The rights of children have been brought by the
UN within an all-encompassing document, the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly in 1989. The
rights of the disabled, the elderly and the young as well as human
rights in armed conflicts have also been considered. Another basic
commitment of the UN concerns the achievement of equality of
rights for men and women, both in law and in fact.
12.7 Decolonization
The UN has played a crucial role in the transition of peoples

belonging to more than 80 nations from colonial domination to
freedom. Decolonization made early significant gains under
the International Trusteeship System; the progress was greatly
accelerated by the Declaration on the Granting of Independence
to Colonial Countries and Peoples, proclaimed by the General
Assembly in 1960, and by the work of the Special Committee
established by the Assembly in 1961 to examine on a regular basis
the application of the Declaration and to make recommendations
to help speed its implementation. To observe the 30th anniversary
of the Declaration in 1990, the Assembly designated the final
decade of the century (1990–2000) as the International Decade for
the Eradication of Colonialism. Decolonization is one of the great
revolutions of our century. It was brought on by forces that were
neither generated nor controlled by the UN, but it helped promote
a more peaceful transition to independence and self government.
Since 1945, the UN provided a forum where anti-colonial
spokesmen could articulate their position, it greatly expanded the

principle of international accountability and it developed more
effective instruments for international supervision of colonial
administration. Above all, it gave an element of legitimacy to
independence movements everywhere in the world. For all
purposes, the functions of the Trusteeship Council are now over
following the completion of its mandate.
12.8 Achievements
For over 60 years, the UN, despite all its shortcomings, has been
an indispensable institution, a ‘happening concern’, which has left
a permanent imprint on nearly every major political, economic,
social and humanitarian problems of our age in its efforts to find
solutions to them. The post-1945 era in global politics has been
one of unprecedented transition in every part of the globe—an era
of decolonization and emergence of a host of newly independent
nations on the world scene, Cold War between the superpowers,
continuing nuclear arms race, struggle for modernization and
development in the Third World, recurring regional conflicts
and most importantly, several technological changes which have
created proximity and more extensive contacts among the peoples
of the world than was ever possible in any previous global era.
The UN has played a role in each of these developments on the
world scene, developments, which have accelerated multinational
cooperation. Let us now examine some of the major achievements
of the UN before we turn to some of the limits to UN action.
It is true that the UN has not been able to prevent wars,
which is evident from the fact that there have been more than
500 regional conflicts since 1945, and the nation states have not
yet come to a stage of evolution where they can renounce war as
an instrument of national policy. Though it is true that nuclear
weapons have not been used since 1945, thus averting a major
world catastrophe, conventional weapons have frequently been
employed in regional conflicts and the race for conventional as
well as nuclear arms is still on. However, despite all this, the
UN as an organization has made some modest contributions to
reduce or contain conflicts in various regions of the world. The
324 l Rumki Basu
outbreak of hostilities anywhere brings a UN response, generally

as a moderator or pacifier. Peacekeeping has been one of the
most significant innovations under the UN Charter, which had
originally provided for the device of collective security—this has
been used only twice, since the inception of the UN. Collective
security however became unworkable and the UN resorted to
‘peacekeeping’ to defuse tension in various conflict regions of the
world. Classical peacekeeping gave way to innovative methods
of peacekeeping in the post–Cold War period. It is this dynamism
and innovative character of the UN which has helped it to survive
in a world that has changed so rapidly since 1945.
Through its trusteeship and non-self-governing provisions,
the UN has provided the basic instrument needed for one of the
biggest revolutions of our time: decolonization. It is debatable
whether this process could have taken place in a relatively
peaceful manner had it not been for the efforts of the UN.
Through its principle of trusteeship, it has been able to maintain
the international accountability needed for the transformation of
the colonial states into independent ones. It has provided them
with a forum where they can stand on an equal footing with their
colonial masters, thus breaking down the barriers of the past
centuries without recrimination.
It is, however, in the field of functional cooperation that the
UN record has been most impressive. The work of UN agencies
in such areas as health, transportation, communication, food,
science and education has made the world body an indispensable
organ of multinational cooperation. ‘Development’ and ‘security’
has been prefixed with a ‘human’ connotation—thanks largely to
the efforts of the UN. Human development and human security
are both global concerns today.
Through multilateral programmes in specific functional areas,
the UN has given international protection and material assistance
to millions of refugees and has aided children and other target
groups to meet their special needs. Rights of women and
children are now clearly codified in UN conventions as are the
rights of minorities and the ‘differently abled’. The UN system
has also helped in a substantial flow of technical assistance and
development capital to needy counties. Although the wide gap
between the rich and the poor has not been bridged, the UN has
made a significant contribution to the growth of the idea that
development is an international responsibility.
The UN role in promoting human rights has been limited

largely to rule-making. Violations of UN standards in this regard
have been innumerable Nevertheless, through discussions,
declaration, reports and international covenants sponsored by
the UN, the organization seems to have promoted the cause of
human rights as never before in the past.
12.9 The Limits of UN Action
Judged by its self-proclaimed aims and agenda, the achievements

of the UN have been modest. Given the feasibility limits that exist
on effective international action, this does not seem surprising. The
divisive effects of differing ideologies, cultures, material interest
and levels of development have very often hindered effective
multilateral cooperation. In the more sensitive areas of peace and
security, where national power, prestige, and resource allocation
are at stake, the UN has since its very inception been hampered
by serious and continuing divisions—East–West, North–South,
colonial–anticolonial, regional and bilateral power rivalries and so
on. Another serious limitation on UN performance in every field
has been the inability of the UN to enforce its decisions on states
reluctant to conform to multilateral control or any kind of global
governance mechanism. This is true not only of the permanent
members of the Security Council (armed with the veto, which
can nullify any action against them), but also of other recalcitrant
states against whom it has not been possible to impose decisions.
The greatest limitation of the UN system was and will remain
the sovereignty of states and until a global consensus is forged
on the need for a wider acceptance of the mechanisms of global
governance, the UN will continue to function pretty much as it
does today.
12.10 Millennium Declaration
The Millennium Summit Declaration in 2000 was adopted

following three days of unprecedented meetings which brought
together the largest gathering of world leaders in history. One
326 l Rumki Basu
hundred heads of state, 47 heads of government, three crown

princes, five vice-presidents and three deputy prime ministers
took part in the event, which drew some 8,000 delegates and 5,500
journalists.
The Declaration spells out values and principles, as well as goals
in the key priority areas of peace, development, the environment,
human rights, protecting the vulnerable, the special needs of
Africa, and strengthening of the UN. In addition, leaders called
for specific follow-up action, requesting the General Assembly to
regularly review progress in implementing the Declaration, and
asking the Secretary-General to issue periodic reports as a basis
for further action.
‘We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure
that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world’s
people,’ the Declaration states in its opening section. ‘For a while
globalisation offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are
very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed’
(We the Peoples).10
The opening section also identifies six core values as ‘essential’
to international relations, namely freedom, equality, solidarity,
tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility. In addition,
the leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the UN and expressed
their determination to establish a just and lasting peace all over
the world in accordance with the UN Charter.
The Declaration sets out a number of measures in the area of
peace and disarmament, including providing the UN with the
necessary resources for conflict prevention, peacekeeping and
related tasks.
‘We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women
and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of
extreme poverty,’ the Declaration states in its longest section, on
development.11 Leaders set out a specific timetable for reducing
poverty (halving the number of people in extreme poverty by the
year 2015), ensuring universal primary education for boys and
girls (by three quarters by 2015), halting the spread of HIV/AIDS
10
United Nations Millennium Declaration, A/Res/55/2 (18th September 2000),
quoted from paragraph 5, second line, available at www.un.org/millennium/sg/
report
11
Ibid., paragraph 11.
(by 2015) and improving the lives of at least 100 million slum
dwellers (by 2020).
Other measures to achieve poverty eradication concern
promoting gender equality, working with the private sector,
and providing access to information technology. In addition, the
Declaration commits member states to ‘an open, equitable, rule-
based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading
and financial system’.12
On the environment, the Declaration calls for such measures
as ensuring the entry-into-force of the Kyoto Protocol, which
contains binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases,
and pressing for full implementation of treaties on biodiversity
and desertification.
‘We will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen
the rule of law’, the Declaration states.13 It calls for specific measures
to secure the rights of all people, with particular mention of
women, minorities and migrant workers, among others. Leaders
undertake to eliminate acts of racism and xenophobia-on the rise
in many societies—and to ensure media freedom as well as the
public’s right to information.
The Declaration also outlines a series of specific measures on
meeting the special needs of Africa, including debt cancellation,
improved market access, enhanced Official Development
Assistance, and increased flows of Foreign Direct Investment as
well as transfers of technology.
On strengthening the UN, the leaders reaffirmed the central
position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy
making and representative UN organ. They also resolved to
intensify efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the Security
Council.
In addition, leaders resolved to ensure that the UN is provided
with timely and predictable resources to do its job. The Declaration
also calls for giving the private sector, non-governmental
organizations and civil society more opportunities to realize the
UN’s goals.
In the report, ‘Road Map towards the Implementation of the
United Nations Millennium Declaration’ published in 2001, the
12
United Nations Millennium Declaration: paragraph 13.
13
Ibid.: paragraph 24.
328 l Rumki Basu
Secretary-General examines in detail how member states, the UN

bodies, international organizations and civil society are putting
into practice the goals set out in the Millennium Declaration.
The final section of the road map, ‘Strengthening the United
Nations’, argues that ‘renewing the capacity of the Organisation
to provide a space for genuine dialogue and a catalyst for effective
action calls for improved coordination among its principal organs
and enhanced partnerships with other multilateral organisations
and civil society’.14 Specifically, there is a need to reaffirm the
central position of the General Assembly, achieve a comprehensive
reform of the Security Council towards more representativeness
and strengthen the role of the Economic and Social Council to take
deliberate steps towards a new world economic order.15
Key reforms in this area, says the Secretary-General, will
involve ensuring the safety of UN and associated personnel. He
also notes the importance of the organization receiving needed
financial resources on a timely and predictable basis. Among
other recommendations for strengthening the organization,
the road map stresses the need for continuing to adopt the
best internal management practices. It recommends building
a stronger relationship among the UN, the Bretton Woods
institutions and the World Trade Organization through the
UN body established for that purpose—the Administrative
Committee on Coordination.
12.11 United Nations Reform
Four factors drove the UN reform process at the end of the

millennium:
• The US government demands for serious institutional

changes.
• A long-term financial crisis brought on by many members’
non-payment of their UN assessments, most particularly the
14
United Nations Millennium Declaration, paragraph 29.
15
UN General Assembly, Implementation of the United Nations Millennium
Declaration: Report of the Secretary General, UN document A/58/323 (New York:
UN, 2 September 2003).
unwillingness of the US to meet its financial obligations to

the organization.
• The expansion of UN obligations, particularly for
peacekeeping—the UN Administrative and Budgetary
Committee approved US$2.8 billion for peacekeeping in
2004–05, with an expectation that the cost could rise by 60
per cent in the following year—in the post–Cold War world,
including engaging in nation building, battling terrorism
and providing humanitarian assistance.
• The election of an activist secretary-general who made
reform the hallmark of his tenure in office. (Moore Jr and
Pubantz, 2006: 100)16
In 1996, faced with implacable US opposition to the re-election of

Boutros-Ghali, the Security Council nominated and the General
Assembly chose Kofi Annan of Ghana as the seventh secretary-
general of the UN. On July 16 he delivered on his commitment,
issuing ‘Renewing the United Nations’, the most sweeping set
of administrative and financial reform proposals made in the
institution’s history. During the next six years, Annan pushed
many of his proposals through the General Assembly and then
undertook an effort to reform the programmatic direction of the
world body and to address the growing demands for structural
change in the half-century-old organization. This last area of
reform came in response to the institutional crisis created in 2003
by the US-led war in Iraq.
As one of its concluding acts in 1997, the General Assembly
approved ‘Renewing the United Nations’. Annan’s reform
programme consolidated 12 Secretariat entities into 5, cut UN
personnel 25 per cent below 1987 levels, reduced administrative
costs by 33 per cent, set up a development account in which cost-
cutting savings could be held for development programmes in
poor countries and decentralized ‘decision-making at the country
level while [consolidating] the UN presence under “one [UN]
flag”’.17 This last change reflected Annan’s effort to enhance
16
See the Chapter on UN Reform in Moore and Pubantz (2006: 100).
17
All these measures were approved by the General Assembly based on the
proposals of Kofi Annan presented in a document ‘Renewing the United Nations:
A Programme for Reform’, UN document A/51/950. New York: United Nations,
16 July 1997.
330 l Rumki Basu
the role and authority of the UN resident coordinator in each

country where the organization had programmes and to bring
together all in-country UN agencies into one ‘UN House’. The
approved reforms addressed the near-bankruptcy of the UN by
shifting the organization to a ‘results-based budgeting’ system,
enhancing accountability requirements for all UN subdivisions
and specialized agencies, calling for the creation of a revolving
credit fund of $1one billion, and establishing ‘sunset provisions’
to guarantee that bodies no longer needed would be disbanded.
In February 2003 the secretary-general appointed a panel of
eminent persons, headed by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the
former president of Brazil, to look at UN–civil society relations
and to make recommendations on how such relations might be
deepened. The panel issued the Cardoso Report in June 2004.18
Panel members called for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the work of the
UN, with reforms based on four principles:
• The UN should become an ‘outward-looking organization’,

serving as the ‘convener’ of multiple constituencies,
facilitating rather than ‘doing’. It should put global issues
rather than the institution at the centre of its work.
• The UN should include more, not fewer, actors in its
deliberations, creating permanent partnerships whenever
possible. Noting that critics often described NGOs as
unelected, nondemocratic advocacy groups that speak
for few more than their members and that are far less
representative than sovereign states, the panel asserted
that ‘politically active citizens now express their concerns
through civil society mechanisms rather than the traditional
instruments of democracy’.19 The UN must recognize that
‘global civil society now wields real power in the name of
citizens.’20
• The UN must attempt to connect the global with the local,
recognizing that in the process of globalization, the nation
state cannot always be the mediator between the citizen
18
The Cardoso Report, ‘Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations—Civil
Society Relations, We the Peoples: Civil Society, the United Nations and Global
Governance’, UN document A/58/817. New York: United Nations, 21 June 2004.
19
Ibid., 20.
20
Ibid., 25.
and the world. The UN will implement its programmes

effectively only if it has a working relationship with the sub-
national actors present in local communities.
• The UN should accept an explicit role in strengthening
global governance and tackling the democratic deficits it is
prone to, ‘emphasizing participatory democracy and deeper
accountability of institutions to the global public’.21 In other
words, the UN needs to go beyond its intergovernmental
nature and become an actor itself in civil society, promoting
a particular political ideology and its supporting values and
institutions.
The UN Charter provides a constitutional framework for the

UN. Like any written foundational document, it lays out an
organizational and functional arrangement that met its authors’
needs but has required amendment and reinterpretation as times
and conditions have changed. Although the Charter has been
amended formally only five times in the UN’s history, the majority
of changes in the UN have resulted from informal revisions in UN
practice. Most important, the growth in UN membership, Cold
War pressures, financial woes, US discontent with the UN and
peacekeeping and new-era demands on the organization have
forced concerted reform in the world body.
Box 12.2: 2005 World Summit Outcome
At the September 2005 World Summit, held at UN Headquarters,

world leaders agreed to take action on a range of global challenges. Their
commitments included:
• Development. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
by 2015; $50 billion a year by 2010 to fight poverty; developing
countries to adopt MDG national plans by 2006; quick-impact
initiatives to support anti-malaria efforts, education, healthcare;
innovative sources of financing for development; ensuring long-term
debt sustainability with increased grant-based financing; cancelling
100 per cent of the official multilateral and bilateral debt of heavily
(Box 12.2 Contd.)
21
Cardoso Report, 2004.
332 l Rumki Basu
(Box 12.2 Contd.)
indebted poor countries (HIPCs); where appropriate, significant debt

relief or restructuring for other low and middle-income developing
countries; commitment to trade liberalization, implementing the
development aspects of the WTO’s Doha work programme.
• Terrorism. Unqualified condemnation by all governments of terrorism
‘in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever,
wherever and for whatever purposes’; push for a comprehensive
convention against terrorism within a year; early entry into force of
the nuclear terrorism convention; all states to join and implement all
anti-terrorism conventions; an anti-terrorism strategy to make the
international community stronger, terrorists weaker.
• Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping and Peacemaking. Creating a
Peacebuilding Commission to help countries transition from war to
peace, backed by a support office and standing fund; a standing police
capacity for UN peacekeeping operations; strengthening the Secretary
General’s capacity for mediation and good offices.
• Responsibility to Protect. Unambiguous acceptance of collective
international responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; willingness to
take timely, decisive collective action through the Security Council.
• Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law. Strengthening the UN
human rights machinery; doubling the High Commissioner’s budget;
establishing a Human Rights Council during the coming year; reaffirming
democracy as a universal value; welcoming a new Democracy Fund;
eliminating pervasive gender discrimination, including inequalities in
education, property ownership, violence against women and girls, and
impunity. Ratifications during the Summit triggered the entry into
force of the Convention against Corruption.
• Management Reform. Strengthening the UN’s oversight capacity,
expanding oversight to additional agencies; an independent oversight
advisory committee; further developing a new ethics office; reviewing
all UN mandates older than five years; overhauling rules and
policies on budget, finance and human resource to improve the UN’s
responsiveness; a one-time staff buyout, to ensure the UN has the
appropriate staff for today’s challenges.
• Environment. Recognizing the serious challenge of climate change;
acting through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change;
assisting the most vulnerable, such as small island developing states,
creating a global early warning system for all natural hazards.
• International Health. Scaling up response to HIV/AIDS, TB and
malaria, through prevention, care, treatment and support, and
mobilizing additional resources; fighting infectious diseases, including

full implementation of the new International Health Regulations, and
support for the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network of the
WHO.
• Humanitarian Assistance. Improving the Central Emergency
Revolving Fund, so that relief arrives reliably and immediately when
disasters occur; recognizing the Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement as an important framework for protecting the internally
displaced.
• Updating the UN Charter. Updating the Charter by winding up
the Trusteeship Council, marking completion of UN’s historic
decolonization role, and deleting the Charter’s anachronistic references
to ‘enemy states’.
Many of these commitments have already been accomplished, and many
others are well under way. (For the full text of the 2005 World Summit
Outcome, see www.un.org/summit2005)
Source: United Nations (2008: 16). Also available at www.un.org
12.12 Conclusion
It is generally agreed that the UN should try to become far more

effective than it is today by acting as ‘a centre for harmonizing
the interest of nations’. It should be better equipped to enable it
to become such a centre, for the UN is not what was once hoped it
would be—a world government or in any respect a superstate, able
to act outside the framework of decisions made by its members.
The UN can, therefore, be best defined as a state-serving, state-
restraining and state-protecting organization. What it can do, if
properly used, is to modify interstate relations by maximizing the
asset which it does possess—its influence. The general direction
in which the UN should seek to move is towards anticipation of
potential conflicts, promotion of negotiations and the formulation
of general norms of international behaviour.
The functions and activities of the UN are moulded by the basic
dimensions and dynamic processes of the international system,
but the UN is itself an actor in the system and is sometimes able to
influence its environment significantly if we examine its various
334 l Rumki Basu
roles carefully in the following roles: (a) as a norm setter, (b) as

an articulator and aggregator of interests, (c) conflict manager
and (d) a force for political change. The current flexibility in the
international system creates both opportunities and pitfalls for the
UN. In many areas of the globe (Russia, East Europe and China)
we have witnessed political change of a phenomenal character.
However, in large parts of Asia and Africa, there is acute
poverty, violations of human rights and civil wars. The situation
by its very nature emphasizes the norm creation and collective
legitimization role of the organization. The fact that many of the
emerging problems are relatively new ones makes them seem
more promising areas for UN activity. As to the pitfalls, the
temptation to move into each new area as a major participant,
despite the obvious political limitations on the capacities of the
organization in the present international system raises serious
dangers of over-commitment. The Millennium Development
Goals focused on both development and democratization. As
world conflicts shifted from interstate to intrastate origins, the
focus of UN activity also shifted accordingly. Kofi Annan (2000:
48) wrote, ‘Once synonymous with the defense of territory from
external attack, the requirements of security today have come
to embrace the protection of communities and individuals from
internal violence.’22 He argued for the UN to defend ‘personal
sovereignty’. Through the nexus of peacekeeping and nation-
building, the UN could address the domestic ‘security’ problems,
could raise the standards of living for the local population and
could promote international stability by promoting human rights
within countries. New multilateral partnerships between the
United Nations and sub-national levels of government and non
state actors could provide a basis for UN success in countering
these challenges.
22
Also see the following works of Kofi Annan.
• ‘Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform’, UN document
A/51/950. New York: UN, 2001.
• ‘Strengthening of the UN: An Agenda for Further Change’, UN document
A/57/387. New York: UN, 2002
Suggested Readings
Annan, Kofi A. 2000. We the Peoples: The Role of the UN in the 21st Century.
New York: United Nations.
Baehr, Peter R. and Leon Gordenker. 1984. The United Nations. New York:
Praeger.
Bailey, Sydney D. and Sam Daws. 1998. The Procedure of the UN Security
Council. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bajpai, U. S. 1986. Forty Years of the UN. New Delhi: Lancer International.
Claude, Iris L. 1971. Swords into Ploughshares. New York: Random.
Glassner, Martin Ira (ed.). 1998. The United Nations at Work. Westport, CT:
Praeger.
Goodrich, L. M. 1974. UN in a Changing World. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Knight, Andy W. 2000. A Changing United Nations: Multilateral Evolution
and the Quest for Global Governance. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan.
Luard, Evan. 1979. The United Nations: How It Works and What It Does.
London: Macmillan.
Mildoon, James P. Jr, Jo Ann Fagot Aviel, Earl Sulivan and Richard
Reitano (eds). 2005. Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Mingst, Karen A. and Margaret P. Karns, 1996. The UN in Post-Cold War
Years. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Moore, John Allphin, Jr and Jerry Pubantz. 2006. The New United Nations.
International Organization in the Twenty First Century. New Delhi:
Pearson Prentice Hall India.
Nicholas, H. 1975. The United Nations as a Political Institution. London:
Oxford University Press.
Peterson, M. J. 1986. The General Assembly in World Politics. Boston, MA:
Allen & Urwin.
Riggs, Robert E. and Jack C. Plano. 1988. The United Nations: International
Organization and World Politics. Chicago, IL: The Dorsey Press.
United Nations. 2008. The United Nations Today, DPI/2480. New York:
United Nations.
Weiss, Thomas G., David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate. 1996. The UN and
Changing World Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

UN - Rumki Basu

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

UN - Rumki Basu

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

UN - Rumki Basu

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

12

The United Nations:

l To understand the historical evolution of the United Nations (UN) since

The United Nations (UN), established on 24 October 1945 by 51

• To maintain international peace and security

The UN family of organizations is made up of a group of

12.1 The Main Organs of the United Nations:

12.1.1 The General Assembly

a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, and

12.1.2 The Role of the General Assembly

greatly influenced the development of norms of international

directly control activity by the Secretariat or subsidiary organs of

played a dominant role in the next two or three years in influencing

problems, the division of Germany, Berlin, human rights in East

are outside its direct purview, the Assembly seeks to influence

12.1.3 The Security Council

When the Security Council considers a threat to international

VI and VII, during the Cold War, when superpower difference

agreed courses of action over crisis situations among individual

12.1.4 The Economic and Social Council

1. To make or initiate studies, reports and recommendations

Decisions of the Council are made by a simple majority of members

Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Commission on Science and

The commissions are responsible for studying the problems of

Finally, the Council itself is a body of very limited powers. It

12.1.5 The Trusteeship Council

12.1.6 The International Court of Justice

countries which are parties to the statute of the court can be

the international court will perhaps not seem impressive. On

12.1.7 The Secretariat

empowered to become involved in a large range of areas that can

12.2 The Budget

The biennial budget of the UN is initially submitted by

the General Assembly. The most significant innovation involved

12.3 The United Nations and the Maintenance

number of classical peacekeeping missions like the ones in Congo,

Peacekeeping Operations, established during the financial crisis

• Establishment of an early warning office that continuously

Expenditures on UN peacekeeping grew sixfold between 1987

12.4 Intervention within States

change the functioning, policies and goals of its government and

War in 1991 quickly gave way to doubts about UN efficiency and

12.5 Economic and Social Development

The UN aim of ‘social progress and better standards of life in

accepted norms to govern international economic relations

Box 12.1: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Goal 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 8 : Develop a global partnership for development

Source: United Nations.

social problems in one part of the world may have an impact on

organizations (IGOs) were brought into the UN System besides

12.6 Humanitarian Assistance and

A number of bodies have been set up by the UN in order to assist

General Assembly created the UNICEF in 1946 and extended its

The principle that the individual is to be held responsible for

The UN has played a crucial role in the transition of peoples

spokesmen could articulate their position, it greatly expanded the

outbreak of hostilities anywhere brings a UN response, generally

The UN role in promoting human rights has been limited

12.1 The Main Organs of the United Nations:

12.1.2 The Role of the General Assembly

12.3 The United Nations and the Maintenance

12.6 Humanitarian Assistance and