United Nations

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Type: Government Agency
On the web: http://www.un.org

The United Nations comprises 192 member countries (nearly every country in the world) and works toward maintaining international peace and security and finding solutions for global economic and humanitarian problems. The UN conducts its mission through six main organs, the Economic and Social Council, the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, the Secretariat, the Security Council, and the Trusteeship Council. The United Nations was founded in 1945 when the UN Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, the US, and a majority of other signatory countries. The UN is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Geneva and Vienna.

Officers:
Secretary General: Ban Ki-Moon
Deputy Secretary General: Asha-Rose Migiro
Chief Information Technology Officer: Choi Soon-hong

(est. 1945). President Franklin D. Roosevelt foresaw the need for “Four Policemen”—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China (France was added later)—to order the post–World War II world and repel all attempts at aggression and violence. Meeting in San Francisco in 1945, the founders of the United Nations tried to fulfill that vision by creating a Security Council with five permanent members charged with saving “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The UN Charter set up a military staff committee—consisting of the chiefs of staff or their representatives from the five permanent members—to take over the strategic direction of any military operation of the Security Council. Although this committee has met regularly for more than a half century, it has never directed any UN military operation. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union could never agree sufficiently on military issues to share a joint command. Even after the Cold War, this kind of cooperation proved impractical. Yet, despite an inert military staff committee, the United Nations has been heavily involved in military action.

In one instance, the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, the Security Council did act like a team of Roosevelt‐inspired policemen. The Council condemned North Korean aggression, called on the world to aid South Korea, and authorized a UN command under U.S. Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur. But the United Nations managed to do all this only because the Soviet Union was boycotting sessions of the Security Council to protest the denial of a Council seat to Communist China. Although fifteen other countries dispatched troops or air support to Korea under a UN flag, the Americans commanded and dominated the UN force and fought the three‐year Korean War as if it were their own.

Aside from the accident of the Soviet boycott during the initial Korean crisis, the United Nations had no significant role in dealing with the Cold War. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, for example, the United Nations served as no more than a theater as U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson displayed photographic evidence of the Soviet Union installing missiles and launchers in Cuba. And Secretary General U Thant earned only contempt from President Lyndon B. Johnson during the late 1960s for trying to mediate an end to the Vietnam War.

The United Nations dealt instead with crises on the periphery of the Cold War. A major innovation in UN work arose from the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Looking for a way to ease the British, French, and Israeli troops out of Egypt after their ill‐fated intervention, Dag Hammarskjold, the urbane Swedish bureaucrat who headed the United Nations as secretary general, persuaded all sides to accept UN troops in their place. That had never been done before. In a remarkable feat of management and energy, Hammarskjold and his chief aide, the African American Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph Bunche, put together in one week the United Nations' first peacekeeping force—6,000 troops from 9 countries. The United States offered surplus helmets, which were quickly painted blue and passed to the troops, the first “Blue Helmets,” as UN peacekeepers would come to be known.

In 1960, the United Nations dispatched Blue Helmets to the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to restore law and order out of bloody chaos and replace the Belgian troops, who no longer had any place in an independent African country. Hammarskjold, who would die in a plane crash while on a Congo mission, interpreted Security Council resolutions as broadly as possible and directed his troops to put down the secession of Katanga. The suppression was so controversial and bloody, however, that UN peacekeepers would not engage in military offensives for another thirty years. Quiet patrolling of cease‐fire lines in trouble spots like Cyprus (between Greek and Turkish Cypriots), the Sinai (between Egyptians and Israelis), and the Golan Heights (between Syrians and Israelis) would become the hallmark of UN peacekeepers, earning them the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

The character of UN peacekeeping was transformed by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War. Euphoria over the Persian Gulf War of 1991 contributed to the change. Although this war was not officially declared a UN war as the Korean War had been, the Security Council played a key role with resolutions authorizing the United States and its Coalition partners to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The war persuaded UN diplomats and bureaucrats that the Security Council, as long as the United States and Russia agreed, could now literally attempt anything. Some analysts felt that Franklin Roosevelt's dream would be realized at last.

The United Nations found itself dealing with a host of crises in different ways: monitoring human rights violations, supervising elections, creating democratic institutions, feeding the hungry, as well as policing the peace in such flashpoints as El Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, Haiti, and Rwanda. But its new confidence was swiftly shattered by ill‐fated missions to Somalia and Bosnia.

When eighteen U.S. Army Rangers died in Mogadishu in October 1993 during their abortive manhunt for a Somali warlord, President Bill Clinton decided to withdraw all U.S. troops, crippling the mission. Although the fallen rangers had operated outside UN command, aides of Clinton unjustly put the blame on Secretary General Boutros Boutros‐Ghali, despoiling the image of the United Nations in American eyes. That image worsened in the Bosnian crisis (1992–95). The United Nations proved incapable of halting Serb aggression and protecting Muslim civilian populations from massacre in towns that had been designated “safe areas” by the Security Council. This impotence stemmed from the failure of the United States and its European allies to agree on a strategy for dealing with Serb aggression. UN peacekeepers found themselves patrolling Bosnia under the authority of scores of contradictory toothless resolutions from the Security Council. When the United States brokered a peace agreement at Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, NATO troops supplanted the UN peacekeepers and enforced the agreement.

The animosity toward the United Nations so intensified in the United States that Congress refused to pay all the assessments that Washington owed, precipitating a financial crisis. UN diplomats and officials commemorated the fiftieth anniversary in October 1995 in a depressed mood, convinced that the United Nations no longer would have the funds or public support to mount many peacekeeping missions.

[See also Berlin Crises; Internationalism; Somalia, U.S. Military Involvement in.]

Bibliography

• Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjold, 1972.
• John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 1977.
• Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1982.
• Brian Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War, 1991.
• Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Life, 1993.
• Stanley Meisler, United Nations: The First Fifty Years, 1995

An international organization of countries set up in 1945, in succession to the League of Nations, to promote international peace, security, and cooperation. Its members, originally the countries that fought against the Axis Powers in World War II, now number more than 150 and include most sovereign states of the world, the chief exceptions being Switzerland and North and South Korea. Administration is by a secretariat headed by the Secretary General. The chief deliberative body is the General Assembly. The Security Council bears the primary responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security. The headquarters of the United Nations are in New York. See United Nations General Assembly; United Nations Security Council; and United Nations Task Force.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

A voluntary association of around 190 states signatory to the UN Charter (1945), whose primary aim is to maintain international peace and security, solve economic, social, and political problems through international cooperation, and promote respect for human rights.

The UN, headquartered in New York, formally embodies the sovereign equality of states. The chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General. Primary responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security rests with the Security Council. The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ and plenary body. An Economic and Social Council coordinates the work of the many specialized intergovernmental agencies and bodies, and the International Court of Justice. The Assembly delivers resolutions and not statutes; it can make external recommendations but not take binding decisions or enforcement action.

The hopes that the UN would play a larger role including in peacekeeping activities following the end of East-West hostilities have dimmed. The attitude of the US government is critical and has been a constraining factor. Nevertheless, the conventional understanding that the body has no right to intervene in matters essentially the domestic jurisdiction of any state (UN Charter Article 2:7) is eroding, especially where governments abuse their own citizens' basic human rights. Funded by contributions from member states, the UN desperately needs larger and more secure funding. It is expected that Japan will be admitted to the Security Council, and that possibly there will be a seat for the European Union.

— Peter Burnell

The UN replaced the failed League of Nations after the Second World War. Wartime negotiations between Russia, America, China, and Britain produced a blueprint for a new global security institution. The United Nations came into being on 24 October 1945 with 51 member states. By 2000, there were 188.

The institutions of the UN bore some similarity to those of the league, though the General Assembly was empowered to act on majority votes, rather than the principle of unanimity. But the five main powers, UK, USA, USSR, France, and China, gave themselves a power of veto in the Security Council, which Britain retains.

The effectiveness of the UN in maintaining global security has rested to a large extent on the superpowers being in agreement. UN peacekeeping activities proliferated at times of relaxation during the Cold War, and after 1989, but were rarer when the two main powers were trading vetoes with each other in the 1950s or the 1980s. The UN was able to intervene in the Korean War because the USSR at the time was boycotting the Security Council. British soldiers have played a part in UN peacekeeping activities, notably in Cyprus and in Bosnia. But UN authority was weakened by strong disagreements in 2003 over policy towards Iraq.

The United States was a key force behind the establishment of the United Nations (UN) at the end of World War II. The term, the "United Nations," was first used on 1 January 1942 in an agreement that pledged that none of the Allied governments would make a separate peace with the Axis Powers. The actual Charter of the United Nations that was finalized in 1945 was very much a U.S. document, in contrast to the Covenant of the LEague of Nations that had been based primarily on both U.S. and British drafts. The UN Charter flowed from discussions at Dumbarton Oaks (outside Washington, D.C.) in 1944 between the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and later China. Fifty governments signed the Charter in June 1945. UN membership exceeded 120 by the early 1970s, was over 150 by 1980, and reached 185 nation-states by the 1990s. Despite the central role of the United States in the establishment of the UN, and in many of its subsequent operations, Washington's relationship with the organization has not been without friction over the years.

The Origins and Establishment of the United Nations

There is considerable debate about the United States' motives for the establishment of the UN. From the point of view of some commentators, the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945) viewed the UN as a potential pillar of a wider effort to construct an international order in which U.S. manufacturers and investors would be able to continue to benefit economically following the end of World War II. Other observers emphasize the role of liberal (or Wilsonian) idealism in the foundation of the UN and its importance as an effort to move beyond the Great Power rivalry of the pre-1945 era. Related to this perception is the view that Roosevelt envisioned the UN as a vehicle by which the Soviet Union could be brought into a more cooperative and less confrontational international order. From this perspective, the UN was a way of maintaining and broadening the alliance after 1945 between the victorious powers in World War II.

At the same time, even if the establishment of the UN represented an immediate response to World War II, it built on rather than displaced the ideas about, and the practices of, international relations that had emerged prior to the 1940s. For example, the UN was clearly a successor organization to the League of Nations. But, given the discredited reputation of the League, the UN could not be established directly on its foundations. Many observers regard the UN as an improvement on the overall structure of the League of Nations. From the perspective of the United States and its wartime allies, one of the most significant improvements was to be the way in which the UN was even more explicitly grounded in the principle of the concert (or concerted action) of the Great Powers. The notion that the Great Powers had unique rights and obligations in international relations was already a major element behind the establishment of the League of Nations, particularly its main decision-making body, the Council. In the UN, however, the major allied powers were given permanent seats on the Security Council, which came with the right of veto on any UN security initiative. The main framers of the UN also sought to enlarge the organization's role in social and economic affairs (in contrast to the League). This flowed from the knowledge that a broad international effort would be required to deal with a range of problems related to reconstruction following the end of World War II. There was also a sense that mechanisms for countering the kind of wholesale violation of human rights that had characterized the Nazi regime needed to be set up. Furthermore, in light of both the Great Depression and World War II there was a growing concern that economic inequality and poverty facilitated crisis and war.

The Operation and Growth of the United Nations

The Security Council, as already suggested, is the most important body of the UN. It is in permanent session and is responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. It has the power to call on the armed forces of member governments to provide peacekeeping forces and to intervene in conflicts and disputes around the world. The Security Council was established with five permanent members and ten rotating members. The permanent members are the major allied powers that won World War II: the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), Great Britain, France, and China (Taiwan held the Chinese seat until 1971). The five permanent members all have an absolute veto on any resolution of the Security Council. After 1945 international power politics, as played out at the UN, were directly linked to the (sometimes dubious) proposition that these five states were the most politically and militarily significant in world affairs. The veto also meant that although these five powers were prevented, in theory, from using force in a fashion that went against the UN Charter, their veto in the Security Council protected them from sanction or censure if they did engage in unilateral action. The Security Council thus represented a major arena for Cold War politics at the same time as the Cold War, which pitted its members against each other, ensured that the ability of the Security Council to act was often profoundly constrained.

While the Security Council's focus was on issues of peace and war, the General Assembly was given particular responsibility for social and economic issues. Over the years, as this brief has grown, a range of specialized, often semiautonomous, agencies have emerged. For example, the International Labor Organization, which had been set up by the League of Nations, was revitalized. The UN also established the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization, not to mention the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Development Programme. By the 1990s there were nineteen separate UN agencies. Some of the most significant UN organizations that emerged after 1945 now operate almost entirely independently. This is particularly true of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank).

The Cold War, Decolonization, and the United Nations in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

The UN, as already emphasized, was profoundly shaped by the emerging Cold War. In this context the United States increasingly perceived it as an important element in its policy toward Moscow. For example, a U.S. Department of State memorandum in April 1946 observed, "[t]he Charter of the United Nations affords the best and most unassailable means through which the U.S. can implement its opposition to Soviet physical expansion." Meanwhile, Moscow's early resistance to Washington's preferred candidates for the presidency of the General Assembly and the post of the UN's first Secretary-General ensured that the UN would be an important forum for the wider Cold War. The UN was also directly involved in and shaped by the rising nationalist sentiment against colonialism and the move toward decolonization, as well as the question of racial discrimination that was directly or indirectly connected to the colonial question. For example, the UN passed a resolution on 29 November 1947 that called for the end of the British mandate in Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem being put under international administration. The Arab delegates at the UN were unhappy with these proposed arrangements and responded by walking out of the General Assembly. On 14 May 1948 the state of Israel was officially proclaimed, followed by the start of open warfare between the new state of Israel and neighboring Arab states. A cease-fire was eventually agreed to under the mediation of Ralph Bunche (a U.S. citizen and senior UN official), who subsequently received the Nobel Peace Prize. Israel was formally admitted to the UN in May 1949. The conflict between the Dutch colonial government in the Netherlands East Indies and the de facto government of the Republic of Indonesia was also brought before the UN in the late 1940s. The United States exerted its influence inside and outside the UN, and in March 1949 the Dutch government agreed to move quickly to decolonize and recognize Indonesian independence. The Cold War backdrop was important in this trend. The United States was concerned that Moscow's support for national liberation movements, such as that in Indonesia, might enhance the influence of the Soviet Union, and it realized at the same time that U.S. support for decolonization would advance U.S. influence.

The Korean War (1950–1953) was a turning point for the UN, and for U.S. Cold War policy. In September 1947 the United States placed the Korean question before the General Assembly. This was done in an effort to wind back the United States' commitment to the Korean peninsula. Subsequently the General Assembly formally called for the unification of what was at that point a Korea divided between a northern government allied to the Soviet Union (and later the Peoples' Republic of China, or PRC) and a southern government allied to the United States. Following the outbreak of war between the north and the south on 25 June 1950, the Security Council quickly began organizing a UN military force, under U.S. leadership, to intervene in Korea. This was made possible by the fact that Moscow had been boycotting the Security Council since the start of 1950. The Soviet Union was protesting the fact that China's permanent seat on the Security Council continued to be held by the Kuomintang (KMT) government that had been confined to Taiwan since the Chinese Communist Party's triumph on the mainland at the end of 1949. In Korea it quickly became clear that the United States (and its UN allies) were entering a major war. The resolutions of the General Assembly on Korean unification were soon being used to justify a full-scale military effort against the North Korean regime. The initial aim of U.S.-UN intervention to achieve the limited goal of ending northern aggression was quickly transformed into a wider set of aims, centered on the reunification of the peninsula under a pro-U.S.–UN government. The ensuing conflict eventually brought the PRC directly into the war.

It was initially thought that U.S.-UN intervention in Korea indicated that the UN had overcome the paralysis that had afflicted the League of Nations in any conflict where the rival interests of Great Powers were involved. But, once the Soviet Union resumed its seat on the Security Council in August 1950, Moscow challenged the validity of the resolutions of the Security Council that underpinned UN operations in Korea. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was also highly critical of Secretary-General Trygve Lie's keen prosecution of UN actions in Korea. Moscow opposed his reelection in 1951, but the United States managed to ensure that he remained in the post until the end of 1952. At the same time, Moscow's delegation at the UN avoided having anything to do with the Secretary-General, dramatically weakening his position. In the wake of the signing of an armistice agreement in Korea on 27 July 1953, U.S. influence at the UN went into relative decline. Another result of the Korean War was two decades of Sino-U.S. hostility. Until 1971 Washington successfully prevented all attempts at the UN to have the PRC replace the KMT in China's permanent seat in the Security Council.

The decline of U.S. influence in the 1950s was primarily a result of the way in which the process of decolonization increasingly altered the balance of power in the General Assembly. A key event in the history of decolonization and the growth of the UN was the Suez Crisis that followed the seizure of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956 by the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954–1970). The canal was of considerable commercial and strategic importance to Great Britain and France. Despite the objections of the Security Council, London and Paris, with the support of the Israeli government, attacked Egypt. The UN responded, with U.S. and Soviet support, by setting up and dispatching a 6,000-strong United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to manage a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Anglo-French troops from the Canal Zone. The UNEF, which continued to operate as a buffer between Egypt and Israel from 1956 to 1967, was important for the history of future peacekeeping efforts. It flowed from a resolution of the General Assembly and clearly set the precedent (not always followed) that UN peacekeeping forces should work to prevent conflict between opposing sides rather than engage in the conflict.

The growing significance of decolonization for the UN became clear when, following Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, a UN force (Opération des Nations Unies au Congo, or ONUC) was asked to intervene. The UN operation in the Congo, from July 1960 to June 1964, was the biggest UN action since the war in Korea in the early 1950s. The Congo crisis started with a mutiny in the former Belgian colonial military establishment (Force Publique) that had become the Armée Nationale Congolaise following independence. When troops attacked and killed a number of European officers, the Belgian administrators, and other Europeans who had remained behind after independence, fled the country, opening the way for Congolese to replace the European military and administrative elite. Shortly after this, Moise Tshombe led a successful secessionist effort to take the wealthy Katanga province out of the new nation. At the end of 1960 President Kasa Vubu dismissed the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and a week later Colonel Joseph Mobutu seized power, holding it until February 1961, by which time Lumumba had been killed. Meanwhile, Belgian troops intervened to protect Belgian nationals as civil war spread in the former Belgian colony. The assassination of Lumumba precipitated a Security Council resolution on 21 February 1961 that conferred on ONUC the ability to use force to stop the descent into civil war. Prior to this point ONUC had only been allowed to use force in self-defense. During operations in the Congo, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. Even with upwards of 20,000 UN-sponsored troops in the Congo, however, a cease-fire was not agreed to and Katanga was not brought back into the Congo until 1963. All ONUC troops were withdrawn by the end of June 1964, in part because the UN itself was on the brink of bankruptcy (a result of the French and Soviet government's refusal to contribute to the costs of ONUC). It was not until the UN operation in Somalia in 1992, almost thirty years later, that the UN again intervened militarily on the scale of its operation in the Congo in the early 1960s.

The Un and the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s

By the 1970s the emergence of a growing number of new nation-states in Africa and Asia over the preceding decades had clearly altered the balance in the UN in favor of the so-called "Third World." This shift was readily apparent when the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in April 1974 passed the Declaration and Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New Economic Order. This represented a formal call for a New International Economic Order in an effort to improve the terms on which the countries of the Third World participated in the global economy. In the late 1970s the UN also established the Independent Commission on International Development (the Brandt Commission), presided over by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. However, by the start of the 1980s, calls at the UN and elsewhere to address the North-South question were increasingly rebuffed, particularly with the Debt Crisis and the subsequent spread of neoliberal economic policies and practices. With the support of Margaret Thatcher's government in Britain (1979–1990) and the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) in the United States, the IMF and the World Bank increasingly encouraged the governments of the Third World to liberalize trade, privatize their public sectors, and deregulate their economies. This trend was strengthened by the end of the Cold War, by which time virtually all branches of the UN had become sites for the promotion of economic liberalism and what has come to be known as globalization.

The United Nations After the Cold War

The Cold War had undermined the expectation, prevalent in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that the UN would provide the overall framework for international security after 1945. With the end of the Cold War, however, the UN was presented with an opportunity to revive the major peacekeeping and security activities that many of its early proponents had anticipated. For example, while the UN dispatched a total of 10,000 peacekeepers to five operations (with an annual budget of about $233 million) in 1987, the total number of troops acting as peacekeepers under UN auspices by 1995 was 72,000. They were operating in eighteen different countries and the total cost of these operations was over $3 billion. Early post–Cold War initiatives were thought to augur well for the UN's new role. The major civil war in El Salvador, which had been fueled by the Cold War, came to a negotiated end in 1992 under the auspices of the UN. Apart from El Salvador, the countries in which the UN has provided peacekeepers and election monitors include Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, East Timor, Macedonia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, and the Western Sahara. While Cambodia and East Timor, for example, are seen as UN success stories, the failure of the UN in Angola and Somalia highlights the constraints on the UN's role in the post–Cold War era.

The UN's new post–Cold War initiative in relation to peacekeeping was linked to the appointment of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General at the beginning of 1992. Shortly after taking up the new post, Boutros-Ghali presented the Security Council with his "Agenda for Peace." This document laid out a range of major reforms to facilitate a greatly expanded peacekeeping role. Boutros-Ghali wanted member states to provide permanently designated military units that could be deployed quickly and overcome the UN's well-known inability to act quickly in a time of crisis. A number of states expressed an interest in such an arrangement at the same time as changes were made at UN headquarters in New York. The UN military advisory staff was expanded with a focus on intelligence activities and long-range planning, and efforts were made to enhance communications between officers on the ground and UN headquarters. There was even some talk of forming a multinational military establishment, made up of volunteers that would be under the direct control of the UN. These initiatives made little progress, however, in the context of an organization comprised of nation-states that were very wary of providing soldiers and equipment in ways that might diminish their sovereignty. Furthermore, there was little or no possibility of a more effective and united intervention by the UN in situations where the national interests of the major powers were thought to be at stake. At the same time, the fact that a number of countries, including the United States and Russia, fell behind in their payment of dues to the UN suggested the prospects for a more activist and revamped UN were still limited. As a result of concerted U.S. opposition, Boutros-Ghali was not reappointed as Secretary-General for a second term, further dampening the momentum toward a more assertive UN. His replacement, Kofi Annan, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, has emerged as a much more cautious and conciliatory Secretary-General.

Bibliography

Armstrong, David. The Rise of the International Organisation: A Short History. London: Macmillan, 1982.

Hilderbrand, Robert C. Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Meisler, Stanley. United Nations: The First Fifty Years. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.

Wesley, Michael. Casualties of the New World Order: The Causes of Failure of UN Missions to Civil Wars. Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1997.

The United Nations, successor to the League of Nations, was conceived and created by the allies during World War II. In 1944 the USSR and the United States, with other major nations, met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., to plan a postwar organization that would provide a forum for the settlement of disputes. Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill solidified plans for the United Nations at Yalta (1945), compromising on substantive issues regarding voting procedures, territorial trusteeships, and the admission of various countries. In April 1945 the allies met in San Francisco and wrote the charter of the new organization, and the United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, following the charter's ratification by the major powers. All member nations received one vote in the General Assembly, but the five major powers enjoyed the right of veto in the Security Council.

Disputes in the United Nations between the Soviet Union and the United States paralleled the growing bitterness of the Cold War. In 1946 the Soviet Union and the United States clashed over the issues of Soviet troops in Iran and the control of atomic weapons. In both cases American victories led to increasing Soviet disaffection from the international body. The United States scored another success in 1950, when a boycott of the Security Council by Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik over the seating of China allowed the United States to win United Nations support for military assistance for South Korea.

The United Nations remained largely impotent in the face of a determined superpower. When Soviet troops moved to crush the Hungarian uprising in 1956, appeals for assistance from the freedom fighters to the United Nations were ignored. Nevertheless the USSR and the United States agreed that same year to allow United Nations monitors into the Middle East to help end the Suez Crisis. In the fall of 1960 Khrushchev attended the opening session of the General Assembly and delivered a speech attacking the Western powers. During a reply to the Soviet leader, members of his delegation hit their fists on the desk in protest; Khrushchev proceeded to bang the table with his shoe, creating one of the more memorable images of the Cold War. In October 1962, when the USSR denied that it had placed offensive missiles in Cuba, the United States presented photographic evidence of the missile sites at the United Nations and convinced world opinion of its position.

The Soviet view of the United Nations slowly changed over the next two decades, as the emergence of new nations in Africa and Asia shifted the balance of power in the General Assembly away from the United States. After seeing the United Nations as an unfriendly body for its first twenty years of existence, and thereby exercising its right to veto many United Nations resolutions, the Soviet Union began to perceive the General Assembly as a more sympathetic body. Both the USSR and the United States continued to use the United Nations as a forum for influencing other nations. Fierce arguments continued over the Middle East, surrogate wars in Africa, Korean Airline 007, and other issues.

During the Gorbachev era the USSR sought better relations with the West and became more cooperative at the United Nations. The first major test of this new policy occurred when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and Gorbachev brought Soviet policy into line with that of the Western powers. Since that time, Russia has attempted to maintain cordial relations with the United Nations.

Bibliography

United States. (1945). United States Statutes at Large (79th Congress, 1st Session, 1945), 59(2):1033 - 1064, 1125 - 1156.

United States. Department of State. (1944). Department of State Bulletin, vol. 11. Washington, DC: Office of Public Communication, Bureau of Public Affairs.

United States. Department of State. (1945). Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Foreign Relations of theUnited States diplomatic papers 6), 969 - 984. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

United States. Department of State. (1945). Department of State Bulletin, vol. 13. Washington, DC: Office of Public Communication, Bureau of Public Affairs.

—HAROLD J. GOLDBERG

The United Nations (U.N.) is an organization of 185 states that strives to attain international peace and security, promotes fundamental human rights and equal rights for men and women, and encourages social progress. The successor to the League of Nations, the United Nations stems from the 1941 Inter-Allied Declaration signed by representatives of fourteen countries (not including the United States) and the Atlantic Charter signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom. In 1942 twenty-six countries met in Washington, D.C., and signed the Declaration by United Nations in a cooperative effort to triumph over German dictator Adolf Hitler during World War II. In addition, wartime conferences in Moscow, Tehran, Yalta, and Washington, D.C. (at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Georgetown), laid the foundation of the future organization. On June 25, 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco and unanimously adopted the Charter of the United Nations. By October 24, 1945, China, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and a majority of the charter's other signatories had ratified it, and the United Nations was officially established. Shortly thereafter the U.S. Congress unanimously invited the United Nations to set up headquarters in the United States, and the organization chose New York City as its permanent home.

The United Nations is open to all "peace-loving" states, a requirement construed liberally over the years. The United Nations comprises six major organs: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice (World Court), and the Trusteeship Council. The Trusteeship Council, which was established to encourage governments to prepare trust territories for self-government or independence, has largely completed its original task of supervising eleven non-self-governing territories. In 1994 the Security Council terminated the Trusteeship Agreement of Belau, a trust territory in the western Pacific that had been administered by the United States. As all other trust territories had previously obtained independence or self-government, the Trusteeship Council amended its rules and now meets only as situations requiring action arise.

The main deliberative body of the United Nations, the General Assembly, somewhat resembles a parliament; each nation has one vote. The General Assembly has no power to compel any action by a member state, however: it only has the right to discuss and make recommendations on matters within the scope of the U.N. Charter. Headed by a president elected at each session, the assembly ordinarily meets from mid-September to mid-December; other sessions are held as necessary. Ordinary matters require only a majority vote, but important matters, such as recommendations on peace and security, election of members to the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council, or admission of member states, require a two-thirds majority. The assembly also approves the U.N. budget (including peacekeeping operations), sets policies, determines programs for the U.N. Secretariat, and, in conjunction with the Security Council's recommendation, appoints the U.N. secretary-general, the chief administrative officer of the United Nations.

The Security Council has the primary responsibility for maintaining peace and security. Five permanent members — the United States, China, France, the Russian Federation (replacing the Soviet Union), and the United Kingdom — join ten other members elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. A representative of each member of the Security Council must always be present at U.N. headquarters so that the council can convene any time peace is threatened. Unlike the other U.N. organs, member states are obligated under the charter to carry out economic and diplomatic decisions by the council. All decisions require nine votes, but on all questions except procedural matters, the permanent members must vote unanimously or abstain. This veto power has been exercised many times and can seriously undermine the Security Council's ability to take bold steps in tenuous situations.

The Security Council usually seeks peaceful means such as mediation or settlement when international peace is threatened. Peacekeepers may be sent to prevent the outbreak of a conflict, or the council may issue a cease-fire directive once fighting has begun. The Security Council may impose economic sanctions and order collective military action.

The United Nations has been involved in approximately forty peacekeeping operations since 1948; more than two dozen operations have occurred since 1988. Military personnel are drawn from member states; more than 750,000 persons have served. More than 1,400 peacekeepers have lost their lives. In early 1996 seventeen U.N. operations deployed approximately 26,300 personnel, including troops, civilian police, and military observers, from seventy countries.

The reality of U.N. peacekeeping efforts often falls short of the organization's ideals. For example, in the early 1990s U.N. troops attempted to restore order and provide humanitarian relief during the civil war in Somalia. Warring Somali factions greatly impeded the troops' efforts, however, and in 1995 the U.N. forces withdrew without succeeding in their mission. In addition, U.N. members sometimes pledge support for a mission but fail to deliver tangible evidence of that support. In 1994 the secretary-general determined that 35,000 troops would be needed to deter attacks on so-called safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Member states authorized fewer than 8,000 troops and took a year to provide them. Nevertheless, the United Nations has had some successes: its operations in Kashmir, Cyprus, Lebanon, Suez, Cambodia, and Mozambique have been highly praised. Other strife-torn areas receiving assistance in recent years include Angola, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and a number of Central American countries. The United Nations also monitored or observed elections in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and South Africa.

The Economic and Social Council, which has fifty-four members, coordinates the economic and social work of the United Nations and its specialized agencies and institutions. Among other tasks, the council recommends and directs activities to promote economic growth in developing countries, promotes the observance of human rights, and attempts to foster cooperation in creating housing, controlling population growth, and preventing crime.

Fourteen specialized agencies are separate, autonomous organizations connected to the United Nations by specific agreements, mainly through the Economic and Social Council. Specialized agencies include the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund (originally the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), is a semi-autonomous organization reporting to the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. UNICEF has programs in 144 countries addressing children's needs, including immunization, nutrition, primary health care, and education. A joint UNICEF-WHO program claims to have immunized 80 percent of the world's children against polio, tetanus, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tuberculosis.

The United Nations also provides humanitarian aid for countries stricken by war, natural disaster, or famine through UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and other U.N. programs. In addition, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, part of the Secretariat, helps assist and protect many millions displaced by strife.

With a staff numbering in the thousands, the Secretariat carries out the United Nations' day-to-day functions in New York and throughout the world. Headed by the secretary-general, the Secretariat's staff represents nearly every member country. The Security Council recommends a candidate for secretary-general to the General Assembly, which appoints the secretary-general for a five-year term. In addition to administrative duties, the secretary-general plays an active role in worldwide peacemaking through diplomacy, by employing mediators, or by sending representatives to negotiate settlements or otherwise assist in resolving conflicts.

The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, is the judicial branch of the United Nations and meets in The Hague, Netherlands. Its fifteen judges are elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council for nine-year terms. Jurisdiction applies only to countries, not individuals. Unless required by a treaty, a country is not obligated to submit to the court's jurisdiction. However, a country agreeing to have a matter determined by the World Court is obligated to comply with the court's decision.

Competing needs, shifting alliances, problems of managing a huge worldwide bureaucracy, and the inevitable politics of the organization make it difficult for the United Nations to attain the goals set forth in its charter. Financial difficulties present further challenges. The United Nations is funded by dues from member states and is prohibited from borrowing from financial institutions. By 1997 members were more than $3 billion in arrears; the United States was responsible for more than half that amount. Despite these obstacles, however, the United Nations has had some success in resolving conflicts and bettering the lives of the world's citizens.

See: international law.

An organization that includes virtually all countries in the world, with nearly 190 member nations. Its General Assembly, in which each member nation has one vote, guides policies and finances generally. Another important division of the United Nations is the Security Council, in which five powerful nations have a majority; the Security Council is charged with solving crises and keeping peace. The United Nations also includes an Economic and Social Council; a Secretariat, or administrative division; and the International Court of Justice, or World Court. It also is allied with several agencies that operate independently, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Quotes:

"We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation." - Dean Acheson

"The United Nations is our one great hope for a peaceful and free world." - Ralph Bunche

"I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife." - Javier Perez De Cuellar

"The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good." - John Foster Dulles

"The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right -- you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves." - Dag Hammarskjold

"The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure -- but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations." - Hubert H. Humphrey

See more famous quotes about United Nations

"UN" redirects here. For other uses, see UN (disambiguation).

United Nations الأمم المتحدة (Arabic) 联合国 (Chinese) Organisation des Nations unies (French) Организация Объединённых Наций (Russian) Organización de las Naciones Unidas (Spanish)
Flag
Map of UN member states Note that this map does not represent the view of its members or the UN concerning the legal status of any country,[1] nor does it accurately reflect which areas's government have UN representation.
Headquarters		International territory in Manhattan, New York City
Official languages		Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish
Membership		192 member states
Leaders
-	Secretary-General	Ban Ki-moon
Establishment
-	United Nations Charter	26 June 1945
-	Ratification of Charter	24 October 1945
Website www.un.org

United Nations portal

The United Nations Organization (UNO) or simply United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions.

There are currently 192 member states, including nearly every sovereign state in the world. From its offices around the world, the UN and its specialized agencies decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout the year. The organization is divided into administrative bodies, primarily: the General Assembly (the main deliberative assembly); the Security Council (for deciding certain resolutions for peace and security); the Economic and Social Council (for assisting in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development); the Secretariat (for providing studies, information, and facilities needed by the UN); the International Court of Justice (the primary judicial organ). Additional bodies deal with the governance of all other UN System agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The UN's most visible public figure is the Secretary-General, currently Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who attained the post in 2007. The organization is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, and has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.^[2]

Contents 1 History 2 Organization 2.1 General Assembly 2.2 Security Council 2.3 Secretariat 2.3.1 Secretary-General 2.4 International Court of Justice 2.5 Economic and Social Council 2.6 Specialized institutions 3 Membership 3.1 Group of 77 4 Functions 4.1 Peacekeeping and security 4.2 Human rights and humanitarian assistance 4.3 Social and economic development 4.4 Mandates 4.5 Other 5 Funding 6 Personnel policy 7 Reform 8 Criticism of the United Nations 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links

History

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Main article: History of the United Nations

The signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco, 1945

Following in the wake of the failed League of Nations (1919–1946), which the United States never joined, the United Nations was established in 1945 to maintain international peace and promote cooperation in solving international economic, social and humanitarian problems. The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization was begun under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt first coined the term 'United Nations' as a term to describe the Allied countries. The term was first officially used on January 1, 1942 when 26 governments signed the Atlantic Charter, pledging to continue the war effort.^[3] On 25 April 1945, the UN Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the Charter of the United Nations. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945 upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, and the Security Council, took place in Westminster Central Hall in London in January 1946.^[4]

Since its creation, there has been controversy and criticism of the UN organization. In the United States, an early opponent of the UN was the John Birch Society, which began a "get US out of the UN" campaign in 1959, charging that the UN's aim was to establish a "One World Government." After the Second World War, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the US as the government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that aimed at creating the new organization. Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it le machin ("the thingie"), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintaining world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.^[5]

Organization

Main article: United Nations System

The United Nations system is based on five principal organs (formerly six – the Trusteeship Council suspended operations in 1994);^[6] the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice.

Four of the five principal organs are located at the main United Nations headquarters located on international territory in New York City. The International Court of Justice is located in The Hague, while other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. Other UN institutions are located throughout the world.

The six official languages of the United Nations, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish,^[2] while the Secretariat uses two working languages, English and French. Five of the official languages were chosen when the UN was founded; Arabic was added later in 1973. The United Nations Editorial Manual states that the standard for English language documents is British usage and Oxford spelling (en-gb-oed), and the Chinese writing standard is Simplified Chinese. This replaced Traditional Chinese in 1971 when the UN representation of China was changed from the Republic of China to People's Republic of China.

General Assembly

United Nations General Assembly hall.

Main article: United Nations General Assembly

The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the United Nations. Composed of all United Nations member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions under a president elected from among the member states. Over a two-week period at the start of each session, all members have the opportunity to address the assembly. Traditionally, the Secretary-General makes the first statement, followed by the president of the assembly. The first session was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Westminster Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.

When the General Assembly votes on important questions, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required. Examples of important questions include: recommendations on peace and security; election of members to organs; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; and, budgetary matters. All other questions are decided by majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under Security Council consideration.

Conceivably, the one state, one vote power structure could enable states comprising just eight percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote.^{[citation needed]} However, as no more than recommendations, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which a recommendation by member states constituting just eight percent of the world's population, would be adhered to by the remaining ninety-two percent of the population, should they object. (See List of countries by population.)

Security Council

United Nations Security Council chamber.

Main article: United Nations Security Council

The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the United Nations can only make 'recommendations' to member governments, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member governments have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25.^[7] The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The Security Council is made up of 15 member states, consisting of 5 permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – and 10 non-permanent members, currently Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, and Uganda. The five permanent members hold veto power over substantive but not procedural resolutions allowing a permanent member to block adoption but not to block the debate of a resolution unacceptable to it. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms with member states voted in by the General Assembly on a regional basis. The presidency of the Security Council is rotated alphabetically each month,^[8] and is held by China for the month of January 2010.

Secretariat

Main article: United Nations Secretariat

The United Nations Secretariat Building at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

The United Nations Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, assisted by a staff of international civil servants worldwide. It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for their meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies. The United Nations Charter provides that the staff be chosen by application of the "highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity," with due regard for the importance of recruiting on a wide geographical basis.

The Charter provides that the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any authority other than the UN. Each UN member country is enjoined to respect the international character of the Secretariat and not seek to influence its staff. The Secretary-General alone is responsible for staff selection.

The Secretary-General's duties include helping resolve international disputes, administering peacekeeping operations, organizing international conferences, gathering information on the implementation of Security Council decisions, and consulting with member governments regarding various initiatives. Key Secretariat offices in this area include the Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter that, in his or her opinion, may threaten international peace and security.

Secretary-General

Main article: Secretary-General of the United Nations

The current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea

The Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, who acts as the de facto spokesman and leader of the UN. The current Secretary-General is Ban Ki-moon, who took over from Kofi Annan in 2007 and will be eligible for reappointment when his first term expires in 2011.^[9]

Envisioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "world moderator", the position is defined in the UN Charter as the organization's "chief administrative officer",^[10] but the Charter also states that the Secretary-General can bring to the Security Council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security",^[11] giving the position greater scope for action on the world stage. The position has evolved into a dual role of an administrator of the UN organization, and a diplomat and mediator addressing disputes between member states and finding consensus to global issues.^[9]

The Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly, after being recommended by the Security Council. The selection can be vetoed by any member of the Security Council,^[12] and the General Assembly can theoretically override the Security Council's recommendation if a majority vote is not achieved, although this has not happened so far.^[13] There are no specific criteria for the post, but over the years it has become accepted that the post shall be held for one or two terms of five years, that the post shall be appointed on the basis of geographical rotation, and that the Secretary-General shall not originate from one of the five permanent Security Council member states.^[13]

Secretaries-General of the United Nations^[14]

No.	Name	Country of origin	Took office	Left office	Note
1	Trygve Lie	Norway	2 February 1946	10 November 1952	Resigned
2	Dag Hammarskjöld	Sweden	10 April 1953	18 September 1961	Died while in office
3	U Thant	Burma	30 November 1961	1 January 1972	First Secretary-General from Asia
4	Kurt Waldheim	Austria	1 January 1972	1 January 1982
5	Javier Pérez de Cuéllar	Peru	1 January 1982	1 January 1992	First Secretary-General from South America
6	Boutros Boutros-Ghali	Egypt	1 January 1992	1 January 1997	First Secretary-General from Africa
7	Kofi Annan	Ghana	1 January 1997	1 January 2007
8	Ban Ki-moon	South Korea	1 January 2007	Incumbent

International Court of Justice

Peace Palace, seat of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands

Main article: International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, Netherlands, is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. Established in 1945 by the United Nations Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the Court.^[15]

It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, sharing the building with the Hague Academy of International Law, a private centre for the study of international law. Several of the Court's current judges are either alumni or former faculty members of the Academy. Its purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states. The court has heard cases related to war crimes, illegal state interference and ethnic cleansing, among others, and continues to hear cases.^[16]

A related court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), began operating in 2002 through international discussions initiated by the General Assembly. It is the first permanent international court charged with trying those who commit the most serious crimes under international law, including war crimes and genocide. The ICC is functionally independent of the UN in terms of personnel and financing, but some meetings of the ICC governing body, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, are held at the UN. There is a "relationship agreement" between the ICC and the UN that governs how the two institutions regard each other legally.^[17]

Economic and Social Council

Main article: United Nations Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, all of which are elected by the General Assembly for a three-year term. The president is elected for a one-year term and chosen amongst the small or middle powers represented on ECOSOC. ECOSOC meets once a year in July for a four-week session. Since 1998, it has held another meeting each April with finance ministers heading key committees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Viewed separate from the specialized bodies it coordinates, ECOSOC's functions include information gathering, advising member nations, and making recommendations. In addition, ECOSOC is well-positioned to provide policy coherence and coordinate the overlapping functions of the UN’s subsidiary bodies and it is in these roles that it is most active.

Specialized institutions

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Main article: List of specialized agencies of the United Nations

There are many UN organizations and agencies that function to work on particular issues. Some of the most well-known agencies are the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

It is through these agencies that the UN performs most of its humanitarian work. Examples include mass vaccination programmes (through the WHO), the avoidance of famine and malnutrition (through the work of the WFP) and the protection of vulnerable and displaced people (for example, by the HCR).

The United Nations Charter stipulates that each primary organ of the UN can establish various specialized agencies to fulfill its duties.

Specialized agencies of the United Nations

No.	Acronyms	Flag	Agency	Headquarters	Head	Established in
1	FAO		Food and Agriculture Organization	Rome, Italy	Jacques Diouf	1945
2	IAEA		International Atomic Energy Agency	Vienna, Austria	Yukiya Amano	1957
3	ICAO		International Civil Aviation Organization	Montreal, Canada	Raymond Benjamin	1947
4	IFAD		International Fund for Agricultural Development	Rome, Italy	Kanayo F. Nwanze	1977
5	ILO		International Labour Organization	Geneva, Switzerland	Juan Somavía	1946
6	IMO		International Maritime Organization	London, United Kingdom	Efthimios E. Mitropoulos	1948
7	IMF		International Monetary Fund	Washington, D.C., USA	Dominique Strauss-Kahn	1945
8	ITU		International Telecommunication Union	Geneva, Switzerland	Hamadoun Touré	1947
9	UNESCO		United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization	Paris, France	Irina Bokova	1946
10	UNIDO		United Nations Industrial Development Organization	Vienna, Austria	Kandeh Yumkella	1967
11	UPU		Universal Postal Union	Berne, Switzerland	Edouard Dayan	1947
12	WB		World Bank	Washington, D.C, USA	Robert B. Zoellick	1945
13	WFP		World Food Programme	Rome, Italy	Josette Sheeran	1963
14	WHO		World Health Organization	Geneva, Switzerland	Margaret Chan	1948
15	WIPO		World Intellectual Property Organization	Geneva, Switzerland	Francis Gurry	1974
16	WMO		World Meteorological Organization	Geneva, Switzerland	Alexander Bedritsky	1950
17	UNWTO		World Tourism Organization	Madrid, Spain	Taleb Rifai	1974

Membership

Main article: United Nations member states

An animation showing the timeline of accession of UN member states, according to the UN. Note that Antarctica has no government; political control of Western Sahara is in dispute; and the territories administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Kosovo are considered by the UN to be provinces of the People's Republic of China and Republic of Serbia, respectively.

With the addition of Montenegro on 28 June 2006, there are currently 192 United Nations member states, including all fully recognized independent states^[18] apart from Vatican City (the Holy See, which holds sovereignty over the state of Vatican City, is a permanent observer).^[19]

The United Nations Charter outlines the rules for membership:

1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

—United Nations Charter, Chapter 2, Article 4 , http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/

Group of 77

The Group of 77 at the UN is a loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations. There were 77 founding members of the organization, but the organization has since expanded to 130 member countries. The group was founded on 15 June 1964 by the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries" issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The first major meeting was in Algiers in 1967, where the Charter of Algiers was adopted and the basis for permanent institutional structures was begun.^[20]

Functions

Peacekeeping and security

See also: List of United Nations peacekeeping missions

UN peacekeeping missions. Dark blue regions indicate current missions , while light blue regions represent former missions.

The UN, after approval by the Security Council, sends peacekeepers to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased or paused to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military, peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states of the UN. The forces, also called the "Blue Helmets", who enforce UN accords are awarded United Nations Medals, which are considered international decorations instead of military decorations. The peacekeeping force as a whole received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

The founders of the UN had envisaged that the organization would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible, however the outbreak of the Cold War made peacekeeping agreements extremely difficult because of the division of the world into hostile camps. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace, as there are several dozen ongoing conflicts that continue to rage around the globe.

A 2005 RAND Corp study found the UN to be successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It compared UN nation-building efforts to those of the United States, and found that seven out of eight UN cases are at peace, as compared with four out of eight US cases at peace.^[21] Also in 2005, the Human Security Report documented a decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses since the end of the Cold War, and presented evidence, albeit circumstantial, that international activism—mostly spearheaded by the UN—has been the main cause of the decline in armed conflict since the end of the Cold War.^[22] Situations where the UN has not only acted to keep the peace but also occasionally intervened include the Korean War (1950–1953), and the authorization of intervention in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War in 1990.

A British armoured car painted as it appeared while deployed on a UN peacekeeping mission

The UN has also drawn criticism for perceived failures. In many cases, member states have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions, an issue that stems from the UN's intergovernmental nature—seen by some as simply an association of 192 member states who must reach consensus, not an independent organization. Disagreements in the Security Council about military action and intervention are seen as having failed to prevent the 1994 Rwandan Genocide,^[23] failed to provide humanitarian aid and intervene in the Second Congo War, failed to intervene in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and protect a refugee haven by the authorizing the peacekeepers to use force, failure to deliver food to starving people in Somalia, failure to implement provisions of Security Council resolutions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and continuing failure to prevent genocide or provide assistance in Darfur. UN peacekeepers have also been accused of child rape, sexual abuse or soliciting prostitutes during various peacekeeping missions, starting in 2003, in the Congo,^[24] Haiti,^[25][26] Liberia,^[27] Sudan,^[28] Burundi and Côte d'Ivoire.^[29] In 2004, former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold criticized what it called the organization's moral relativism in the face of (and occasional support of)^[30] genocide and terrorism that occurred between the moral clarity of its founding period and the present day. Gold specifically mentions Yasser Arafat's 1988 invitation to address the General Assembly as a low point in the UN's history.^[31]

In addition to peacekeeping, the UN is also active in encouraging disarmament. Regulation of armaments was included in the writing of the UN Charter in 1945 and was envisioned as a way of limiting the use of human and economic resources for the creation of them.^[32] However, the advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the charter and immediately halted concepts of arms limitation and disarmament, resulting in the first resolution of the first ever General Assembly meeting calling for specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction".^[33] The principal forums for disarmament issues are the General Assembly First Committee, the UN Disarmament Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament, and considerations have been made of the merits of a ban on testing nuclear weapons, outer space arms control, the banning of chemical weapons and land mines, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, the reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.

The UN is one of the official supporters of the World Security Forum, a major international conference on the effects of global catastrophes and disasters, taking place in the United Arab Emirates, in October 2008.

Human rights and humanitarian assistance

Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949

The pursuit of human rights was a central reason for creating the UN. World War II atrocities and genocide led to a ready consensus that the new organization must work to prevent any similar tragedies in the future. An early objective was creating a legal framework for considering and acting on complaints about human rights violations. The UN Charter obliges all member nations to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights" and to take "joint and separate action" to that end. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though not legally binding, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common standard of achievement for all. The Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues.

The UN and its agencies are central in upholding and implementing the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A case in point is support by the UN for countries in transition to democracy. Technical assistance in providing free and fair elections, improving judicial structures, drafting constitutions, training human rights officials, and transforming armed movements into political parties have contributed significantly to democratization worldwide. The UN has helped run elections in countries with little or no democratic history, including recently in Afghanistan and East Timor. The UN is also a forum to support the right of women to participate fully in the political, economic, and social life of their countries. The UN contributes to raising consciousness of the concept of human rights through its covenants and its attention to specific abuses through its General Assembly, Security Council resolutions, or International Court of Justice rulings.

The purpose of the United Nations Human Rights Council, established in 2006,^[34] is to address human rights violations. The Council is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which was often criticised for the high-profile positions it gave to member states that did not guarantee the human rights of their own citizens.^[35] The council has 47 members distributed by region, which each serve three year terms, and may not serve three consecutive terms.^[36] A candidate to the body must be approved by a majority of the General Assembly. In addition, the council has strict rules for membership, including a universal human rights review. While some members with questionable human rights records have been elected, it is fewer than before with the increased focus on each member state's human rights record.^[37]

The rights of some 370 million indigenous peoples around the world is also a focus for the UN, with a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples being approved by the General Assembly in 2007.^[38] The declaration outlines the individual and collective rights to culture, language, education, identity, employment and health, thereby addressing post-colonial issues which had confronted indigenous peoples for centuries. The declaration aims to maintain, strengthen and encourage the growth of indigenous institutions, cultures and traditions. It also prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their active participation in matters which concern their past, present and future.^[38]

In conjunction with other organizations such as the Red Cross, the UN provides food, drinking water, shelter and other humanitarian services to populaces suffering from famine, displaced by war, or afflicted by other disasters. Major humanitarian branches of the UN are the World Food Programme (which helps feed more than 100 million people a year in 80 countries), the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees with projects in over 116 countries, as well as peacekeeping projects in over 24 countries.

Social and economic development

Millennium Development Goals

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

The UN is involved in supporting development, e.g. by the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is the largest multilateral source of grant technical assistance in the world. Organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS, and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are leading institutions in the battle against diseases around the world, especially in poor countries. The UN Population Fund is a major provider of reproductive services. It has helped reduce infant and maternal mortality in 100 countries.^{[citation needed]}

The UN also promotes human development through various related agencies. The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, are independent, specialized agencies and observers within the UN framework, according to a 1947 agreement. They were initially formed as separate from the UN through the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.^[39]

The UN annually publishes the Human Development Index (HDI), a comparative measure ranking countries by poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors.

The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that all 192 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015.^[40] This was declared in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000.

Mandates

See also: Category:United Nations Security Council mandates

From time to time the different bodies of the United Nations pass resolutions which contain operating paragraphs that begin with the words "requests", "calls upon", or "encourages", which the Secretary-General interprets as a mandate to set up a temporary organization or do something. These mandates can be as little as researching and publishing a written report, or mounting a full scale peace-keeping operation (usually the exclusive domain of the Security Council).

Although the specialized institutions, such as the WHO, were originally set up by this means, they are not the same as mandates because they are permanent organizations that exist independently of the UN with their own membership structure. One could say that original mandate was simply to cover the process of setting up the institution, and has therefore long expired. Most mandates expire after a limited time period and require renewal from the body which set them up.

One of the outcomes of the 2005 World Summit was a mandate (labeled id 17171) for the Secretary-General to "review all mandates older than five years originating from resolutions of the General Assembly and other organs". To facilitate this review and to finally bring coherence to the organization, the Secretariat has produced an on-line registry of mandates to draw together the reports relating to each one and create an overall picture.^[41]

Other

Over the lifetime of the UN, over 80 colonies have attained independence.^[42] The General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960 with no votes against but abstentions from all major colonial powers. Through the UN Committee on Decolonization,^[43] created in 1962, the UN has focused considerable attention on decolonization. It has also supported the new states that have arisen as a result self-determination initiatives. The committee has overseen the decolonization of every country larger than 20,000 km² and removed them from the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, besides Western Sahara, a country larger than the UK only relinquished by Spain in 1975.

The UN declares and coordinates international observances, periods of time to observe some issue of international interest or concern. Using the symbolism of the UN, a specially designed logo for the year, and the infrastructure of the United Nations System, various days and years have become catalysts to advancing key issues of concern on a global scale. For example, World Tuberculosis Day, Earth Day and International Year of Deserts and Desertification.

Funding

Top 10 donators to the UN budget, 2009^[44]

Member state	Contribution (% of UN budget)
United States	22.00%
Japan	16.624%
Germany	8.577%
United Kingdom	6.642%
France	6.301%
Italy	5.079%
Canada	2.977%
Spain	2.968%
China	2.667%
Mexico	2.257%
Other member states	23.908%

The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by their Gross National Income (GNI), with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income.^[45]

The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a 'ceiling' rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly revised the scale of assessments to reflect current global circumstances. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25% to 22%. The U.S. is the only member that has met the ceiling. In addition to a ceiling rate, the minimum amount assessed to any member nation (or 'floor' rate) is set at 0.001% of the UN budget. Also, for the least developed countries (LDC), a ceiling rate of 0.01% is applied.^[45]

The current operating budget is estimated at $4.19 billion for the 2-year (biennial)period of 2008 to 2009, or a little over 2 billion dollars a year^[45] (refer to table for major contributors).

A large share of UN expenditures addresses the core UN mission of peace and security. The peacekeeping budget for the 2005–2006 fiscal year is approximately $5 billion (compared to approximately $1.5 billion for the UN core budget over the same period), with some 70,000 troops deployed in 17 missions around the world.^[46] UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular funding scale, but including a weighted surcharge for the five permanent Security Council members, who must approve all peacekeeping operations. This surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. As of 1 January 2008, the top 10 providers of assessed financial contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations were: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, China, Canada, Spain, and the Republic of Korea.^[47]

Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF, the WFP and UNDP) are financed by voluntary contributions from other member governments. Most of this is financial contributions, but some is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations.

Because their funding is voluntary, many of these agencies suffer severe shortages during economic recessions. In July 2009, the World Food Programme reported that it has been forced to cut services because of insufficient funding^[48]. It has received barely a quarter of the total it needs for the 09/10 financial year.

Personnel policy

The UN and its agencies are immune to the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding UN's impartiality with regard to the host and member countries.^[49] This independence allows agencies to implement human resources policies that may even be contrary to the laws of a host – or a member country.^{[citation needed]}

Despite their independence in matters of human resources policy, the UN and its agencies voluntarily apply the laws of member states regarding same-sex marriages, allowing decisions about the status of employees in a same-sex partnership to be based on nationality. The UN and its agencies recognize same-sex marriages only if the employees are citizens of countries that recognize the marriage. This practice is not specific to the recognition of same-sex marriage but reflects a common practice of the UN for a number of human resources matters. It has to be noted though that some agencies provide limited benefits to domestic partners of their staff and that some agencies do not recognise same-sex marriage or domestic partnership of their staff.

Reform

Main article: Reform of the United Nations

Proposed logo for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, which would involve direct election of a country's representative by its citizens

Since its founding, there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations, although little consensus on how to do so. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, while others want its role reduced to humanitarian work.^[50] There have also been numerous calls for the UN Security Council's membership to be increased, for different ways of electing the UN's Secretary-General, and for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

The UN has also been accused of bureaucratic inefficiency and waste. During the 1990s the United States withheld dues citing inefficiency, and only started repayment on the condition that a major reforms initiative was introduced. In 1994, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was established by the General Assembly to serve as an efficiency watchdog.^[51]

An official reform programme was begun by Kofi Annan in 1997. Reforms mentioned include changing the permanent membership of the Security Council (which currently reflects the power relations of 1945), making the bureaucracy more transparent, accountable and efficient, making the UN more democratic, and imposing an international tariff on arms manufacturers worldwide.^{[citation needed]}

In September 2005, the UN convened a World Summit that brought together the heads of most member states, calling the summit "a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take bold decisions in the areas of development, security, human rights and reform of the United Nations."^[52] Kofi Annan had proposed that the summit agree on a global "grand bargain" to reform the UN, renewing the organisation's focus on peace, security, human rights and development, and to make it better equipped at facing 21st century issues. The result of the summit was a compromise text agreed on by world leaders,^[53] which included the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from conflict, a Human Rights Council, and a democracy fund, a clear and unambiguous condemnation of terrorism "in all its forms and manifestations", and agreements to devote more resources to the Office of Internal Oversight Services, to spend billions more on achieving the Millennium Development Goals, to wind up the Trusteeship Council because of the completion of its mission, and that the international community has a "responsibility to protect" – the duty to intervene in when national governments fail to fulfill their responsibility to protect their citizens from atrocious crimes.

The Office of Internal Oversight Services is being restructured to more clearly define its scope and mandate, and will receive more resources. In addition, to improve the oversight and auditing capabilities of the General Assembly, an Independent Audit Advisory Committee (IAAC) is being created. In June 2007, the Fifth Committee created a draft resolution for the terms of reference of this committee.^[54][55] An ethics office was established in 2006, responsible for administering new financial disclosure and whistleblower protection policies. Working with the OIOS, the ethics office also plans to implement a policy to avoid fraud and corruption.^[56] The Secretariat is in the process of reviewing all UN mandates that are more than five years old. The review is intended to determine which duplicative or unnecessary programmes should be eliminated. Not all member states are in agreement as to which of the over 7000 mandates should be reviewed. The dispute centres on whether mandates that have been renewed should be examined. As of September 2007, the process is ongoing.^[57]

Criticism of the United Nations

Main article: Criticism of the United Nations

Criticism of the United Nations has been politically and ideologically diverse, although much of it is focused on the UN's presumed inability to handle international conflicts, even on a small scale. Other criticisms tend to focus on the UN's alleged elitism or its presumed support of globalist philosophies.

See also

High-level Panel on United Nations Systemwide Coherence International relations Israel, Palestinians, and the United Nations List of Permanent Representatives to the United Nations Model United Nations Official statistics UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador United Nations Association

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea United Nations elections and appointments United Nations in popular culture United Nations International School United Nations Peace Messenger Cities United Nations Postal Administration United Nations University University for Peace World Heritage Site Yearbook of the United Nations

References

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3. ^ David, Wilton. "United Nations". Etymologies & Word Origins: Letter U. WordOrigins.org. http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/united_nations/. 
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9. ^ ^{a b} Office of the Secretary-General - United Nations.
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11. ^ Charter of the United Nations, Article 99.
12. ^ United Nations - Appointment Process of the Secretary-General.
13. ^ ^{a b} "An Historical Overview on the Selection of United Nations Secretaries-General" (PDF). UNA-USA. http://www.unausa.org/atf/cf/%7B49C555AC-20C8-4B43-8483-A2D4C1808E4E%7D/SG%20Reform%20Fact%20Sheet-fina-logol.pdf. Retrieved 2007-09-30. 
14. ^ Former Secretaries-General - United Nations.
15. ^ "Statute of the International Court of Justice". International Court of Justice. http://www.icj-cij.org/documents/index.php?p1=4&p2=2&p3=0. Retrieved 2007-08-31. 
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17. ^ "Agreement Between the International Criminal Court and the United Nations". International Criminal Court. 2004-10-04. http://www.icc-cpi.int/pressrelease_details&id=47&l=en.html. 
18. ^ Kosovo and Taiwan are only partially recognized, and are not recognized by the UN.
19. ^ "United Nations Member States". United Nations. http://www.un.org/members/. Retrieved 2007-05-05. 
20. ^ "About the G77". Group of 77. http://www.g77.org/doc/. Retrieved 2007-09-30. 
21. ^ RAND Corporation. "The UN's Role in Nation Building: From the Congo to Iraq" (PDF). http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG304.sum.pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-30. 
22. ^ Human Security Centre. "The Human Security Report 2005". http://www.humansecurityreport.info/. Retrieved 2007-02-08. 
23. ^ "Book Review: A People Betrayed, the Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide". Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/community/bookreviews/melvern.htm. 
24. ^ Colum Lynch (2004-12-16). "U.N. Sexual Abuse Alleged in Congo". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3145-2004Dec15.html. 
25. ^ "UN troops face child abuse claims". BBC News. 2006-11-30. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6195830.stm. 
26. ^ "108 Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti to be repatriated after claims they paid prostitutes". International Herald Tribune. 2007-11-02. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/02/news/UN-GEN-UN-Haiti-Sexual-Exploitation.php. 
27. ^ "Aid workers in Liberia accused of sex abuse". International Herald Tribune. 2006-05-08. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/08/news/abuse.php. 
28. ^ "UN staff accused of raping children in Sudan". Telegraph. 2007-01-04. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/03/wsudan03.xml. 
29. ^ "UN staff accused of raping children in Sudan". BBC. 2007-05-28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7420798.stm. 
30. ^ Gold, 216–217
31. ^ Gold, 38
32. ^ United Nations Charter, Article 26.
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34. ^ United Nations General Assembly Resolution 251 session 60 on 15 March 2006 (retrieved 2007-09-19)
35. ^ "The Shame of the United Nations". New York Times. 2006-02-26. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/opinion/26sun2.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2006-08-15. 
36. ^ "UN Human Rights Council Elections". United Nations. http://www.un.org/ga/61/elect/hrc/. Retrieved 2007-05-04. 
37. ^ "Successful UN Human Rights Council Elections Demonstrate UN Members are Taking Reform Effort Seriously.". Open Society Policy Center. 2006-05-09. http://www.opensocietypolicycenter.org/news/article.php?docId=110. 
38. ^ ^{a b} UN General Assembly - 61st session - United Nations adopts Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
39. ^ "About Us - United Nations". The World Bank. 2003-06-30. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/0,,contentMDK:20040610~menuPK:41691~pagePK:43912~piPK:44037,00.html. Retrieved 2007-08-02. 
40. ^ "The UN Millennium Development Goals". United Nations. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/. Retrieved 2007-05-04. 
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45. ^ ^{a b c} "Fifth Committee Approves Assessment Scale for Regular, Peacekeeping Budgets, Texts on Common System, Pension Fund, as it Concludes Session (Press Release)". United Nations. 2006-12-22. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gaab3787.doc.htm. 
46. ^ "United Nations Peacekeeping Operations". United Nations. 2007-12-31. http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/bnote.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-24. 
47. ^ Financing of UN Peacekeeping Operations
48. ^ "BBC News, 'Dire shortage' at UN food agency". BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/8179250.stm. Retrieved 2009-09-05. 
49. ^ http://diplomaticlaw.com/blog/2009/03/23/jerusalem-court-no-immunity-for-un-employee-for-private-acts/
50. ^ The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward / Joshua Muravchik (2005) ISBN 978-0-8447-7183-0.
51. ^ Reddy, Shravanti (2002-10-29). "Watchdog Organization Struggles to Decrease UN Bureaucracy". Global Policy Forum. http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/ngo-un/rest-un/2002/1029watchdog.htm. Retrieved 2006-09-21. 
52. ^ "The 2005 World Summit: An Overview" (PDF). United Nations. http://www.un.org/ga/documents/overview2005summit.pdf. 
53. ^ "2005 World Summit Outcome" (PDF). United Nations. http://www.un.org/summit2005/presskit/fact_sheet.pdf. 
54. ^ Irene Martinetti (1 December 2006). "Reforming Oversight and Governance of the UN Encounters Hurdles". http://www.centerforunreform.org/node/226. 
55. ^ "Oversight and Governance". Center for UN Reform Education. http://www.centerforunreform.org/node/31. 
56. ^ "Ethics Office". Center for UN Reform Education. http://www.centerforunreform.org/node/32. 
57. ^ "Mandate Review". Center for UN Reform Education. http://www.centerforunreform.org/node/30. 

Further reading

• United Nations Intellectual History Project Book Series. Indiana University Press.
• "Think Again: The United Nations", Madeleine K. Albright, Foreign Policy, September/October, 2004.
• Hans Köchler, Quo Vadis, United Nations?, in: Law Review, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, College of Law, May 2005 Online version.
• An Insider's Guide to the UN, Linda Fasulo, Yale University Press (1 November 2003), hardcover, 272 pages, ISBN 0-300-10155-4.
• United Nations: The First Fifty Years, Stanley Mesler, Atlantic Monthly Press (1 March 1997), hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 0-87113-656-2.
• United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations edited by Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury, Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (1 January 1994), hardcover, 589 pages, ISBN 0-19-827926-4.
• A Guide to Delegate Preparation: A Model United Nations Handbook, edited by Scott A. Leslie, The United Nations Association of the United States of America, 2004 edition (October 2004), softcover, 296 pages, ISBN 1-880632-71-3.
• "U.S. At War – International." Time Magazine XLV.19 7 May 1945: 25–28.
• The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, Oxford University Press, July 2007, hardcover, 896 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-927951-7, ISBN 0-19-927951-9.

• Gold, Dore. Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.

External links

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Other

• Documents and Resources on UN, War, War Crimes and Genocide
• Eye on the U.N. – A Project of the Hudson Institute New York and the Touro Law Center Institute for Human Rights
• History of the United Nations – UK Government site
• Inner City Press – UN related news.
• Outcomes of the 2005 World SummitPDF (82.9 KB)
• Permanent Missions To The United Nations
• Searchable archive of UN discussions and votes
• List of UN datasets on CKAN, a registry of open data
• Task Force on United Nations – U.S. Institute of Peace
• U.N. watch – non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter.
• United Nations Association of the UK: independent policy authority on the UN
• United Nations: Change at the Helm - Change for the Whole Ship? – Independent news reports by the news agency Inter Press Service
• United Nations eLearning Unit created by ISRG – University of Innsbruck
• United Nations Research Guide from the Mississippi State University Libraries
• Website of the Global Policy Forum, an independent think-tank on the UN
• http://unfccc.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/CBD2008_2/templ/ply_cbd.php?id_kongresssession=1147&player_mode=isdn_real

• (English) (French) EQUITAS, the Authority on Judicial Morality providing legal resources helpful in aid for the better advancement of the Rule of Law.

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v • d • e Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize Kofi Annan / United Nations (2001) · Jimmy Carter (2002) · Shirin Ebadi (2003) · Wangari Maathai (2004) · International Atomic Energy Agency / Mohamed ElBaradei (2005) · Grameen Bank / Muhammad Yunus (2006) · Al Gore / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) · Martti Ahtisaari (2008)  · Barack Obama (2009) Complete roster: 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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Dansk (Danish)
abbr. - United Nations; Forenede Nationer

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    UNESCO, FNs uddannelses-, videnskabelige og kulturelle organisation

Nederlands (Dutch)
Verenigde Naties (V.N.)

Français (French)
abbr. - (abrév = United Nations) ONU Nations Unis

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    Organisation des Nations Unis de l'Éducation,, la Science et la Culture, UNESCO

Deutsch (German)
abbr. - VN, Vereinte Nationen

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    UNESCO

Ελληνική (Greek)
abbr. - Ηνωμένα Εθνη
pron. - αρνητικό πρόθεμα
pref. - ά-, α-, μη, ξε-

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    ΟΥΝΕΣΚΟ

Italiano (Italian)
N.U.

Português (Portuguese)
abbr. - ONU
pref. - prefixo com sentido de negação
pron. - one (coloq.)

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    Organização Educacional Científica e Cultural das Nações Unidas

Русский (Russian)
ООН

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    ЮНЕСКО

Español (Spanish)
abbr. - ONU, (Organización de las Naciones Unidas)

idioms:

• un Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization    UNESCO (Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura)

Svenska (Swedish)
abbr. - Förenta Nationerna, FN
pref. - FN-

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
联合国

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
abbr. - 聯合國

한국어 (Korean)
abbr. - United Nations (유엔)

日本語 (Japanese)
abbr. - 国際連合

idioms:

• un Educational    ユネスコ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(اختصار) الامم المتحدة (بادئه الكلمه) بادئه بمعنى غير‏

עברית (Hebrew)
abbr. - ‮האומות המאוחדות, האו"ם, אחד‬

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