![Map showing the member states of the United Nations[a]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_Nations_Members_(green%E2%80%93grey_scheme).svg)
Map showing the member states of the United Nations
| |
| Headquarters | New York City (international territory) |
| Official languages | |
| Type | Intergovernmental organization |
| Membership | 193 member states 2 observer states |
| Leaders | |
| António Guterres | |
| Amina J. Mohammed | |
| Maria Fernanda Espinosa | |
| Marie Chatardová | |
| Kacou Houadja Léon Adom | |
| Establishment | |
• UN Charter signed
| 26 June 1945 |
• Charter entered into force
| 24 October 1945 |
Website
www www | |
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that was tasked to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international co-operation and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, and is subject to extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development and upholding international law. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. In 24 October 1945, at the end of World War II, the organization was established with the aim of preventing future wars. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193. The UN is the successor of the ineffective League of Nations.
On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 in the San Francisco Opera House, and signed on 26 June 1945 in the Herbst Theatre auditorium in the Veterans War Memorial Building. This charter took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operation.
The UN's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades during the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles. The organization's membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization which started in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies had gained independence, including 11 trust territories, which were monitored by the Trusteeship Council. By the 1970s its budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.
The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council; the Trusteeship Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. The UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF. The UN's most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres since 1 January 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN's work.
The organization, its officers and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes.
Other evaluations of the UN's effectiveness have been mixed. Some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased.
History
Background
1943 sketch by Franklin Roosevelt of the UN original three branches: The Four Policemen, an executive branch, and an international assembly of forty UN member states
In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international treaty organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross was formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and strife.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I
As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches,
influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for
the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in
the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of
this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the international body
in his 14-point proposal to end the war. In November 1918, the Central Powers
agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months
later, the Allies met with Germany and Austria-Hungary at Versailles to
hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson wanted peace, but
England and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on their
former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, and in the summer of
1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the US Senate
for ratification. On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally
comes into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by
42 nations in 1919, takes effect.
However, at some point the League became ineffective when it failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as in February 1933, 40 nations voted for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria. It also failed against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War despite trying to talk to Benito Mussolini
as he used the time to send an army to Africa, so the League had a plan
for Mussolini to just take a part of Ethiopia, but he ignored the
League and invaded Ethiopia, the League tried putting sanctions on
Italy, but Italy had already conquered Ethiopia and the League had
failed.
After Italy conquered Ethiopia, Italy and other nations left the
league. But all of them realised that it had failed and they began to
re-arm as fast as possible.
During 1938, Britain and France tried negotiating directly with Hitler
but this failed in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
When war broke out in 1939, the League closed down and its headquarters
in Geneva remained empty throughout the war.
1942 "Declaration of United Nations" by the Allies of World War II
The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the U.S. State Department in 1939. The text of the "Declaration by United Nations" was drafted at the White House on December 29, 1941, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France. "Four Policemen" was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Republic of China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries. "On New Year's Day 1942, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, and T. V. Soong,
of China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the
United Nations Declaration and the next day the representatives of
twenty-two other nations added their signatures." The term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, which Stalin approved after Roosevelt insisted. By 1 March 1945, 21 additional states had signed.
A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATEMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA
The Governments signatory hereto,
Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,
Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,
DECLARE:
The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.
- Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
- Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.
During the war, "the United Nations" became the official term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis.
Founding
The UN in 1945: founding members in light blue, protectorates and territories of the founding members in dark blue
The UN was formulated and negotiated among the delegations from the Allied Big Four (the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China) at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference from 21 September 1944 to October 7, 1944 and they agreed on the aims, structure and functioning of the UN. After months of planning, the UN Conference on International Organization opened in San Francisco, 25 April 1945, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the UN Charter. "The heads of the delegations of the sponsoring countries took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings: Anthony Eden, of Britain, Edward Stettinius, of the United States, T. V. Soong, of China, and Vyacheslav Molotov, of the Soviet Union. At the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mister Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mister Gromyko for Mister Molotov."
The UN officially came into existence 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 UK and the US—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 Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London beginning on 10 January 1946.
The General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the
headquarters of the UN, construction began on 14 September 1948 and the
facility was completed on 9 October 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters
buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory. The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General.
Cold War era
Dag Hammarskjöld was a particularly active Secretary-General from 1953 until his death in 1961.
Though the UN's primary mandate was peacekeeping,
the division between the US and USSR often paralysed the organization,
generally allowing it to intervene only in conflicts distant from the Cold War. A notable exception was a Security Council resolution on 7 July 1950 authorizing a US-led coalition to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, passed in the absence of the USSR.), and the signing the Korean Armistice Agreement in 27 July 1953.
On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly approved a resolution to partition Palestine, approving the creation of the state of Israel. Two years later, Ralph Bunche, a UN official, negotiated an armistice to the resulting conflict. On November 7, 1956, the first UN peacekeeping force was established to end the Suez Crisis; however, the UN was unable to intervene against the USSR's simultaneous invasion of Hungary following that country's revolution.
On 14 July 1960, the UN established United Nations Operation in the Congo (UNOC), the largest military force of its early decades, to bring order to the breakaway State of Katanga, restoring it to the control of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 11 May 1964. While travelling to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe during the conflict, Dag Hammarskjöld, often named as one of the UN's most effective Secretaries-General, died in a plane crash; months later he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1964, Hammarskjöld's successor, U Thant, deployed the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, which would become one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions.
With the spread of decolonization
in the 1960s, the organization's membership saw an influx of newly
independent nations. In 1960 alone, 17 new states joined the UN, 16 of
them from Africa. On 25 October 1971, with opposition from the United States, but with the support of many Third World nations, the mainland, communist People's Republic of China was given the Chinese seat on the Security Council in place of the Republic of China that occupied Taiwan; the vote was widely seen as a sign of waning US influence in the organization. Third World nations organized into the Group of 77 coalition under the leadership of Algeria, which briefly became a dominant power at the UN. On 10 November 1975, a bloc comprising the USSR and Third World nations passed a resolution, over strenuous US and Israeli opposition, declaring Zionism to be racism; the resolution was repealed on 16 December 1991, shortly after the end of the Cold War.
With an increasing Third World presence and the failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East, Vietnam, and Kashmir, the UN increasingly shifted its attention to its ostensibly secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange. By the 1970s, the UN budget for social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget.
Post-Cold War
Kofi Annan, Secretary-General from 1997 to 2006
After the Cold War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its
peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in ten years than it had in
the previous four decades.
Between 1988 and 2000, the number of adopted Security Council
resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased
more than tenfold. The UN negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In 1991, the UN authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Brian Urquhart,
Under-Secretary-General from 1971 to 1985, later described the hopes
raised by these successes as a "false renaissance" for the organization,
given the more troubled missions that followed.
Though the UN Charter had been written primarily to prevent
aggression by one nation against another, in the early 1990s the UN
faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within nations such as
Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia. The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the US withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu, and the UN mission to Bosnia faced "worldwide ridicule" for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing. In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amid indecision in the Security Council.
Beginning in the last decades of the Cold War, American and
European critics of the UN condemned the organization for perceived
mismanagement and corruption. In 1984, the US President, Ronald Reagan, withdrew his nation's funding from UNESCO
(the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,
founded 1946) over allegations of mismanagement, followed by Britain and
Singapore. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, initiated a reform of the Secretariat, reducing the size of the organization somewhat. His successor, Kofi Annan (1997–2006), initiated further management reforms in the face of threats from the United States to withhold its UN dues.
In the late 1990s and 2000s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1991–2002 was supplemented by British Royal Marines, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by NATO. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq
despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for
authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the
organization's effectiveness. Under the eighth Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the UN has intervened with peacekeepers in crises including the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War. In 2013, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 concluded that the organization had suffered "systemic failure". One hundred and one UN personnel died in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the worst loss of life in the organization's history.
The Millennium Summit was held in 2000 to discuss the UN's role in the 21st century.
The three day meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in
history, and culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a commitment to achieve international development in areas such as poverty reduction, gender equality, and public health. Progress towards these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the UN's focus on promoting development, peacekeeping, human rights, and global security. The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.
In addition to addressing global challenges, the UN has sought to
improve its accountability and democratic legitimacy by engaging more
with civil society and fostering a global constituency.
In an effort to enhance transparency, in 2016 the organization held its
first public debate between candidates for Secretary-General. On 1 January 2017, Portuguese diplomat António Guterres, who previously served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
became the ninth Secretary-General. Guterres has highlighted several
key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for
preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and
streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to
global needs.
Structure
The UN system is based on five principal organs: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice and the UN Secretariat. A sixth principal organ, the Trusteeship Council, suspended operations on 1 November 1994, upon the independence of Palau, the last remaining UN trustee territory.
Four of the five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters 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 UN, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. On the basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the UN and its agencies are immune
from the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding the
UN's impartiality with regard to the host and member countries.
Below the six organs sit, in the words of the author Linda
Fasulo, "an amazing collection of entities and organizations, some of
which are actually older than the UN itself and operate with almost
complete independence from it". These include specialized agencies, research and training institutions, programmes and funds, and other UN entities.
The UN obey the Noblemaire principle, which is binding on
any organization that belongs to the UN system. This principle calls for
salaries that will draw and keep citizens of countries where salaries
are highest, and also calls for equal pay for work of equal value
independent of the employee's nationality. In practice, the ICSC takes reference to the highest-paying national civil service. Staff salaries are subject to an internal tax that is administered by the UN organizations.
Principal organs of the United Nations
| UN General Assembly — Deliberative assembly of all UN member states — |
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UN Secretariat — Administrative organ of the UN — |
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International Court of Justice — Universal court for international law — |
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| UN Security Council — For international security issues — |
UN Economic and Social Council — For global economic and social affairs — |
UN Trusteeship Council — For administering trust territories (currently inactive) — | ||
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Principal organs of the United Nations
General Assembly
Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet general secretary, addresses the UN General Assembly in December 1988.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the UN. Composed of all UN member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions, but emergency sessions can also be called. The assembly is led by a president, elected from among the member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents. The first session convened 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.
When the General Assembly decides on important questions such as
those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary
matters, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required.
All other questions are decided by a 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 consideration by the Security Council.
Draft resolutions can be forwarded to the General Assembly by its six main committees:
- First Committee (Disarmament and International Security)
- Second Committee (Economic and Financial)
- Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural)
- Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization)
- Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary)
- Sixth Committee (Legal)
As well as by the following two committees:
- General Committee – a supervisory committee consisting of the assembly's president, vice-president, and committee heads
- Credentials Committee – responsible for determining the credentials of each member nation's UN representatives
Security Council
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, demonstrates a vial with alleged Iraqi chemical weapon probes to the UN Security Council on Iraq war hearings, 5 February 2003.
The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security
among countries. While other organs of the UN can only make
"recommendations" to member states, the Security Council has the power
to make binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out,
under the terms of Charter Article 25. The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The Security Council is made up of fifteen member states,
consisting of five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United
Kingdom, and the United States—and ten non-permanent members elected for
two-year terms by the General Assembly (with end of term date)—Bolivia
(term ends 2018), Côte d'Ivoire (2019), Equatorial Guinea (2019),
Ethiopia (2018), Kazakhstan (2018), Kuwait (2019), Netherlands (2018), Peru (2019), Poland (2019), and Sweden (2018). The five permanent members hold veto power
over UN resolutions, allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a
resolution, though not debate. The ten temporary seats are held for
two-year terms, with five member states per year voted in by the General
Assembly on a regional basis. The presidency of the Security Council rotates alphabetically each month.
UN Secretariat
The current Secretary-General, António Guterres
The UN Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, assisted by the Deputy Secretary-General and a staff of international civil servants worldwide.
It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by UN bodies
for their meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the
Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council,
and other UN bodies.
The Secretary-General acts as the de facto spokesperson
and leader of the UN. The position is defined in the UN Charter as the
organization's "chief administrative officer".
Article 99 of the charter 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", a phrase
that Secretaries-General since Trygve Lie have interpreted as giving the position broad scope for action on the world stage.
The office 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.
The Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly, after
being recommended by the Security Council, where the permanent members
have veto power. 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. The current Secretary-General is António Guterres, who replaced Ban Ki-moon in 2017.
| No. | Name | Country of origin | Took office | Left office | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trygve Lie |  Norway |
2 February 1946 | 10 November 1952 | Resigned |
| 2 | Dag Hammarskjöld |  Sweden |
10 April 1953 | 18 September 1961 | Died in office |
| 3 | U Thant |  Burma |
30 November 1961 | 31 December 1971 |
|
| 4 | Kurt Waldheim |  Austria |
1 January 1972 | 31 December 1981 |
|
| 5 | Javier Pérez de Cuéllar |  Peru |
1 January 1982 | 31 December 1991 |
|
| 6 | Boutros Boutros-Ghali |  Egypt |
1 January 1992 | 31 December 1996 |
|
| 7 | Kofi Annan |  Ghana |
1 January 1997 | 31 December 2006 |
|
| 8 | Ban Ki-moon |  South Korea |
1 January 2007 | 31 December 2016 |
|
| 9 | António Guterres |  Portugal |
1 January 2017 | – |
International Court of Justice
The court ruled that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, in
the Netherlands, is the primary judicial organ of the UN. Established in
1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor
to the Permanent Court of International Justice.
The ICJ is composed of 15 judges who serve 9-year terms and are
appointed by the General Assembly; every sitting judge must be from a
different nation.
It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, sharing the building with the Hague Academy of International Law,
a private centre for the study of international law. The ICJ's primary
purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states. The court has heard
cases related to war crimes, illegal state interference, ethnic
cleansing, and other issues. The ICJ can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide advisory opinions.
It is the only organ that is not located in New York.
Economic and Social Council
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly
in promoting international economic and social co-operation and
development. ECOSOC has 54 members, 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. The council has one annual meeting in July, held in either New
York or Geneva. Viewed as separate from the specialized bodies it
co-ordinates, ECOSOC's functions include information gathering, advising
member nations, and making recommendations. Owing to its broad mandate of co-ordinating many agencies, ECOSOC has at times been criticized as unfocused or irrelevant.
ECOSOC's subsidiary bodies include the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which advises UN agencies on issues relating to indigenous peoples; the United Nations Forum on Forests, which co-ordinates and promotes sustainable forest management; the United Nations Statistical Commission, which co-ordinates information-gathering efforts between agencies; and the Commission on Sustainable Development, which co-ordinates efforts between UN agencies and NGOs working towards sustainable development. ECOSOC may also grant consultative status to non-governmental organizations;[108] by 2004, more than 2,200 organizations had received this status.
Specialized agencies
The UN Charter stipulates that each primary organ of the United
Nations can establish various specialized agencies to fulfil its duties. Some best-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
(WHO). The UN performs most of its humanitarian work through these
agencies. Examples include mass vaccination programmes (through WHO),
the avoidance of famine and malnutrition (through the work of the WFP),
and the protection of vulnerable and displaced people (for example, by UNHCR).
Membership
Map of the current UN member states by their dates of admission
1945 (original members)
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–present
non-member observer states
With the addition of South Sudan 14 July 2011, there are 193 UN member states, including all undisputed independent states apart from Vatican City.
The UN Charter outlines the rules for membership:
- Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states that accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
- 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. Chapter II, Article 4.
In addition, there are two non-member observer states of the United Nations General Assembly: the Holy See (which holds sovereignty over Vatican City) and the State of Palestine. The Cook Islands and Niue, both states in free association with New Zealand,
are full members of several UN specialized agencies and have had their
"full treaty-making capacity" recognized by the Secretariat.
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 UN. Seventy-seven
nations founded the organization, but by November 2013 the organization
had since expanded to 133 member countries. The group was founded 15 June 1964 by the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries" issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The group held its first major meeting in Algiers in 1967, where it adopted the Charter of Algiers and established the basis for permanent institutional structures.
Objectives
Peacekeeping and security
Bolivian "Blue Helmet" at an exercise in Chile, 21 October 2002
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. These
soldiers are sometimes nicknamed "Blue Helmets" for their distinctive
gear. The peacekeeping force as a whole received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.
In September 2013, the UN had peacekeeping soldiers deployed on 15 missions. The largest was the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which included 20,688 uniformed personnel. The smallest, United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), included 42 uniformed personnel responsible for monitoring the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir. UN peacekeepers with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) have been stationed in the Middle East since 1948, the longest-running active peacekeeping mission.
A study by the RAND Corporation in 2005 found the UN to be
successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It compared efforts
at nation-building by the UN 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. 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 in that
period.
Situations in which the UN has not only acted to keep the peace but
also intervened include the Korean War (1950–53) and the authorization
of intervention in Iraq after the Gulf War (1990–91).
UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus was established in 1974 following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
The UN has also drawn criticism for perceived failures. In many
cases, member states have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce
Security Council resolutions. Disagreements in the Security Council
about military action and intervention are seen as having failed to
prevent the Bangladesh genocide in 1971, the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, and the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Similarly, UN inaction is blamed for failing to either prevent the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 or complete the peacekeeping operations in 1992–93 during the Somali Civil War.
UN peacekeepers have also been accused of child rape, soliciting
prostitutes, and sexual abuse during various peacekeeping missions in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Sudan and what is now South Sudan, Burundi, and Ivory Coast. Scientists cited UN peacekeepers from Nepal as the likely source of the 2010–13 Haiti cholera outbreak, which killed more than 8,000 Haitians following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
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 their creation. The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the charter, resulting in the first resolution
of the first 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". The UN has been involved with arms-limitation treaties, such as the Outer Space Treaty (1967), the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), the Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1971), the Biological Weapons Convention (1972), the Chemical Weapons Convention (1992), and the Ottawa Treaty (1997), which prohibits landmines. Three UN bodies oversee arms proliferation issues: the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission.
Human rights
One of the UN's primary purposes is "promoting and encouraging
respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without
distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion", and member states
pledge to undertake "joint and separate action" to protect these rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Spanish, 1949
In 1948, the General Assembly adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee headed by American diplomat and activist Eleanor Roosevelt, and including the French lawyer René Cassin.
The document proclaims basic civil, political, and economic rights
common to all human beings, though its effectiveness towards achieving
these ends has been disputed since its drafting.
The Declaration serves as a "common standard of achievement for all
peoples and all nations" rather than a legally binding document, but it
has become the basis of two binding treaties, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In practice, the UN is unable to take significant action against human
rights abuses without a Security Council resolution, though it does
substantial work in investigating and reporting abuses.
In 1979, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, followed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. With the end of the Cold War, the push for human rights action took on new impetus. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was formed in 1993 to oversee human rights issues for the UN, following the recommendation of that year's World Conference on Human Rights.
Jacques Fomerand, a scholar of the UN, describes this organization's
mandate as "broad and vague", with only "meagre" resources to carry it
out. In 2006, it was replaced by a Human Rights Council consisting of 47 nations. Also in 2006, the General Assembly passed a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and in 2011 it passed its first resolution recognizing the rights of LGBT people.
Other UN bodies responsible for women's rights issues include United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, a commission of ECOSOC founded in 1946; the United Nations Development Fund for Women, created in 1976; and the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, founded in 1979.
The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, one of three bodies with a
mandate to oversee issues related to indigenous peoples, held its first
session in 2002.
Economic development and humanitarian assistance
Another primary purpose of the UN is "to achieve international
co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social,
cultural, or humanitarian character". Numerous bodies have been created to work towards this goal, primarily under the authority of the General Assembly and ECOSOC. In 2000, the 192 UN member states agreed to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals. The SDGs have an associated financing framework called the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP), an organization for grant-based technical assistance founded in 1945, is one of the leading bodies in the field of international development. The organization also publishes the UN Human Development Index, a comparative measure ranking countries by poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), also founded in 1945, promotes agricultural development and food security. UNICEF
(the United Nations Children's Fund) was created in 1946 to aid
European children after the Second World War and expanded its mission to
provide aid around the world and to uphold the Convention on the Rights
of the Child.
Three former directors of the Global Smallpox Eradication Programme read the news that smallpox had been globally eradicated, 1980.
The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund
(IMF) are independent, specialized agencies and observers within the UN
framework, according to a 1947 agreement. They were initially formed
separately from the UN through the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.
The World Bank provides loans for international development, while the
IMF promotes international economic co-operation and gives emergency
loans to indebted countries.
In Jordan, UNHCR remains responsible for the Syrian refugees and the Zaatari refugee camp.
The World Health Organization
(WHO), which focuses on international health issues and disease
eradication, is another of the UN's largest agencies. In 1980, the
agency announced that the eradication of smallpox had been completed. In subsequent decades, WHO largely eradicated polio, river blindness, and leprosy. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), begun in 1996, co-ordinates the organization's response to the AIDS epidemic. The UN Population Fund, which also dedicates part of its resources to combating HIV, is the world's largest source of funding for reproductive health and family planning services.
Along with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the UN often takes a leading role in co-ordinating emergency relief. The World Food Programme
(WFP), created in 1961, provides food aid in response to famine,
natural disasters, and armed conflict. The organization reports that it
feeds an average of 90 million people in 80 nations each year. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), established in 1950, works to protect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people.
UNHCR and WFP programmes are funded by voluntary contributions from
governments, corporations, and individuals, though the UNHCR's
administrative costs are paid for by the UN's primary budget.
Other
Since the UN's creation, over 80 colonies have attained independence. 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. The UN works towards decolonization through groups including the
UN Committee on Decolonization, created in 1962. The committee lists seventeen remaining "Non-Self-Governing Territories", the largest and most populous of which is Western Sahara.
Beginning with the formation of the UN Environmental Programme
(UNEP) in 1972, the UN has made environmental issues a prominent part
of its agenda. A lack of success in the first two decades of UN work in
this area led to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which sought to give new impetus to these efforts. In 1988, the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), another UN organization, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses and reports on research on global warming. The UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, set legally binding emissions reduction targets for ratifying states.
The UN also declares and co-ordinates international observances, periods of time to observe issues of international interest or concern. Examples include World Tuberculosis Day, Earth Day, and the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
Funding
The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from
member states. 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 its gross national income (GNI), with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income. The two-year budget for 2012–13 was $5.512 billion in total.
The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not
be unduly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus,
there is a "ceiling" rate, setting the maximum amount that any member
can be assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly
revised the scale of assessments in response to pressure from the United
States. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was
reduced from 25% to 22%. For the least developed countries (LDCs), a ceiling rate of 0.01% is applied.
In addition to the ceiling rates, the minimum amount assessed to any
member nation (or "floor" rate) is set at 0.001% of the UN budget
($55,120 for the two year budget 2013–2014).
A large share of the UN's expenditure addresses its core mission
of peace and security, and this budget is assessed separately from the
main organizational budget.
The peacekeeping budget for the 2015–16 fiscal year was $8.27 billion,
supporting 82,318 troops deployed in 15 missions around the world.
UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived
from the regular funding scale that includes 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. In 2017, the
top eight providers of assessed financial contributions to UN peacekeeping operations were the United States (28.47%), China (10.25%), Japan (9.68%), Germany (6.39%), France (6.28%), United Kingdom (5.77%), Russian Federation (3.99%) and Italy (3.75%).
Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget, such as
UNICEF and the World Food Programme, are financed by voluntary
contributions from member governments, corporations, and private
individuals.
Evaluations, awards, and criticism
The 2001 Nobel Peace Prize to the UN—diploma in the lobby of the UN Headquarters in New York City
A number of agencies and individuals associated with the UN have won the Nobel Peace Prize
in recognition of their work. Two Secretaries-General, Dag Hammarskjöld
and Kofi Annan, were each awarded the prize (in 1961 and 2001,
respectively), as were Ralph Bunche (1950), a UN negotiator, René Cassin
(1968), a contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and
the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1945), the latter for his role in the organization's founding. Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs,
was awarded the prize in 1957 for his role in organizing the UN's first
peacekeeping force to resolve the Suez Crisis. UNICEF won the prize in
1965, the International Labour Organization
in 1969, the UN Peace-Keeping Forces in 1988, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (which reports to the UN) in 2005, and the UN-supported Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
in 2013. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded in 1954 and
1981, becoming one of only two recipients to win the prize twice. The UN
as a whole was awarded the prize in 2001, sharing it with Annan.[186] In 2007, IPCC
received the prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate
greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the
foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
To mark the UN's 70th anniversary – Budapest, 2015
Since its founding, there have been many calls for reform of the UN
but 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. 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 UN Parliamentary Assembly. Jacques Fomerand states the most enduring divide in views of the UN is "the North–South split" between richer Northern nations and developing Southern nations.
Southern nations tend to favour a more empowered UN with a stronger
General Assembly, allowing them a greater voice in world affairs, while
Northern nations prefer an economically laissez-faire UN that focuses on transnational threats such as terrorism.
After World War II, 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 created
the new organization. The future French president Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it a machin ("contraption"), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.
Throughout the Cold War, both the US and USSR repeatedly accused the UN
of favouring the other. In 1953, the USSR effectively forced the
resignation of Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General, through its refusal to
deal with him, while in the 1950s and 1960s, a popular US bumper
sticker read, "You can't spell communism without U.N." In a sometimes-misquoted statement, President George W. Bush
stated in February 2003 (referring to UN uncertainty towards Iraqi
provocations under the Saddam Hussein regime) that "free nations will
not allow the UN to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant
debating society." In contrast, the French President, François Hollande,
stated in 2012 that "France trusts the United Nations. She knows that
no state, no matter how powerful, can solve urgent problems, fight for
development and bring an end to all crises ... France wants the UN to be
the centre of global governance." Critics such as Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, Robert S. Wistrich, a British scholar, Alan Dershowitz, an American legal scholar, Mark Dreyfus, an Australian politician, and the Anti-Defamation League consider UN attention to Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be excessive. In September 2015, Saudi Arabia's Faisal bin Hassan Trad has been elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council panel that appoints independent experts, a move criticized by human rights groups.
Since 1971, the Republic of China
on Taiwan has been excluded from the UN and since then has always been
rejected in new applications. Taiwanese citizens are also not allowed to
enter the buildings of the United Nations with ROC passports. In this
way, critics agree that the UN is failing its own development goals and
guidelines. This criticism also brought pressure from the People's Republic of China, which regards the territories administered by the ROC as their own territory.
Critics have also accused the UN of bureaucratic inefficiency,
waste, and corruption. In 1976, the General Assembly established the Joint Inspection Unit
to seek out inefficiencies within the UN system. During the 1990s, the
US 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. In 1994, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN to Somalia Mohamed Sahnoun published "Somalia: The Missed Opportunities", a book in which he analyses the reasons for the failure of the 1992 UN intervention in Somalia, showing that, between the start of the Somali civil war in 1988 and the fall of the Siad Barre
regime in January 1991, the UN missed at least three opportunities to
prevent major human tragedies; when the UN tried to provide humanitarian
assistance, they were totally outperformed by NGOs,
whose competence and dedication sharply contrasted with the UN's
excessive caution and bureaucratic inefficiencies. If radical reform was
not undertaken, warned Mohamed Sahnoun, then the UN would continue to
respond to such crisis with inept improvization. In 2004, the UN faced accusations that its recently ended Oil-for-Food Programme—in
which Iraq had been allowed to trade oil for basic needs to relieve the
pressure of sanctions—had suffered from widespread corruption,
including billions of dollars of kickbacks.
An independent inquiry created by the UN found that many of its
officials had been involved, as well as raising "significant" questions
about the role of Kojo Annan, the son of Kofi Annan.
In evaluating the UN as a whole, Jacques Fomerand writes that the
"accomplishments of the United Nations in the last 60 years are
impressive in their own terms. Progress in human development during the
20th century has been dramatic and the UN and its agencies have
certainly helped the world become a more hospitable and livable place
for millions."
Evaluating the first 50 years of the UN's history, the author Stanley
Meisler writes that "the United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its
founders, but it accomplished a great deal nevertheless", citing its
role in decolonization and its many successful peacekeeping efforts. The British historian Paul Kennedy
states that while the organization has suffered some major setbacks,
"when all its aspects are considered, the UN has brought great benefits
to our generation and ... will bring benefits to our children's and
grandchildren's generations as well."
