United Nations: Role in World Peace By Alpit Chahal History: The name "United Nations", coined by United States

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was first used in the "Declaration by United Nations" of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers. In 1945, representatives of 50 countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draw up the United Nations Charter. Those delegates deliberated on the basis of proposals worked out by the representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States at Dumbarton Oaks, United States in August-October 1944. The Charter was signed on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. Poland, which was not represented at the Conference, signed it later and became one of the original 51 Member States. The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and by a majority of other signatories. United Nations Day is celebrated on 24 October each year. Objective: When States become Members of the United Nations, they agree to accept the obligations of the UN Charter, an international treaty that sets out basic principles of international relations. According to the Charter, the UN has four purposes: to maintain international peace and security to develop friendly relations among nations to cooperate in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.

The United Nations is not a world government and it does not make laws. It does, however, provide the means to help resolve international conflicts and formulate policies on matters affecting all of us. At the UN, all the Member States - large and small, rich and poor, with differing political views and social systems - have a voice and a vote in this process. The United Nations has six main organs. Five of them - the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council and the Secretariat - are based at UN Headquarters in New York. The sixth, the International Court of Justice, is located at The Hague in the Netherlands. U.N. - A Failure: The main objective of the United Nations at its founding was to prevent future wars and suffering on a mass scale. As millions have died in hundreds of conflicts around the world in more than fifty years since the UN's establishment, it must be condemned as a failure. Another key objective of the United Nations has been to promote human rights worldwide, yet these continue to be violated by many regimes, often on a horrific scale, as in the genocidal civil wars in the Balkans and Central Africa in the 1990s. Given that voting rights in the UN General Assembly are not linked to a regime's human rights record, and that gross human rights abusers

such as China sit on the UN Security Council, it is no surprise that the UN has failed in this part of its agenda. The UN suffers from a bloated bureaucracy, in which seniority is not linked to ability, resulting in painfully slow decision-making and operational failure in such crises as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Some UN organisations, such as UNESCO have been viewed as so corrupt countries such as the USA and the UK have withdrawn from them, while the US Congress has long withheld part of the dues it owes to the UN in protest against corruption and money-wasting. There are also institutional problems associated with the General Assembly and the Security Council, whereby GA resolutions with widespread support can be stymied by a single veto from one of the Permanent 5. This has led to unilateral action by countries such as the USA and organisations such as NATO, undermining the authority of the UN, and to a lack of credibility for the UN in dealing with issues such as Israel and Palestine, where the USA among the P5 has strong interests. Much of the international progress made since 1945 has not involved the UN at all. The Cold War and mutually assured destruction kept the peace between the great powers, while institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, GATT and the WTO have functioned independently of the UN in promoting greater prosperity. Mass murder of millions has gone on for years in many places with no response at all from the U.N. There has also been a U.N. failure to hold violators of human rights responsible and to oppose rogue states seeking the acquisition of weapons of mass murder. The overriding selfinterests of dictatorships, police states, anti-Western, anti-democratic, and Arab/Islamic-driven theocratic continue day in and day out to paralyze any possibility that the U.N. could ever encourage true justice. Here are just a few examples of major crimes that were ignored by the U.N: Genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s estimated at 2 million people. North Korea starved to death about 2 million of its own people. Saddam Hussein gassing of the Kurds and slaughter of the Marsh Arabs, while devastating their fragile ecosystem. Failure to oppose the spread of WMD in Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya etc. Muslim genocide of southern black Sudanese Christians and animists over an 18year period. Over 1 million people in Sudan have been driven from their homes with the threat of mass murder of another 400,000 by the end of 2004. Slaughter of 800,000 Tutis and Hutu in Rwanda. Constant terror attacks on Israel plus the usual calls from Arab and Muslims countries for the destruction of Israel.

Failure to implement its own resolution for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon following Israel's exit, over four years ago. Some Justifications: Despite horrific suffering in many countries, the world has avoided another devastating global conflict in which tens of millions might die, and for this the UN can take much credit. It has also resisted aggression in regional conflicts in Korea and the Middle East, helping to deter future invasions, and acted as an intermediary in making peace in many other conflicts, e.g the Iran-Iraq war. Consider how much more violent the world might have been without the United Nations. Human rights abuses usually take place within states, often in civil wars, so the UN has no

mandate to intervene directly against them - as it was explicitly set up with a policy of noninterference in internal affairs it is unfair to count this a failure. Nonetheless, it has placed human rights on the international agenda, making billions of people aware of what are considered norms and shaming many regimes into improving their policies. Even China makes great efforts to claim its human rights record is better than that of countries such as the USA, albeit differently defined. Errors in strategic decision-making are not the fault of the UN secretariat but of its masters in the Security Council. There have been past abuses, but these are used as a stick to beat the UN with by those, principally in the USA, who are against the UN for other reasons. In recent years considerable progress has been made in improving the efficiency and meritocratic nature of the secretariat, although this has been hampered by the failure of the USA to pay its dues, which are needed to compensate those made redundant by restructuring. Since the end of the Cold War UN decision-making has been much improved, as key votes in the Security Council are no longer likely to result in deadlock between eastern and western blocs. In any case, P5 countries try to avoid using their veto power if at all possible, due to the negative image this creates at home and abroad. Instead the Security Council acts as a forum in which positions can be explained and compromises hammered out, even if action is not necessarily collectively authorised. Clearly the workings of the Security Council could be changed to diminish the importance of the P5, and to make action easier to take, but this does not in itself render the unreformed UN a failure. Other organisations have also been important in bringing greater peace and prosperity to the world, but none have the authority the UN derives from the participation of almost every state in the world. In international crises the Security Council is the forum for discussion, deal-making, arbitration and understanding. The UN has also made huge contributions to global progress through its agencies, particularly those dealing with refugees, the World Health Organisation and Unicef. By its efforts smallpox has been eliminated, healthcare improved and education promoted. Such programmes are not often noticed, but the UN's responsibility for them should be seen as a key part of its success. Do we need UN? There must be some forum where all the countries could raise their points, as there has been instances where powerful countries like USA trying to play worldcop without consent of majority. It is another thing that the UN had been handicapped because of the pressure put by USA and its allies like UK in the cases like Afghanistan and Iraq. The increasing bhai type of role of USA is a threat to the peaceful world order. Now, it is duty of UN to increase the members of security council so that USA could face more resistance from the other countries of the world in case of any action against the humanity and world peace. So, whether successful or not the existence of UN is essential for the new world order for which there should be honest consideration for the concerns of the other countries, which constitute far more than the few selected countries that dominate the UN decisions. Conclusion: It is increasingly apparent that the United Nations possesses inherent characteristics that make it incapable of effectively mediating complex international disputes. Yet because of its brief period of success, an egregious gap has grown between popular expectations and U.N. abilities. As currently constituted, the United Nations has great difficulty performing many basic functions required of an effective mediator. It does not serve well as an authoritative channel of communication. It has little real political leverage. Its promises and threats lack credibility. And it is incapable of pursuing coherent, flexible, and dynamic negotiations guided by an effective strategy.

Edited by Ravishankar Panda Alpit is student of Career Launcher from Chandigarh Centre.