Why The United Nations Doesn’t Work ?

January 21, 2008 · Filed Under Ideas & Thoughts, Politics 

The topic for discussion in my Intro to International Relations class was the United Nations. Most people know the name but know little about the organization itself. The definition according to Wikipedia is:

The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. The UN was founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, in the hope that it would intervene in conflicts between states and thereby avoid war.

So the common knowledge about the U.N. is that they prevent wars and help out other countries. The truth is that they don’t do a very good job at it. And if you don’t agree with that then why was there Apartheid in South Africa for such a long time? Why is the current situation in Darfur still going on? Pick an issue and you will see that the U.N. has done little or nothing to solve this issue. But the question is, why doesn’t the U.N. work? It is a bunch of countries that gather and try to solve problems that other countries have. The important meeting where all the states get together, or all the members, is called the General Assembly. There everyone discusses topics and vote on what should/shouldn’t be done to bring peace and solve problems. What most people don’t know is that there is also a Security Council composed by 5 permanent members: China, United States, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. There is also 10 non-permanent members that rotate every year.

These five permanent members come from World War II, which is what made the United Nations exist. These five dominating countries have a great power. These five states have the power to Veto any proposal. You don’t need all five of them to veto, just one. Thus, if a proposal is given that doesn’t benefit any of the permanent members, one of them will most likely veto it in their personal interest. Meaning… nothing will ever be passed that doesn’t benefit or affects one of these states. If the U.N. would work better then there would be no permanent members, they should rotate the entire Security Council every year. Because these five countries are in charge of making these decisions before they reach the General Assembly, they will never have any repercussion from the U.N. This is a monopoly on an international level. Why doesn’t someone challenge the U.N. on this?

Yasser

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One Response to “Why The United Nations Doesn’t Work ?”

  1. joseph dian on January 22nd, 2008 10:57 am

    This is a really good post that might enlightens those who don’t know how the UN operate. The reason why no one can challenge the UN or specifically the permanent Members of the UN is quite simple. If you want to challenge the organisation or aiming direclty at its permanent members you need an adjudicating body i.e a court. There is no such court that have sufficient jurisdiction to rule on such matters. 3 more problems pop in :
    (a) the matter referred to a court must raise an issue of international law and
    (b) what is the enforcement mechanism i.e can you sanction them.
    (c) normally a security council resolution in some ways override any laws.
    Once you become a permanent member you cannot be expelled beacause as you mentionned only one veto is sufficient to block a project. What can then brings a change in the composition and operation of the UN operates will be a worldwide political revolution (it could be another war , this is how the UN started) or another organisation that can supersede UN because of its influential powers (sth like EU).
    However it will be a long long time before we witness any change. There is democratic deficit everywhere : it is just a matter of choosing the lesser evil.

    Returning to the Darfur and apartheid problems : the answer is because every state is sovereign you don’t interfere with another state’s sovereinty. Everyone minds his own business. There are very specific grounds where a country can intervene in another country’s domestic matters : e.g humanitarian intervention. the problem with Darfur is that China is has a lot of strong economic interest s in africa. they are giving away cheap loans, investing in african oil and so on. Being a permanent member of the UN security council and having a strict culture of state sovereignty they will easily veto any projects regarding the african continent. It’s all about a balance of interests.