Encyclopedia
The
United Nations is an
international organization that aims at facilitating co-operation in international law, international security, economic development, and social equity. It was founded in 1945 at the signing of the
United Nations Charter by 51 countries, replacing the
League of Nations founded in 1919.
The UN was founded after the end of
World War II by the victorious
allied powers with the hope that it would act to prevent and intervene in conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible or limited. The organization's structure still reflects in some ways the circumstances of its founding, which has led to calls for reform. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with
veto power, are the five main victors of World War II or their successors:
People's Republic of China ,
France,
Russia , the
United Kingdom, and the
United States.
As of 2006, there exist 192
United Nations member states, including virtually all internationally recognized independent states. From its
headquarters in
New York City, the UN's member countries and specialized agencies give guidance and decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout each year. The organization is divided into administrative bodies, including the
General Assembly,
Security Council,
Economic and Social Council,
Secretariat, and the
International Court of Justice , as well as counterpart bodies dealing with the governance of all other UN system agencies, such as the
World Health Organization and
United Nations Children's Fund . The UN's most visible public figure, and the representative head, is the
Secretary-General, currently
Kofi Annan.
History
The United Nations was founded as a successor to the League of Nations, which was considered by many to have been ineffective in its role as an international governing body, in the sense that it had been unable to prevent World War II. Some argue that the biggest advantage the United Nations has over the League of Nations is the ability to maintain and deploy its member nations' armed forces as
peace keepers. Others see such "peace keepers" and "peace keeping" as euphemisms for war and domination of weak and poor countries by the wealthy and powerful nations of the world.
The term "United Nations" was decided by
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill during World War II, to refer to the Allies. Its first formal use was in the January 1, 1942 Declaration by the United Nations, which committed the Allies to the principles of the
Atlantic Charter and pledged them not to seek a separate peace with the
Axis powers. Thereafter, the Allies used the term "
United Nations Fighting Forces" to refer to their alliance.
The idea for the UN was elaborated in declarations signed at the wartime Allied conferences in
Moscow,
Cairo, and
Tehran in 1943. From August to October 1944, representatives of France, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union met to elaborate the plans at the
Dumbarton Oaks Estate in
Washington, DC. Those and later talks produced proposals outlining the purposes of the organization, its membership and organs, and arrangements to maintain international peace and security and international economic and social cooperation.
On April 25, 1945, the UN Conference on International Organizations began in
San Francisco. In addition to the governments, a number of non-governmental organizations were invited to assist in drafting the charter. The 50 nations represented at the conference signed the Charter of the United Nations two months later on 26 June.
Poland had not been represented at the conference, but a place had been reserved for it among the original signatories, and it added its name later. The UN came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council — Republic of China, France, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.
Initially, the body was known as the
United Nations Organization, or
UNO. However, by the 1950s, English speakers were referring to it as the United Nations, or the UN.
Membership
As of 2006 there are 192
United Nations member states, including virtually all internationally-recognized independent
states. Among the notable absences are the
Republic of China , whose seat on the Security Council was transferred to the
People's Republic of China in 1971;
Holy See , which has declined membership but is an
observer state; the
State of Palestine ; and the
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic , which claims
Western Sahara. The
most recent addition to the UN is
Montenegro, admitted on June 28, 2006
Headquarters
The current United Nations headquarters building was constructed in New York City between 1949 and 1950 beside the
East River. This office project land was bought for 8.5 million dollars by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., using his son
Nelson as a crucial negotiator with the developer, in December 1946. JDR Jr. then donated the land to the UN.
It was designed by an international team of architects that included
Le Corbusier ,
Oscar Niemeyer , and representatives of numerous other nations.
Wallace K. Harrison headed the team. There is disagreement among scholars as to attribution. UN headquarters officially opened on 9 January 1951. While the principal headquarters of the UN are in New York, there are major agencies located in
Geneva,
The Hague,
Vienna,
Montreal,
Copenhagen,
Bonn, and elsewhere. The street address of the UN headquarters is 760 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA. Due to security concerns, all mail sent to that address is sterilized.
The UN buildings are not considered separate political jurisdictions, but do have certain aspects of sovereignty. For example, under agreements with their host countries the
United Nations Postal Administration is allowed to issue
postage stamps for local mailing. Since 1951 the New York office, since 1969 the Geneva office, and since 1979 the Vienna office, have had their own issues. UN organizations also use their own telecommunications ITU prefix, 4U, and unofficially the New York, Geneva, and Vienna sites are considered separate entities for
amateur radio purposes.
As the UN main building is aging, the UN is in the process of building a temporary headquarters designed by
Fumihiko Maki on
First Avenue between 41st and
42nd Streets for use while the current building is being expanded.
The
United Nations Office at Geneva is the United Nations European headquarters. Prior to 1949, the United Nations used a variety of venues in
London and
New York State.
Financing
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 national income statistics, along with other factors.
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 20%. The U.S. is the only member that meets that ceiling, but it is in arrears with hundreds of millions of dollars . Under the scale of assessments adopted in 2000, other major contributors to the regular UN budget for 2001 are
Japan ,
Germany , France , the UK ,
Italy ,
Canada ,
Spain , and
Brazil .
Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments. Some of this is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations, but the majority is financial contributions.
Aims and activities
International conferences
The countries of the UN and its specialized agencies — the "stakeholders" of the system — give guidance and decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout each year. Governing bodies made up of member states include not only the General Assembly,
Economic and Social Council, and the Security Council, but also counterpart bodies dealing with the governance of all other UN system agencies. For example, the World Health Assembly and the Executive Board oversee the work of
WHO.
When an issue is considered particularly important, the General Assembly may convene an international conference to focus global attention and build a consensus for consolidated action. Recent examples include:
- The UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, led to the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to advance the conclusions reached in Agenda 21, the final text of agreements negotiated by governments at UNCED;
- The International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo
...
,
Egypt, in September 1994, approved a programme of action to address the critical challenges and interrelationships between population and sustainable development over the next 20 years;
- The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, in September 1995, sought to accelerate implementation of the historic agreements reached at the Third World Conference on Women;
- The Second UN Conference on Human Settlements , convened in June 1996 in Istanbul, Turkey, considered the challenges of human settlement development and management in the 21st century.
International years and related
The UN declares and coordinates "International Year of the..." in order to focus world attention on important issues. Using the symbolism of the UN, a specially designed logo for the year, and the infrastructure of the UN system to coordinate events worldwide, the various years have become catalysts to advancing key issues on a global scale.
Arms control and disarmament
The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure "the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources". The advent of
nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first resolution of the first meeting of the General Assembly was entitled "The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy" and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction".
The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly and the UN Disarmament Commission. Items on the agenda include consideration of the possible merits of a
nuclear test ban,
outer-space arms control, efforts to ban
chemical weapons, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of
military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.
The Conference on Disarmament is a forum established by the
international community for the negotiation of multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. It has 66 members representing all areas of the world, including the five major nuclear-weapon states . While the conference is not formally a UN organization, it is linked to the UN through a personal representative of the Secretary-General; this representative serves as the secretary general of the conference. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly often request the conference to consider specific disarmament matters. In turn, the conference annually reports its activities to the Assembly.
Peacekeeping
UN peacekeepers are sent to various regions where armed conflict has recently ceased, in order to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage the combatants from resuming hostilities, for example in
East Timor until its independence in 2001. These forces are provided by member states of the UN, and participation in peace keeping operations is optional; at this point only 2 nations, Canada and Portugal, have participated in all peacekeeping operations. The UN does not maintain any independent military. All UN peacekeeping operations must be approved by the Security Council.
The founders of the UN had high hopes that it would act to prevent conflicts between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have not been fully realized. During the
Cold War , the division of the world into hostile camps made peacekeeping agreement extremely difficult. Following the end of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving world peace, as several dozen military conflicts continue to rage around the globe. But the breakup of the Soviet Union also left the U.S. in a unique position of
global dominance, creating a variety of new challenges for the UN.
UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular scale, but including a 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 December 2000, the UN revised the assessment rate scale for the regular budget and for peacekeeping. The peacekeeping scale is designed to be revised every six months and was projected to be near 27% in 2003. The US intends to pay peacekeeping assessments at these lower rates and has sought legislation from the
U.S. Congress to allow payment at these rates and to make payments towards .
The UN
Peace-Keeping Forces received the 1988
Nobel Prize for
Peace. In 2001, the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."
The UN maintains a series of
United Nations Medals awarded to military service members who enforce UN accords. The first such decoration issued was the
United Nations Service Medal, awarded to UN forces who participated in the
Korean War. The
NATO Medal is designed on a similar concept and both are considered
international decorations instead of military decorations.
Human rights
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.
On 15 March 2006 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to replace the United Nations Commission on Human Rights with the UN Human Rights Council . Its purpose is to address human rights violations. The UNCHR had repeatedly been criticized for the composition of its membership. In particular, several of its member countries themselves had dubious human rights records, including states whose representatives had been elected to chair the commission.
There are now seven UN-linked human rights treaty bodies, including the Human Rights Committee and the
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Secretariat services are provided regarding six of those by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The United Nations and its various 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 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 or Security Council resolutions or ICJ rulings.
Early 2006, an anti-torture panel at the United Nations recommended the closure of
Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning. Some Democrats and human rights groups argued that the
CIA’s secret prison system did not allow monitoring for abuses and they hoped that it would be shut down.
Humanitarian assistance and international development
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 disaster. Major humanitarian arms of the UN are the World Food Programme , the
High Commissioner for Refugees with projects in over 116 countries, as well as peacekeeping projects in over 24 countries. At times, UN relief workers have been subject to attacks .
The UN is also involved in supporting development, e.g. by the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations Development Programme is the largest multilateral source of grant technical assistance in the world. Organizations - like the 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.
The UN annually publishes the
Human Development Index , a comparative measure
ranking countries by
poverty,
literacy,
education,
life expectancy, and other factors.
The UN promotes human development through various agencies and departments:
On 9 March 2006, Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched the
Central Emergency Response Fund for those in the
Horn of Africa threatened with starvation.
UN also had an agency called the World Food Council with the goal of coordinating national ministries of agriculture to help alleviate malnutrition and hunger. It was suspended in 1993.
Treaties and international law
The UN negotiates
treaties such as the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to avoid potential international disputes. Disputes over use of the oceans may be adjudicated by a special court.
The International Court of Justice is the main court of the UN. Its purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states. The ICJ began in 1946 and continues to hear cases. Important cases include:
- Congo v. France, where the Democratic Republic of Congo accused France of illegally detaining former heads of state accused of war crimes; and Nicaragua vs. United States, where Nicaragua accused the United States of illegally arming the Contras .
- In 1998 the General Assembly called a conference in Rome for the establishment of an International Criminal Court , at which the "Rome Statute" was adopted. The International Criminal Court became operational in 2002 and began its first case in 2006. 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. However, the ICC is functionally independent of the UN both in terms of personnel and financing, although 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.
- The UN, in 2002, established the Special Court for Sierra Leone in response to the atrocities committed during that country's civil war.
There is also a SCIU for East Timor.
Notable United Nations figures
Many famous humanitarians and celebrities have been involved with the United Nations including:
Audrey Hepburn,
Eleanor Roosevelt,
Danny Kaye, Jay-Z,
Peter Ustinov,
Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, Clint Borgen,
Angelina Jolie,
Mother Teresa,
Shakira, and
Nicole Kidman for UNIFEM.
Reform
In recent years there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations. But there is little clarity, let alone consensus, about how to reform it. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, others want its role reduced to humanitarian work. There have also been numerous calls for the UN's Security Council's membership to be increased to be able to reflect the current geo-political state In 2004 and 2005, allegations of mismanagement and corruption regarding the Oil-for-Food Programme for Iraq under
Saddam Hussein led to renewed calls for reform.
An official reform programme was initiated by
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan 
