United Nations

The United Nations (UN) was established toward the end of World War II in 1945 as the successor intergovernmental organization to the League of Nations. The UN's primary purpose is to maintain or restore international peace and security, and to this end the founding members established a potentially powerful executive organ, the Security Council, that consists of fifteen members, five of which are permanent (China, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France). The idea was that the Security Council would take collective security measures to deal with threats to or breaches of international peace, for example, through the imposition of economic sanctions against member states violating or threatening peace or through the use of armed forces put at the Council's disposal by member states.

One of the effects of the Cold War (1945–1989) between the United States and the former Soviet Union was that the Security Council achieved little because those two permanent member states exercised their right to veto proposed action. The principal exception to this stalemate was the Korean conflict (1950–1953), in which the Security Council mandated a U.S.-led army to repel the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. This was made possible by the absence of the Soviet Union from the Security Council when the initial attack occurred. The return of the Soviet Union to the Council chamber led to the UN General Assembly developing its subsidiary collective security powers by supporting the forceful reunification of Korea and by claiming to be able to recommend enforcement actions in the future. The General Assembly also went on in 1956 to mandate the first full peacekeeping or "blue-helmeted force" as a mechanism for ending the Suez crisis.

Such forces were not mandated or equipped to fight wars but to help the parties to a conflict implement agreed-on measures to stop the fighting and restore peace. However, as a plenary organ consisting of the vast majority of countries in the world—191 by the end of 2003—meeting regularly in annual sessions, the General Assembly is suited to recommend action in emergencies only when the Security Council is deadlocked. It has the advantage, though, of not being subject to the veto decisions made by a majority, normally two-thirds of those states present and voting. Both political organs also are mandated by the founding treaty—the UN Charter—to facilitate the peaceful settlement of disputes between states, much of which power is delegated to the UN secretary-general.

The Charter also established an International Court of Justice (ICJ) based in The Hague as the principal judicial organ of the UN, with the function of deciding disputes between states and rendering legal advice upon request by recognized UN organs and organizations. The weakness of the Court is that in hearing disputes between states it must establish that both parties have consented to its jurisdiction .

the un system

The UN system does not consist only of a single organization based in New York City made up of the sometimes headline-grabbing organs discussed above. The UN system also includes a number of specialized agencies that are intergovernmental organizations in their own right, having separate councils and assemblies as well as secretariats and budgets and headquarters around the globe. Many of these agencies predate the UN Charter or came about in the immediate post-World War II era. These agencies deal with matters of common concern—for example, diseases, financial crises, the safety of civil aviation and merchant shipping, international postal services, and international telecommunications. Many are well known—for example, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Maritime Organization, the International Telecommunications Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank (formally known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development); others are less so—for example, the World Meteorological Organization, the UN Industrial Development Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the Universal Postal Union. In addition, there are other organizations that, although not specialized agencies of the UN, have a relationship with the UN that is either formal, for example, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Criminal Court (ICC), or practical, for example, the World Trade Organization.

trade and finance

The World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization (which was constituted in 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) together form the three pillars of the global system for trade and finance, and there are significant levels of cooperation among the three organizations. The World Trade Organization promotes free trade , the IMF helps countries with balance of payment difficulties, and the World Bank concentrates on loans for less developed states. These three organizations promote a global economic system based on exchange rate stability and the free flow of trade and capital. Although all three groups generally make decisions on the basis of consensus, the executive boards of the IMF and the World Bank are dominated by the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. These countries have a higher percentage of votes because of their greater financial contributions. In contrast to this system of weighted voting, the World Trade Organization is based on the UN voting principle of "one state, one vote."

subsidiary organs

The organizations in the UN system have created numerous subsidiary bodies. The UN General Assembly, for instance, has created bodies that deal with matters such as children's welfare, trade and development, the environment, refugees, and human rights. Examples of well-known subsidiary bodies include the UN Children's Fund and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR). The UN Economic and Social Council, another political organ of the UN office based in New York City, also has established significant subsidiary bodies, for instance, the Human Rights Commission created in 1946. In addition, the Security Council has formed subsidiary bodies. Examples include fact-finding bodies, peacekeeping forces, and in the 1990s international criminal tribunals to try those suspected of war crimes or other international crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It has created bodies that have responsibility for the interim government of territories or countries pending the out-come of a peace process. The UN interim administrations in Kosovo and East Timor established in 1999 are some contemporary examples.

coordination

Coordination of this unwieldy global network of organizations, organs, and individuals is problematic, although some evidence exists of systems developing that cut across bodies and institutions governing areas such as human rights, collective security, environmental matters, and labor conditions. Several of these issues may be addressed within one of the UN entities identified above, such as the International Labor Organization in regard to labor conditions. Others are more likely to be dealt with across bodies—for instance, human rights issues are addressed by the Security Council, General Assembly, and ICJ, several of the specialized agencies (e.g., UNESCO), many of the subsidiary organs (e.g., the UN Children's Fund), and related bodies (e.g., the ICC). Sufficient evidence of the coordination of these bodies exists that it can be said there are at least weak systems within the UN. Perhaps more important, the UN bodies with some authority on human rights matters view themselves as being part of a UN human rights system and are viewed by outside agencies as such.

Mechanisms for coordination and direction of the system are present, although they have proved largely ineffective for much of the UN's tenure. Some evidence suggests that under the direction of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appointed in 1997, mechanisms such as the Chief Executives Board have started to provide a focal point for drawing on the resources of the entire system to address jointly, in various combinations of agencies and programs, global problems such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Chief Executives Board consists of the heads of the specialized agencies under the chair of the UN secretary-general and the leaders of other UN funds and programs, plus the directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Trade Organization. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the system has received more policy direction from the Economic and Social Council and General Assembly, the UN organs that have ultimate responsibility for managing the UN specialized agencies, funds, and programs.

values

The values of the UN system may be found in the preambles and opening articles of the organization's principal treaties. However, these core values have been elaborated on by the practice of the various bodies in the UN system. Many of these values—the promotion and protection of peace, human rights, and self-determination —were significant developments for the international community in 1945. These values provide both the goals to which the system aspires and the benchmarks against which the success or failure of the system can be measured. Other values have been added to the core established in the immediate post-World War II period. One new value reflects the emergence of an extremely serious and common problem facing the international community. The protection of the environment made its way onto the list of UN values at the organization's 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. In addition, the promotion of democracy has emerged as a core value since the end of the Cold War, deriving from the principle of self-determination.

Other established UN values are peace and security, justice and law, and economic and social well-being. Whereas peace and security are largely the concern of the principal organs established by the UN Charter, many of the other values are pursued by the specialized agencies and subsidiary bodies and programs under the general direction of the General Assembly and Economic and Social Council. This has, in part, led to a perceived hierarchy of values, with peace and security seen as the primary value, whereas the others are of a secondary nature.

This debate on the hierarchy of UN values perhaps is misunderstood. Peace is no longer simply the absence of war but the establishment of an all-encompassing peace promoting justice, human rights, democracy, and economic and social wellbeing. In other words, peace in this wider sense may be viewed as an overarching value, including all others. This is reflected in the constitutions of most of the specialized UN agencies, which make an explicit link between their purposes—for example, to develop a system of civil aviation, to prevent epidemics, to improve the conditions of workers—and the promotion of peace.

Although peace has this overarching character, the UN system is underwritten by another value: the law. All UN values and mechanisms are based on the legal foundation of the UN Charter and the constitutions of its specialized agencies. However, it does appear that the Security Council, the most powerful UN organ, is not always limited by international law in the area of protecting peace. Clearly, the Security Council has a great deal of latitude to take coercive action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, but this does not mean that it can ignore basic principles of international or Charter law.

Law is at the heart of the UN system, not only the law that frames the system and embeds its values but also the law produced by the system, the purpose of which is to uphold, implement, and enforce those basic values. Despite the inherent weaknesses of organs, bodies, and agencies whose main form of decision making is a recommendation, the UN system does generate vast amounts of law. The legislative capacity of the UN has increased since its inception. The seminal resolutions of the General Assembly, for example, those on decolonization, are not the only examples. Many of the resolutions of the WHO, International Telecommunications Union, International Civil Aviation Authority, and International Atomic Energy Agency, for example, although not always technically binding in the sense of a treaty, are accepted and acted on as pieces of legislation for the world community. Rules governing safety in civil aviation and nuclear plants, rules aimed at the prevention of diseases, and rules governing the use of orbital slots for the placement of telecommunications satellites are just some examples of the regulatory frameworks being created at the global level but applied at varying levels, from a surgical procedure to the realms of outer space. This reflects the UN's multilateralist approach to issues and problems, an approach that promotes the establishment of general principles which then are applied to specific problems and disputes, in contrast to a unilateralist approach that favors the application of power by individual states.

compliance

Historically, the UN has been content to produce large amount of law with little regard to the issues of compliance and enforcement. As with general international law, the UN has relied for the most part on voluntary compliance by member states. Although relying on the goodwill of member states does in fact work for much of the legislation produced by the technical agencies, for more political matters the UN has found the need to develop enforcement mechanisms.

Common procedures are reporting and supervision, which are used widely in the human rights field and in many of the technical areas governed by the specialized agencies. States are obligated to report on their compliance efforts, and very often these reports are subject to critical scrutiny by a UN body. This sometimes is supplemented in the human rights field with individual complaint procedures, by which under an optional protocol states may consent to allow individuals from within their jurisdictions to take alleged cases of abuse at the hands of the state before a UN body. However, these methods can prove to be too limited to deal with persistent offenders. To this end more intrusive procedures are being developed within the UN—for example, in attempts to reduce the number of cases of torture or of the involuntary disappearances that have plagued many countries. These methods include having an inspection regime for places of detention in addition to the inspection regimes utilized by some of the agencies, for instance, the International Civil Aviation Organization and IMF as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Armed peacekeeping forces help ensure compliance with UN law. They may be used in the case of a cease-fire or in the pursuit of a more ambitious peace. UN peacekeeping has become multifunctional and includes human rights and development components in addition to the traditional blue-helmeted force. Clearly, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the failure of so-called safe areas in Bosnia in 1995 show that UN peacekeeping is in need of reform. The Brahimi report of August 2000 confirmed this, but this should not detract from the successes of UN peacekeeping operations in Namibia, Nicaragua, and Mozambique, for instance.

Other coercive techniques employed by the UN include making development aid and loans conditional and the penalization of a lawbreaking state by expulsion or suspension from the UN or, more commonly, through the denial of credentials to a government. Nonmilitary enforcement actions by the Security Council, normally in the form of economic sanctions imposed on the delinquent state, have increased in their use in the post-Cold War era. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on the United States this authority has expanded with general legislation requiring all states to take measures to prevent support for terrorists. The Security Council's ultimate power is that of authorizing military enforcement action by willing member states to reverse an aggression or address a threat to peace. It has authorized the use of armed force on numerous occasions since 1989—for example, in the Persian Gulf (1990), Somalia (1992), Albania (1997), Bosnia (1994), Haiti (1994 and 2003), East Timor (1999), and the Congo (2003).

Again, as with many aspects of UN law, the major weakness of enforcement mechanisms lies in the judicial sphere. Judicial enforcement by the ICJ remains weak, although once states have consented to its jurisdiction, its decisions are binding on the parties to the case. The formation of the ICC in 2002 represented a major step forward in establishing the legal responsibility of individuals for breaches of fundamental norms prohibiting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and for punishing those individuals.

reform

Despite these positive developments, improvements and reform are required in virtually all UN organs and organizations. Membership in the Security Council must be expanded; also needed are substantive legal limitations on the

use of the veto, the most significant flaw in the UN Charter. Other needed reforms include greater access of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other segments of civil society to UN organs; a proper judicial system armed with the power to review the decisions of the political organs of the UN; greater separation of powers; and the realignment and better coordination of bodies with overlapping responsibilities. As well as institutional reform (a process that has remained stalled since the early 1990s), there must be further efforts to close the gap between the dictates of UN law and the practice of member states.

See also: European Court of Justice; Human Rights; International Court of Justice; International Criminal Court; International Human Rights Law; International Humanitarian Law; Peacekeeping Forces; United Nations Commission on Human Rights; Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Nigel D. White