75 Years Of Uno: Relevance, Challenges & Reforms

The idea of an international body to promote global peace started with President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom. The United Nations came into existence on October 24, 1945 after being ratified by 51 nations, which included five permanent members (France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the UK and the US) and 46 other signatories. The first meeting of the General Assembly took place on January 10, 1946.

Major aims of the UN

• Maintaining international peace and security,
• Developing friendly relations among nations,
• Achieving international cooperation in solving international problems,
• Protection of Human Rights, and
• Provide humanitarian and upholding international law.

Main Organs of the UN

• The General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the U.N. Secretariat are six main parts of the U.N.

Achievements

When the U.N. was established in 1945 and its charter was signed, there were 50 members.The General Assembly is now composed of 193 members.

• Since 1993, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has strived to ensure humanity’s fundamental social, cultural and political rights. Initiatives such as the World Conference against Racism and Related Intolerance in 2001 have substantively protected numerous minority groups.
• Over the past 75 years the U.N. and its agencies have worked on a wide range of issues. They include maintaining peace and security, disarmament, and the prevention of nuclear proliferation, genocide, delivering humanitarian aid, providing food, sustainable development, environmental protection, etc.
• The U.N. is credited with helping negotiate 172 peaceful settlements and helping more than 30 million refugees.
• Currently, approximately 100,000 peacekeepers from 120 countries are serving in 13 UN missions. The U.N. and its agencies have had success in coordinating global efforts against diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, cholera, influenza, yellow fever, meningitis and COVID-19, and helped eradicate smallpox and polio from most of the world.
• In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. The UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics.
• The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process for promoting free trade.

Failures

It lacks effective and efficient ways of dealing with not only traditional security issues but also non-traditional ones, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

• A number of ongoing crises are indicative of U.N. inaction and paralysis, including Russia’s takeover of part of Ukraine; China occupying disputed territories in South China Sea; the Iraq War; the Israel-Palestine conflict; civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the treatment of Rohingyas in Myanmar, Ughyurs in China.
• On the conservation front United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has failed to adequately protect oceans from overfishing and over-exploitation.
• The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
• Despite the treaties such as 1951 Refugee Convention and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there have been incidences of refugee crisis- Palestinians, Syrians, Rohingyas and Jewish refugees.
• Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. The civil wars in Rwanda, Syria and Yemen; Russia-Ukraine conflict reflect lack of capability of UN to engage in resolving conflicts.
• Institutions designed in 1945 poorly fit with the systemic global challenges. Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power. As a result, regional groupings are coming up with their own financing mechanism.

Relevance

It provides a platform for countries to communicate and seek cooperation. As powerful countries move toward unilateralism, populism, and nationalism at the expense of multilateralism and collective action, a united and forward-looking Security Council capable of effectively driving the United Nations to achieve its goals is essential.

• It can strengthen early warning protocols on international emergencies including famines and pandemics to help nations to take preventive and prompt action to detect, prevent, and mitigate potential new threats that could undermine international security, national economies, sanitary and health conditions, and food security.
• It can make efforts to reduce the destructive potential of the threats that endanger the existence of humanity such as climate change, infectious disease, and nuclear weapons.
• The pillars of global governance are undergoing rapid transformation, institutional infirmities are being revealed, and a normative shift is becoming increasingly visible. It can provide a way to deal with new challenges of governance.
• Multilateralism, through dialogue, negotiation and international cooperation, provides the most suitable platform to discuss and reach agreements in search of a common understanding.
• Conflict between the US on the one hand and China and Russia on the other has become a new reality in West-East conflict. UN can serve as an effective platform in tackling this rise of new cold war.

Challenges

Following issues faced by UNO, weaken its effectiveness, render it unable to act decisively on critical global issues and undermine its relevance:

• Gross underfunding
• Burgeoning bureaucracy
• Creeping unilateralism
• The non-representative Security Council with abuse of veto power by permanent members
• Disunity and geopolitical rivalry among the permanent members of the Security Council
• Powerful members ignoring U.N. charter and resolutions
• Climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation

Possibilities and Prospects

There is need to reform the Security Council to make it more inclusive, representative, transparent, and effective, and to demonstrate greater cooperation and consensus-building. A permanent coordinating platform should be set up to integrate the UN response across agencies, funds, and related organizations, and to act quickly, comprehensively, and efficiently in various fields. There is need to foster mutually reinforcing and coordinated efforts amongst the main organs of the United Nations to boost and uphold multilateralism.