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The United Nations: A Very Short Introduction
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AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTIONS L. Sandy Maisel
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY Charles O. Jones
ANARCHISM Colin Ward ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas ANCIENT WARFARE
Harry Sidebottom ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia ANTISEMITISM Steven Beller ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes ART HISTORY Dana Arnold ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY
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Fred Piper and Sean Murphy DADA AND SURREALISM
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Paul Langford THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball EMOTION Dylan Evans EMPIRE Stephen Howe ENGELS Terrell Carver ETHICS Simon Blackburn THE EUROPEAN UNION
John Pinder and Simon Usherwood EVOLUTION
Brian and Deborah Charlesworth EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn FASCISM Kevin Passmore FEMINISM Margaret Walters THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Michael Howard FOSSILS Keith Thomson FOUCAULT Gary Gutting FREE WILL Thomas Pink THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
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PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close PAUL E. P. Sanders PHILOSOPHY Edward Craig PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
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Leofranc Holford-Strevens TRAGEDY Adrian Poole THE TUDORS John Guy TWENTIETH-CENTURY
BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan The united Nations
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Jussi M. Hanhimäki
The United Nations
A Very Short Introduction
3
3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hanhimäki, Jussi M., 1965–
The United Nations:a very short introduction / Jussi M. Hanhimäki. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–530437–4 1. United Nations. I. Title.
JZ4984.5.H364 2008 341.23—dc22 2008018818
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1
1 The best hope of mankind?: A brief history of the UN 8
2 An impossible hybrid: the structure of the United Nations 26
3 Facing wars, confronting threats: the UN Security Council in action 50
4 Peacekeeping to peacebuilding 71
5 Economic development to human development 91
6 Rights and responsibilities: human rights to human security 111
7 Reform and challenges: the future of the United Nations 135
Chronology 149
Glossary: acronyms of major UN organs and agencies
used in the text 154
References 156
Further reading 158
Index 162
C o n te n ts
List of Illustrations
1 UN Headquarters 2
UN Photo/Yutaka Nagata
2 Woodrow Wilson and Georges
Clemenceau at Versailles 10
Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62-104954
3 Signing of the UN Charter 14
UN Photo/McLain
4 Khrushchev at the General
Assembly 34
Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62-134149
5 Dag Hammarskjöld
ceremony 37
UN Photo/#72120
6 China seat cartoon 57
Library of Congress,Temple, no. 25.
7 Lester Pearson 72
Library of Congress
LC-USZ62-128757
8 Boutros Boutros-Ghali in
Sarajevo 84
UN Photo/A Morvan
9 UNICEF doctor 104
Library of Congress, Lot 13350,
no. 12
10 Eleanor Roosevelt at meeting
to draft the International
Bill of Rights 113
UN Photo
11 Kofi Annan in Darfur 132
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
12 Peacekeeping in Haiti 141
UN Photo/Sophia Paris
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the encouragement of my colleagues at
the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
in Geneva, Switzerland, for providing a stimulating environment
in which to explore the ins and outs of the United Nations.
At Oxford University Press, I was extremely fortunate to be able
to work with an excellent team that, at various points, included
Joellyn Ausanka, Tim Bartlett, Mary Sutherland, Justin Tackett,
and, in particular, Nancy Toff.
As always my family in Finland has been supportive. Thanks
especially to my parents, Hilkka Uuskallio and Jussi K.
Hanhimäki, who have never ceased to be supportive. In Geneva,
my son, Jari, has allowed his dad to spend hours preparing this
book while other pressing matters—tennis, football, trips to aqua
park, etc.—would clearly have been far more appropriate ways of
using time. Last, I would like to thank Barbara, who insisted that
I had to complete this book. While seeing it in print may not
change my life, she surely has.
Introduction
We the Peoples: The Promise
of the United Nations
‘‘We the peoples of the United Nations,’’ begins the United Nations
Charter. It goes on to list four principal aims for the global
organization. First, the UN was to safeguard peace and security in
order ‘‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’’
Second, it was ‘‘to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights.’’
Third, the UN was to uphold respect for international law. And
fourth, the new organization pledged ‘‘to promote social progress
and better standards of life.’’ In the summer of 1945, the founders
of the United Nations thus vowed to make the world a better place.
Has the UN been able to achieve all, some, or any of these
worthy goals over more than six decades of existence? This is the
major question tackled in this book. Accordingly, it will assess
the successes and failures of the United Nations as a guardian of
international peace and security, as a promoter of human rights, as a
protector of international law, and as an engineer of socioeconomic
advancement. In doing so, the book will delve into the structure of
the UN and its operations throughout the world.
This is not an easy task, for throughout its history the UN has been
a controversial institution. Admired by many and reviled by others,
the world’s only truly global international organization has had a
bumpy ride. It has received Nobel Peace Prizes and other awards
for saving lives and easing suffering. But it has also been a favorite
1
target of politicians who suspect—or claim they do in order to
curry favor with certain groups of voters—the UN of trying to
become a global government. Yet others, such as Henry Cabot
Lodge Jr., the U.S. ambassador to the UN from 1953 to 1960, have
taken a more sober view, recognizing the inherent limits of an
organization that, in theory at least, represents the interests of the
entire world. As Lodge succinctly put it in 1954: ‘‘This organization
is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn’t created to
take you to heaven.’’ 1
1. UN Headquarters, covering eighteen acres on the east side of
Manhattan, consists of four main buildings: the General Assembly
(with sloping roof), the Conference Building (on the East River), the
thirty-nine-floor Secretariat, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library,
which was added in 1961. The complex was designed by an
international team of eleven architects.
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T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
Indeed, if there is one theme running through this book it is the
simple fact that the UN’s greatest challenge has been an impossibly
wide gap between its ambitions and capacities. A quick look at the
key areas of UN activities should make the case evident.
First, the founders of the UN pledged to make the world a safer
place. In order to avoid the sort of carnage caused by World War II,
they created a structure and instruments designed to address
threats to international security. Most obviously, the UN Security
Council was awarded almost limitless power when it came to
dealing with violations of peace. Its resolutions were to be binding
on all member states. Its underling, the Military Staff Committee,
was to plan military operations and have at its disposal an air force
contingent ready for immediate deployment. Never again, the
founders seem to have hoped, would the world stand by and watch
as aggressors violated international borders and agreements.
The design was flawed. The Military Staff Committee did not get
its air force or the bases envisioned. Thus, UN military operations
could not be deployed rapidly; indeed, the UN was not to have a
military arm of its own. The UN charter also contained in it the seeds
of the Security Council’s immobilization: by granting the veto right to
five countries (China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and
the United States), the charter allowed this select group to prevent
action that they viewed as being antithetical to their national
interests. As a result, the UN may have had a positive role in
preventing the outbreak of another world war, but it could not
prevent or stop a series of regional conflicts (from Korea and
Vietnamto the Middle East and Africa). The peacekeepers sent tothe
world’s trouble regions tended to arrive long after the worst
hostilities had ended. Sometimes, as in Sudan’s Darfur region after
2003, their arrival was delayed while genocide progressed.
The basic problem for the UN as the overseer of international
security was and remains simple: how to deal with conflicts—be
they between or within states—without offending the national
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sovereignty of its member states. It is a riddle that continues to
affect the UN’s international security functions. Peace is still
waiting to break out.
The UN’s second goal was to highlight the importance of human
rights and respect for international law. To accomplish this
objective, treaties, declarations, and legal instruments multiplied.
The most important of these documents was undoubtedly the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Others were added to the
human rights canon in the 1960s, thus producing the International
Bill of Rights. By the twenty-first century, the Human Rights
Council, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other
bodies were busily reporting abuses around the world, while the
International Criminal Court and special tribunals were
prosecuting the worst human rights abusers at The Hague.
But the capacity of these bodies to implement some form of
universal jurisdiction remains limited by the very same factor that
hampers the UN’s role in international security: the prerogative of
the nation state. The High Commissioner and the Council cannot
give ‘‘orders’’ to sovereign states. The special rapporteurs who
investigate abuses on behalf of the international community
have to be ‘‘invited’’ by the host government that, in many cases, is
the very same government that is being investigated. All too often
deadlock has been the end result.
Finally, the UN pledged to promote social and economic progress.
To accomplish this, such institutions as the World Bank—linked to
but not technically part of the UN system—were set up to assist
countries in need of assistance. By the 1960s, as the UN’s
membership was rising with the proliferation of newly
independent and often underdeveloped countries (mainly from
Africa), the organization responded by creating additional
structures, of which the UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Development Program
(UNDP) are probably the best known.
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T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
Two problems, still evident today, emerged as early as the 1960s.
On the one hand, there was no agreement on how to promote
progress. Economists and social scientists argued over the
desirability of giving economic aid as opposed to allowing the
market to take care of the work. On the other hand, the different
organizations had different resource bases and organizational
structures. For example, because the World Bank has been funded
mainly by the United States, its policies have been heavily
influenced by Washington. But the United States was, for more
than four decades, engaged in fighting the Cold War and
promoting capitalism over communism as the correct way to
organize economic life. In that context, development aid often, too
often, became a political tool unrelated to the real problems of
real people in the developing world.
Add to this a number of other elements—corruption, interagency
competition, and lack of resources—and the reasons why
development aid has not been a resounding success become
clearer. But neither has it been a complete failure as some of its
detractors would have it. Indeed, the so-called Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) unveiled in 2000 called for halving
global poverty rates by 2015. By July 7, 2007—the UN’s official
halfway point for meeting this target—it seemed that Asian
countries were on track toward meeting this goal. But sub-Saharan
Africa was lagging far behind its targets. It is no accident that
the current UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has followed
in his successors’ footsteps in calling for the rich countries to get
serious about development aid.
The United Nations may not have lived up to all the ambitions
of its founders, yet one fact remains clear: it is the only truly
global organization in the history of mankind. With 192 member
states as of 2008, the UN covers the entire globe. In its six
decades of existence it has almost quadrupled its original
membership of 51. The meetings of the UN General Assembly,
the forum where all member states are represented, are a true
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gathering of the proverbial ‘‘family of nations’’ or ‘‘the parliament
of man.’’
What lies behind the founding of such a seemingly all-
encompassing and potentially all-powerful global organization?
Why did its membership increase so dramatically? Why, despite
much criticism, does it continue its work around the globe? And
what does that work actually involve?
This short book is an attempt to find some answers to these
questions, many of them puzzling and frustrating. At the core of
my interest, though, is an attempt to explain—both to myself and
the readers of this book—the dichotomy that has bothered me
ever since I moved to Geneva, the city that is both the original seat
of the League of Nations and the current host of the UN’s
European headquarters.
On the one hand, many of us think of the UN as a bizarre
bureaucracy filled with highly (over)paid international civil servants
with little else to do with their time but hold conferences in nice
cities (such as Geneva) located far away from the world’s trouble
zones. And yet, on the other hand, we also seem to be of the opinion
that the UN helps millions of people around the globe to live
better lives or, in many cases, to just hang on to life. Making sense
of these widely disparate views of the UN and its role in the modern
world is the basic reason that I undertook to write this book.
It has not been easy. For one, it has been necessary to make some
tough choices. The choices that I made meant that I would not focus
on the slew of resolutions that the UN passes annually. Many UN
agencies and funds were omitted, not because they are not
important but because the limitation of space did not allow me to
discuss, say, the work of the World Tourism Organization (the other
WTO) or the important analyses produced by the World
Meteorological Organization (WMO). Rather, I emphasized the
different areas that are the heart of the UN’s daily work:
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international security and peacekeeping; economic and human
development; and the advocacy of human rights. Some might object
to the fact that I have given short shrift to the UN’s environmental
and global health agenda. I would simply respond that both of these
can be viewed as parts of the broad issues just described.
Second, writing a short book about a vast topic is (inherently)
difficult for a historian used to dealing and highlighting complexity
over simplicity. Readers will undoubtedly make up their own
minds whether the effort was successful. But they should be
forewarned that one trace of the fact that the author is a historian
was impossible to disguise: the book does often veer toward a
narration of events around a specific theme rather than a
theoretical explanation and analysis of the functions of a given
part of the United Nations.
In the end, one cannot write a book about the UN without
addressing a basic question: is the UN obsolete and unnecessary?
The answer in this book is no. The UN is an indispensable
organization that has made the world a better place, as its
founders hoped. But it is also a deeply flawed institution, in need of
constant reform.
This, it seems, is not a revolutionary argument. Rather, it reflects the
views of most people around the globe. As a 2007 global opinion
survey indicates, giving the UN additional powers is a popular
proposition around the globe (three out of four of those polled
supporting the idea of increasing the powers of the UN Security
Council to authorize the use of force). This not only reflects the
general dissatisfaction over the way in which the UN is often
sidelined by strong countries—the 2003 intervention of Iraq being a
recent high-profile case. It is also indicative of the continued hopes
that most people in most countries place on the United Nations.
That, alone, makes trying to understand the UN in all its manifold
complexity a worthy task.
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Chapter 1
The best hope of mankind?
A brief history of the UN
We usually think of international organizations as a twentieth-
century phenomenon that started with the establishment of the
League of Nations in 1919. This is, for the most part, true. However,
in the late nineteenth century nations had already established
international organizations for dealing with specific issues. The
foremost among them were the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), founded in 1865 (originally called the International
Telegraph Union), and the Universal Postal Union, which dates
back to 1874. Today, both of these organizations are part of the
UN system. The International Peace Conference held in The Hague
in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which
started its work in 1902. It was the first medium for settling
international disputes between countries and a predecessor of the
UN’s International Court of Justice. The outbreak of World War I
in August 1914 and the carnage that followed, however, showed the
limits of this mechanism. It also signaled the final end of an
international system—the so-called Concert of Europe—that had
saved the old Continent from the scourge of a major war since
Napoleon’s adventures a century earlier.
Between 1914 and 1918, Europe saw the worst killing spree of its
already bloody history. Almost twenty million people perished.
Empires (the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, and, temporarily,
the Russian) collapsed. New nations (such as Czechoslovakia,
8
Estonia, and Finland) were born. Radical revolutions were won (in
Russia) and lost (in Germany). In short, a new world order emerged.
The League of Nations: ‘‘a definite guaranty of peace’’
Amid the carnage, in January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson
outlined his idea of the League of Nations. Given the utter
devastation caused by World War I, support for the idea of an
international organization was widespread. To many, an
international organization with the power to settle disputes
before they escalated into military conflicts appeared to be the
answer. Although the United States would eventually fail to join
the League of Nations, Wilson chaired the 1919 Versailles Peace
Conference’s commission on the establishment of an international
organization. Wilson, for one, had few reservations about the
significance of the League. As he declared to a joint session of
the U.S. Congress in 1919:
It is a definite guaranty of peace. It is a definite guaranty by word
against aggression. It is a definite guaranty against the things which
have just come near bringing the whole structure of civilization into
ruin. Its purposes do not for a moment lie vague. Its purposes are
declared, and its powers are unmistakable. It is not in contemplation
that this should be merely a league to secure the peace of the
world. It is a league which can be used for cooperation in any
international matter. 1
The president was not alone in placing such high hopes in the
new organization. Wilson, with his open idealism and fresh
internationalism, offered a ray of hope for a better future. But in
retrospect, Wilson’s confident rhetoric appears out of place. The
new League was dealt a devastating blow when the U.S. Senate
refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty. The country never joined the
League, making the newly formed organization permanently
handicapped.
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Nevertheless, after being housed temporarily in London, the
League commenced its operations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1920.
It soon scored some limited successes. In the early 1920s, the
League settled territorial disputes between Finland and Sweden
over the Aland Islands, between Germany and Poland over Upper
Silesia, and between Iraq and Turkey over the city of Mosul. The
League combated the international opium trade and alleviated
refugee crises in Russia with some success. By acting as the
umbrella organization for such agencies as the International Labor
Organization (ILO) and the Permanent Court of International
Justice (predecessor of today’s International Court of Justice, ICJ),
it also provided a model for the future United Nations.
A victors’ organization, the League was dominated by France and
Great Britain, with Japan and Italy as the other two permanent
members of the League Council (the rough equivalent to the UN
Security Council and the highest authority on matters of
international security). The twenty-eight founding members,
represented in the General Assembly, were mostly from Europe
and Latin America.
2. President Woodrow Wilson rides with French premier
Georges Clemenceau to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
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Indeed, the League of Nations was in this sense an expression of
the Eurocentric world of its times: virtually all of Africa, Asia,
and the Middle East were controlled by European imperial powers.
To be sure, the League established the so-called mandate system to
prepare the ‘‘natives’’ of the different regions for self-government
and independence. The governments that received the mandates—
for example, Britain in Palestine and France in Lebanon and
Syria—were granted broad authority regarding such preparations.
They took their time. Independence for most European mandates
would have to wait until after 1945 and would be accompanied by
much violence, instability, and, in the long run, chronic insecurity.
Shortsighted though they were, the mandates were a time bomb
that would explode only after the League had ceased to exist. It was
the League’s failure to prevent the outbreak of World War II that
caused its demise.
The world at war
Although the absence of the United States was a significant factor
in rendering the League of Nations ineffectual, the organization’s
importance was further minimized by the lack of respect it
commanded among other great powers. Germany and the Soviet
Union were members, but only briefly: Germany joined in 1926,
only to exit the League after the Nazis came to power in 1933.
In 1933 the Soviet Union entered the League. Six years later, after
its attack on Finland in late 1939, the USSR became the only
League member ever to be expelled.
By that point the League had also seen the departure of two of its
founding members. Unhappy with the League’s criticism of its
occupation of Manchuria, Japan left the club in 1933. In 1935–36
Italy was equally dismissive of its membership obligations after
its successful attack and occupation of Ethiopia, one of the three
African members of the League (the others were Liberia and
South Africa).
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Why did the League fail in countering this series of aggressive acts
by a number of great powers willing to use military force for
expansionist purposes? The global economic crisis of the 1930s
certainly curbed the enthusiasm of others—France and Britain
in particular—to risk lives and resources to fight distant wars that
did not have an immediate bearing on their national security.
Thus, they turned to appeasement, a policy that ultimately failed.
During the 1938 Munich Conference, Britain and France
acquiesced in the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia by agreeing to
the addition of the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Reich. If that act had
been justified by the existence of a large German-speaking
population in the ceded parts of Czechoslovakia, there might have
been no excuse for Germany’s later occupation of the remainder
of Czechoslovakia. When Germany finally attacked Poland in
September 1939, after concluding a sinister pact with the Soviet
Union a month earlier, the high hopes placed upon the League
only two decades earlier were completely crushed.
The League of Nations was further handicapped by its inability
to apply sufficient pressure in clear-cut cases of aggression.
According to its covenant, the League could introduce verbal or
economic sanctions against an aggressor and, if these methods
failed, intervene militarily. In theory these steps were logical and
reasonable. But while verbal sanctions could not deter an aggressor
that was determined and strong, economic sanctions required
international collaboration. As the League had no authority
beyond its limited membership, a country suffering from the
pressure of economic sanctions could still trade with nonmembers.
Especially during the international economic crisis of the 1930s,
willing trading partners were not hard to find. Because the
League had no army of its own, military intervention required
member countries to furnish the necessary troops. In practice this
meant French or British troops, but neither country was
interested in getting involved in potentially costly conflicts in
Africa or Asia.
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By the time the League expelled the Soviet Union in 1939, there
was no getting around the fact that the League had failed in its
overall objective. It had not become, as Wilson had hoped, a
‘‘definite guaranty for peace.’’ Nevertheless, the onset of World
War II made it even more evident that some form of
international organization was needed to safeguard against yet
another descent to Armageddon in the future. One goal was
paramount: a repetition of the League experience could not be
allowed.
An act of creation
The first ‘‘Declaration by United Nations’’ dates back to January 1,
1942, when representatives of twenty-six nations pledged their
governments to continue fighting together to defeat the Axis
powers and to obtain a ‘‘just’’ peace. Thus, unlike the League, the
UN started off as an alliance that came into being soon after the
American entry to the war, following the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor and Germany’s declaration of war on the United States in
December 1941. World War II became a truly global conflict,
pitting the so-called Grand Alliance (headed by the United States,
Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) against the Axis powers
(Germany, Italy, and Japan).
World War II was, simply, deadly. The estimated civilian and
military death tolls ran as high as 72 million. The deeper impact of
the war on global and national economies, as well as on political
structures around the globe, was profound. European empires
collapsed either during or as a result of the war. The United States
and the Soviet Union emerged as the strongest nations on earth.
Germany and Japan were occupied and militarily emasculated. In
sum, the world was transformed.
The UN was created, in part, to manage that transformation. As
in the case of the League, it was an initiative of the American
president, in this case Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose administration
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pushed for the creation of the UN during the last years of the
war. In August 1944 delegates from China, the Soviet Union, the
United Kingdom, and the United States met at Dumbarton Oaks,
a private estate in Washington, D.C., to draw up the basic
blueprint for the new international organization. By October the
outline for the UN Charter was ready. After the surrender of
Germany in April of the following year (and the death of Roosevelt
in the same month), the charter was signed in San Francisco on
June 26, 1945. On October 24, 1945, with the Pacific war also
concluded, the United Nations officially came into existence.
3. After months of intense negotiations, the UN Charter was
officially adopted on June 25, 1945. A member of the Guatemalan dele-
gation signs the charter at the official signing ceremony the next day.
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The basic issue with which the drafters of the UN Charter dealt
was in essence unchanged from the one Wilson and his European
counterparts had faced in 1918–19. They wanted to create an
organization that would, indeed, be a definite guaranty of peace.
There was plenty of skepticism, understandably so given the fate
of the League’s lofty goals. And, as earlier, the basic dilemmas and
conundrums had not changed: How to balance national
sovereignty and international idealism? How to reconcile the
imbalances between countries over power and influence, over
resources and commitments? How, in other words, could one
draft a charter that would recognize and effectively deal with the
sheer fact that some countries were, in effect, more equal than
others? How could one make sure that some countries would not
simply walk out—as Japan had done in the 1930s—when it did
not like the decisions of the UN?
The men who drafted the UN Charter addressed this issue with
a simple mechanism: the veto power. In other words, the
charter gave superior powers to five of the founding members of
the UN—China, France, Great Britain, the United States, and the
USSR—that allowed them to prevent any decisions that they
viewed inimical to their interests from being made. They became
the Permanent Five (P-5) of the UN Security Council, countries
that would have both a seat in the most important body of the
new organization as long as it existed. This strategy, it was
thought, would provide the key countries with an incentive to
remain part of the UN. It also provided them with the means of
neutralizing the world organization.
Although its founders were keenly aware of the failures of the
League of Nations, most of its ideals and many structural
elements were at the core of the UN Charter. Most evidently,
the UN Charter and the League Covenant cited the promotion
of international security and the peaceful settlement of disputes
as key goals. But the UN Charter was different in two important
respects.
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It differed from the League Covenant particularly in its emphasis
on the promotion of social and economic progress as a central goal.
The latter had been part of the League of Nations Covenant as well,
but it appeared, and then only briefly, in article 23. In contrast, the
very preamble of the UN Charter reads: ‘‘to employ international
machinery for the promotion of the economic and social
advancement of all peoples.’’
The reason for highlighting the significance of economic and
social development was rooted in the interwar years. Many saw the
global economic depression of the late 1920s and 1930s as the
root cause of the political upheavals that had led to the rise of
The UN Charter in brief
The UN Charter consists of a series of articles divided into
chapters. Chapter 1 sets forth the general purposes of the United
Nations, most importantly the maintenance of international
peace and security. Chapter 2 defines the general criteria for
membership in the United Nations; it was open to ‘‘all peace-
loving states.’’ Applicants would, however, have to be
‘‘recommended’’ by the UN Security Council, thus giving the
UNSC the right to veto any country’s membership.
The bulk of the document is contained in chapters 3 through 15,
which describe the organs and institutions of the UN and their
respective powers. Perhaps the most important chapters,
however, are those dealing with the enforcement powers of the
key UN bodies. Chapters 6 and 7, for example, discuss the
Security Council’s power to investigate and mediate disputes as
well as its power to authorize sanctions or the use of military
force. Subsequent chapters deal with the UN’s powers for
economic and social cooperation; the Trusteeship Council, which
oversaw decolonization; the powers of the International Court
of Justice; and the functions of the United Nations Secretariat, the
administrative arm (or permanent bureaucracy) of the UN.
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ultranationalism and the acts of aggression that had produced
World War II. Thus, promoting economic and social equality was
seen as a way of safeguarding international security.
The founders of the UN wanted to create an organization that
would be able to prevent that ‘‘scourge of war’’ from descending
upon mankind yet again. For this purpose, they defined the
question of international security in broader terms than had those
who erected the League of Nations. They also aimed to create a
structure that would allow the UN to be an active participant in
world affairs in its key areas: military security, economic and social
development, and the upholding of human rights and
international justice.
In a sense, there was something for everybody but also a recipe for
future conundrums.
The early Cold War and the UN
The original signatories of the UN Charter hardly expected that
the simple act of creation would guarantee a peaceful world order.
In fact, the UN shared a significant common feature with its
predecessor. Like the League of Nations, the UN was, at its very
founding, a ‘‘victors’ organization.’’ Major wartime adversaries and
their allies and co-belligerents were not awarded membership
until later. For example, the first UN Security Council members
included Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and
Poland; Italy, Japan and Germany were left out. Nevertheless, the
hope that the UN would be a more effective force in safeguarding
international security rested on the fact that its founders did
include both the United States and the Soviet Union.
As the delegates of fifty-one nations arrived for the first series of
meetings in London in January 1946, the general atmosphere of
international relations was already deteriorating. In February,
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made a much criticized speech in
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which he described a world irrevocably divided between two
economic and political systems. On March 5, 1946, former
British prime minister Winston Churchill responded by declaring
that an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe. A year later,
the U.S. president Harry Truman unveiled the Truman Doctrine,
the first public expression of America’s long-term strategy of
containing the expansion of Soviet and communist influence.
Subsequent descent to the Cold War was rapid. By February 1948
the establishment of the Iron Curtain in East-Central Europe
was concluded when Czechoslovakia joined the ranks of Soviet bloc
communist dictatorships. In Western Europe, the United States
assumed a preponderant position as the counterweight to Soviet
influence by assisting the anticommunist faction in the Greek
Civil War, offering aid to Turkey because that country was being
pressed by the USSR and, most significantly, launching the
European Recovery Program, which, between 1948 and 1952,
boosted the economic recovery of Western Europe. The creation
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949
cemented the division of Europe into two hostile blocs. In
subsequent years (and decades) the Cold War became increasingly
global and militarized. The creation of the People’s Republic of
China on October 1, 1949, was quickly followed by the Sino-
Soviet alliance and, in June 1950, the outbreak of the Korean War,
which presented the UN with its first severe challenge.
The onset of the Cold War and the outbreak of the first major
hot war of the post-1945 era did not destroy the UN. But it did
fundamentally shape its role in international relations and
restricted its ability to act as a positive force for international
security. The Korean conflict was to remain the only large-scale
UN military intervention during the Cold War era, made possible
only by the absence of the USSR from the Security Council
sessions in June 1950; the Soviets were boycotting the UN’s refusal
to admit the newly constituted People’s Republic of China into
the organization. Thus, the Soviet representative was not there to
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veto a resolution sponsored by the United States, a right that
the USSR employed no fewer than eighty times between 1946
and 1955.
The Soviet use of the veto was, in fact, linked to another Cold War–
induced handicap: the deadlock in adding new members to the
UN. Being a ‘‘peace-loving state’’ clearly did not suffice as a
qualification. During the first decade after San Francisco only nine
countries were added to the roster: Afghanistan, Iceland,
Sweden, and Thailand in 1946; Pakistan and Yemen in 1947;
Burma (now Myanmar) in 1948; Israel in 1949; and Indonesia
in 1950. How much more ‘‘peace-loving’’ some of these countries
were when compared to such persistent applicants as Finland or
Austria is questionable.
In fact, there was no shortage of applicants. But the Korean War
(1950–53) made any cooperation between the United States and
the Soviet Union virtually impossible. On top of this there was a
Soviet-American disagreement over procedure: while the Soviets
wanted a package deal that would ensure the simultaneous
addition of roughly an equal number of pro-Soviet, pro-American,
and neutral states to the UN roster, the United States insisted that
each application should be decided upon the merits of the specific
country. The end result was a deadlock: after 1950 no new
members were added for five years.
Most of all, however, the controversy over the People’s Republic of
China’s (PRC) bid to join the UN and the Security Council severely
hurt the organization’s credibility in the 1950s and 1960s. Having
won the Chinese civil war in 1949, the PRC—or ‘‘Red China’’ as
most American politicians called it—claimed that it was the
rightful representative of all Chinese. This notion was vehemently
rejected by the Republic of China (ROC, or Taiwan), which, as an
ally of the United States, received constant American support. For
more than two decades Taiwan—a small island off the Chinese
coast where the Nationalist Chinese had fled after communist
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victory—represented China in the UN. Most crucially, Taiwan
wielded a veto right in the Security Council as though it was one of
the world’s five great powers. Only in 1971, when the Nixon
administration wished to open a diplomatic relationship to the
PRC, did Washington change its policy of nonrecognition of the
PRC. Beijing, however, remained adamant in its claim to represent
all of China. Thus, the PRC replaced Taiwan in the UN and the
Security Council, leaving the island and its population of
approximately 22 million outside the UN.
Although the emergence of the Cold War fundamentally affected
the UN’s effectiveness in its first decade, there were a number of
positive developments as well. None of these was more significant
than the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, a document negotiated under the leadership of Eleanor
Roosevelt, widow of the former president. Also in 1948, the UN
sent its first peace observers to South Asia and the Middle East. In
the latter region, the civil rights activist Ralph Bunche successfully
mediated armistice agreements between the new state of Israel and
its Arab neighbors in 1948–49. In the same period, the UN was
active in dealing with the needs of World War II European
refugees, resulting ultimately in the creation of the office of the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950.
But such milestones could not mask the fact that during its first
decade the UN was hostage to a highly charged international
climate. In particular, only a shift in the nature of the Cold War
could resolve the membership deadlock that by the mid-1950s
began to undermine the UN’s credibility as a truly open
international organization.
Decolonization and development
Sixteen countries joined the UN in 1955, bringing the total number
of members to seventy-six. The sudden enlargement came as a
result of a package deal in which Eastern members such as
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Albania, Bulgaria, and Hungary were balanced against such
Western ones as Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In addition, the
package deal included a number of neutral European countries
(Austria, Finland, and Ireland) and a few that had been recently
granted independence (Cambodia, Laos, and Libya).
The 1955 package deal reflected a temporary easing of East-West
tensions in the aftermath of Stalin’s death and the end of the
Korean War. Only a year later, however, international tensions
again increased as two virtually simultaneous crises erupted. In
October 1956, Soviet troops intervened to crush a democracy
movement in Hungary. The brutal suppression did not lead to
any American action—in part because it coincided with an ill-fated
British, French, and Israeli attack on Egypt after Egyptian
leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had announced the nationalization of
the Suez Canal. Ironically, the Suez crisis prompted the first
significant case in which the Americans and Soviets found
themselves on the same side at the UN: both voted in favor of
a resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of foreign
troops from Egypt.
The 1956 Suez crisis is sometimes described as a moment that
crystallized the end of European imperial pretensions. In the
years that followed, the bulk of the Belgian, British, and French
colonies gained independence. As they did so, the new nations
worked hard to gain rapid international recognition. One of the
most important symbols of their new nationhood was membership
in the UN.
It is therefore not surprising that the number of countries added to
the UN in 1955 soon paled when compared to the expansion that
followed. Between 1956 and 1968 the membership grew to 119 (by
1962 the UN had already doubled its original roster of fifty-one).
With a few exceptions (Japan, which joined in 1956, the foremost
among them), these new members consisted of former African and
Asian colonies of European powers. Most were economically
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backward when compared to the original members. In the
twenty-first century many continue to be wrecked by civil conflicts
and have become permanent theaters of various UN operations.
The new nations had another common feature: the bulk of them
refused to choose a side in the East-West confrontation, opting for
membership in the so-called Nonaligned Movement (NAM)
instead. The movement started out with a meeting of twenty-five
nations at Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1961. In subsequent decades
NAM grew to a grouping of more than one hundred nations that
transcended the Cold War. In 2006, for example, it held another
summit meeting in Havana, Cuba. NAM has been, since the 1970s,
the largest grouping of countries represented in the UN General
Assembly.
The main impact of NAM was to place the focus of UN
activities and concerns on social and economic questions,
particularly on the unequal distribution of wealth between the
countries of the global North and South. The first UN Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), held in 1964, highlighted
this goal by the formation of the Group of 77 (G-77), a loose
organization of developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and
Africa that attempts to keep development aid at the center of the
UN’s agenda.
0
50
100
150
200
1945 1970 1990 2005
Number of member states
Chart 1.1 The growth of UN membership since 1945.
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In this they have been successful. The expanded UN clearly
honed in on economic, social, and environmental questions in the
1960s and 1970s. There were major UN-sponsored international
conferences on the environment (1972) and the status of
women (1975). The UN adopted conventions against racial
discrimination (1969) and to combat gender-based intolerance
and discrimination (1979). And the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) succeeded in pushing for the signing of the Treaty on
the Protection of the Ozone Layer (the Montreal Protocol) in 1987.
In 1980 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared
smallpox extinct (the last case having been reported in 1977).
While the organization’s ability to deal with international security
issues (particularly with interstate and intrastate wars) was in
some doubt throughout the Cold War, the UN was actively
addressing the many other global challenges, particularly those
facing its newer member states.
The UN in the post–Cold War era
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War
transformed international politics and the UN. With the
disappearance of the persistent East-West confrontation, many
expected that the UN Security Council would finally take its
rightful role as the provider and guarantor of international peace
and security. According to the ‘‘Agenda for Peace,’’ adopted in the
summer of 1992, the UN would use preventive diplomacy,
peacemaking, and peacekeeping to make its mark on the post–
Cold War international order. With the superpower confrontation
over, development aid was supposed to become less politicized.
Hence, in 1994 the UN published its ‘‘Agenda for Development.’’
Not to be outdone, human rights activists pushed through an
‘‘Agenda for Democracy’’ in 1996. If the number of agendas was to
be any guide, a golden age of global governance was at hand. ‘‘This
era of global challenges leaves no choice but cooperation at the
global level,’’ maintained UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan upon
receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. 2
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Annan, the charming Ghanaian who led the UN for a decade
(1997–2007), was undoubtedly right. But he surely knew that
his high-minded ideals were far from being realized at the start of
the new millennium. The decade and a half after the end of the
Cold War has seen many changes both in the UN’s policies and
within the organization itself. But greater relevance in determining
global affairs is hardly among them.
There has been growth in numerous ways. UN membership has
increased from 159 countries in 1989 to 192 in 2007. In the same
period the UN budget jumped from $2.6 billion to roughly
$20 billion. This has resulted partly from the increase in the
number of UN peace operations since the end of the Cold War.
Thirteen operations were undertaken in the first four decades of
the UN’s existence; thirty-six have been authorized since 1988. In
2007 there were approximately 80,000 UN peacekeepers around
the globe, compared to 13,000 two decades earlier. The cost of
these operations grew tenfold: from approximately $500 million
in the late 1980s to $5 billion in 2006. At the same time the UN
was almost hyperactive in its presentation of numerous
ambitious undertakings and plans, prompted by countless
studies and conferences. Much of this activism was crystallized
in 2000, when the UN unveiled its Millennium Development
Program: a list of eight universal goals that ranged from
halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and
providing universal primary education. This was all to be
achieved by 2015.
Such growth and activism could not, however, mask the harsh
realities that the UN faced in the post–Cold War era. Despite
the explosion in the number of its peace operations, the balance
between success and failure tended to tilt toward the latter.
Although the UN may have succeeded in the transformation of
Namibia to majority rule, for example, it failed in preventing
massive killings in former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. Though the
percentage of people living in extreme poverty in Asia may have
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declined in the early years of the twenty-first century, similar
numbers had gone up in Africa.
The UN’s first six decades were, thus, replete with change. The
growth in membership alone meant that the organization was,
by the early twenty-first century, the only truly global institution.
But this development was filled with challenges and frustrations
as the rapidly transforming UN dealt with, among others,
questions of international and human security, post-conflict
management, human rights, and social and economic
development. Operating on a global scale, with an international
staff and within the overall context of a conflict-ridden
international system, the UN usually had only mixed success in
any of these fields.
One clue to understanding why this is the case lies within the
hybrid structure of the international organization itself.
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Chapter 2
An impossible hybrid: the
structure of the
United Nations
In an interview with Time magazine in the summer of 1955, Dag
Hammarskjöld expressed his frustration over the UN’s public
image. He worried, in particular, that many people considered the
organization—at the time barely ten years old—as a bureaucratic
monstrosity incapable of addressing the real concerns of real
people. Equally important, Hammarskjöld thought that such
disaffection was distancing the UN from the very people it was
designed to serve. There was but one solution. As Hammarskjöld
explained: ‘‘Everything will be all right—you know when? When
people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird
Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.’’ 1
The second UN Secretary-General’s remarks are indicative of one
of the central problems of the world organization. In 1955 the UN
was indeed present but distant, not the least because the UN
worked in so many different fields, through so many different
agencies, and with such a variety of different goals. It was, as it still
remains, ‘‘a weird Picasso abstraction,’’ an organizational hybrid,
its many functions impossible to explain in plain language. There is
no point in mincing words: the UN is a structural monstrosity, a
conglomeration of organizations, divisions, bodies, and
secretariats all with their distinctive acronyms that few can ever
imagine being able to master. This, alone, explains many of the
UN’s problems.
26
The central point, though, is that the rationale behind the creation
of this hybrid—the Picasso abstraction in Hammarskjöld’s words—
is simple: it was made up by people from many nations, with
divergent backgrounds and goals. Equally important, the founders
of the UN (and the designers of its structure) were faced with the
everlasting dilemma: how to reconcile national interests—national
security, national prosperity, national laws—with the
international—international security, global development,
universal justice, and human rights. The structure that was
created reflected this dilemma and is one of the reasons for the
outcome: a painting that is part abstraction, part real.
The UN ‘‘family’’
In 1945 the six principal organs of the UN were the General
Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council,
Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice, and the
Secretariat. With the exception of the Trusteeship Council, which
became obsolete with the completion of the decolonization process
it oversaw, these organs still constitute the basic superstructure of
the UN. All of them meet regularly, and their members vote and
make decisions, issue declarations, and debate the issues of the
day. Yet the functions of these organs are vastly different: while the
GA is basically the parliament of the UN and the Security Council
its executive committee, the Secretariat is the operational body of—
or the bureaucracy that runs—the UN.
The UN ‘‘family,’’ though, is much larger, encompassing fifteen
agencies and several programs and bodies. Some of the
organizations, such as the International Labor Organization
(ILO), were founded during the League of Nations era in the
1920s. Many more have been created since 1945 to address the
specific problems that the UN has been called to solve. Much of
this proliferation—and the ensuing complexity of the UN—is the
result of a rapid growth in membership that, in the decades
following the founding of the organization, contributed to the
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Chart 2.1 The United Nations System
escalation of the tasks that the UN has been charged to undertake.
As a result, new bodies and programs have been (and continue to
be) added on a regular basis. Others, such as the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), were originally
meant to be temporary but have since been transformed into
permanent organs. Some, inevitably, overlap with others.
To top it all off, the UN has a hybrid set of ‘‘subsidiaries’’ and
partners. Throughout its history, the UN has associated with
almost three thousand NGOs. This was already envisioned in 1945:
article 77 of the UN Charter explicitly states that the UN ‘‘may
make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-
governmental organizations [NGOs] which are concerned with
matters within its competence.’’ In practice this means that
every year the UN works together with hundreds of NGOs to
undertake humanitarian tasks in the world’s conflict zones. For
example, between 1995 and 2002 the UN Mission in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (UNMIBH) oversaw that country’s process of
peacebuilding—most significantly the establishment of the rule
of law—after a nasty war. Throughout the period it participated
with close to forty local NGOs that offered their expertise on a
wide range of competencies ranging from the clearing of land
mines to protecting the environment.
In addition to their cooperation with the many UN missions,
NGOs also act as lobbying groups for various causes. In 2007,
for example, thirty-two NGOs issued an open letter ‘‘urging’’ UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to pressure Sudan’s reluctant
government into permitting a Joint African Union/United Nations
Peacekeeping Force to enter the conflict-ridden Darfur region.
This example hints at another way in which the UN has
increasingly been forced to admit the limits of its own capacities
and forge alliances elsewhere. Particularly since the early 1990s,
the UN has ‘‘subcontracted’’ peacekeeping tasks to non-UN
institutions (such regional organizations as NATO or the African
Union) or even to private security companies. In 2001 the latter
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even formed their own NGO, the International Peace Operations
Association (IPOA), which acts as a public relations lobbying
group for firms that in previous times would have been referred
to as bands of mercenaries.
This structural complexity also reflects an effort to create an
organization that would avoid some of the problems faced by the
League of Nations and one that could adapt to the changing
international environment as needed. The League had had as
many similar organs as the UN. For example, there had been the
League Council (an executive committee that resembled the UN
Security Council) and the League Assembly (the rough equivalent
of the UN General Assembly). The UN’s organization was
ultimately based on a combination of inherited structures, new
challenges, and historical lessons.
The Security Council
The Security Council is the central organ of the entire UN system.
It has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international
peace and security. To that effect, the SC was granted wide powers
that would make it an active participant in international affairs. It
could investigate any dispute or situation that might lead to
international friction and it was authorized to decide on economic
sanctions or military action. The SC was therefore mandated to use
its powers both as a means of preventing a conflict and as a way of
enforcing a state’s compliance with a specific decision or
resolution.
The wide powers granted to the Security Council can be
understood as a result of the desire to build a more effective
guardian of international peace and security than the League of
Nations had been. Few at the time or afterwards have disputed
the need for such an organization. But the structure of the SC is
not unproblematic. It reflects one of the central tensions that
have overshadowed the UN—and often hampered its
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Chapter 7 of the UN Charter defines the Security
Council’s prerogatives. Some of the key articles
include:
Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat
to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall
make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken
in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore
international peace and security.
Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security
Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding
upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties
concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems
necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be
without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties
concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure
to comply with such provisional measures.
Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the
use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its
decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United
Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or
partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air,
postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication,
and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided
for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be
(Continued)
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effectiveness. In particular, its two-tiered membership
organization, which gave disproportionately more power to five of
the major victorious powers of World War II, recognized Great
Power prerogatives as an important element of the UN Charter.
The nation-state and narrow national interests were thus
juxtaposed against the universal ideals that were at the
foundation of the UN.
The Security Council was initially made up of eleven members
(or states), a number that was increased to fifteen in 1965. Of
these, five—the United States, Great Britain, France, China,
and Russia (until 1991 the Soviet Union)—are permanent members
(known as the P-5). The other ten are nonpermanent
members, elected by the UN General Assembly for two-year
terms. Their selection reflects an effort to find some—but hardly
perfect—regional balance: Africa has three seats, while Western
Europe and Oceania, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean
each get two. The last seat is reserved for Eastern Europe. Each year
Chapter 7 of the UN Charter (continued)
inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as
may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and
security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and
other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the
United Nations.
Article 43
1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to
the maintenance of international peace and security,
undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its
call and in accordance with a special agreement or
agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities,
including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of
maintaining international peace and security. . . .
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five of these ten nonpermanent members leave the SC and
are replaced.
Two key features differentiate the Security Council from the League
Council. First, the decisions of the Security Council are binding and
require a majority of nine out of fifteen—rather than unanimity as
was the case in the League—to be passed. Second, the permanent
members are clearly more powerful than the nonpermanent ones:
any one of the five can block a decision by using its right of veto. This
clause has prompted numerous calls for reform: the five permanent
members may have been the ‘‘great powers’’ of 1945; they certainly
were the key victorious powers of World War II. This is not
automatically the case in the twenty-first century, though. But since
the founding of the UN the only major reform has been the increase
in the number of nonpermanent members in 1965.
The concentration of power in the hands of five countries has
been a subject of criticism in large part because the SC exercises
a broad range of powers over the rest of the UN system. For
example, the SC can recommend the admission of new member
states, it basically chooses the Secretary-General, and, with the
GA, it selects the judges of the International Court of Justice.
Faulty or not, the Security Council and its five permanent members
simply overshadow all other organs of the UN.
The General Assembly
If the UNSC is where the UN—or those countries that are
members of the SC at any given time—usually reacts to the many
conflicts around the globe, the General Assembly (GA) is the forum
where each of the 192 member states can make its case heard. As
the main deliberative organ of the United Nations, it is in many
ways akin to a national parliament. Each member state, regardless
of its size, has one vote. This arrangement seems to make the GA
much like the U.S. Senate, where each of the fifty states is
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represented by two senators regardless of the size of the population
or landmass of a given state. The situation is in some ways absurd:
the tiny island of Tuvalu with its 11,600 citizens has equal
4. Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the USSR, at a meeting of the UN
General Assembly in September 1960. His visit to the UN is best
remembered for the day the fiery Soviet leader banged his shoe on the
lectern to reinforce his oratory.
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representation with the People’s Republic of China and India, each
with more than 1 billion.
The very size of the GA means that its effectiveness is limited.
The annual meetings—or regular sessions—that usually open in
September have become ritualistic and tend to make news only
in connection with a possible high-profile appearance, by the U.S.
president, for instance. Indeed, the UNGA has acquired perhaps
its most obvious significance as a protest forum for disaffected
would-be nations (such as the Palestinians since 1970s).
Its very inclusiveness is the GA’s—and in a nutshell the UN’s—
greatest weakness: with so many members represented,
contentious issues have little chance of being affirmatively decided.
This is particularly so because decisions on key questions—on
peace and security, admission of new members, and budgetary
matters—require a two-thirds majority (decisions on other
questions are by simple majority). On questions of international
security the GA is ultimately subservient to the Security Council
and, hence, dependent on consensus among the P-5.
In many ways, the General Assembly functions like a national
parliament. It has a president and twenty-one (!) vice presidents.
Unlike most national parliaments with their political parties,
however, the GA is divided along regional lines. The presidency,
for example, rotates each year among five groups of states: African,
Asian, Eastern European, Latin American and the Caribbean,
and Western European and other states (for example, the United
States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).
In addition, the GA’s work is carried out in a number of committees
with a more limited membership. These are charged with dealing
with such specific issues as Disarmament and International
Security (first main committee); Economic and Financial questions
(second); and Social, Humanitarian and Cultural issues (third). As
in the case of the presidency and vice presidency, the membership
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and chairmanships of the committees is selected on a regional
basis. For example, in 2006 the first committee was chaired by a
Norwegian, the second by an Estonian, the third by an Iraqi, the
fourth by a Nepalese, and so on.
If the SC has remained remarkably static in terms of its rules and
membership, the GA is the UN body where the gradual proliferation
of member countries—from 51 in 1945 to 192 today—has been most
visible. This explosion of membership has affected the UN in a
number of important ways, the most important one probably being
the crystallization of economic and social development as the key
issues on the UN’s agenda. It has also affected the work of those who
run the organization on a daily basis.
Secretary-General: ‘‘the most difficult job on earth’’?
The UN Secretariat serves the other principal organs of the
United Nations and administers the programs and policies laid
down by them. At its head is the Secretary-General, who is
appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of
the Security Council for a renewable five-year term. The entire
secretariat consists of approximately 9,000 international civil
servants working at UN duty stations around the world (mainly
in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Geneva, Nairobi, New York,
Santiago, and Vienna).
The role of the Secretariat is multifaceted, ranging from public
advocacy of various UN causes and the day-to-day administration
of its various economic and social programs to crisis diplomacy and
overseeing the work of UN peacekeeping forces in the trouble spots
of the world. Balancing these tasks while under pressure from the
member states has never been easy for this relatively small body of
international civil servants who are, after all, citizens of the
member states. The work of the Secretariat is, by the sheer
composition of the personnel, under constant pressure from the
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dyad of nation-state imperatives and universal goals. Can one
truly expect that a national of a given country will not use his or
her position as a UN functionary to push certain policies that
would have a positive impact on his or her native country?
This point has clearly affected the makeup of the Secretariat
and the selection of the UN Secretary-General (UNSG). Since
1946 the UNSG has been the public face—as well as the chief
administrative officer—of the organization. The post of the
UNSG combines enormous visibility and expectations with
limited powers. Ideally independent from national
prerogatives and above politics, the UNSG and the Secretariat
as a whole cannot function without the support of the
constituent nation-states, most specifically the five permanent
5. At the airport in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, an honor guard
escorts Dag Hammarskjöld’s body onto a plane for the journey to his
hometown in Sweden. Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in
1961 while trying to resolve a crisis in the Congo.
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members of the Security Council. Because the physical
headquarters of the UN are in New York, the UNSG is
particularly open to the scrutiny of the American
media, making him a subject of partisan wrangling—as well as
criticism and disdain—within the most powerful nation-state
in the world.
The first UNSG, the Norwegian Trygve Lie, summed up the
difficulties of the post when passing the job to the Swede Dag
Hammarskjöld in 1953: ‘‘Welcome to the most difficult job on
earth.’’ Earlier, Lie—who had had to contend with such difficult
issues as the outbreak of the Korean War—had told the press,
‘‘I shall take all the troubles of the past, all the disappointments, all
the headaches, and I shall pack them in a bag and throw them in
the East River.’’ 2
Lie’s successors would be likely to share this cheerful assessment. If
anything, the UNSG’s position became even more difficult over
succeeding decades as the membership of the UN enlarged and
diversified. Yet some of them have left a significant legacy. Dag
Hammarskjöld, for example, championed the creation of UN
peacekeeping forces, those with the blue helmets who have
patrolled the world’s conflict regions over the past half a century. He
also helped push economic development to the forefront of the UN’s
agenda. To be sure, Hammarskjöld’s tenure coincided with the
rapid explosion of UN membership as the decolonization process
unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Personally committed to
making the UN a significant player in world affairs, Hammarskjöld
did not let the UN become completely hostage to Cold War
antagonisms that threatened to expand to the newly independent
parts of the globe. Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash in 1961—
and thus achieved a martyrdom of sorts—in the midst of the Congo
crisis, one of the many conflicts that arose from this process.
Most subsequent Secretaries-General have not enjoyed the same
public exposure, in part because the ongoing Cold War and the
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explosion of membership made administering the UN increasingly
difficult. The choice of the UNSG also remained a highly
sensitive issue; since each of the P-5 had a veto on the matter,
the selection resulted in a series of compromises that while
spreading the right to hold the post beyond Northern Europe, also
produced relatively ineffective UNSG’s: the Burmese U. Thant,
the Austrian Kurt Waldheim, the Peruvian Pérez de Cuéllar, and
the Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali. To be fair, all of these men
(and so far all UNSGs have been men) did attempt to maintain the
impartiality and high profile of their office as best they could.
But Cold War prerogatives and, in the case of Boutros-Ghali,
preponderant American influence in the 1990s, doomed any
effort to lift the UN’s independent profile.
In the end, the next UNSG to stand out as having left a significant
mark on the organization is the Ghanaian Kofi Annan. During
his tenure the UN adopted the so-called Millennium Goals, a broad
set of guidelines aimed at cutting global poverty in half by 2015.
Annan also started and spearheaded a process of incremental
reform of the administrative management structure of the UN,
aimed at making the UN a more effective organization. But perhaps
UN Secretaries-General
1946–52 Trygve Lie, Norway
1953–61 Dag Hammarskjöld, Sweden
1961–71 U Thant, Myanmar (Burma)
1972–81 Kurt Waldheim, Austria
1982–91 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Peru
1992–96 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egypt
1997–2006 Kofi Annan, Ghana
2007– Ban Ki-moon, Republic of Korea (South Korea)
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most importantly, the soft-spoken and always charming Annan
managed to keep the UN’s image relatively positive at a time when
its relevance—and the integrity of its staff—was increasingly
questioned. Like Hammarskjöld, Annan, the first UNSG who was a
career UN official, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Still, the last
few years of Annan’s time in office were hampered by numerous
challenges, such as the conflict over the American-led invasion of
Iraq, the inability of the UN to forge a quick end to the fighting that
erupted on the Israeli-Lebanese border in 2006, and charges of
widespread corruption within the UN system (which involved,
among others, Annan’s own son). To Annan, vacating the UNSG’s
office in New York upon the arrival of Ban Ki-moon in December
2006 must have been a relief of sorts.
Indeed, the Secretariat and the UNSG’s office are hampered by
numerous problems, including bureaucratic intransigence, red
tape, budgetary shortfalls, and mismanagement. Most
significantly, the last six decades have shown the difficulties in
maintaining an international staff within a system that makes the
Secretariat, like so much of the UN, dependent on the whims of
the P-5. Moreover, any effort at streamlining the UN faces a
virtually insurmountable challenge in the plethora of organizations
that make up the often dysfunctional UN family.
A further difficulty for UN reform efforts stems from its
uniqueness: its universal membership. Beneath the often high-
minded rhetoric at the General Assembly and the Security
Council lay layer upon layer of competing national ambitions and
agendas. The multinational staff overseen by the Secretary-
General is supposed to rise above such pettiness, but in reality this
is virtually impossible. At a practical level, the members of the
Secretariat bring with them their own cultural and national
management styles, work ethics, and cultural preferences that can,
in turn, create severe interpersonal conflict and hurt the
effectiveness of the given UN bureau or field office. The observance
of national and religious holidays—to give a simple example—may
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at times coincide with important meetings and conferences.
Ironically, finding ways of avoiding intercultural tension is not
just one of the mandates stipulated in the UN’s Charter; it is part
of the daily life within the organization itself.
ECOSOC and the three sisters
Under the UN’s mandate, the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) ‘‘coordinates the economic and social work of the
United Nations and the UN family of organizations’’ and therefore
‘‘plays a key role in fostering international cooperation for
development.’’ That sounds fine and logical. The SC was charged
with weighty issues of military security, leaving ECOSOC to deal
with the related questions of economic security. These were not
to be taken lightly, for many of the negotiators involved in the
drafting of the UN Charter saw the economic depression of the
1930s as the root cause of World War II.
In truth ECOSOC is a relatively powerless part of the UN structure.
With fifty-four members representing more than a quarter of
the total UN roster of nations, each elected by the General
Assembly for three-year terms (on the basis of ‘‘equitable
geographical representation’’), ECOSOC oversees a number of
functional (such as Human Rights, Sustainable Development) and
regional commissions. The Commission on Human Rights, for
example, monitors the observance of human rights throughout
the world (and the work of the new Human Rights Council and,
before 2006, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights). Other bodies focus on social development, the status of
women, crime prevention, narcotic drugs, and environmental
protection. Five regional commissions promote economic
development and cooperation in their respective areas. But
ECOSOC’s mission remains as amorphous as its structure.
In fact, the true global economic power within the UN family lies
with the so-called three sisters: the World Bank, the International
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Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization
(WTO). Each has its own specific remit. Based in Washington,
the World Bank, originally known as the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, is a multilateral institution
that lends money to governments and government agencies for
development projects. The IMF, also located in Washington, lends
money to governments to help stabilize currencies and maintain
order in international financial markets. The WTO, headquartered
in Geneva, was founded in 1995 to replace the General Agreement
Presidents of World Bank* Managing Directors of IMF
Eugene Meyer, 1946 CamilleGutt(Belgium),1946–51
John J. McCloy, 1947–49 Ivar Rooth (Sweden), 1951–56
Eugene R. Black, 1949–63 Per Jacobsson (Sweden),
1956–63
George D. Woods, 1963–68 Pierre-Paul Schweitzer
(France), 1963–73
Robert McNamara, 1968–81 Johannes Witteveen
(Netherlands), 1973–78
Alden W. Clausen, 1981–86 Jacques de Larosiere (France),
1978–87
Barber Conable, 1986–91 Michel Camdessus (France),
1987–2000
Lewis T. Preston, 1991–95 Horst Köhler (Germany),
2000–04
James Wolfensohn, 1995–2005 Rodrigo Rato y Figaredo
(Spain), 2004–
Paul Wolfowitz, 2005–07
Robert Zoellick, 2007–
*all U.S. citizens
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on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Its general goal is to lower tariffs and
other trade barriers.
Together the three sisters wield tremendous power and influence but
also attract criticism as organizations that favor the established free-
market system over any possible alternatives. Indeed, the rules of
governance within the organizations give certain countries a clear
advantage in decision making. At the World Bank and the IMF
voting power is weighted based on individual countries’
contributions. This means that the United States has (in 2005)
approximately 17 percent of the vote while the seven major
industrialized countries (G-7: Britain, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, and the United States) together hold about 45 percent.
No one-country, one-vote principle here! In fact, the biggest
‘‘shareholder,’’ the United States, has always held effective vetopower
over the World Bank and IMF’s decisions. The Western dominance
over these institutions has been strengthened further by the long-
standing tradition of choosing an American as the president of the
World Bank, and a European as the managing director of the IMF.
The problem that stems from this structure is evident. The
countries that have most at stake—the countries in the
developing world that are often in need of World Bank loans or
IMF credits—have relatively little power within these institutions.
But the programs and policies that are decided upon in
Washington often have a tremendous impact throughout the
developing world. It is no wonder that the critics of the IMF and
the World Bank argue that they represent a new form of Western
control over Africa, parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin
America. (In the last region, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez
has championed the creation of Banco del Sur [Bank of the South],
as a way of ridding South America from dependency on World
Bank loans and U.S. dominance.)
The WTO (and its predecessor GATT) is seemingly moredemocratic
than its Washington-based sisters. Voting is not weighted. Decisions
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are made—or often not made—by consensus (majority voting is
possible but has never been used). However, given the broad array
of members (more than 75 percent of the total of 153 countries are
from the developing world) with different interests and goals, the
need to find a consensus inevitably leads to heavy behind-the-scenes
bargaining. In such discussions, though, American and European
representatives (or the so-called G-7 countries) clearly start from a
strong position vis-à-vis, say, countries in Africa. Leverage—
economic or political—matters, albeit in a different way as in the
context of the IMF or the World Bank.
The basic point is that the WTO yields little power of its own; it is
the member states that decide through a lengthy bargaining
process over changes in multilateral trading rules. And since
some member states ultimately are more equal than others, the
WTO, much like its sisters, is often charged with an effort to
perpetuate an international economic system dominated by the
North.
Programs, funds, specialized agencies
As noted earlier, ECOSOC is responsible for coordinating the
social work of the UN. This translates to a loose role as the overseer
of the work carried out by a large number of specialized agencies,
programs, and funds. Some of these—especially the many
humanitarian organizations—are well known and held in high
regard. Most everyone would have heard, for example, about the
UN International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) or the World
Health Organization (WHO).
A full listing of all the various organizations—many of which will
be discussed in other chapters—would make this book much more
than a ‘‘very short introduction.’’ (See chart 2.1.) But it is worth
asking: what, aside from the issues they address, differentiates a
‘‘Specialized Agency’’ (like the WHO) from the group ‘‘Programs
and Funds’’ (like UNICEF)?
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Part of the answer is simple: money. While Programs and Funds
are financed mainly through voluntary contributions from
member countries (making their finances chronically uncertain),
the Specialized Agencies are funded through a mixture of
assessments (i.e., contributions from the overall UN budget) and
voluntary contributions. The latter have a baseline budget, the
former do not. Some countries are indeed more equal than others
at the UN Security Council and the World Bank; but Specialized
Agencies are more equal than Programs and Funds.
The practical consequences of such systemic division are
controversial. One is justified in asking, for example, why UNICEF
should be required to spend more of its time in fundraising to assist
disadvantaged children than the UN Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is required in planning its
activities to enhance intercultural understanding? Why does the
World Tourism Organization (WTO, not to be confused with the
other WTO) enjoy greater stability as a specialized agency than does
the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)?
The latter does, after all, address the needs of roughly 20 million
refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers!
These are questions we will revisit in the final chapter of this book.
They do, however, point to another basic question related to the
UN structure: How much does it all cost?
Footing the bill: who pays and how much?
The popular notion is that the roughly $20 billion that the various
UN operations cost in 2006 make it a prohibitively expensive
enterprise. Yet, before coming to this conclusion, one might
consider a few salient facts. First, the UN’s total budget represents
but a fraction of most countries’ national budgets; indeed, the UN
total expenditures are roughly the same as those of the country
with the highest per capita income in the world, Luxembourg (a
population of less than 500,000).
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UN funding is unduly complex—almost like another Picasso
abstraction. In very general terms, however, the UN budget is
based on two categories of contributions: assessed (ca. 45 percent
in 2006) and voluntary (55 percent). The assessed contributions
can, in turn, be divided into three categories according to the end
use of the funds:
1. Assessed contributions to the Regular Operating Budget (totaling
about $1.8 billion in 2006)
2. Assessed contributions to UN Specialized Agencies (ca. $2 billion)
3. Assessed contributions to UN Peacekeeping Operations (ca. $5
billion)
The basic rulein ‘‘assessing’’ howmuch each member country should
contribute to the UNis simple: the wealthier the countryis, themore
it must pay. There is, though, a ceiling for wealthy countries and a
minimum for the poorer ones. The maximum contribution for any
single country is 22 percent of the entire operating budget. This is
what the United States (which represents more than 30 percent of
the world economy) contributes. The minimum contribution is
0.001 percent, paid (if not defaulted) by such countries as Laos,
Malawi, and Timor-Leste. A similar scale of assessment is used to
raise the $2 billion that fund the operations of the various
specialized agencies. The largest recipients in this category are the
World Health Organization (WHO) with $458 million, Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) with $377 million, UNESCO with
$306 million, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with
$276 million, and ILO with $265 million.
At 25–27 percent of the total, the United States is also the largest
single contributor to peacekeeping costs. The higher assessment
for peacekeeping operations is explained by an important
modification: for peace operations the permanent members of the
Security Council pay proportionately more than for the regular
budget. Conversely, the floor for the least developed countries is
even lower than for the regular budget (0.0001 percent).
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The amount of assessed contributions to the regular budget is set
every three years by the General Assembly. In addition to the
United States, the other major contributors include Japan,
Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, and
China. Indeed, these nine countries combined pay for roughly
75 percent of the entire core budget of the United Nations.
Voluntary contributions were estimated at roughly $10 billion in
2006. Although most of this goes for the various Programs and
UN Operating Budget
The major contributors to the UN operating budget of about
$4.2 billion are assessed based on the proportion of their national
economy vis-à-vis the size of the global economy. In 2000 the UN
lowered the ceiling of these contributions from 25% to 22% of the
total budget. In 2005–06 this meant that the top ten contributors
to the UN operating budget were ranked as follows (China and
Mexico were new entries into the ‘‘top ten’’).
1. United States 22.00%
2. Japan 19.47%
3. Germany 8.66%
4. UK 6.13%
5. France 6.03%
6. Italy 4.89%
7. Canada 2.81%
8. Spain 2.52%
9. China 2.05%
10. Mexico 1.80%
Some member nations are in arrears on their payments, most
notably the United States. The European Union countries
contribute roughly 35% of the total operating budget. Special UN
programs—such as UNICEF and UNDP—are not included in the
regular budget and are financed by voluntary contributions from
member governments.
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Funds, some of the contributions benefit the work of the various
Specialized Agencies (the difference between the funding of UN
Programs and Funds as opposed to Specialized Agencies has
already been touched upon previously). Exceptions among the
Specialized Agencies are the IMF and the World Bank, which are
funded and governed outside of the UN system. This, naturally,
gives them an added degree of independence (or dependence
from the major funding countries). It also makes them far
wealthier. The World Bank, for example, had an operating
budget of more than $2 billion in 2007 and approved in 2005
more than $22 billion in loans and credits to various development
projects.
All of this translates into a few uncomfortable facts. First, the UN
depends on the contributions of its wealthiest member states,
particularly the United States. Second, this dependency gives the
‘‘big payers’’—especially because they are (with the exception of
Russia) also permanent members of the Security Council—an
effective stranglehold on the overall ability of the UN to function at
all. Or if it is to function, the wealthy contributors can exercise
(perhaps) undue influence on the direction of the UN’s policies.
Third, the developing countries that are most in need of the UN’s
assistance are thus indirectly linked via a ‘‘dependency chain’’ to
the continued goodwill of the most developed ones.
A penniless hybrid? A dysfunctional family?
The complexity of the UN is its strength and its weakness. While
the UN has a body (at least one) or a related organization devoted
to almost any imaginable issue, it can be extremely cumbersome
when it comes to dealing with specific issues or solving complex
problems. There are bureaucratic conundrums. As in any large
organization, turf battles within and among different agencies
can reach epic proportions. There is duplication of services and, as
many critics argue, too much political correctness: an uncalled-
for emphasis for satisfying national quotas over actual skills when
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making appointment decisions within the various UN
organizations.
An additional symptom of the UN’s complexity is the uncertainty
of funding that hampers its operational abilities. At the very basic
level, the UN relies on its wealthiest member states to fund its
operations. These contributions are in no case massive (in the case
of the United States it represents less than 0.25 percent of the
federal budget) and they often come in late, if at all. At the end of
2006 member states owed the UN $2.3 billion (the United States
counted for 43 percent of this amount). The UN operates, it seems,
permanently in the red.
But what has this hybrid, penniless structure achieved since 1945?
Where has it been successful? Where has it failed? How can it be
improved? Is there any sense of discussing it as anything else than
a Picasso abstraction?
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Chapter 3
Facing wars, confronting
threats: the UN Security
Council in action
If the purpose of the UN was to save mankind from the destruction
that had overshadowed the history of the first half of the
twentieth century, measuring its success depends on one’s
perspective. On the one hand, it could be argued that since no
World War III has erupted, the founders had created a successful
organization. On the other hand, not a day has gone by since 1945
without a deathly military conflict somewhere on the globe. Many
such conflicts have transpired and continued with the full
knowledge of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In
short, the UN may have played a role in saving mankind from
the devastation of global war, but it has not come close to
eliminating the scourge of war from our planet.
Nor is it clear whether the absence of global military confrontation
has had much to do with the UN and its executive body, the
Security Council. It can be argued that the existence and
proliferation of nuclear weapons acted as a deterrent against a
direct military confrontation between the United States and the
Soviet Union. The potential consequences of such a war—a rapid
annihilation of one’s own country—removed the incentive to go to
war far more effectively than any deliberations at the UN. But the
United States and the USSR were more than happy to intervene in
military conflicts around the globe that did not seem likely to
escalate into a direct superpower confrontation. After the Cold
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War new antagonisms emerged, most evidently within the context
of the United States’ call for regime change in Iraq in 2002–03.
This does not mean that the Security Council was or is irrelevant. It
simply underlines the fact that at its very founding, this central
organ of the UN could be effective only when the so-called P-5
were in agreement. In fact, the UNSC has on numerous occasions
exercised an important role as a global troubleshooter. Taking into
account the dependence of the UNSC on the unanimity of its five
permanent members—and hence on the national interests of
China, France, Great Britain, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union),
and the United States—it has actually been remarkably successful
and active. Ideally, the Security Council’s role should not be purely
reactive. It should also be able to address potential threats and
prevent them from materializing. The relationship between UNSC
and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sometimes
referred to as the UN’s ‘‘nuclear watchdog,’’ is a good example of
the potential that the UN has for making a positive impact on
international security in the twenty-first century. There is probably
no other issue besides the possibility of a nuclear holocaust to bring
peoples and countries together. Yet the attempt to safeguard
against the proliferation of such weapons has been a half-hearted
success at best. Once again, national interests have clashed with
global security concerns to produce a series of imperfect
compromises and temporary solutions.
Political constraints: the veto conundrum
In theory, the Security Council has few limits to its power. Its remit
is broad; its resolutions are binding on all members of the UN. In
short, if the UNSC decided something—to impose sanctions
against a country or to enforce a ceasefire in a conflict area—the
order would have to be implemented. One could not, in other
words, ignore the collective will of the P-5 that effectively
determines the decisions of the UNSC. But finding such collective
will has often been an elusive quest. The question of national
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sovereignty is at the top of the list, and it is something that those
who are ‘‘more equal’’ than others—that is, the P-5—hold
particularly dear. And since they have the right to veto decisions,
they are likely to do so should a proposed resolution be against
their national interest.
The P-5’s right of veto has complicated the UNSC’s work more
than any other issue. Indeed, the fact that five nations—out of a
total of 192—have a privileged position seems absurd. If the
People’s Republic of China (and, more absurdly, between 1949 and
1971 the small island of Taiwan, known as the Republic of China),
France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States can agree on a
course, then the UN can act. If they do not—or if only one of them
decides that a certain resolution is objectionable—then the UNSC
is effectively paralyzed.
Box 3.1 Veto power (‘‘Great Power unanimity’’)
Each UN Security Council member has one vote. Decisions on
procedural matters (for example, whether an issue is to be
discussed by the UNSC at all) require the support of at least nine
of the fifteen members. Decisions on substantive matters (for
example, a decision calling for direct measures to settle an
international dispute, or to employ sanctions) also require nine
votes, but these must include the votes of all five permanent
members. This is the rule of ‘‘Great Power unanimity,’’ often
referred to as the ‘‘veto’’ power.
In theory the nonpermanent members of the UNSC also hold a
collective veto power: if at least seven of them vote collectively
against a resolution (whether procedural or substantive) they can
block a resolution even if all the permanent members vote for it.
This so-called sixth veto has existed only since 1965, when the
number of nonpermanent members was increased from six to
ten. Although all P-5 members have used their veto power
repeatedly, the sixth veto has yet to be employed.
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Thus, the use of the veto can actually prevent the UN from
enforcing measures to end a war. This was the case, for example, in
December 1971, when the Soviet Union vetoed a UN resolution
calling for a ceasefire in a war between India and Pakistan. By
doing so the Soviets were helping India to continue its military
advances against Pakistan, a firm American ally in the Cold War.
Truth be told, Pakistan had won few friends because of its
repression of an independence movement in what was soon to
become the independent nation of Bangladesh (but was until 1971
formally known as East Pakistan). Yet the Pakistani government
was perfectly within its rights when it complained that the
international community was failing to enforce a peaceful
resolution and, in effect, left the outmaneuvered Pakistanis no
alternative but to surrender (which they did on December 16,
0
10
19 46
−5 5
19 56
−6 5
19 66
−7 5
19 76
−8 5
19 86
−9 5
19 96
19 97
19 98
19 99
20 00
20 01
20 02
20 03
20 04
20 05
20 06
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90 82
60
31 33 37
0 0 0 0 3 3
1 1 12 2
China France UK US USSR / Russia Total
Chart 3.1 Use of the Veto.
DuringtheCold War theUSSR was themost frequentuser of the veto. Afterfirst usingit in
1970, however, the United States has taken over this role. Yet, as the chart shows, the
P-5 have almost ceased exercising this privilege since the end of the Cold War.
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1971). Witnessing his country’s hardships from New York, Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, the foreign minister of Pakistan, erupted in front of a
UN Security Council meeting: ‘‘Let’s build a monument for the
veto. Let’s build a monument for impotence and incapacity.’’ 1
To be sure, the General Assembly has often issued resolutions
despite a P-5 veto. But such resolutions simply do not carry the
authority necessary to outweigh a stubborn permanent UNSC
member. Nor does the fact that the nonpermanent members of the
UNSC hold a theoretical ‘‘sixth veto’’ since the expansion of
Security Council membership in the 1960s make the body either
more effective or less driven by great power prerogatives.
The UNSC, for better or worse, was and remains an arena of power
and realpolitik. And despite attempts to reform it, the body
remains, after six decades, more or less the way it was at the
founding: empowered in theory but incapacitated in practice.
Operational constraints: the Military Staff Committee
In order to prevent wars and stop the ones that did erupt, the UN
needed a military capacity. How else could the organization throw
its weight around but by dispatching troops to a troubled region?
How else could the UN force warring parties—unwilling to yield to
diplomatic or economic pressure—to cease fighting but by
displaying superior military prowess?
The UN Charter addressed these questions. It set up the Military
Staff Committee (MSC) as a subsidiary body of the Security
Council and charged it with the planning of UN military
operations. The MSC was further mandated to assist the Security
Council in arms regulation (including, implicitly, the regulation of
nuclear arms). Moreover, the MSC was to provide the command
staff for a set of air force contingents provided by the P-5. The
contingents themselves were to be scattered on UN bases around
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the globe so that the Security Council could call upon them as
needed.
The problem with this plan soon became evident. None of the P-5
saw an independent military force serving their interests. The
mistrust and tensions of the early Cold War—including the creation
of such military alliances as NATO and the Warsaw Pact—meant
that none of the P-5 provided the required forces. Already in July
1948—following two years of negotiations—the MSC reported to
the Security Council that it was unable to fulfill its mandate.
Consequently, although it was the only subsidiary body of the
Security Council mentioned in the charter, the MSC became
‘‘dormant’’ (or irrelevant, in non-UN language). To be sure, there
was a brief revival of interest in the MSC in 1990 when it played a
role in coordinating naval operations during the Gulf War. In the
end, however, the UN has shifted toward subcontracting force out
to regional bodies such as NATO (for example in Kosovo) or the
African Union (in Darfur) rather than creating a structured and
effective military capacity of its own.
After sixty years the MSC still exists as an advisory body that plays
a role in the planning and conduct of UN peacekeeping operations.
It consists of army, naval, and air force representatives of the P-5.
This group meets every two weeks at the UN headquarters in
New York. Other UN members are included in meetings regarding
peacekeeping operations in which their country’s forces are
deployed. But the practical significance of the MSC remains, as it
always has been, extremely limited.
Political constraints: Security Council and the Cold War
The record of the UNSC is checkered. To be sure, it deliberated on
virtually all international conflicts during the Cold War, such as the
Arab-Israeli wars, Korea, Suez, Congo, and Berlin. In all those cases,
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however, it was contingency—the specific interests of the P-5 (and
especially the United States and the Soviet Union)—rather than the
principles of the UN Charter that ultimately decided the outcome.
While the veto power of the P-5 extends to a number of areas—
including the choice of the UN Secretary-General or the admission
of new members to the UN—what truly counts is the way in
which the P-5’s privileged position has affected the UN’s ability
in matters related to war and peace. Of course, the line even here
has often been blurred and the actual measures taken—and
resolutions passed or not passed—depended ultimately how
and if the interests of the P-5 were influenced by the conflict in
question.
For example, the first Soviet use of the veto, in February 1946, was
over a resolution regarding the withdrawal of French forces
from Syria and Lebanon. The Soviet UN ambassador argued that the
regimes slated to take over these countries were essentially French
puppet governments. Later in the same year, the UNSC refused to
discuss a Siamese complaint about French military activities on its
border with Indochina and could not come to an agreement over an
investigation regarding the communist-royalist civil war in Greece.
The major division within the Security Council’s P-5 was, though,
straightforward and reflected the emergence of the Cold War. On
most issues where the veto was used, the Soviet Union stood on one
side, the other four members on the other. This, effectively,
guaranteed a deadlock on most issues, including such hot concerns
as the division of Berlin. In June 1948, the USSR—which occupied
East Germany, including all areas surrounding Berlin, after the
war—cut off all land connections and supply routes to West Berlin.
The American, British, and French forces occupying that part of
the German capital (as well as the Germans who lived there) were,
essentially, hostages. To overcome the blockade, the United States
commenced a massive airlift of food and other supplies. It would
last almost a year.
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The Berlin blockade of 1948–49 dramatically illustrated the limits
of the UNSC’s influence. While the Western powers debated and
drafted resolutions to end the blockade, the Soviets ignored any
possibility of compromise. Not until early 1949 did the Soviets
accept that Western powers could not be smoked out of Berlin.
After several months of negotiations between the American and
Soviet ambassadors to the UN, an end to the blockade was finally
announced in May 1949. But the crisis and its solution had
6. A 1953 cartoon illustrates the struggle between Mao
Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party in Communist China,
and Chiang Kai-Shek, president of Nationalist China, for the
“China seat” in the UN.
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illustrated that the UNSC was not likely to be an operational body.
It could not prevent conflicts but could, however, provide a context
for negotiating an end to a confrontation.
Within months after the end of the Berlin blockade, the UNSC
faced a new conundrum: what to do with the Chinese
membership after the communists triumphed in the Civil War
and proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October
1, 1949. To the Soviets, the obvious course was to replace the ‘‘old’’
China with the ‘‘new’’ one. But others—least of all the Chinese
representative in the UNSC—disagreed, refusing even to
recognize the legitimacy of the PRC. Instead, the Americans and
others upheld the Republic of China (which had been reduced to
the island of Taiwan) as the legitimate member of the P-5. By the
summer of 1950, in a vain effort to sway the other P-5 members,
the Soviets were boycotting the UNSC meetings. In 1971 the
PRC finally gained its seat. At the same time Taiwan was
summarily ejected from the world body.
The Korean conflict
On June 24, 1950, North Korean troops crossed into South Korea.
The UNSC was able to pass an American-drafted resolution
condemning the attack because Jakob Mali, the Soviet
ambassador, was not in New York to veto it. Another resolution
authorized the use of force to push the North Koreans back. The
preeminently American troops that carried out the resolution
eventually overstepped the boundaries of the UNSC resolution by
moving deep into North Korea (and very close to the Chinese
border) in the fall of 1950. The Chinese intervened, and the conflict
dragged on for several years.
Far from strengthening the UN’s effectiveness, the Korean conflict
may actually have diminished it. The arrival of mostly American
troops under American command (led by General Douglas
MacArthur) spoke of the futility of expecting rapid military action
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from the world body unless a member state was ready to step in
and pick up the responsibility. The United States—with the help of
a number of other countries—did so from 1950 to 1953. But it was
clear that for the Americans the Korean conflict was primarily
an American war fought to contain the expansion of communism
rather than a call for duty under the UN charter.
The Korean conflict also produced an important resolution that,
at least in theory, provided a challenge to the executive authority
of the Security Council. In November 1950 the General Assembly
passed Resolution 377, also known as the ‘‘United for Peace’’
Resolution. It stated that in case the UNSC could not maintain
international peace, an issue could be taken up by the General
Assembly. Although seemingly revolutionary, the resolution was
promoted by the United States as a way of circumventing
possible Soviet vetoes—the USSR having returned to the UN in
the meantime—regarding Korea. It became clear over the years
that followed, however, that notwithstanding Resolution 377,
the General Assembly remained subservient to the Security
Council.
United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 377, November 3, 1950
‘‘[I]f the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the
permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and security in any
case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach
of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall
consider the matter immediately with a view to making
appropriate recommendations to Members for collective
measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of
aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain
or restore international peace and security.’’
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Among the many other lessons of the Korean conflict one stands
out. The P-5 learned that absence from the UNSC could be costly
to their national interest. The Soviets would not miss future
meetings (naturally, the other four UNSC members learned the
same lesson). This had two consequences. It highlighted the
importance of the UNSC as a means of blocking action that might
jeopardize the interests of the P-5. No wonder that the next large-
scale military action blessed by the UNSC would not take place
until the end of the Cold War. In the more immediate term,
though, the role of the UNSC as the place where all cold-war issues
would be deliberated upon was secure.
Suez and the ‘‘P-2’’
Korea was the sole case during the Cold War when the UNSC
actually authorized a large-scale military intervention. There were
plenty of other wars and conflicts that were consistently debated
and voted upon. But after the Korean War such conflicts—and
what the UN could do about them—were increasingly linked to
the interplay between the gradual globalization of the Cold War
and the simultaneous decolonization of European empires. In
some cases, they produced odd bedfellows.
One example was the Suez crisis of 1956. In October of that year
the British, French, and Israelis cooperated in an offensive against
Egypt with the aim of removing Gamel Abdel Nasser from power.
Among Nasser’s sins was his decision to nationalize the Suez
Canal, which had led to numerous discussions in the Security
Council as well as a series of mediation efforts by Secretary-
General Dag Hammarskjöld. Nothing worked. Finally, on
October 29, 1956, Israeli forces invaded the Sinai peninsula. By
previous agreement, the British and French called for a ceasefire
and the withdrawal of Egyptian and Israeli forces ten miles from
the Suez Canal. When Israel, as had been agreed, accepted and
Egypt, as expected, rejected the ultimatum, British and French
planes bombed Cairo and the Suez Canal region. A few days later,
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without consulting the UNSC, London and Paris sent troops,
ostensibly to keep the peace.
Given the lukewarm support of the Soviet leadership to Nasser’s
Egypt, the British and French hardly expected strong American
criticism. It came as a rude shock to London and Paris that the
Eisenhower administration called for an immediate Security
Council condemnation of the Israeli, British, and French action.
The Council voted 7–2, the British and French being forced to use
their vetoes for the first time. But while they formally blocked the
resolution, the British and French agreed within weeks to remove
all their troops in favor of a UN peacekeeping force (the UN
Emergency Force, or UNEF).
Ultimately, Suez showed two salient facts. The resolution of the
crisis was an indication of the fact that among the P-5 some were
indeed more equal than others, basically, the P-2: the United
States and the Soviet Union. But Suez also showed that the General
Assembly, which strongly criticized the attacks on Egypt, actually
carried more than symbolic weight. In the end, though, this may
have made it even more difficult for the Security Council to act
decisively in the Cold War era.
Deadlocked and paralyzed
The Soviet Union and the United States clearly acted during Suez
with an eye on the world’s public opinion. Both superpowers were
trying to win allies among the newly independent (or about to be
independent) states in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Yet, as the
explosion of nonaligned countries would show, countries like
Egypt were keener on striking their own course than aligning
themselves with the two most powerful states on the globe.
This did not mean that Cold War contests disappeared from the
agenda of the Security Council. During the 1962 Cuban missile
crisis, for example, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Adlai
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Stevenson, challenged his Soviet counterpart vehemently during
one of the most public confrontations between the superpowers’
representatives. In front of the television cameras, Stevenson
demanded that Valentin Zorin, the Soviet representative, admit to
the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. ‘‘I am prepared to wait
for my answer until hell freezes over,’’ said Stevenson. When Zorin
refused to answer, the American showed photographs that clearly
established the presence of the missiles. Despite Stevenson’s
impressive performance, the UNSC played virtually no direct
role in the final solution to the crisis. That task was left for back-
channel Soviet-American diplomacy.
By this point the UNSC had acquired much the same role as the
General Assembly in the Cold War context: it had become a
forum for public relations. Resolutions were debated but—if they
made it to the Security Council’s agenda—they were usually vetoed
by one or more of the P-5. French military action in Indochina
and Algeria in the 1950s and early 1960s passed without UNSC
intervention. During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States
military involvement in Vietnam and neighboring countries drew
worldwide condemnation. But there was no UNSC resolution
calling for an American withdrawal. A decade or so later the
Soviet Union sent its troops to Afghanistan, but despite global
uproar no UN resolution was forthcoming. Other deadly conflicts
in, for example, Angola, the Horn of Africa, and Cambodia were in
practice ignored by the Security Council because they involved
the interests of one or more of the P-5. In sum, during the Cold
War the UNSC was heavily influenced, to some extent even
paralyzed, by the East-West confrontation.
An active UNSC: from Iraq to Iraq
All seemed to change as the end of the Cold War ushered in a new
era of UNSC activism. In 1988 alone the Council authorized five
new peacekeeping missions; in the early 1990s such missions
proliferated around the globe. With the absence of Cold War
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antagonisms the UN appeared to emerge as a major player in
shaping a new world order, a term employed, yet again, by an
American president.
The most significant event heralding George H. W. Bush’s idea of a
‘‘new world order’’—a term that had surfaced for the first time during
Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to revamp the international system by
creating the League of Nations at the end of World War I—was the
American-led but UN-sponsored military operation in the Persian
Gulf. Following the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait in
August 1990, the U.S. administration engineered a series of
unanimous UNSC resolutions that ultimately authorized the
dispatch of a large multinational military force to push the Iraqis out
of Kuwait. With the participation of thirty countries, approximately
660,000 troops, and a massive air operation, the American-led
coalition did just that by the end of February 1991.
Although Operation Desert Storm was successfully concluded and
represented the largest UNSC-authorized military campaign, its
consequences were contradictory for the UN. On the one hand,
the operation’s success undoubtedly encouraged the UNSC to
approve other, much smaller-scale military missions in the early
1990s. But the fact that a number of these missions—in former
Yugoslavia, in Somalia, in Rwanda—could not quell the violence or
stop genocide, highlighted the UN’s continued lack of a reliable
military arm. Far from increasing the credibility of the UN, the
Gulf War actually undermined it.
More important, the Gulf War symbolized the inequality that
was evident even among the UN’s P-5. The sudden emergence of
virtual unanimity among the veto powers did not hide the fact
that there was, at this point, but one superpower. The United
States—in part because of its dramatic advantages in wealth and
military resources, in part because of the demise of its only true
counterweight, the Soviet Union—emerged in the 1990s as the one
power that could make or break any UNSC initiative.
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Most disturbingly, in 2003 the United States showed that, as
before, it could easily take massive military action without
UNSC blessing. The occasion was, again, Iraq. Despite more
than a decade of UN sanctions, that country was reportedly
continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Iraq, still ruled by Saddam Hussein, arguably also had links to
various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, the organization
that had perpetrated the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York
and Washington, D.C. Although both accusations proved false
and the threat of a French veto led the United States to stop
pushing for a UNSC resolution, the second U.S.-led invasion
toppled Sadddam Hussein’s government in the spring
of 2003.
The comparison regarding the role of the UN in the two Gulf
wars was stark. In 2003, the UN was reduced to the role of a
bystander, called in—if at all—to engage in some humanitarian
tasks after the ‘‘serious’’ military mission was completed. Nor
was this the only such occasion to occur in the new millennium:
in October 2001 the United States had led a military operation
that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan (accused
of harboring the headquarters of the terrorists who had
planned the attacks of September 11). The UN was brought in
afterwards, as a sponsor of the planning for the future shape of
Afghanistan.
In short, the sudden activism—and apparent unanimity—of the
UNSC in the early 1990s had not translated to the creation of
a collective body that was willing to engage in the world’s
trouble spots after multilateral consultation. If anything, the end
of the Cold War had highlighted the disparity between one of
the P-5 countries and the rest of the world. When the UN
engaged in various peace operations, it did so only in places that
lacked obvious significance to the P-5, particularly the United
States. The majority of UN members did not approve of the
military action called for by the United States, but they were
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incapable of preventing it. In this sense, the collapse of the Cold
War international system had changed little.
Nuclear threats and the IAEA
A key dimension in the field of international security after 1945
was the emergence of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the very first UN
General Assembly resolution, adopted in January 1946, called for
the elimination of ‘‘weapons adaptable to mass destruction’’ and
cooperation toward harnessing the peaceful use of atomic energy.
Broad principles, however, again clashed with naked national
interest. The United States chose to safeguard its monopoly of
atomic weapons, while the Soviet Union quickly moved to develop
its own arsenal. By the fall of 1949 the USSR had successfully
tested one. By 1964, after the People’s Republic of China tested its
weapon, all of the P-5 were members of the nuclear club (Great
Britain and France had conducted their first tests in the interim
period). In subsequent decades India and Pakistan both declared
their nuclear capabilities, while other states—Israel, Iran, and
North Korea—worked hard to acquire them. Many others—from
South Africa to Sweden—flirted with the idea of developing their
own nuclear weapons at some stage.
The justification, in all cases, has been deterrence rather than
offense. The possession of nuclear weapons presumably makes a
state invulnerable to attacks from other states, the consequences—
a subsequent retaliation with nuclear weapons—being too grave
to the attacker. And indeed, despite such tense moments as the
1962 Cuban missile crisis, nuclear weapons have not been used
since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in
1945. At that point, of course, the bombs were used for offensive
purposes and without the fear of retaliation in kind.
Although nuclear weapons have not been used as a tool of war for
more than six decades, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is
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proof of the overall failure—especially by the P-5—to live up to the
1946 UN goal of abolishing nuclear weapons. There have been
many efforts to control their spread by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), founded in 1957 and headquartered in
Vienna. As well, a series of international treaties has been aimed at
controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons, at limiting the
scale of the arsenals each country holds, and, ultimately, at
bringing the threat of nuclear war under control.
The IAEA grew from an American proposal in December 1953 that
eventually resulted in the unanimous approval of the agency’s
statute by the General Assembly in October 1956. An independent
agency, the IAEA reports regularly to both the GA and the UNSC
on its work, which focuses on three areas: nuclear verification and
security, nuclear safety, and nuclear technology transfer. The
recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, the IAEA is among the
most high-profile UN agencies and its Director General (in 2008
the Egyptian diplomat Mohammed ElBaradei) ranks as one of the
most publicly visible UN functionaries.
Such name recognition and international influence have not
always been the case. Throughout the Cold War the IAEA
remained a relatively impotent organization, beholden to the
whims of the great powers. Particularly in the field of nuclear arms
control, what mattered were the views from Moscow and
Washington (and to a lesser extent London, Paris, and Beijing). In
the field of nuclear proliferation even the views from the great
capitals could not prevent states bent on acquiring nuclear
weapons capability from doing so.
The efforts at nuclear arms control were therefore essentially
results of old-fashioned power politics rather than the moral
pressure of the international community. In the aftermath of the
1962 Cuban missile crisis, for example, the United States and
the USSR began seeking common ground. In 1972 their talks led to
the SALT I agreement that put caps on the number of offensive
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nuclear weapons each side could have. In a separate agreement
(the Anti-Ballistic Missile, or ABM, Treaty) signed at the same
time the Americans and the Soviets essentially agreed to freeze the
development of ‘‘defensive’’ nuclear weapons. Whether the
agreements were primarily aimed at making the world a safer
place, as its principal advocates piously argued is, however, open to
question. It is clear, though, that the renewed atmosphere of
Soviet-American tensions in the late 1970s resulted in a renewed
nuclear arms race in the 1980s. And there was nothing the IAEA
could do about it.
Meanwhile, the addition of China and France to the nuclear ‘‘club’’
in the 1960s led to growing support for international, legally
binding commitments and comprehensive safeguards to stop the
further spread of nuclear weapons. The first major result was the
approval of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT) in 1968. The NPT essentially froze the number of
declared nuclear weapon states at five (the U.S., Russia, the UK,
France, and China). Other states were required to forswear the
nuclear weapons option and to conclude comprehensive
safeguard agreements with the IAEA on their nuclear materials.
In the 1970s the NPT was accepted by almost all of the key
industrial countries and by the vast majority of developing
countries.
In the early 1990s the dissolution of the Soviet Union lifted the
nuclear shadow of the Cold War. In 1995 the NPT was made
permanent, and in 1996 the UN General Assembly approved and
opened for signature a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTB). But
fears of global annihilation as a result of a superpower showdown
were soon replaced by renewed concerns of proliferation.
Discoveries or concerns over clandestine weapons programs in
Iraq (where the suspicions proved unfounded in 2003) and North
Korea, as well as concern over the future of the former Soviet
Union’s massive nuclear arsenal and possibilities of nuclear
terrorism led to the strengthening of the IAEA’s role; it became, in
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effect, a global nuclear watchdog, a UN verification agency
working to ensure that nuclear energy is developed for peaceful
purposes.
But the IAEA remains hostage to the national interests of select
countries. It still lacks the ability to satisfy those who demand
assurances against the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The United States and its allies used the Iraqi nuclear weapons
program as a reason for the invasion and occupation of that
country in 2003 despite (accurate) statements by the IAEA that no
such program existed. The agency could do little to prevent the
North Koreans from developing their nuclear arsenal in the 1990s
and 2000s. The IAEA has had little impact on the apparent
Iranian quest to develop a nuclear weapon.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also
called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was initially signed on
July 1, 1968. Its aim was to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. By
2007, 189 states had signed the treaty, and only four states have
completely opted out of the NPT. Of these, two (India and
Pakistan) are confirmed nuclear powers (those who have openly
tested nuclear weapons), and one is a presumed nuclear power
(Israel). One further nuclear power, the Democratic Republic of
Korea, ratified the treaty in 1985 but withdrew from it in 2005. In
1995 the treaty was extended indefinitely and without conditions.
NPT has had its successes. Several NPT signatories have given up
nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. For example, in
the 1970s South Africa undertook a nuclear weapons program
and may even have conducted a nuclear test in the Atlantic ocean.
But it later renounced nuclear weapons and signed NPT in 1991.
At about this time, several former Soviet republics destroyed or
transferred to Russia the nuclear weapons inherited from the
Soviet Union.
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In the end, the IAEA cannot make states abandon their quest for
nuclear weapons. It can inspect, deliver a verdict, and make a
recommendation to the UN. But it is ultimately up to the UN
Security Council to act upon such findings and recommendations.
UNSC did so, for example, in March 2007 (and again in 2008)
when it unanimously decided to strengthen economic sanctions
against Iran to pressure that country into abandoning its nuclear
program. Whether such a decision would have the desired—or the
opposite—effect remains to be seen.
UNSC in a ‘‘unipolar’’ world
The UNSC has been and remains the victim of its own rules. The
great conundrum was created by the necessity to make sure that
the most powerful countries would join and remain members of
the UN. Thus, the five major winners of World War II were
granted special status as the P-5 of the Security Council and the
only ones with individual veto power (the sixth veto is essentially
a hypothetical one). This aspect makes the UN an undemocratic
institution. But it has also guaranteed that, unlike the League of
Nations in the 1930s, the UN has not seen major powers leave
the organization in protest. They need not do so. They can paralyze
the UN with a simple vote—and they have repeatedly done so.
As a result, the Security Council has an uncertain future. Stripped of
the ability to rapidly deploy a military force of its own, it has relied
excessively on great power contributions for large-scale military
campaigns. No wonder that the ones undertaken so far—in Korea in
the early 1950s and in the Persian Gulf in the early 1990s—took place
in extraordinary political circumstances. Both were essentially
American military operations, and as such, both also highlighted the
fact that the inability to agree on a substantial role for the Military
Staff Committee in the 1940s had paralyzed the UN.
The basic point that follows is that today’s UN remains, essentially,
dependent on the whims of the P-5 and the specific power
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constellations among them. At the moment this means that the P-5
is in danger of becoming the P-1, with the United States playing the
role of a global hegemon, directing or blocking UN interventions as
befits its national interests. It is hardly an ideal situation, made
more acute with the challenge of nuclear proliferation. The fact
that the country that will most likely join the nuclear club before
2010 is Iran may also increase tensions within the UNSC, some of
whose members depend, for example, on Iran’s oil as a key energy
resource.
The UNSC, much like most of the world organization, is
undoubtedly in need of reform. In fact, it is the lynchpin of reform
activity. At this point, however, it is useful to remind ourselves of
the fact that for all its faults and limitations, the UN Security
Council has authorized numerous peacekeeping missions. While
the so-called blue helmets’ record is far from perfect, they have
saved and altered thousands—probably millions—of lives around
the globe over the past five decades. They deserve a closer look.
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Chapter 4
Peacekeeping to
peacebuilding
‘‘Certainly the idea of an international police force effective against
a big disturber of the peace seems today unrealizable to the point of
absurdity.’’ It was an unexpected line from Lester B. Pearson,
delivered as part of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in
December 1957. After all, peacekeeping is among the most visible
roles that the UN plays on every continent (save North America).
In the summer of 2008 there were twenty-two individual active
missions, manned by approximately 90,000 soldiers from more
than a hundred countries. Yet as Pearson, whose remarkable
career included stints as Canada’s foreign and prime minister,
indicated, trust in the success of such operations has not always
been excessively high. 1
Indeed, as Pearson—who was at the time the Canadian
representative at the UN and who can take much of the credit
for the creation of the first large-scale peacekeeping force in
1956 (to protect the Suez Canal)—perceived half a century ago,
the UN has not lived up to the high expectations of its founders.
One statistic illustrates this fact: between 1948 and 1988 the
UNSC had authorized only thirteen peacekeeping missions. In
those same years a number of interstate and an increasing
number of intrastate (or civil) wars took place around the
globe. In 1982 alone, more than forty intrastate conflicts were
under way.
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Cold War pressures, particularly the inability of the Security
Council to agree on matters of war and peace in a charged East-
West context, explain part of the imperfect record. But even after
the Cold War, UN peacekeeping has been faced with numerous
problems that have shattered the image of benevolence and
neutrality that the world body is supposed to project. In the 1990s
genocides (in Rwanda) and ethnic cleansing (in the former
Yugoslavia) took place despite the presence of blue-helmeted
forces in those areas.
7. When Lester Pearson, Canada’s delegate to the UN, won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1957, the citation praised him, in part, for
his consistently “realistic and positive attitude. . . . Lester Pearson’s
vision is not that of a dreamer. He looks at life and the conditions of
the world as they are, basing his conclusions on realities.”
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If anything, UN peacekeepers face more formidable challenges
today than they did when they first took to the field in the 1950s.
This is mainly because peacekeeping is no longer just about
standing between two hostile sides in order to pacify a war and
allow diplomacy take its course. Today’s peacekeeping activities–or
‘‘peace operations’’—are far more complex in nature: keeping peace
is not the same thing as making and building peace.
The UN Charter and peacekeeping
The UN Charter itself does not refer to ‘‘peacekeeping,’’ but the
concept developed (and became a central part of the UN’s
agenda) in later years. This was in part a result of the simple fact
that the fifty-one founders of the UN rejected the idea that the
organization could intervene in internal affairs of a country. Thus
peacekeeping—which eventually meant placing military within the
borders of a state for the specific purpose of blocking hostilities—
could easily be regarded as a breach of national sovereignty. To
guard against that possibility, ‘‘traditional’’—or what is often
referred to as ‘‘first generation’’—peacekeeping was possible only
with the consent of the hostile parties. Unfortunately this could
also work in reverse: a ‘‘host’’ country could demand that the UN
peacekeeping force exit its territory (for example, Egypt in 1967) or
simply refuse them entry.
Nor did the UN have the means at its disposal for extensive
peacekeeping missions. The idea of having permanent UN bases
scattered around the world, originally envisioned in article 43 of
the UN Charter, never got off the ground. Though this failure owed
much to the emergence of Soviet-American rivalry in the
immediate postwar years, it was also linked to the reality that
the world of 1945 was governed with empires that assumed that
they were entitled to play the role of a policing power within their
‘‘sphere.’’ Countries such as Britain and France considered their
imperial possessions as falling within the limits of their national
sovereignty. In possession of the veto right in the UN Security
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Council, they were in a position to block the establishment of
anything resembling an international rapid-reaction force.
However, the swift dissolution of European empires in the
aftermath of World War II created problems and conflicts that
required a new kind of policing power. In 1947–48 the large-scale
killings related to the partition of India and Pakistan, as well as
the first Arab-Israeli War and the emergence of the Palestinian
refugee issue, clearly indicated that the UN required a military
arm if it was ever to subdue conflicts around the globe. These two
crises resulted in the founding of the two longest-lasting UN
peacekeeping missions: in May 1948 the United Nations Truce
Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in the Middle East was
established with headquarters in Jerusalem; in January 1949 the
UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP)
was deployed to monitor the ceasefire in the Kashmir region.
Both were and remain small-scale observatory missions. Their
extraordinary longevity is not a happy symbol for either region.
The Korean conflict of 1950 saw the deployment of the largest UN
force in a conflict area. But the purpose of the American-
dominated mission was to counter an attack that had already taken
place, not to police a fragile peace. Less well known is the fact that
UN peacekeepers remained on the South Korean side of the
demilitarized zone until 1967, at which point U.S. and South
Korean troops took over.
It was only in the mid-1950s that peacekeeping—‘‘the first
genuinely international police force,’’ as Pearson put it—was born.
Suez and peacekeeping
The Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal in the summer of
1956 was followed by an Israeli invasion and Anglo-French
intervention. With the UNSC paralyzed, the General Assembly
passed a landmark resolution (GA Res. 998) on November 4, 1956
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authorizing the Swedish Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld,
to raise and deploy a UN Emergency Force (UNEF), responsible to
Hammarskjöld and headed by a neutral officer. The proposal
originated with Lester Pearson, who initially suggested that the
force consist of mainly Canadian soldiers. But the Egyptians were
suspicious of having a Commonwealth nation defend them against
Great Britain and her allies. In the end, a wide variety of national
forces were drawn upon to ensure national diversity. Pearson
received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his role and is today
considered a father of modern peacekeeping.
The purpose of the 6,000-strong multinational peacekeeping
force was straightforward: to erect a physical barrier between
Israel and Egypt. It worked, if only for a decade. UNEF’s presence
depended on the consent of the regional (or host) nations. In 1967
Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser told UNEF to leave shortly
before the so-called Six-Day War, during which Israel occupied the
Sinai peninsula (as well as the Golan Heights and the West Bank).
The main significance of the Suez crisis from the perspective of the
UN was as a prototype of modern peacekeeping. In numerous
other conflicts after 1956, the blue helmets, worn mainly by
soldiers from countries that were not among the P-5, would arrive
General Assembly Resolution 998
On November 4, 1956, the UN General Assembly adopted a
Canadian proposal that requested, ‘‘as a matter of priority, the
Secretary-General to submit to it within forty-eight hours a plan
for the setting up, with the consent of the nations concerned, of
an emergency international United Nations Force to secure and
supervise the cessation of hostilities’’ along the Suez Canal. The
vote was 57 to 0, with 19 abstentions. Egypt, France, Israel, the
United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and various eastern European
states were among the abstainers.
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and provide a shield against future hostilities. They would not be
authorized to fire their guns except in self-defense.
As its name implies, UNEF was created simply to soothe an
emergency situation. Its job was not to resolve the deeper sources
of the conflict or enforce a permanent settlement. Moreover, the
blue-helmeted soldiers who were stationed on the western part of
the Sinai peninsula could be told to leave by their host country,
Egypt, at any moment. In other words, peace could ultimately be
kept only if those on either side of the conflict found it in their
interest. A decade after the Suez conflict the Egyptians asked
UNEF peacekeepers to leave on the eve of the Six-Day War. The
repercussions of that 1967 conflict set the backdrop for the
seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Despite its limited long-term success, the prototype established at
Suez was the general model used in most Cold War–era UN
peacekeeping missions. The particular characteristics of this type of
‘‘Generations’’ of peace operations
UN peacekeeping operations have greatly evolved in their
purpose and complexity over the years. Observers thus like to
divide them into three or four groups, usually referred to as
‘‘generations.’’ Although the word is misleading in that implies a
clear chronological progression rather than the parallel existence
of several types of operations, the generations can roughly be
defined as follows (this is not the only possible division; others
talk of as many as six generations of peacekeeping):
First Generation peacekeeping (or traditional peacekeeping)
refers to operations aimed at creating a physical barrier between
two warring parties—both of them internationally recognized
states—that have given their consent to peacekeepers’ presence.
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‘‘first generation’’ peacekeeping mission were their stringent
neutrality and impartiality in the conflict in question, which allowed
the UN and its member states to refrain from choosing sides. In an
era characterized by the East-West rivalry, this was virtually the
only way in which an international military mission could gain the
The classic example of this type of an operation is the role of
the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) after the 1956
Suez crisis.
Second Generation peacekeeping (or peacebuilding) refers to
the implementation of complex, multidimensional peace
agreements, mostly in the aftermath of civil wars. Again the
consent of the various parties is required, but they are usually not
both (or all, if more than one) states. In addition to traditional
military functions, peacekeepers play a role in various police and
civilian functions. The goal is the long-term settlement of the
underlying conflict. Examples of this type of operations include
Namibia in 1989–90 and Cambodia in 1991–93.
Third Generation peacekeeping is often referred to as peace
enforcement. These activities include low-level military
operations, enforcing cease-fires, and rebuilding ‘‘failed states.’’
The problem with the use of the term ‘‘generation’’ is particularly
evident here: the Congo mission in the early 1960s was essentially
the first example of peace enforcement, third generation
peacekeeping actually predated the second generation ones. Two
of the more recent examples of this type of operations are former
Yugoslavia and Somalia in the 1990s.
Fourth Generation peacekeeping (rarely called such) refers to
delegated peacebuilding when, for example, the UN subcontracts
various peacebuilding and peacekeeping tasks to, say, regional
organizations. Perhaps the best known example of this is NATO’s
role in Bosnia from the mid-1990s on.
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support of states on opposite sides of the Cold War divide. However,
the emphasis placed upon monitoring the situation, rather than
influencing it, the need to have the consent of the conflicting parties,
and the nonuse of force (except in self-defense) made the Suez
prototype unfit for all types of conflict situations, particularly the
many succession struggles that erupted in the aftermath of
European decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s.
The birth of peace enforcement: the Congo
Although the Suez crisis set the pattern of modern UN
peacekeeping in conflicts between nation-states, the Congo
conundrum represented a new kind of challenge. The sudden
independence of the former Belgian colony in early 1960 created
not only the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa but one that was
rife with internal power struggles, rich in resources, and ripe for
external intervention. The richest province of the Congo,
Katanga, declared itself independent after receiving support from
Rhodesia and South Africa (both countries ruled by white
minorities). When Belgian troops returned to the Congo, the
country’s prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, appealed to the UN
for help. But the arrival of peacekeepers did not immediately solve
the crisis as the UN Security Council debated the implications of
intervention in the internal affairs of Congo, which had been a UN
member state since September 1960.
The Congo became, in effect, the first case in which the UN was
engaged in a ‘‘peace enforcement’’ mission. The 20,000-strong
United Nations Operation in the Congo (Opération des Nations
Unies au Congo, or ONUC) faced physical limitations and constant
attacks from local groups. In the same year Patrice Lumumba was
captured and killed by his internal opponents. The mayhem in
Congo was almost total until 1964, when the unity of the country
was—for the time being—restored and a central government
headed by Mobutu Sese Seiko was firmly in power in Kinshasa.
The last UN troops left the Congo in the summer of 1964. With 250
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UN casualties, ONUC was the deadliest UN peacekeeping
operation in the Cold War era. Among the casualties was the
UN Secretary-General. Tragically, Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane
crashed in 1961 while he was shuttling around the region in an
effort to mediate an end to the conflict.
The legacy of the UN’s role in the Congo was mixed. Even though the
ONUC played a role in ensuring the survival of the new nation as one
unitary state, it had done little to solve the sources of future unrest
and instability. Colonialism was gone, and the unity of what looked
like a ‘‘failed state’’ had been preserved by the UN intervention. But
the outcome was a corrupt dictatorship. Over three subsequent
decades Mobutu proved a ruthless dictator, enriching his personal
fortunes and favoring his support base while hiding behind the
façadeof a stable nation-state.Eventually in the 1990s,a lengthycivil
warwouldensue and Mobutuwouldbe deposed. Ifpeacekeepingà la
Suez left the door open for interstate conflict, peace enforcement à la
Congo provided no basis for future internal harmony.
Peacekeeping and Cold War constraints
Suez and the Congo were two examples of what might be termed
the ‘‘prototypical’’ UN peacekeeping and peace enforcement
missions. They were constrained by the ability of the Security
Council’s permanent members to veto any action if it seemed
contrary to their national interest. Although Suez showed that even
in cases where two of the P-5 were involved, the UN was indeed
capable of some action; it was equally clear that without
tremendous American and Soviet pressure nothing would have
been done to curtail the interventions of Britain and France.
Suez remained an exception in this regard. During most of the
Cold War era, until the late 1980s, UN peacekeeping and peace
enforcement was not possible in a number of areas. During the
bloody conflict in Algeria, for example, the UN was unable to
intervene because of French ability to block any action. The
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Vietnam wars—both its French (1946–54) and American (1960–
75) phases—went by without the UN playing any significant role.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 or the
Chinese attacked Vietnam in the same year, the UN could do
nothing but offer to mediate. The lone mission in the Western
Hemisphere—a region the United States continued to dominate—
was established in the Dominican Republic in May 1965, following
the unilateral military intervention by 20,000 U.S. marines. The
Mission of the Representative of the Secretary-General in the
Dominican Republic’s (DOMREP) mandate lasted until October
1966, when its ‘‘infrastructure’’ (two military observers and a tiny
civilian staff) was disbanded.
Still, the blue helmets expanded their operations even during the
Cold War. From the 1960s to the 1980s, peacekeepers were sent
to numerous conflict regions, particularly in the Middle East.
Someoftheseoperationshave becomepartof the regionallandscape.
For example, the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) has
been present on the eastern Mediterranean island since 1964, and
the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) that was created
toobserve the border between Israel and Syria in1974still remains in
place. Perhaps most astonishingly, the misnamed UN Interim Force
in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was expanded in the summer of 2006
following the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict that threatened to destroy
Lebanon’s efforts to move toward some form of normality. UNIFIL
was originally created in 1978. It has been a long ‘‘interim.’’
Overall, a total of eighteen UN peacekeeping missions were created
during the Cold War. Unlike the few just cited, most were relatively
short-lived. Several—the Dominican Republic one being an
extreme example—were essentially observer missions. The good
news was that fatalities were relatively few: between 1948 and
1990, 850 peacekeepers died. Moreover, UN forces diffused and
‘‘froze’’ a number of violent conflicts and, at a minimum, made
negotiations between conflicting parties possible. By doing so, they
saved lives and promoted the overall cause of peace; a much
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belated recognition of this role was the awarding of the Nobel
Peace Prize to UN peacekeepers in 1988.
Nevertheless, as evidenced by the long-drawn-out conflicts in the
Middle East and the ever-present UN observers in Kashmir, the
impact that UN peacekeepers could have on the actual resolution
An Agenda for Peace, 1992
Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s paper ‘‘An
Agenda for Peace,’’ which provided analysis and
recommendations on ways to strengthen and improve the UN’s
capacity to maintain world peace, was commissioned by the UN
Security Council on January 31, 1992, at its first-ever meeting at
the level of heads of state.
‘‘An Agenda for Peace’’ defined four consecutive phases of
international action to prevent or control conflicts: Preventive
diplomacy, Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and Peacebuilding
(action to identify and support indigenous structures that will
help to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse
into conflict).
The paper reflected an expanded outlook on the UN’s role in the
post–Cold War world, particularly in the area of UN
peacekeeping. Instead of separating national armies involved in
conflicts as had been the case during the Cold War, in the 1990s
peacekeeping operations were deployed increasingly to
situations of internal conflict, which involve nonstate or rebel
forces (often calling themselves ‘‘national liberation
movements’’). The role(s) that peacekeepers have to perform in
such conflicts are more complex than in traditional interstate
conflicts. Further, ‘‘An Agenda for Peace’’ implied that, in order to
intervene, the UN did not necessarily require the consent of all
the parties engaged in the conflict itself. This in large part explains
the sudden explosion of UN peace operations in the 1990s.
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of disputes remained limited. Since the late 1980s the situation has
become even more complicated.
Peacekeeping overreach
The end of the Cold War was followed by a dramatic explosion of
UN peacekeeping operations. In 1988–89, for example, five new
peacekeeping operations were added, to monitor the Afghanistan/
Pakistan border, the Iran-Iraq ceasefire, the end of fighting in
Angola’s long-lasting civil war, the resolution of Namibia’s
independence struggle, and the ceasefires between rival factions in
Central America. In subsequent years the roster kept growing as
Western Sahara, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia,
Mozambique, Rwanda, Haiti, and other regions saw the arrival of a
UN peace operation.
The slew of new missions required new organizational structures
and additional resources, summarized in the UN Secretary-
General’s Agenda for Peace of January 1992. In the same year, the
UN created the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)
to coordinate the various peace operations. The number of blue-
helmeted soldiers jumped from about 15,000 in 1991 to more
than 76,000 in 1994. In the same period the financial cost of UN
peacekeeping operations grew more than 600 percent, from
roughly $490 million in 1991 to $3.3 billion in 1994. Not
surprisingly, the human costs went up in a dramatic fashion:
there were 15 deaths among UN peacekeepers in 1991 but 252
in 1993 (so far the highest annual casualty rate in the history of
UN peacekeeping).
The post–Cold War activism of the UN in peacekeeping did not
always produce the desired results. This was, probably, in part due
to the complexity of the new missions. In contrast to ‘‘classical
peacekeeping’’ between nation-states, the UN peacekeepers were
suddenly thrown into a number of civil war situations and
effectively mandated to enforce a settlement that may or may
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not have had the acquiescence of warring parties. Whether classified
as second, third, or fourth generation peace operations, the
record of these efforts was, particularly in the early 1990s, mixed.
Some of the successes of UN peacekeeping operations included El
Salvador and Mozambique, where UN peacekeepers helped
provide the internal security necessary to achieve sustainable
peace. The case of El Salvador further contributed to the successful
search for peace in Central America that laid the basis for the
‘‘democratization’’ of the region at large. Between 1992 and 1994
just over six thousand peacekeepers of the UN Operation in
Mozambique (ONUMOZ) helped oversee that Southeast African
nation’s transition from a state of civil war to representative
democracy. Earlier, in 1989–90, the UN Transition Assistance
Group (UNTAG) had managed to guide Namibia from a prolonged
independence struggle toward independence. The point, though,
was that in the transition phase from the Cold War international
system to a post–Cold War one, UN peace operations managed
to produce stability in a number of the world’s trouble spots.
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
N u
m b
e r
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rc e s
40,000
30,000
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10,000
0
1 9 4 7
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1 9 5 9
1 9 6 1
1 9 6 3
1 9 6 5
1 9 6 7
1 9 6 9
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1 9 7 5
1 9 7 7
Year 1 9 7 9
1 9 8 1
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1 9 8 7
1 9 8 9
1 9 9 1
1 9 9 3
1 9 9 5
1 9 9 7
1 9 9 9
2 0 0 1
2 0 0 3
2 0 0 5
Size of UN Peacekeeping Forces: 1947−2006
Chart 4.1 Size of the UN Peacekeeping Forces: 1947–2006.
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At approximately the same time, 15,000 UN peacekeepers—as part
of the UN Advance Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC, 1991–92) and
the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC, 1992–93)—
oversaw the implementation of the Comprehensive Political
Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict (signed in Paris on
October 23, 1991). This was a particularly impressive achievement,
given that Cambodia had seen more than two decades of
continuous civil strife and a genocidal campaign by the Khmer
Rouge in the late 1970s that had resulted in the death of more than
two million people. Although the UN’s record was not perfect, the
operations in Cambodia showed the potentially beneficial impact
that international organizations could have in transforming
a war-torn society into a peaceful one.
It did not matter much, though, that the UN could point to
certain successful peace operations in the early 1990s. By the middle
of the decade it was clear that the early post–Cold War enthusiasm
regarding the UN’s role as a global peacekeeper had started to wane.
This was largely due to three magnificent failures.
8. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is escorted by Egyptian
peacekeeping troops on a visit to Sarajevo in December 1992.
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Two of these tragic failures took place in Africa. Between 1992
and 1995, two UN Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM I & II)
failed to produce a secure environment in a country split by civil
war and ruled by rival militia groups. In 1994 the Rwandan
genocide, the massacre of at least 800,000 members of the
Tutsi tribe by two extremist Hutu groups between April and
July, took place despite the presence of the UN Assistance
Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). More than a decade after the
departure of UNOSOM II and UNAMIR, Somalia and Rwanda
remain politically unstable, classic examples of the shortcomings of
post–Cold War peace enforcement.
Equally dramatic was the failure of the UN—or any other
international force—to prevent the ethnic cleansing in former
Yugoslavia. Particularly shocking was the 1995 massacre of an
estimated 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in Srebrenica, an
area declared a ‘‘safe haven’’ by the UN Security Council. But
not even a unanimous Security Council resolution, nor the
presence of 400 Dutch peacekeepers, could stop the worst
massacre in Europe since World War II.
Together with Somalia and Rwanda, Bosnia served to discredit
those who had placed high hopes in UN peacekeeping in the
post–Cold War era. Thus, after peace agreements (the Dayton
Agreements) that were eventually negotiated to end the wars of
former Yugoslavia in October 1995, the UNSC did not
authorize a UN force to oversee their implementation. Instead,
it delegated all military tasks to NATO’s Implementation
Force (IFOR).
These highly public failures did not completely erase the belief in
the positive role of peace operations that had been nurtured by the
earlier successes in Central America, Africa, and Asia. And yet, by
the mid-1990s, the successes seemed to pale in comparison to some
of the magnificent and deadly failures of UN peacekeeping.
Stocktaking followed.
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Reassessments
The contrast between the peacekeeping operations conducted
mainly by a multinational UN force and the massive Persian
Gulf operation in 1990–91 headed by U.S. troops was clear. The
sheer size of the latter, dubbed Operation Desert Storm, was
such that it could not have been conducted by the modest
resources available to the UN. Nor would the United States—or
a number of other countries—yield its ultimate command over
its own national military to some supranational body. The Gulf
War may well have been a successful implementation of a UNSC
resolution. But because making Iraqi forces retreat from Kuwait
was possible only through the use of large-scale military force,
the Gulf War was more a demonstration of American
military might as the lone superpower than an indication of
the UN’s new robust role in safeguarding international peace
and security.
A comparison of the resources put into driving Iraq out of Kuwait
with those allocated to the peacekeeping missions in the first five
years of the post–Cold War era illustrates the point. At their peak
the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf numbered 660,000;
estimates of the financial costs of the war range from $61 to
$71 billion (an estimated $53 billion came from countries other
than the United States, although the Americans committed more
than three-quarters of the troops engaged in the conflict).
By contrast, in 1993, the year when the costs of post–Cold War
UN peacekeeping peaked, the total budget allocated was
$3.6 billion; the total number of blue helmets was just below
80,000 (scattered in thirteen different missions on three different
continents). The late 1990s would see a gradual decline in
operations as well as the funds devoted to them until the new
millennium saw yet another rise in both. The number of
peacekeepers breached the 100,000 barrier in summer 2008; the
budget had climbed to $5.4 billion.
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It is difficult to judge whether peacekeeping missions are
adequately funded. It is clear, however, that the UN spends but a
minuscule proportion of the national defense spending (roughly
1 percent of the French and less than 0.1 percent of the U.S.) of
most major powers. This relatively modest funding may well be
one reason why peacekeeping did not ultimately become the great
success story of the 1990s. Ironically, however, the growth of
peacekeeping costs tends to attract much more attention and
criticism than the much higher cost of, say, the first Gulf War.
The so-called Brahimi Report on UN Peace Operations (named
after Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria, who had the
impressively long title of ‘‘Chairman, Under-Secretary-General
for Special Assignments in Support of the Secretary-General’s
Preventive andPeacemaking Efforts’’) that wasreleased in2000laid
bare many of the problems. It pointed to the basic reason why the
missions in Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia had failed: they had not
been deployed to post-conflict situations but tried to create a post-
conflict environment with inadequate resources. In short, war
needed to end before peace could be built, but the UN force lacked
the mandate and the resources to enforce a peace.
The Brahimi Report also drew a clear distinction between
peacekeepers and peacebuilders, pointing out that the two groups
needed to work closely together if sustainable peace were to be
forged. To improve the situation, the report went on to list no fewer
than twenty key recommendations for UN peace operations.
Among these were the need for preventive action, clear and
credible mandates for the missions, added funding and logistical
support, and an improved public information capacity.
The recommendations lacked the simplicity that would have
appealed to political pundits. They were logical and well argued
but could never be expected to produce immediate results. They
were backed up by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called a
reform of the UN Peacekeeping Operations essential. Annan
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further demanded that it was finally time to place peacekeeping
at the center of UN activities. To achieve this purpose, however,
many more funds were needed. Thus, Annan made a plea to
member states to increase their funding for UN peace operations.
The response was positive but incremental and uneven. The
expenditures on peacekeeping operations had hovered between
$1 billion and $1.5 billion in 1996–99. By 2002–03 the figure had
almost doubled; in 2005 the UN spent over $4.7 billion (more than
three times as much as a decade earlier). Eighteen operations with
about 25,000 peacekeepers in 1997, and twenty-two operations
with roughly 70,000 soldiers were active in 2005, respectively.
The Brahimi Report, 2000
Officially called the ‘‘Report of the Panel on United Nations
Peacekeeping Operations,’’ the Brahimi Report gets its name
from the chairman of the committee that drafted it, the Algerian
diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who had previously served as UN
envoy to Haiti and South Africa. This report, released in 2000,
followed up on the 1992 ‘‘Agenda for Peace.’’ The Brahimi Report
took a critical view of UN peace operations in the 1990s and
provided a list of twenty recommendations. In particular, the
report called for extensive restructuring of the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations; a new information and strategic
analysis unit to service all United Nations departments concerned
with peace and security; an integrated task force at Headquarters
to plan and support each peacekeeping mission from its
inception; and more systematic use of information technology.
In subsequent years, the UN has followed a number of these
recommendations by, for example, establishing the
Peacebuilding Commission in 2006 and through the
establishment of the Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change, which delivered its report on the
future security challenges of the UN in 2004.
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More peacekeepers did not mean a more peaceful world. If
anything, the surge in numbers suggested that there were more
trouble spots in the world after, rather than during, the Cold War.
More disturbingly, a number of conflict areas remained stubbornly
warlike despite lengthy UN involvement. Clearly, UN
peacekeepers had proven their worth when it came to separating
two hostile nations that saw it in their interest to end hostilities
(as in Suez or Cyprus). Clearly UN troops could, in certain
contexts, successfully enforce peace inside an internally divided
country (as in the Congo). But building a durable peace, a nation
that was not at war with itself, was more difficult.
The challenge of peacebuilding
Since the mid-1940s the business of keeping, maintaining, and
enforcing peace has been high on the UN’s agenda. It remains so
today and is likely to continue as long as military conflicts persist—
as they unfortunately are likely to do—in the future. Recognizing
this fact and the limited successes of peace operations (as spelled
out in the Brahimi Report) in general, the UN General Assembly
voted to establish the Peacebuilding Commission (PC) in late
2005. The commission held its first meeting in the summer of
2006. Its mission was to ‘‘marshal resources at the disposal of the
international community to advise and propose integrated
strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention on
reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development,
in countries emerging from conflict.’’ 2
This was a fine idea. It reflected the fact that in the new millennium
the scope for traditional peacekeeping à la Suez post-1956 was
obsolete and peace enforcement was possible only under specific
conditions—when there was no opposition to such an effort from
the UN Security Council’s P-5. The 2003 U.S.-led intervention had
further demonstrated the incapacity of the UN in keeping a
superpower like the United States from using its military might to
deadly effect without the UN’s blessing. However, the Iraq war’s
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aftermath has showed how crucial a role the UN could potentially
play in a post-conflict environment. Traditional peacekeeping was
meant to buy time for interstate diplomacy and conflict resolution.
The UN’s peacebuilders are to buy time for the transition period
that followed the many twenty-first-century internal conflicts
around the globe.
The founding of the Peacebuilding Commission is a commendable
step toward a more nuanced and flexible way of addressing the
future of the world’s major trouble spots. Yet the commission alone
will be able to accomplish little. It is an advisory body, consisting
of thirty-one representatives of UN member states (including the
P-5). As its website spells out ‘‘the Commission’s power will come
from the quality of its advice and the weight carried by its
membership.’’ 3 In other words, it works by consensus and can
ultimately do little more than offer advice. It is no miracle cure.
If there is one lesson to be learned from this latest development, it
is the fact that there is a continued need for measures that go
beyond the simple blocking of two hostile sides from attacking
each other. Keeping peace may well have been what the first UN
peace operations aimed to do, but the far more arduous challenge
is the building of peace. In order to do this, the Peacebuilding
Commission was to ‘‘bring together the UN’s broad capacities and
experience in conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping,
respect for human rights, the rule of law, humanitarian assistance,
reconstruction and long-term development.’’
Peacebuilding is, therefore, a holistic exercise that recognizes both
the significance of the UN’s economic role as well as contributions
of the various well-known humanitarian organizations that
together form the ‘‘softer side’’ of the United Nations.
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Chapter 5
Economic development
to human development
The UN Charter drew a link between international security and
global poverty. The founders believed that World War II was in
large measure an outcome of the Great Depression of the 1930s;
in other words, that economic turmoil had been transformed
into political instability, which in turn was a precondition to the
Nazi takeover in Germany. One of the UN’s central goals was to
prevent similar economic upheaval and the political consequences
that derived from it. The founders—at least some of them—hoped
to head off economic collapse, war, and revolution by a dose of
social democratic reforms and intergovernmental policy
coordination.
But while the UN Charter speaks of promoting ‘‘higher standards
of living’’ and creating ‘‘conditions of economic and social progress
and development,’’ there has never been an agreement on how
these goals should be advanced. In the early postwar years the
major issue on the agenda was the recovery of Western Europe and
Japan. In the 1950s and 1960s the process of decolonization and
the emergence of the so-called Third World shifted the focus
toward questions of global inequality. Although international
relations may have been guided by the East-West conflict, the
persistent North-South divide overshadowed the UN’s efforts to
reshape the global economy.
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And so it remained when, in September 2000, the General
Assembly adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The UN’s major task was to make the world a better place by,
among other things, eradicating poverty and hunger, achieving
universal education, empowering women, and fighting infant
mortality. None of these extremely worthy goals was new. All
remain ‘‘goals’’ today.
Yet, as Miguel A. Albornoz, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the UN,
succinctly put it in a speech at the UN General Assembly in 1985: ‘‘In
the developing countries the United Nations doesn’t mean
frustration, confrontation or condemnation. It means
environmental sanitation, agricultural production, tele-
communications, the fight against illiteracy, the great struggle
against poverty, ignorance and disease.’’ 1 In spite of its problems and
in the minds of many at the receiving end, the UN has done more
than any other organization or single nation to alleviate
the economic and social problems of the less developed countries. It
is a story that—however imperfect the end results—cannot be
ignored in putting the UN’s economic activities in perspective.
Reconstruction after World War II
In 1945 Europe was in ruins. Most ancient capitals were physically
crumbling, unemployment was at record high levels, millions of
refugees were displaced, and famine loomed. In Asia, Japan and
China were both reeling from the physical destruction caused by
a war that had, for all intents and purposes, begun in 1937. In
China a civil war continued until the formation of the People’s
Republic of China on October 1, 1949.
The only major exception in the bleak picture was the United
States, a country that produced half of the world’s industrial goods
in 1945. Thus it was no accident that the Americans shaped the
postwar world. Yet, because of the simultaneous descent into the
Cold War, the economic reconstruction of most of the globe
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became excessively politicized. From 1948 to 1952 the Marshall
Plan—or the European Recovery Program (ERP)—benefited only
Western Europe, the Soviet Union having pressured the eastern
half to stay out of such schemes. The fear of losing control over its
new satellite countries in East-Central Europe made the Kremlin
particularly antagonistic to any economic or political scheme that
might have helped vest the region from Soviet control.
In the Far East, especially after 1947, the United States gave
generous reconstruction assistance to Japan. In both cases the
major rationale behind U.S. policy was to prevent a potential left-
wing drift of the countries that became its major Cold War allies.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union tied Eastern European countries
closely to its economic and political orbit. The end result was, in
effect, the creation of what would later be referred to as the ‘‘first
world’’ (North America, Western Europe, and Japan) and the
‘‘second world’’ (the Soviet Union and its satellites in Europe).
Postwar reconstruction aid was significant in the creation of this
new economic world order. But it was a fleeting phase, deriving
mainly from immediate political and security concerns. Much like
NATO in the security field, the Marshall Plan served to tie the
major European countries to the United States economically. The
side effect—and an intended one—of these efforts was to erect a
barrier between what would soon be called propagandistically the
‘‘free world’’ and the parts of the world that lived under the
influence of Soviet communism.
This also meant, however, that one of the charter’s main ideas, the
world body’s commitment to ‘‘economic and social progress and
development,’’ was essentially a casualty of the political division of
the world after 1945. Of course, no one openly disputed the need
for economic progress. But the instruments by which it could be
promoted were controversial. Specifically, the first and second
worlds had their own ideas about how to promote economic and
social progress. The Americans emphasized free trade and the role
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of the private sector; the Soviets heralded the salutary effects of
government control and refused to join in the global trade
network. Although in 1944–45 many Americans thought that
governments and businesses should cooperate closely in postwar
reconstruction efforts, they saw this as at best a temporary
phenomenon. During the Cold War this Soviet-American,
socialist-capitalist dichotomy laid a shadow over the UN’s role in
promoting development and reducing poverty.
Trade and growth
The UN’s economic agenda was originally controlled by the
so-called Bretton Woods institutions, named after the city in New
Hampshire where, in July 1944, representatives of forty-three
countries met to contemplate the postwar international economic
order. The three key institutions of this system are still operational
and influential today: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank (originally called the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, or IBRD), and the World Trade
Organization (WTO, known as the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade, or GATT, between 1947 and 1995). All three reflected a
certain ideological view on how the international economy should
function: while the GATT/WTO developed into an institution
upholding the principle of ever-freer trading rules (if not always
successfully), the IMF was set up to increase stability in the world’s
currency market, and the IBRD/World Bank was to provide
financial assistance to countries willing but otherwise unable to
join the world market.
These were institutions conceived to prop up, expand, and regulate
the global marketplace. They were, by and large, Anglo-American
in their design. The World Bank, for example, received
approximately 35 percent of its original $9.1 billion capitalization
from the United States. Moreover, it is important to note that
the World Bank and the IMF in particular were founded as
organizations in which the power lay with those who paid. In other
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words, the voting power in these organizations was skewed to the
rich and powerful countries (the major contributors), with the
United States at the top. While the United States and other rich
Western nations were undoubtedly concerned over economic
stability and security, their agenda was dominated by the belief
that the promotion of free trade through international treaties and
mechanisms was the best guarantee against future international
economic collapse and offered the best hope of future prosperity
around the globe.
It is a mantra that has had its success. Since 1945 international
trade has grown rapidly in volume and contributed greatly to
the growth of global gross and per capita income. Between 1960
and 1993, for example, global income grew from $4 trillion to
$23 trillion. Even when adjusted to global population growth,
this still meant a threefold increase of per capita income.
This apparent success story had its critics and opponents. The
U.S.-funded Marshall Plan was rejected by the USSR in 1947 and
followed by the creation of a socialist economic system within the
Soviet bloc. Equally adamantly, after 1949 the People’s Republic of
China rejected capitalism as a way of promoting ‘‘economic and
social advancement.’’ In the decades that followed, the IMF, World
Bank, and GATT remained ‘‘Western’’ institutions promoting one
side’s vision in the global confrontation. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, the end of the Cold War seemingly proved that the Western
vision had been correct and the socialist way erroneous. The
disintegration of the USSR underlined this point.
The second challenge came from decolonization. The explosive
growth in membership transformed the balance of power within
the UN General Assembly: during the early 1960s the Nonaligned
Movement (NAM) emerged as the largest—if a very loosely
coordinated—group of countries. This shift resulted in a growing
emphasis on social and economic questions, particularly on the
unequal distribution of wealth between the countries of the global
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North and South. The first UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) held in 1964 highlighted this by the
formation of the Group of 77 (G-77), an organization of developing
countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa that continues to
promote the importance of development aid.
By 2008 the G-77 comprised more than 130 countries in the
so-called global South. Most of them are poor and underdeveloped
compared to Europe and North America. But their sheer
numbers, both countries and people within them, and the
persistent fact of global economic inequality have presented a
continuous challenge to the UN system.
Development tops the agenda
The World Bank and IDA
In the 1960s the UN’s economic agenda shifted from reconstruction
to development. The World Bank rapidly became an institution
focusing on development aid. In 1960 it founded a subsidiary, the
International Development Association (IDA). While the original
World Bank lending agency, the IBRD, had shifted its focus to
so-called middle-income countries, the IDA’s task was to provide
interest-free loans and grants to the least developed ones, countries
that already in the 1950s were called the ‘‘third world.’’
The first IDA loans, to Chile, Honduras, India, and Sudan, were
approved in 1961. Over the subsequent forty-five years the IDA
gave roughly $161 billion in loans (usually called credits) to 108
countries. Most of them have gone to Africa; in 2008 half were in
sub-Saharan Africa.
Despite such apparent good intentions, the IDA was often resented
by those in the receiving end. The World Bank is an institution
controlled by those who fund its operations. Thus, the United
States as the primary ‘‘shareholder’’ has dominant influence over
the bank’s priorities. This fact is further underlined by the
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agreement to have an American president of the World Bank and
to station the headquarters of the organization, as well as the IMF,
in Washington. Controversial choices for this post—such as
former U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara (1968–81) or
Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (2005–07)—have
not helped the World Bank’s overall reputation. Indeed, many
southern countries have seen the World Bank as a renewed form
of Western (or Northern) imperialism. Thus, since the 1960s there
has been a push for alternative ways of promoting development
within the UN system.
UNCTAD
One significant expression of this desire was the first meeting of
UNCTAD, held in 1964 in Geneva. It had two significant long-term
results. First, it led to the creation of the Group of 77 as a powerful
lobby for the interests of developing countries. Second, over the
past four decades, UNCTAD has taken the integration of
developing countries into the world economy as its key mission.
In the 1960s and 1970s UNCTAD emerged as a key forum for the
dialogue between North and South (or developed and developing
countries) and as the major global think tank on development
issues. It was instrumental in pushing through international
agreements that gave developing countries improved market
access through lower tariffs in developed countries. UNCTAD
further contributed to defining how much developed countries
should devote to development aid (in 1970, UNGA approved
0.7 percent of gross domestic product as a target figure) and
identified a group of nations defined as Least Developed Countries
(LDCs, sometimes called the ‘‘fourth world’’).
UNCTAD is important in setting the course of the UN’s
development policy. But even by UN standards it remains a small
operation. After more than four decades in operation, UNCTAD
has a permanent staff of about four hundred (mostly in Geneva)
and an annual regular budget of $50 million. It gives advice,
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prepares data, offers technical assistance, and organizes a major
conference every four years (and a conference focusing on the
needs of the LDCs every ten years). UNCTAD lobbies and
coordinates, but it does not make policy.
UNDP
The creation of the UN Development Program (UNDP) in 1965
was a milestone in global development policy. Its initial purpose was
to coordinate the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance
(EPTA) and the United Nations Special Fund (UNSF), operational
since 1949 and 1959 respectively, in order to respond better to the
needs of a growing number of newly independent countries.
In subsequent decades the UNDP, which depends on voluntary
contributions from member countries, has become an increasingly
important part of the UN. One indication of this is the fact that the
UNDP’s administrator, or chief executive officer, formally ranks
as number three in the UN structure after the Secretary-General
and the Deputy Secretary-General. In this regard, however, the
UNDP hardly became symbolic of the third world’s hope of
circumventing the rich nations’ dominance of development aid:
much like the World Bank, the UNDP has been mostly governed
by an American. The appointment of the Briton Mark Malloch
Brown in 1999 finally broke this pattern; he was succeeded in 2005
by Kemal Dervis, former Minister for Economic Affairs of Turkey.
UNDP and its predecessors began as institutions offering technical
aid (training) and global think tanks producing feasibility studies.
But over the decades, UN development aid has become a multi-
billion-dollar global enterprise. By 1989 contributions to the
UNDP totaled $1.1 billion. It had a staff of 4,700, more than 130
field offices, and worked in 152 countries and territories. Less than
two decades later the budget had more than quadrupled to roughly
$4.5 billion (2005 figure). Impressive, yet it leaves UNDP far
behind the World Bank, which loaned close to $30 billion and
boasted a staff of more than eight thousand in the same year.
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These are large figures. And it is clear that by 1990 there had
already been a great deal of progress. Some of the highlights were
summarized by the UNDP as follows:
. from 1960 to 1987, life expectancy in the global South had
increased by a third (although it still remained only 80 percent
when compared to the developed countries)
. from 1970 to 1985, access to education in the South had
dramatically improved; for example, literacy rates had gone up
from 43 percent to 60 percent in the South
. from 1965 to 1980, average per capita income had gone up by
almost 3 percent every year in developing nations
. from 1960 to 1988, child mortality rates were halved
In short, as the international system underwent the
transformation from the cold-war years to a new era, there
appeared to be plenty of reason for optimism. Already, the global
South had seen a creation of ‘‘conditions of economic and social
progress.’’ With the ideological rivalries between East and West
over, the search for regional proxies through military assistance
seemed to give way for various peacekeeping and peacebuilding
operations in the world’s conflict areas. The era of globalization
sent global growth rates soaring in the 1990s. Although it may
not have played a major role in prompting such changes, the
UNDP could, with certain justification, feel confident that it was
time to put ‘‘people back at the center of the development process
in terms of economic debate, policy and advocacy,’’ 2 as the
UNDP’s first Human Development Report (HDR), published in
1990, put it.
Globalization and human development
The UNDP’s confidence reflected a long overdue paradigm shift.
Instead of looking at such plain statistics as the growth of a
country’s GNP or the average income levels in various nations, the
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HDR wanted to ‘‘assess the level of people’s long-term well-being.’’
Thus, such indicators as life expectancy, education, health,
nutrition, sanitation, and gender discrimination were considered
equally, if not more, important in assessing where a given country
ranked in the Human Development Index (HDI). The index was
developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and has
been used in the HDRs since 1993.
The goal of the HDRs and HDIs was to discover how development
policies affected average people’s daily lives. The reports were then
to be used to improve policies and assure that the circle of
development beneficiaries was extended. In simple terms, the
sheer accumulation of wealth and assets was merely one among
many indicators used to assess human development.
The first HDR was, in fact, rather depressing reading. Among
other things, in 1990:
. average life expectancy in the South remained twelve years shorter
than in the North
. 100 million primary-school age children could not attend school in
the South
. 900 million adults were illiterate (in South Asia overall literacy
rate was only 41 percent); female literacy rates were roughly two-
thirds that of males
. in the 1980s per capita income declined by 2.4 percent in sub-
Saharan Africa
. 14 million children died every year before their fifth birthday
. 3 billion people (roughly half of the world’s population) lived
without proper sanitation
There were, obviously, plenty of challenges for the future and
plenty of work for the various specialized UN agencies. UNDP
itself could coordinate some of it, yet others—the World Health
Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the
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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food
Program (WFP), and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) among others—were often better fitted
to meeting many of the specific challenges. Thus, in 1994
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali issued ‘‘An Agenda for
Development’’ that emphasized the need for coordination across
UN agencies through UNDP resident coordinators that would be
guided by specific ‘‘country strategy notes.’’ Upon unveiling the
paper, however, Boutros-Ghali sounded a warning note:
At present the UN mechanism is caught in a confining cycle. There is
a resistance to multilateralism from those who fear a loss of national
control. There is a reluctance to provide financial means to achieve
agreed ends from those who lack conviction that assessments will
benefit their own interests. And there is an unwillingness to engage
in difficult operations by those who seek guarantees of perfect clarity
and limited duration. Without a new and compelling collective
vision, the international community will be unable to break out of
this cycle. 3
Unfortunately, by the late 1990s it was clear that the ‘‘Agenda for
Development’’ had failed in providing such a ‘‘new and compelling
collective vision.’’ Most significantly, human development was
proceeding on an inequitable basis. Western Europe, North
America, Australia, and Japan ranked high on the Human
Development Index, while Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa,
was lagging even farther behind than a decade earlier. Indeed, the
1999 HDR, subtitled ‘‘Globalization with a Human Face,’’ asserted
that ‘‘the top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries
enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct
investment—the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%.’’ 4
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
The inequalities of the globalized world prompted the UN General
Assembly to publicize an ambitious development agenda for the
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new century. The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of
September 18, 2000, set 2015 as a target date for, among other
things, halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS,
and providing universal primary education. In short, the MDGs—a
result of a plethora of international conference activity in the
second half the 1990s—were concerned mainly with lifting the
poorest of the poorest (the LDCs) from their wretched state. By
2000 this meant that much of the focus of MDG activity was to be
in Africa.
The adoption of the MDGs was a potential turning point in UN
development efforts. Finally, there was a blueprint of ‘‘only’’ eight
goals, accompanied by a timeline. Yet problems were evident from
the beginning. For one, little had changed in terms of those who
grant aid (the wealthy nations) and those who receive it (the poor
ones). This implied a clear hierarchy and a continued dependency
by the South on the goodwill of the North. It also points to one
eternal question of development aid: Should aid be conditional on
the recipient country’s good behavior (or ‘‘good governance,’’ as
Millennium Development Goals, September 2000
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a long- and
medium-term (2000–15) development agenda unveiled by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and approved by the General
Assembly. The eight MDGs are:
Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4 Reduce child mortality
Goal 5 Improve maternal health
Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development
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defined by the donor countries)? Or is setting such preconditions
an affront to one of the shining principles of the UN Charter:
national self-determination?
Another difficulty was that the MDGs suffered from a typical UN
syndrome: trying to offer something for every interest group. The
eight MDGs were broken down to eighteen ‘‘quantifiable targets’’
(for example, ‘‘1. Reduce by half the proportion of people living on
less than a dollar a day’’). These were to be measured by forty-eight
‘‘indicators’’ (for example, the number of people living on less than
$1 per day). But as even these examples suggest, neither the targets
nor the indicators were easily agreed upon. There has been a
constant debate about whether ‘‘dollar-a-day’’ is an acceptable
poverty benchmark to be used when classifying people who live in
‘‘extreme poverty’’ (as opposed to ‘‘just’’ poverty). That the figure is
one used by the World Bank does not satisfy the many critics of
that institution. But neither does it mean that the various
organizations within the UN system that engage in development
work make no difference.
The softer side of development: UNICEF
In December 1946 the General Assembly created what remains
probably the most widely admired UN agency, the UN
International Children’s Emergency Fund (or UNICEF; although
the name would later be shortened to the UN Children’s Fund, the
acronym remained, thankfully, the same). Based in New York,
UNICEF is intended to provide humanitarian and developmental
assistance to children and their mothers, mainly in the developing
world.
UNICEF’s first mission was to ease the suffering in postwar
Europe. Between 1946 and 1950 UNICEF distributed clothes to
five million children, vaccinated eight million against tuberculosis,
and provided supplemental meals to millions of children.
European recovery was undoubtedly eased by these efforts.
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Starting in the 1950s, however, UNICEF expanded its operations
to other parts of the globe and became increasingly active in the
decolonized world. Health campaigns, including large-scale
vaccination projects (against malaria, yaws, leprosy), remained
central to the organization’s program.
At the same time as UNDP emerged as the UN’s development
arm, UNICEF was transformed from a short-term emergency
agency into a long-term developmental one. While it continued to
meet emergency needs of children caught in conflict areas or
rendered homeless by natural disasters, UNICEF moved into
the long-range benefit approach. To raise nutritional standards
for children, UNICEF helped countries produce and distribute
low-cost, high-protein foods, and fostered programs to educate
people in their use. To provide for the social welfare of children,
UNICEF instituted informal training of mothers in child rearing
and home improvement, and aided services for children
through day care and neighborhood centers, family counseling,
and youth clubs.
9. A UNICEF doctor applies ointment to a child’s eye to treat
trachoma, a highly contagious disease.
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In later decades, UNICEF further broadened its policy by
adopting the so-called country approach. This meant allying aid
for children to the development of the (in most cases newly
independent) nation. Consequently, UNICEF became concerned
with the intellectual, psychological, and vocational needs of
children as well as with their physical needs. This meant that
UNICEF began, among other things, providing assistance for
teacher education and curriculum reform in developing countries.
In sum, UNICEF may have been founded as an agency
concerned with meeting the immediate needs of suffering
children. Over the years, however, its mission—reflecting the
changes in the composition of the UN itself—was broadened and
aligned with the broader development agenda of the world
organization.
In the twenty-first century UNICEF remains most people’s
favorite UN agency. It has offices in more than 120 countries and
staff working in the field in more than 150. Its expenditures are
approximately $1.6 billion, funded from voluntary contributions.
Among the UN’s special funds, programs, and specialized agencies,
only the World Food Program (WFP)—often working in close
partnership with UNICEF—has a larger budget.
Although it is difficult to assess the exact impact of UNICEF’s
many programs on developing countries, it is safe to say that the
organization has helped millions of children to grow up healthier,
safer, and better educated. Some statistics may help in grasping
this achievement. For example, in the first twenty-five years of its
existence UNICEF vaccinated 400 million children against
tuberculosis; helped set up 12,000 rural health centers and several
thousand maternity wards in eighty-five countries; provided
equipment for 2,500 teacher training schools and 56,000 primary
and secondary schools; and supplied billions of supplementary
meals. In 1965 UNICEF was, deservedly, awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize for making a positive difference in the lives of millions
of children.
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Paying (or not) for development
Money—where it comes from and where it goes to—has always
been a controversial issue in UN development policy. Yet, since the
late 1960s there has been a surprising unanimity of opinion
concerning how much wealthier countries should devote to
helping the less fortunate ones: at least 0.7 percent of their gross
national income (GNI). Unfortunately, there has also been a
virtually unanimous inability to meet that goal.
The figure is based on a report commissioned by World Bank
president (and former U.S. secretary of defense) Robert
S. McNamara in 1968, the first year that had actually witnessed a
decline in development aid. The Commission on International
Development was headed by former Canadian prime minister
Lester Pearson, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role
in the creation of the first large peacekeeping force following the
Suez crisis in 1956. The Pearson Commission had seven other
members, who, with the exception of a Brazilian representative,
all came from the developed world. They delivered their final
report (called ‘‘Partners in Development’’) on September 15, 1969.
The report’s basic point was that a ‘‘much-increased flow of aid will
be required if most developing countries are to aim for self-
sustaining growth by the end of the century.’’ The Pearson report
set two targets for donor countries: while official (government)
development assistance (ODA) should be 0.7 percent of the
country’s GNI, total aid (including private sources) should amount
to 1 percent of GNI. The target date for reaching this ODA/GNI
ratio was 1975.
Three decades later, and despite repeated agreements and
commitments to the contrary—usually made at world summits
organized by the UN or one of its agencies—only five countries
were meeting this seemingly modest goal. But however much these
small, wealthy nations—Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
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Norway, Sweden—spend on ODA, their relative contribution will
always be modest. Indeed, the United States remains the world’s
largest single aid donor, followed by Japan, the United Kingdom,
France, and Germany. Remarkably, of the five top donors only
the UK’s ODA/GNI percentage rose between 1990 and 2004.
The collective ODA/GNI ratio for the wealthiest twenty-two
countries in the world was 0.33 percent in 2005, less than half
of the 1975 goal set by Pearson and his colleagues.
It should be noted that in actual monetary terms development aid
has increased substantially: from about $7 billion in the late
1960s to $106 billion in 2005. But given the explosion of global
income and the fact that its primary beneficiaries have been the
developed countries, the proportion these countries actually
spend on development aid has declined.
One last, less than encouraging statistic is worth mentioning.
Following the wide publicity given to the MDGs and in particular
the sudden flow of aid to such war-torn countries as Afghanistan
and Iraq after 2001, development aid grew substantially in the
first five years of the new millennium. But in 2006 it declined by
about 5.1 percent when compared to the year before; it was
expected to do the same in 2007. The trend is widely assumed
to continue.
Failing to meet the UN’s ODA targets is, of course, only part of the
story. There is no guarantee that even if all the richer countries in
the world actually met the 0.7 percent ratio, the money would be
well spent. It would depend on the conditions at the receiving end,
on the appropriate allocation of the resources available.
The major point, however, is not that the task of development is
entirely and necessarily hopeless. Rather, the point is that so far
the ones who ‘‘have’’—the developed nations—have not met the
targets they have set for themselves when designing the means for
helping those who ‘‘have not.’’
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Development in crisis
In 2007 the UNDP’s website proclaimed that it is ‘‘on the ground
in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to
global and national development challenges . . . UNDP seeks to
ensure the most effective use of UN and international aid
resources.’’
This declaration may sound impressive, but simple arithmetic is
helpful in putting this into perspective. Deduct from the total
number seven liaison offices in highly developed countries
(Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, and
Sweden). Then ask yourself why the remaining 159 (representing
83 percent of the 192 UN member countries) need a UNDP
mission. Something, it seems, has not been working as planned
when it comes down to economic and social development. Despite
fervent activity, numerous plans and initiatives, the involvement of
dozens of organizations and institutions, economic and social
development remains lopsided with the world divided into the
haves and the have nots more or less along the same geographic
lines as in the 1960s.
Of course, not everything has gone wrong; there has been
movement. A brief look at progress in trying to reach the MDGs
provides a rather more complex picture of development policies
and their impact. In April 2007, for example, the World Bank’s
Global Monitoring Report confidently pronounced that ‘‘the world
as a whole will meet MDG 1 of halving poverty’’ by 2015. But while
there was evidence that both ‘‘extreme poverty’’ (the number of
people living on less than $1 per day) and ‘‘poverty’’ (people who
live on less than $2 per day) rates had declined, such progress was
widely uneven. While North Africa, the Middle East, and the Far
East were ‘‘on target,’’ Latin America, the Caribbean, and Central
Asia were lagging behind. Worst off was sub-Saharan Africa,
described as ‘‘way off target and unlikely to meet’’ the target of
halving extreme poverty by 2015.
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The story is very similar regarding a number of the other MDGs.
While most regions had made progress in reducing child mortality
rates (MDG 4), some were ‘‘lagging,’’ with sub-Saharan Africa
again being the worst off. In fact, only 32 out of 147 countries
were ‘‘on track’’ in halving child mortality by 2015. This was in
large part due to poor nutrition—a problem that the rapid rise in
global food prices in 2008 could only exacerbate. Depressingly,
the World Bank Report noted that almost every developing region
had countries making little or no progress in this area (with South
Asia and, yes, sub-Saharan Africa again ranking lowest). Of the
35 countries identified by the World Bank as ‘‘fragile states’’—with
weak institutions and policies, often as a result of lengthy
military conflicts—the largest proportion were in sub-Saharan
Africa.
The statistics, of course, tell us relatively little about the realities
that the various aid agencies face in their work. Nor do they give us
anything approaching a satisfactory view of what the specific
measurements actually mean—surely living on $1 per day in
Bangladesh means something different than trying to survive on
Fragile states in 2005 according to the World Bank
The following 35 states and territories were defined as ‘‘fragile’’—
weak institutions and policies, often as a result of lengthy military
conflicts—in 2005 (note the absence of Iraq from the list):
Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Cambodia, Central
African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, The Gambia,
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kosovo, Lao PDR, Liberia,
Mauritania, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sao Tome
& Principe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan,
Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, West Bank and
Gaza, and Zimbabwe.
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the same amount in Afghanistan (imagine trying to do the same in
Switzerland or the United States). Moreover, they hardly explain
what is, or might in the future be, working. But they do seem to
indicate that progress is possible and—lest one take a truly cynical
view—desirable.
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Chapter 6
Rights and responsibilities:
human rights to human
security
Among the plethora of issues on the UN’s agenda, few can be
considered more important and challenging than the protection
of individual human rights. But making sure that people can
live in ‘‘freedom from fear,’’ as Secretary-General Dag
Hammarskjöld summed up his philosophy of human rights in
1956, is not such a straightforward task as it may appear. 1 The
basic problem is simple: the major violators of human rights
tend to be states, and states are the major entities that make up
the UN.
The central question is this: Is it more important to protect the
integrity of a state or the individual being harassed by that state?
From that question flow various others, such as: What about those
people rendered stateless by violent conflict or ecological disaster?
What about people’s right to move within and between nation-
states?
Based on historical experience, the answer to the key question
has often been somewhat unsatisfying. Protection of human
rights, much like the general respect for them, has a contingent
quality. The state—regardless of its nature (democratic,
authoritarian, totalitarian)—has tended to reign supreme over the
individual.
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The canon: the International Bill of Rights
Human rights were a central issue at the very founding of the UN.
Two mileposts from the 1940s established the UN’s human
rights agenda: In December 1946, the first meeting of the
Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) established the UN
Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). One of its key members
was Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady of the United States.
It was in large part due to her persistence that exactly two years
later the General Assembly issued the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, a document that would later be considered a
central part of the so-called International Bill of Rights. Upon
submitting the text of the declaration to the UN General Assembly
in 1948, Roosevelt spoke eloquently:
We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the
United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may
well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.
We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event
comparable to the proclamation in 1789 [of the French Declaration
of the Rights of Man], the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the
people of the United States, and the adoption of comparable
declarations at different times in other countries. 2
The 1948 declaration was based on a simple notion: the
‘‘inherent dignity’’ of all human beings. It linked human rights
with international security by maintaining that the respect for
human rights ‘‘was the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace
in our world.’’ The declaration further specified a number of
the most obvious violations of human rights, such as slavery
and denial of the right to freedom of expression. The document
revealed a certain Western bias when it stressed the equal rights
of men and women. But it also stretched the concept of
human rights to include, among others, the right to free
education, ‘‘equal pay for equal work,’’ and the ‘‘right to rest
and leisure.’’
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Among the tasks of UNCHR was to develop additional
international human rights legislation that would add specificity
and muscle to the Universal Declaration. In 1966 this work led to
the adoption by the General Assembly of two additional human
rights covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights. As their names suggest, the two covenants focused
on different aspects of the original 1948 Declaration.
Together the 1948 declaration and the two covenants of 1966 are
known as the International Bill of Human Rights. They are
undoubtedly a significant, almost revolutionary, achievement.By the
mid-1960s there existed a series of universally approved principles
that protected men and women against almost any possible—civil,
political, economic, or social—form of discrimination and abuse.
The lengthy list of rights does suggest a number of practical
problems. Perhaps most important, the list seems ill-suited to a
10. Chairman Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at the first meeting of the com-
mittee charged by the Commission on Human Rights, Economic and
Social Council with drafting the International Bill of Rights in 1947.
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world of nation-states, especially one loaded with nondemocratic
nations. Indeed, the enforcement of the International Bill of Rights
has not been spectacularly successful.
The practice: commissions, rapporteurs and the advance of human rights
In its six decades of existence, the UNCHR went through several
stages of development that tended to mirror the overall changes of
the UN. In its first two decades the commission focused on the
general promotion of human rights but not on condemning
violations thereof. The policy was, appropriately, called
‘‘absenteeism’’ and was justified by the UN Charter’s strict
The International Bill of Human Rights
To supplement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), the UN General Assembly approved two additional
covenants in 1966. Together, these documents comprise the
basic canon of human rights today.
1. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ‘‘include
the rights to life, liberty, security of the person, privacy and
property; the right to marry and found a family; the right to a
fair trial; freedom from slavery, torture and right to a
nationality; freedom of thought, conscience and relation;
freedom of opinion and expression; freedom of assembly and
association; and the right to free elections, universal suffrage
and participation in public affairs.’’
2. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights ‘‘include the right to work and a just reward; the right
to form and join trade unions; the right to rest and leisure;
and to periodic holidays with pay; the right to a standard of
living adequate to health and well-being; the right to social
security; the right to education; and the right to participation
in the cultural life of a community.’’
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adherence to the principle of national sovereignty. More than that,
a UN resolution of 1947 explicitly stated that the commission ‘‘had
no power to take any action in regard to any complaints
concerning human rights.’’ Petitioning the commission was, in
other words, pointless.
Many violators—including both the Soviet Union (with its
treatment of any political opposition) and the United States (with
the institutionalized racism that was prevalent in the southern
states)—were let off the hook. When pleas and petitions arrived,
the commission could only state that it had ‘‘no competence’’ to
investigate them, much less bring any perpetrators to justice. The
UNCHR’s authority as an impartial judge of the observance of
human rights was therefore damaged from the beginning.
In the mid-1960s the UNCHR moved toward a much more
interventionist approach. Part of the reason for the change was the
adoption of the International Bill of Rights in 1966. But the other
driving force behind the shift was the increase in the number of
African states that called upon the UN to condemn apartheid in
South Africa. Cold War rivalry over the allegiance of these new
states meant that the Soviets and the Americans would not openly
object to the new human rights agenda. The UNCHR was thus
made ‘‘competent’’: it was given the power to take unilateral action
in the case of gross human rights violations. A forum for the
discussion of severe human rights abuses with target countries was
established.
Accordingly, in the 1970s and 1980s the commission’s reach
expanded. It was given an indirect boost by the 1975 Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) that drew a link
between human rights and international security (albeit only in the
context of Europe). New regional (and even country-specific) and
thematic working groups (for example, on minorities or torture)
were formed to allow for the in-depth investigation into human
rights abuses. A number of Special Rapporteurs were sent out on
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fact-finding missions to report on specific cases. As a result of such
actions, the reporting on human rights violations certainly
improved.
UN Special Rapporteurs have a specific mandate (normally for
three years) to investigate, monitor, and recommend solutions to
human rights problems. They often conduct fact-finding missions
to countries to investigate allegations of human rights violations.
But they can visit only those countries that have invited them.
Rapporteurs also assess complaints from alleged victims of human
rights violations. In 2007 there were more than thirty Special
Rapporteurs, who could be divided into two groups: those
UN Special Rapporteurs
UN Special Rapporteurs have a specific mandate (normally for
three years) to investigate, monitor, and recommend solutions to
human rights problems. They often conduct fact-finding missions
to countries to investigate allegations of human rights violations.
But they can only visit countries that have invited them.
Rapporteurs also assess complaints from alleged victims of
human rights violations.
The Rapporteurs have no legal powers and cannot take action
against governments. They can lobby a government and urge it to
respect human rights. They can also raise negative publicity by
issuing press statements. Their effectiveness is, as a result, highly
suspect and contingent.
In 2007 there were more than thirty Special Rapporteurs that
could be divided into two groups, those concerned with specific
countries (Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and
others) and those who held thematic mandates from the Human
Rights Council (Right to Education, Freedom of Religion, Racism,
Sale of Children, etc.).
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concerned with specific countries (Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba,
North Korea, Sudan, and others), and those who held thematic
mandates from the Human Rights Council (Right to Education,
Freedom of Religion, Racism, Sale of Children, and so forth).
The enforcement capabilities of the Rapporteurs are limited. They
have no legal powers and cannot take action against governments.
They can lobby a government and urge it to respect human
rights. They can also raise negative publicity by issuing press
statements. Their effectiveness is, as a result, highly suspect and
contingent. For example, the presence of a Special Rapporteur on
Myanmar since 1992 has done nothing to quell the dictatorial
conduct of that country’s military junta. If anything, Myanmar’s
leadership engaged in some of the most brutal repression in the fall
of 2007 and continued to keep the leader of the battered
opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest (a status she has
‘‘enjoyed’’ since the late 1980s). A military government, such as
Myanmar’s, bent on ignoring external opinion, is highly unlikely to
change its conduct on the basis of criticism from the UN.
Nevertheless, the overall respect for human rights—in the form of
democratization—made rapid advances in the 1980s, culminating
in the collapse of the totalitarian order in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union in 1989–91, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and
democratic reforms in a number of Latin American countries.
Even as violations did continue—most spectacularly in the form of
the 1989 Chinese government’s crackdown on student protesters in
Beijing’s Tiananmen Square—the International Bill of Rights was
finally being taken seriously around the globe.
The role of the UNCHR in the process was not necessarily evident,
however. It had allowed the most flagrant cases of human rights
abuses to go unnoticed. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward in the 1950s had caused the
deaths of millions (some argue thirty million) of his countrymen;
that not being enough, Mao engineered another widespread terror
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campaign in the late 1960s known as the Cultural Revolution. As
‘‘punishment’’ the PRC took Taiwan’s seat in the UN and became a
permanent member of the Security Council in 1971. Other cases
that went virtually unnoticed included the Soviet and Warsaw Pact
crackdowns in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and
Czechoslovakia (1968). In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge managed
to kill millions (one-eighth of the country’s population) in the late
1970s until it was deposed following an invasion by another
consistent violator of human rights, Vietnam. Democratization
and the growing respect for human rights that accompanied it was
as much, if not more, the result of the shifting international
environment—the collapse of the cold war international order—
than the increased activity of the UN in the field.
In fact, by the 1990s the Human Rights Commission had lost much
of its status as a potentially effective guardian of human rights.
There were many reasons for this. The Special Rapporteurs, as we
read earlier, could visit only those countries that invited them; a
major violator was unlikely to do so. The commission itself
consisted of fifty-three members, many of them representing
countries that were committing—or were implicated in
committing—human rights violations (such as the People’s
Republic of China, Algeria, and Syria).
The central problem that emerged and remains can be
summarized as follows. The UNCHR was supposed to stand above
the interests of nation-states and render impartial judgment based
upon broadly accepted certain legal standards. But over the years,
the commission became excessively politicized and was, in the end,
unable to fulfill its mission effectively during the Cold War era. By
the early 1990s it had lost much of its credibility.
The response to such concerns was in some ways a typical UN one:
they organized and held a big conference. The World Conference
on Human Rights, which had been first proposed by the General
Assembly in 1989, finally met in the summer of 1993 in Vienna.
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It brought together representatives from 171 countries and 800
NGOs, as well as academics and other interested parties. On June
25, 1993, the conference adopted the Vienna Declaration and
Programme for Action, a document that emphasized the
protection of women’s, children’s, and indigenous people’s rights.
It also established the office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR), which represented a major organizational step.
The process of reform had started.
Agendas and structures in the new millennium
The follow-up to the 1993 Vienna Conference was almost
immediate. The first High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Ecuadorian judge José Ayala Lasso, took office in April 1994. He
was followed by former Irish president Mary Robinson (1997–
2002), who had apparently been head-hunted for the job by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan. A highly popular and successful
politician, Robinson became a tireless global advocate of human
rights. The first High Commissioner to visit Chinese-occupied
Tibet, Robinson did not shy away from controversial arguments;
she even criticized her native Ireland for exploiting foreign workers
and attacked the use of capital punishment in the United States.
Upon her retirement in 2002, Robinson was followed by another
high-profile High Commissioner, Brazil’s Sergio Vieira de Mello.
A veteran of a number of refugee crises, de Mello had been a UN
‘‘careerist’’ since the late 1960s. He had won praise in the
international press for handling the transition of East Timor
(Timor Leste) from Indonesian occupation to independence
between 1999 and 2002. Many thought of him as a potential
successor to Kofi Annan, but his career ended tragically. In May
2003, de Mello accepted yet another high-profile mission,
becoming the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to
occupied Iraq. In August 2003 de Mello was killed in Baghdad
after a terrorist attack. The UN is often criticized for its high-flying
and overpaid diplomats. De Mello surely fit that description. Yet
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the circumstances of his death were a shocking reminder—almost
at a par with the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in
the Congo during a mediation mission—of the dangers inherent in
working for the international organization.
Since de Mello’s death, the High Commissioner’s office has been
occupied by the Canadian human rights lawyer Louise Arbour. Her
appointment signaled a shift toward a more legalistic approach.
Arbour, a member of Canada’s Supreme Court, was the former
Chief Prosecutor of War Crimes before the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. In that capacity she had
indicted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević for war crimes.
The significance of the act was that Milošević was the first serving
head of state called to account. Thus, Arbour’s term as the High
Commissioner was to see the doubling of the efforts at making
human rights abusers face trial.
In addition to the sheer force of the personalities that have served
in the post, the establishment of the High Commissioner’s office
was a landmark shift in a number of other ways. Holding the
rank of UN Under-Secretary-General, the OHCHR is near the
top of the UN’s hierarchy. Headquartered in Geneva, the
OHCHR has established a global presence by creating a network
of regional and country offices and by assigning human rights
advisors to individual areas. All of this activity—as well as a
general push to emphasize a human rights agenda by successive
UN Secretaries-General (Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi
Annan)—has had a positive impact. In the twenty-first century
it has become increasingly difficult for human rights violations to
go unnoticed.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that such violations have ended.
In its first few years of operation the OHCHR had to face to a series
of crises, such as ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia (including
the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosniaks by Serbs) and the 1994
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genocide in Rwanda that resulted in the systematic killing of an
estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis. In the end, even the most
energetic of High Commissioners, such as Mary Robinson, could
do little to stop determined violators from ignoring the basic
principles of human rights, be they the Taliban in Afghanistan,
Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, communist governments in
China or—much worse—in North Korea, or the many one-party
dictatorships in sub-Saharan Africa.
Such black spots did not mean that there was no progress. In
Central America, democratization progressed as the region left
behind a long legacy of right-wing totalitarian rule and human
rights abuses. To make sure that progress toward implementing
good human rights practices is being made, the OHCHR works
with national governments and occasionally, as it did in 2004 in
Guatemala, opens field offices in order to monitor developments in
particular countries. In many parts of Africa, the OHCHR’s
thirteen field offices exert similar control and pressure—assuring
that everything from children’s rights to voting rights is being
observed. The challenges are great. Since its transformation from
apartheid to democracy, South Africa has stood as a hopeful
example of the steps taken forward in the advancement of human
rights. Yet, in 2007 the OHCHR’s South African Bureau in
Pretoria listed a staggering number of goals for its operations,
ranging from educational campaigns to pressuring the government
into improving its efforts to protect minorities and marginalized
groups.
In fact, the biggest challenge for the OHCHR is the sheer number
of issues—or abuses—that it has to deal with. In one week in
November 2007, for example, the OHCHR was holding meetings
on arbitrary detention, lobbying to secure the rights of indigenous
people in the Amazon rain forest, demanding an end to violence
against women in the Middle East and Africa, and having
committee discussions on the rights of migrant workers and their
families. The ultimate irony though is that no matter what this or
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that commission or working group in Geneva decided to
recommend, the OHCHR had very few tools of implementation.
The International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Council
The paradox between massive abuses and encouraging
improvements in the world’s human rights record pointed to a
need for further strengthening the existing UN structure. In the
early twenty-first century this resulted in two important
developments.
First, there was the establishment of the International Criminal
Court (ICC) in 2002. Headquartered in The Hague, the ICC
became a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for
genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. To be sure, the
ICC suffers from several weaknesses: it can prosecute only crimes
committed after July 1, 2002; it cannot prosecute individuals for
crimes of aggression; and a number of countries have not become
members of the ICC.
Most importantly, although President Clinton signed the founding
treaty of the ICC (the Rome Statute), in late 2000 (the treaty
establishing the ICC was actually negotiated in 1998), he
immediately announced that he would not submit it to the
Congress for ratification until several changes were made. In 2002,
the Bush administration informed the UN that it had no intention
of joining the ICC. There was little surprising in this American
attitude. Both presidents were, in fact, reflecting a bipartisan
consensus in the United States that considered the ICC to be an
infringement on American national sovereignty. ‘‘It is an
agreement that is harmful to the national interests of the United
States, and harmful to our presence abroad,’’ commented John
Bolton, the Bush administration’s ambassador to the UN.
Basically, the Democrats and Republicans tended to share a broad
agreement over the fact that only American courts should be
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allowed to judge American citizens. Another argument against the
ICC was that since Americans were serving abroad in more than
one hundred countries, they could be subjected to ‘‘frivolous or
politically motivated persecutions.’’ 3 Not for the first time,
nationalism collided with universalism at the UN.
Second, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was
replaced by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2006.
Aside from the name change, the major purpose of the change was
to address the criticism often targeted at the commission: that it
tended to give high-profile positions to countries that were well-
known abusers of human rights. In this regard, the 2003 election
of Libya to the chairmanship of UNCHR had been the last straw to
the growing body of skeptics. Thus, over the next few years the
statutes of the UNHRC were drafted, negotiated, and, on March
15, 2006, voted upon. The resolution calling for the establishment
of the UNHRC specifically stated that ‘‘members elected to the
[Human Rights] Council shall uphold the highest standards in the
promotion and protection of human rights.’’ The resolution passed
with surprising unanimity: 170 members (out of a total of 191)
voted affirmatively at the General Assembly. 4
Only four countries voted against; among these was, as in the case
of the ICC, the United States. Like the Marshall Islands, Palau, and
Israel, the Americans claimed that the Human Rights Council
would suffer from exactly the same problems as its predecessor:
it would have too little power and would easily be overtaken by
countries that abused human rights on a regular basis. In fact, a
number of such countries, including Belarus, the Central African
Republic, Iran, Liberia, North Korea, and Venezuela, abstained
from the vote.
The critics were not entirely off the mark: many of the changes
were cosmetic. Instead of the fifty-three-member UNCHR, the
UNHRC would have forty-seven seats, each representing one of
the UN member countries. Such streamlining aside, the seats are
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distributed among the UN’s regional groups as follows: thirteen for
Africa, thirteen for Asia, six for Eastern Europe, eight for Latin
America and the Caribbean, and seven for Western Europe and
Oceania. The countries are elected for three-year terms (renewable
once) by a majority vote at the General Assembly, in a secret
ballot. As an additional check any council member may be
suspended by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. This
apportionment may seem democratic in terms of the distribution
of the globe’s population, but it hardly did justice to the fact that
it might be difficult—at any given time—to find thirteen
countries in Asia or Africa with acceptable (let alone exemplary)
human rights records. In 2007, for example, Nigeria, the
People’s Republic of China, and Azerbaijan were members
despite being under criticism for their respective governments’
abuse of power.
Perhaps the most glaring controversy regarding the Human
Rights Council—as well as the overall human rights regime
(including the ICC) in the twenty-first century—is the role of the
United States. As a result of its refusal to join the ICC, a number
of European countries cooperated in voting the United States
out of the Commission on Human Rights in 2001. Although it was
allowed to return two years later, the United States responded
by boycotting both the ICC and the UNHRC. What has kept the
United States out of the new human rights regime is, basically,
the same conundrum that has handicapped the UN in so many
other fields as well: the contradicting demands of national
sovereignty and national security on the one hand, and
universalism on the other hand. At the same time the American
government continues to portray itself as a champion of human
rights; indeed when compared to many members of the UNHRC
or the ICC, Washington’s record was practically sublime until the
outbreak of news regarding the abuse of terrorist suspects at the
American base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, and the use
of torture by Americans at the Abu Ghraib prison camp in Iraq
in 2004.
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It is perhaps understandable that Americans would not want their
citizens dragged in front of the ICC for, say, war crimes in Iraq. But
by remaining outside the ICC and the UNHRC, the Americans
send an unfortunate signal to other governments, which are
engaged in large-scale human rights abuses, to follow suit.
The question that faces the UN as a result is how to address the
consequences of the inevitable violations of human rights. The
ICC, for example, was created to address one part of the challenge:
the need to bring to justice those that had committed crimes. But
that remains a long-drawn-out process.
Human security and the ‘‘responsibility to protect’’
The term ‘‘human security’’ became common usage after the 1975
Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The
signing of the so-called Helsinki Accords in early August 1975 was
a remarkable feat of multilateral diplomacy: thirty-five European
countries as well as the United States, Canada, and the Soviet
Union agreed on a document that established such basic rules as
the inviolability of post-1945 borders in Europe. Most
controversially at the time, however, the Helsinki Accords included
a number of clauses—hidden in ‘‘Basket III’’ of the document—that
emphasized respect for human rights as an important element of
international security. The 1975 agreements therefore indicated a
shift from a narrow state-centered concern over security to a more
all-encompassing one. The rights of individuals and human
linkages across national borders were given a special place
alongside more traditional questions of borders. At the height of
the Cold War a motto from the Helsinki conference captured the
basic idea: ‘‘Security is not gained by erecting fences; security is
enhanced by building bridges.’’
In the twenty-first century ‘‘human security’’ has entered into
common usage as shorthand for the concerns and practices that
deal with the many faces of, and close relations between, freedom
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from fear and freedom from want. Reflecting the significance
of the concept, Secretary-General Kofi Annan established the
Commission on Human Security (CHS) in early 2001. The
commission delivered its final report in 2003, proposing:
a new security framework that centers directly and specifically on
people. Human security focuses on shielding people from critical
and pervasive threats and empowering them to take charge of their
lives. It demands creating genuine opportunities for people to live in
safety and dignity and earn their livelihood.
Human security therefore encompasses numerous issues, the
foremost of which are the need to fight poverty, improve education,
protect children, enhance access to medical care, fight
international arms and drugs trade, and protect the environment.
There was no question that all these were serious problems. But
there was an irony in all this: the UN already had organizations
whose task it was to deal with each of the issues outlined in the
CHS’s report. The UNDP’s fight against poverty was joined by
the FAO, the ILO, the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), and many others. Improving education was
the specific goal of UNESCO. Assisting and protecting children
was UNICEF’s purview. The World Health Organization
(WHO) was fighting to improve the access to and quality of
medical care. The UN had commissions for fighting arms
smuggling and drug trade. The UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) does, well, what its name indicates. To a large extent,
‘‘human security’’ was but a new collective noun to explain what
the UN was already doing.
Much of this can be summed up by the concept ‘‘the Responsibility
to Protect,’’ the idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to
protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe, but that
when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must
be borne by the broader community of states. One group of people
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whose human security is in constant jeopardy and whose human
rights are frequently trampled upon is refugees.
Refugees, displaced persons, and the UNHCR
Since the dawn of time people have fled their homelands and been
unable or unwilling to return because they fear persecution. In
many cases the cause of a refugee problem has been military
conquest; in others it may have been a regime that, once installed
in power, has started persecuting a group of people within the
nation’s borders (for instance, Jews in Nazi Germany). Whatever
the cause of a specific refugee question, it is warfare and the
movement of national boundaries that has traditionally been the
greatest cause of what is generally referred to as forced migration.
And it is a phenomenon as old as warfare itself.
Only in the twentieth century, however, did refugee issues attract
global attention. After World War I, millions of people were
displaced throughout Europe and other regions of conflict. The first
international agency dealing with refugee problems, the High
Commission for Refugees, was established by the League of Nations
in 1921. Its original mission was to deal with approximately
1.5 million refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution and civil war,
but the scope was soon extended to cover Armenians, Assyrians,
and Turks. In 1931 the High Commission became the Nansen
International Office for Refugees (so named after Fridtjof Nansen,
head of the High Commission, who had died in 1930).
Funded mainly by private contributions, the Nansen Office, much
like its successors, was plagued by inadequate funding and the
uncooperative attitude of many countries. Nevertheless, the
Nansen Office did record a few important achievements, including
the establishment of the so-called Nansen passport, issued by the
League of Nations to stateless refugees. They were designed in
1922 and initially given to refugees fleeing the Russian Revolution.
Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports, honored by fifty-two
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countries, were issued between 1922 and 1942. Nansen also
prompted the creation of a special office for refugees fleeing
persecution in Nazi Germany, and the first international legal
instrument to protect the rights of refugees: the Refugee
Convention of 1933 (signed by only thirteen nations). It is
estimated that the Nansen Office helped approximately a million
refugees before it was abolished at the end of 1938.
The number of refugees multiplied during and after World War II.
Although already a global issue, the handling of refugees was
mostly a European problem at the time. It included the millions
who escaped Nazi persecution (including European Jews) and fled
invading German (and Italian) armies. When the tide of war
turned in the Allies’ favor, the Germans themselves constituted a
large refugee group. All in all, few areas of Europe were unaffected
by the mass movement of civilians. In the Far East, large areas of
China saw similar crises resulting from the Japanese advances.
Estimates of the number of refugees and internally displaced
persons at the end of World War II range from 11 to 20 million.
In 1943 the Allies created the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to deal with this
challenge. In subsequent years the UNRRA provided aid to areas
liberated from German or Japanese occupation in Europe and
Asia. This included returning more than 7 million refugees to their
country of origin and setting up displaced persons camps for
1 million refugees who refused to be repatriated. When UNRRA
was shut down in 1949, its refugee-related tasks were handed to
the International Refugee Organization (IRO). A year later the
IRO became the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). Its initial mandate was for three years, probably
considered sufficient for the resettlement of the remaining
1.2 million European refugees. As it happened, starting in 1953 the
mandate was renewed repeatedly every five years. Only in 2003 did
the General Assembly remove the time limit and make UNHCR
permanent ‘‘until the refugee problem is solved.’’
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Categories of ‘‘people of concern to UNHCR’’
There are millions of people who have become homeless and are
in desperate circumstances but do not legally qualify as refugees
(and are therefore not eligible for normal relief or protection).
Thus, UNHCR activities have been broadened and include at least
the following groups:
Refugees (ca. 8.4 million in 2006)
People who have fled their homeland and sought sanctuary in a
second country in order to escape persecution, war, terrorism,
extreme poverty, famines, and natural disaster.
Internally displaced people (7.1 million)
People who have fled their homes, generally during a civil war,
but have stayed in their native countries rather than seeking
refuge abroad.
Stateless people (3.3 million)
People without citizenship as a result of several possible
circumstances: (a) the state that gave their previous nationality
may have ceased to exist and there is no successor state; (b) their
nationality has been repudiated by their own state; (c) they are
members of a group that is denied citizen status in the country in
whose territory they are born, etc.
Returnees (1.1 million)
People who have returned to their own countries but still receive
help from UNHCR in their reintegration.
Asylum seekers (770,000)
People who have asked for refugee status but are still awaiting
decision.
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The problem seems unsolvable. Based on past experience, there is
little hope that the refugee question will disappear. Although
European World War II refugees were for the most parts either
repatriated or resettled by the early 1950s, other crises conspired to
keep the size of the globe’s refugee populations high (and growing).
Since the 1950s the UNHCR has helped an estimated 50 million
people to restart their lives. But problems keep multiplying. In 1955
the estimated global refugee population was 2.2 million; by the mid-
1960s the numberhad gone upto11million;in1995 itwas 14million.
In 2007 UNHCR’s staff of 7,000 was attending to the needs of
more than 20 million people in 116 countries. The figure included
refugees as well as other ‘‘people of concern’’ to UNHCR: internally
displaced persons, people rendered stateless, returnees, and asylum
seekers.
Aside from the sheer growth in numbers, the geographical
distribution of refugees has changed. In the 1950s more than
half of UNHCR’s ‘‘clientele’’ were in Europe. But the 1960s
and 1970s saw an expanding role for UNHCR in the
developing world, particularly in Asia and Africa. In the early
1970s the scope of the humanitarian crisis on the Indian
subcontinent—where more than 10 million Bengalis fled the
Pakistani Army’s repression into India in 1970—exposed
UNHCR to many new challenges, including the management of
sudden mass refugee influxes, the construction of extensive
refugee camps, and the procurement and distribution of food
and basic relief supplies on a scale previously unimagined. By
the 1980s virtually all of UNHCR’s activity was in the
developing world as it emerged as a truly global organization.
This growth has continued over the past decades, even as
UNHCR, given its dependency on voluntary contributions, has
suffered from constant funding shortages (its 2007 annual
budget was around $1 billion).
UNHCR activities, like almost everything the UN does, raise mixed
feelings of admiration and frustration. As recognition for its
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important work UNHCR has won two Nobel Peace Prizes (1955
and 1981), a distinction exceeded only by the International
Committee of the Red Cross. UNHCR has been and, sadly, is likely
to remain one of the most significant humanitarian aid
organizations in the world. Sadly, because as humanitarian
emergencies have increased in scale and complexity, UNHCR’s
ability to maintain its role as a neutral relief organization has
been challenged. At times refugees have been recruited as
warriors in civil wars (for instance, Angola since the 1970s or
Afghanistan since the 1980s). Humanitarian aid, unfortunately,
occasionally ends up being used to fund arms purchases rather
than to help refugees. Indeed, refugee camps themselves are not
something most governments wish to see on their territory
because of their tendency to spread the conflict that caused the
refugees to flee in the first place. Prolonged existence in refugee
camps, a result of prolonged conflicts often fueled by assistance
from the main rivals in the Cold War, only exacerbates these
problems.
Nor does an end to such existence naturally solve problems. With
the end of the Cold War, many prolonged conflicts came to an end.
Millions of refugees were repatriated to countries in Africa and
Asia. But a new problem arose: the need to assist returnees who
had spent more than a decade away to reintegrate into home
communities whose social and economic infrastructure in many
cases had been destroyed. For example, two years after the return
of 45,000 refugees to Namibia in Southwest Africa, only 75 percent
had found employment.
Multiplication of refugee problems
In the twenty-first century UNHCR thus faces a myriad of different
challenges. Refugee repatriation threatens to destabilize the
countries that want their long-lost brethren back. New refugees
continue to appear. The American-led intervention in Afghanistan
in 2001 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 created
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massive movements of people in and out of these two countries
(thus producing challenges both of repatriation and refugees).
In 2006–07 debates over whether genocide was under way in the
Darfur region of western Sudan masked the depressing fact that
the crisis had produced 2.5 million refugees. It is a sad measure of
the state of the world that a ‘‘temporary’’ relief organization created
more than a half century ago looks set to limp on for decades
to come.
11. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talking to women in the Zam Zam
displaced persons camp in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004.
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Largely as a response to the multiplying challenges of the post–
Cold War era, UNHCR issued the Agenda for Protection in 2002.
It stressed the need for multilateral cooperation in meeting the
international community’s responsibility to protect individuals
who were in harm’s way due to circumstances outside their control.
Logically, the document stressed the need to share burdens and
responsibilities and search for durable (security-related) solutions.
It also outlined one area in need of specific attention: the needs of
refugee women and children.
None of this was entirely new or groundbreaking. UNHCR had, in
fact, a long-standing cooperation with numerous UN and other
agencies dealing with human security issues. These included the
World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF, the World Health
Organization (WHO), UNDP, OHCHR, the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the World Bank, and the
International Organization for Migration (IOM). Almost six
hundred nongovernmental organizations have worked with
UNHCR. Such cooperation has been essential for effective refugee
aid. Over the past six decades, notwithstanding some of the faults
in the refugee protection and assistance system, it remains an
indispensable and, on the whole, successful part of the effort to
protect the globe’s most vulnerable groups of people.
The enduring paradox of human rights
There is no getting around the paradox. On the one hand, human
rights have been a central part of the UN’s agenda from the very
beginning, and there has been success in raising the levels of
respect for many of the individual rights as defined in the 1948
Universal Declaration. On the other hand, the global respect for
human rights has remained contingent on the vagaries of the
international environment and the whims of nation-states.
Human rights, even as they are undoubtedly more diligently
monitored in the twenty-first century than ever before, are
constantly violated on every continent.
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The same sad truth applies to those whose human rights are most
easily trampled upon: refugees. Lacking the protection of the state,
the lives of millions of people ‘‘of concern’’ to the UNHCR
ultimately depend on the goodwill of the international community,
but the protection of their human rights easily clashes with the
rights of a nation-state (whether the one the refugees have escaped
from or are temporarily settled in).
In other words, the estimated 4 million internally displaced people
in Sudan are rightly a concern to UNHCR, but they may also
represent a potential threat to the Sudanese government’s hold on
power (notwithstanding any moral issues involved) and thus a
danger to the survival of the nation-state. Similarly, the arrival in
neighboring Chad of hundreds of thousands of refugees from
Sudan’s Darfur region since 2003 represents a humanitarian
emergency of massive proportions that demands large-scale
international action. But the organization of twelve large refugee
camps also presents a potential threat to the nascent democracy of
the host nation, Chad. Starting in 2005 this became painfully clear
as the Darfur conflict spread to Chad’s eastern parts. In addition,
Chad suddenly had to address another problem: by 2007 there were
an estimated 150,000 internally displaced Chadians competing for
the attentions of UNHCR with 220,000 Sudanese refugees.
The Darfur crisis is but one example of three salient facts about
human rights and the United Nations. First, respect for human
rights remains fragile in many parts of the globe. Second, no
universal declaration, investigative commission, special rapporteur,
or international organization can act as a magic fix, because
ultimately it is those with political authority who define the balance
between rights and responsibilities within their territory. Third,
hopeless though it may sometimes seem, the UN is particularly
indispensable in this area as the only universally recognized body
that can, via its many tools, exert pressure on nations to modify their
human rights policies and assist those who suffer from the abuse of
power still too rampant around the world today.
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Chapter 7
Reform and challenges: the
future of the United Nations
‘‘If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must
bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who
believe in it must fight for it.’’ 1 Norman Cousins, a prominent
journalist and peace advocate, uttered these words in 1956. They
continue to resonate today, for the UN is hardly a perfect
institution. It is structurally flawed and operationally cumbersome.
It often lacks the means of implementation even as it may serve
as the source of excellent ideas. Its different programs often
duplicate work that might be better done by one centralized
agency. In short, the UN is in need of reform and support if it is to
have a meaningful future.
These issues—reforming the system and obtaining wide
international support—are neither new nor separate. Ever since
the early 1990s, there has been talk about the need to reform the
UN Security Council in order to make it more democratic and
representative. Nor was it an accident that the last decade of the
twentieth century saw a massive litany of initiatives—or
‘‘agendas’’—that addressed the key functions of the UN system:
peace, democracy (and human rights), and development. In the
twenty-first century hardly a day has gone by without complaints
and arguments over the way development aid is administered,
human rights are not effectively promoted, peace operations are
not producing sustained results, and a few countries, most notably
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the United States, are treating the UN as a mere tool of their policy
that can be used, abused, or ignored as those in power in
Washington see fit.
And yet, very few would seriously suggest scrapping the UN
altogether. It remains indispensable but in need of reform. But
how can this impossible hybrid that represents the widely different
interests of virtually all inhabitants of this globe be improved?
What can be done to enhance the UN’s effectiveness in
safeguarding international security and helping war-torn societies
get back on their feet? In what way could the UN’s development
policies be changed to improve the chances of success in the
long struggle against poverty and all its undesirable side effects?
How can the UN safeguard both human security and human rights
in a more assertive manner?
Need for reform: the Security Council
How could the Security Council be made more effective as an
instrument of solving international disputes? How could it be
made more representative of the global community? The question
of reforming the UNSC tends to focus on two intertwined issues:
veto and membership.
Proposals abound. In the early 1990s a number of countries floated
around the idea of abandoning the veto and doubling the size of
the Security Council membership. In this way, countries like
Germany, Japan, India, and Brazil (all strong candidates for
membership) argued, UNSC would become more reflective of the
changed global constellation of power.
Two obvious problems, still hindering any serious reform a decade
and a half later, became evident. First, any attempt to remove
the veto was bound to be vetoed. There is no provision within the
UN Charter that would allow the removal of the veto right without
the P-5’s unanimous consent. But why would China, France, Great
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Britain, Russia, or the United States give up this obvious trump
card? Moreover, the veto had been conceived in order to keep the
five countries, especially the United States, in the organization by
enabling them to block decisions they would have found against
their national interests.
Second, the addition of new permanent members—with or without
the right of veto—has run into many objections from countries that
either feel they should be in serious contention for such a
privileged position and/or have a strained relationship with a
potential candidate country. Many Europeans, for example, object
to Germany’s membership; Argentina sees little merit in having
Brazil elevated to new heights; and Pakistan looks at India’s
council bid with distinct animosity.
This, basically, means that the Security Council is destined to
remain undemocratic and virtually unchanged. While its
composition may be tinkered with, there is not going to be a
dramatic overhaul; an addition of a few new members is possible,
but is the creation of permanent seats for certain countries (such as
those just mentioned) possible? The P-5 will not give up their
powers voluntarily.
Yet, one should not despair. Reforming the veto power of
permanent Security Council members—or adding new members to
the UNSC—is a much debated and potentially important
possibility. But how necessary is it? It alone provides no miracle
cure. UNSC resolutions are almost always a compromise, vetoes
have been used fairly sparingly over the past six decades, in part
because the need to veto is negotiated away, or a mere threat of a
veto may lead to the proposal being withdrawn.
In the end, reforming how the UNSC works is hardly the only way
of improving the UN’s overall effectiveness. In fact, it addresses
only a small part of the issues plaguing the organization at the
moment and hardly touches upon the ‘‘real’’ issues of the day. For
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High-Level panel on threats, challenges, and change
In September 2003, noting that ‘‘the events of the past year have
exposed deep divisions among members of the United Nations on
fundamental questions of policy and principle,’’ UN Secretary-
General Kofi Annan created the panel to ensure that the United
Nations remains capable of fulfilling its primary purpose as
enshrined in article 1 of the charter—‘‘to take effective collective
measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.’’
The panel, consisting of former high-level government officials
from around the globe, delivered its report in 2004. It identified
six clusters of global threats:
. war between States
. violence within States, including civil wars, large-scale human
rights abuses and genocide
. poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation
. nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons
. terrorism
. transnational organized crime.
The panel highlighted the fact that the UN was in a position to
deal with all such threats, but that it needs to:
Revitalize the General Assembly and the Economic and Social
Council
Restore credibility to the Commission on Human Rights
Strengthen the role of the Secretary General in questions of
peace and security
Increase the credibility and effectiveness of the Security
Council—the panel emphasized the need for ‘‘making its
composition better reflect today’s realities’’
Create a Peacebuilding Commission
Some of these suggestions have since been carried out, most
notably the creation of the Peacebuilding Commission in 2006.
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the international security challenges faced by the UN today are
vastly different than those in earlier decades. As reflected in the
Secretary-General’s High Panel Report on Global Security
Challenges, the world of the twenty-first century is confronted by
such concerns as nuclear terrorism, state collapse, and the rapid
spread of infectious disease. Viewed in this context, debates over
the size of the Security Council and the ins and outs of the veto
right are hardly the most pressing issues in the field of
international security.
Need for reform: peace operations
The drive toward reforming the UN’s peace operations gathered
force in the 1990s. A number of questions have been repeatedly
raised. How to make most of a limited number of troops in
difficult situations? How to prevent abuses of power—in the form
of sexual exploitation and human trafficking—by the peacekeepers
themselves? How to make sure that a peace operation does not
interfere in a country’s democratic process and thus create new
problems? How to do all this while preventing a repeat of the tragic
events in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia in the 1990s?
These and other questions were addressed in the 2000 Brahimi
Report on Peacekeeping. The report, not unexpectedly, pointed
out the obvious lack of resources that hampered many UN
peace operations, emphasized the need for clear and realistic
mandates, and heralded the insufficient general strategic
planning of operations. But it also, and perhaps most significantly,
flagged the need to develop ‘‘a rapid deployment capacity’’ for
UN peacekeepers. The report itself provided the backdrop for the
creation of the UN Peacebuilding Commission in 2006.
Despite the establishment of this commission, progress and reform
along the lines of the Brahimi Report remains limited almost a
decade after its initial delivery. To be sure, there are more
peacekeepers in more places funded by slightly more money. But
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UN peace operations rarely benefit from an integrated support
network. Equally important, they lack resources and depend, most
of the time, on the ability of the Secretary-General to raise money
for a specific operation.
Moreover, as the case of Darfur has yet again shown, the UN
cannot simply impose a peacekeeping force on an unwilling
host government. Instead, in order to compensate for the lack of
political muscle and manpower, the UN has been forced to
‘‘outsource’’ some of its peacekeeping to such regional
organizations as the African Union (which represented the bulk
of peacekeepers stationed in Sudan in 2007). The results, as far
as Darfur can stand as a case study, are hardly comforting:
between 2003 and 2007 an estimated 400,000 people were
killed while at least 2 million refugees fled Darfur. Talk of
genocide and comparisons to Rwanda in 1993–94 were
rampant.
Whether such tragedies as Darfur could have been avoided with
a more intrusive and aggressive UN policy is difficult to ascertain.
In the end, without the support of its member states, and
particularly the P-5 of the Security Council, no operational
capability would have been meaningful. Nor does the Darfur
experience of outsourcing peacekeeping to regional organizations
mean that such a practice cannot be successful; NATO’s role in
Bosnia seems to provide the exact opposite lesson.
In the end, when contemplating the lessons of past peacekeeping
and how to make future operations more effective, one comes
back to a key point in the Brahimi Report: the need for a rapid
deployment capacity. How else but with an ability to send
peacekeepers to different corners of the globe at short notice
can the UN respond to a sudden crisis? Without such capacity it
will always be rendered a second-class outfit called upon to
police difficult situations or clean up the mess left by ‘‘serious’’
fighting.
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This brings one back to article 45 of the original UN Charter
that envisioned a permanent UN air force—provided by the P-5
and based around the globe—held at the discretionary use of the
Security Council and commandeered by the Military Staff
Committee (that consisted of representatives of the P-5).
Something similar—in the form of a permanent and easily
deployable UN peacekeeping force—to that never-implemented
provision is probably needed for the UN peace operations to
emerge as truly effective instruments of international security.
Depending on one’s perspective, such a plan might seem either
utopian or dangerous. But it may also be necessary.
Need for reform: development
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000
constituted the first common global agenda for human
development. It was much overdue and received, by and large,
12. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for
Peacekeeping Operations, and Juan Gabriel Valdés, special
representative of the Secretary-General and head of the United
Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, accompany a Brazilian patrol
in Bel-Air, a hillside slum in Port-au-Prince ravaged by armed
bandits in 2005.
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an enthusiastic welcome. This is hardly a surprise, for who
could seriously challenge the desirability of fighting global
poverty?
But there are two basic obstacles. First, the twentieth-century
debate over the proper role of market forces seems to have been
decisively won by those heralding the importance of free markets.
Many argue—and often with convincing evidence—that
development aid actually hurts those on the receiving end by
creating a dependency from the donors. Whether this is entirely
true is difficult to prove. Despite decades of development, masses
of people continue to live in abject poverty, and this fact continues
to undermine even the most sophisticated argument in favor of
sustained development assistance as the best means of bringing
about global social and economic justice. It is no wonder that
skepticism, well founded or not, abounds.
Second, the manner in which aid is delivered raises the
indispensable need for reform. Perhaps because of the complexity
of the problem, the effort to combat it has become increasingly
fragmented, with the World Bank and the UNDP representing
only two of the many organizations involved in administering
development assistance. With numerous divisions and agencies
working on all aspects of development, the UN has not always
effectively marshaled the full strength of its resources. In other
words: duplication and overlap have reduced efficiency and
increased administrative costs within the UN and its sister
organizations.
This is hardly a new problem. In 1997 Secretary-General Kofi
Annan had already created the UN Development Group, a body
coordinating the work of the major UN agencies, funds, and
departments that deal with development issues. The UNDG has
encouraged the harmonization of UN development activities
nationally and globally. In the past decade further efforts have
proliferated, building on the recommendations from the
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Millennium Declaration, the 2005 World Summit to assess
progress on the MDGs and other development goals, various
resolutions of the UN General Assembly, the OECD 2005 Paris
Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and, most recently, the
November 2006 recommendations of the High-Level Panel on UN
System-Wide Coherence titled Delivering as One.
This last report in particular had the potential of making a
difference in the overall work of the UN and its development work.
The fifteen members of the panel included several presidents and
prime ministers, as well as Gordon Brown, who would move to
become British Prime Minister in 2007. Delivering as One
identified UN development assistance as ‘‘fragmented and weak.’’
Thus, it called for a well-governed, well-funded UN equipped to
meet the changing needs of countries. The report emphasized
nation-level planning and execution of development aid. It
therefore proposed consolidating most UN country activities
under one strategic program, one budgetary framework, one
strong country team leader, and one office. In short, it called for
centralization at the country level.
This was all reasonable. One of the UN’s overall problems is the
proliferation of the many agencies that, at least through the eyes of
a detached observer, seem to engage in very similar work and
competing for often scarce resources. Whether Delivering as One
will lead to an overhaul of the way UN delivers its development aid,
however, remains uncertain. By late 2007 only eight countries had
agreed to pilot unified UN activities: Albania, Cape Verde,
Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay, and
Vietnam. Of these only Vietnam has taken serious steps toward
implementation.
Given the significance that most analysts of the UN attribute to
development aid as an engine of combating poverty and its
political side effects, Delivering as One clearly addresses a
fundamental need for reform within the UN. The significance of
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Delivering as One
In 2005 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan created a High-Level
Panel to Study System-Wide Coherence. The essential purpose of
the panel was to ‘‘explore how the United Nations system could
work more coherently and effectively across the world in the areas
of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment.’’
The report of the panel was delivered in November 2006. It made
its case for reform as follows: ‘‘The world needs a coherent and
strong multilateral framework with the United Nations at its
centre to meet the challenges of development, humanitarian
assistance, and the environment in a globalising world. The UN
needs to overcome its current fragmentation and to deliver as
one . . . It should enable and support countries to lead their
developmentprocesses andhelp addressglobal challenges such
as poverty, environmental degradation, disease and conflict.’’
The concept of ‘‘Oneness’’ was central to the panel’s report that
identified a set of five general recommendations for the future:
. Coherence and consolidation of UN activities, in line with the
principle of country ownership, at all levels (country, regional,
headquarters)
. Establishment of appropriate governance, managerial, and
funding mechanisms to empower and support consolidation, and
link the performance and results of UN organizations to funding
. Overhaul of business practices of the UN system to ensure
focus on outcomes, responsiveness to needs and delivery of
results by the UN system, measured against the Millennium
Development Goals
. Ensure significant further opportunities for consolidation and
effective delivery of One UN through an in-depth review
. Implementation should be undertaken with urgency, but not
ill planned and hasty in a manner that could compromise
permanent and effective change.
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this mission was aptly summed up by Secretary-General Kofi
Annan upon his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003:
Beneath the surface of States and nations, ideas and language, lies
the fate of individual human beings in need. Answering their needs
will be the mission of the United Nations in the century to come.
Among such needs—and hence central to the UN’s future
mission—is another area in need of reform: the checkered history
of humanity’s respect for human rights.
Need for reform: human rights
Talk about difficult issues. Like everything on the UN’s agenda the
struggle to advance human rights has been an uphill one. And yet,
as the UN website itself proudly proclaims:
One of the great achievements of the United Nations is the creation
of a comprehensive body of human rights law, which, for the first
time in history, provides us with a universal and internationally
protected code of human rights, one to which all nations can
subscribe and to which all people can aspire.
Indeed. Who could doubt the desirability of having a set of broadly
approved texts that ‘‘lay down the law’’ on human rights. The
problem is how it can be implemented.
The promise of human rights remains unfulfilled as daily
evidence—torture, denial of basic political rights, abject poverty of
people—clearly indicates. Over the past decades human rights
watch groups have proliferated. But their reports remain gloomy;
more awareness has not resulted in obvious practical progress.
The problem in this field is not lack of appropriate bodies. If
anything, there are too many of them: the Human Rights Council,
the Commission on Human Rights, the Human Rights Committee,
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the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the
Committee Against Torture are just a few examples. One should
also add that human rights concerns are not the exclusive province
of these specifically created bodies; almost every part of the UN
system addresses, in one fashion or another, questions and
problems related to the abuse of human rights.
The problem goes to the very heart of the UN as an organization
founded at a specific historical moment when the nation-state still
reigned supreme. Many of the compromises that were evident in
the UN Charter reflected this inherent tension between
universalism and national prerogatives, the Security Council being
perhaps the best known example. In today’s globalized world that
tension has hardly disappeared; if anything, it has been
exacerbated. What it translates to in the field of human rights is a
basic dilemma: the UN may have created a detailed body of
international human rights legislation. Along the way it has
produced bodies that can observe and authoritatively report
whether these norms are being adhered to in country x or region y.
But it has left the implementation of these norms—the follow-up
procedures in case of wrongdoing—largely to the nation-states.
The need for reform that is evident with regards to human rights is,
in other words, simultaneously simple and difficult to achieve.
What is needed is an ability by a recognized body—like the
International Criminal Court (ICC) founded in 2002—to stand
above the specific interests of nation-states. So far this has been
possible only in rare cases when a leader, such as in the prosecution
of Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor, has lost both his
domestic power base and his international patrons. But to imagine
nationals of large countries—most obviously those from the P-5—
to ever stand trial at The Hague is difficult.
In sum, for the time being human rights violators are likely to be
pursued selectively. Universality may be the norm, but it is unlikely
to become the practice. No amount of UN reform is likely to fix that.
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Final remark
With all its achievements and shortcomings, the UN remains an
indispensable part of the global community of the early twenty-
first century. If it suddenly disappeared—that is, if its constituent
parts were allowed to disintegrate—millions of people around the
world would soon be worse off. That, alone, is sufficient cause for
upholding and supporting the UN. Yet, in gauging the significance
of the United Nations and the possibilities for improving it a few
salient points should be kept in mind.
First, the UN cannot be the ‘‘definite guaranty of peace’’ that
Woodrow Wilson had hoped the League of Nations would be. As
long as the concept of nation-state is the basic form of organizing
the different entities we know as countries, as long as there is
something called the national interest, as long as governments are
responsible for the well-being (or lack thereof) of their citizens, the
UN will lack the means of acting independently. It remains, in
other words, a tool of nations, albeit in a world where the threats to
security tend to emanate not from nations but rather from either
within them or from various transnational groups.
Second, in its more than sixty years of existence, the UN has
developed structures and bureaucracies that in some ways are its
own worst enemy. For like any organization, the UN is a place where
individuals build careers, compete with each other, establish
entrenched positions, and resist change. All this makes the UN too
easily a target of condemnation. But more importantly, the UN has a
tendency not to reform but to build new structures on top of already
existing ones. As a result, meager resources often are squandered
due to lack of operational coherence. It is a long way off for the UN
being able to deliver as one, a challenge that the current UN
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and his staff will have to address.
Third, the UN cannot continue to have a positive impact without a
sufficient support base. This lays a primary responsibility for
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funding the organization to the wealthier countries of the globe.
The paradox is evident: it translates to the wealthy few paying for
operations and policies that are mainly directed toward helping
others. One of the greatest future challenges will be for the richest
member states—particularly, but not exclusively, the United States
and the countries of the European Union—to explain to their
citizens why a proportion, however small, of their national income
should be used to fund the numerous UN operations. Meeting this
challenge successfully will determine, if not the future existence of
the UN, then at least the effectiveness of the organization.
In the end, the UN cannot and should not be expected to offer
solutions to all of the world’s ills. It does much good humanitarian
work and often provides ways of easing tension and solving crises.
It often enables people stuck in poverty to improve their lot. The
UN is hardly perfect. But it remains an indispensable organization
even as its behavior and effectiveness—much like that of individual
countries—is in constant need of improvement.
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Chronology
1865 The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
founded.
1874 The Universal Postal Union founded.
1899 The International Peace Conference, held in The Hague,
establishes the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
1919 The League of Nations founded.
Woodrow Wilson receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his role
in the founding of the League of Nations.
1921 First High Commission for Refugees established.
1922 The Permanent Court ofInternational Justice(PCIJ)created.
1931 The Nansen International Office for Refugees established.
1933 High Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany
established.
Refugee Convention signed by thirteen countries.
1938 The Nansen Office receives the Nobel Peace Prize but is
abolishedandreplacedby theOffice ofthe High Commissioner
for Refugees under the Protection of the League.
1942 January 1, the first Declaration of the United Nations by
twenty-sixcountriesfightingagainsttheAxisinWorldWarII.
1943 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
(UNRRA) established.
1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference (China, the UK, the U.S.,
and the USSR) sets down the general aims and structure of
the future UN.
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1945 At the Yalta conference in February Churchill, Roosevelt
and Stalin affirm their resolve to form a universal
organization.
In June in San Francisco fifty nations approve the Charter
of the United Nations.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the founding of the UN.
1946 First General Assembly and Security Council Session held
in London.
International Court of Justice (ICJ) replaces PCIJ.
Trygve Lie (Norway) becomes the first UN Secretary-
General.
UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) established.
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
First UN observer mission established—the UN Truce
Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in Palestine.
1949 The UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan
(UNMOGIP) dispatched to oversee the situation in the
disputed Kashmir region.
1950 Korean War begins.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
established.
1952 Trygve Lie resigns as UNSG.
1953 Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden) becomes UNSG.
1954 UNHCR receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
1955 Fifteen countries join the United Nations.
1956 The UN Emergency Force (UNEF), the first UN
peacekeeping force, sent to the Suez Canal.
1957 Lester Pearson receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in
creating the UNEF.
1960 Seventeen newly independent states, sixteen from Africa,
join the UN, the biggest increase in membership in any one
year.
UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC) established to oversee
the transition from Belgian rule to independence;
transformed into the first peace enforcement operation
(mandate ends in 1964).
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1961 Hammarskjöld killed, replaced by U Thant (Burma/
Myanmar) as UNSG
Hammarskjöld awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
posthumously.
1962 UN membership is more than one hundred.
1964 UN peacekeepers sent to Cyprus.
1965 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
founded.
UNICEF awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1966 General Assembly strips South Africa of its mandate to
govern South-West Africa (Namibia).
Mandatory sanctions are imposed against Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe) by the Security Council.
General Assembly adopts the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Together with the
1948 Universal Declaration these form the International
Bill of Rights.
1967 Egypt asks UNEF to leave; soon afterwards the Six-Day
War breaks out, followed by the Security Council adoption
of Resolution 242 as the basis for achieving peace in the
Middle East.
1968 General Assembly approves the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
1969 ILO awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1971 People’s Republic of China takes the seat of the Republic of
China (Taiwan) at the UN Security Council.
1972 Kurt Waldheim (Austria) becomes UNSG.
First UN Environment Conference is held in Stockholm,
Sweden, leading to the establishment of the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in
Nairobi.
1974 General Assembly grants the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) observer status.
1975 International Women’s Year, highlighted by the first UN
conference on women in Mexico City.
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1978 General Assembly convenes, for the first time, a conference
on disarmament.
UN membership is more than 150.
1980 World Health Organization (WHO) officially declares
smallpox eradicated.
1981 UN High Commissioner for Refugees is awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
1982 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru) becomes UNSG.
1988 UN Peacekeeping operations awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize.
1990 UNICEF convenes the World Summit for Children.
1991 Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) becomes UNSG.
After sixteen years of civil war in Angola, a peace agreement
negotiated under UN auspices is signed in New York.
1992 The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro leads to Agenda 21, a
comprehensive plan to promote sustainable development.
The UNSG issues ‘‘An Agenda for Peace’’ (highlighting the
significance of preventive diplomacy, peacemaking,
peacekeeping, and peacebuilding).
1994 UNSG issues ‘‘An Agenda for Development.’’
1995 The World Summit for Social Development meets in
Copenhagen, Denmark, to renew the commitment to
combating poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion.
1996 The General Assembly adopts the Comprehensive Nuclear
Test-Ban Treaty.
UNSG issues the Agenda for Democratization.
1997 Kofi Annan (Ghana) becomes UNSG.
2000 General Assembly adopts the Millennium Development Goals
The Brahimi Report on UN Peace Operations.
2001 United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2002 International Criminal Court (ICC) is established.
2004 A report titled ‘‘A More Secure World’’ by the High Level
Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change calls for global
measures to combat environmental threats, terrorism, and
other transnational problems.
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2005 The International Atomic Energy Agency and its head
Mohammed ElBaradei receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
2006 General Assembly resolution (April) establishes the Human
Rights Council.
Montenegro joins the UN as the 192nd member state.
UN Peacebuilding Commission is established.
‘‘Delivering as One’’ report by a High Level Panel outlines
the need to reform UN development aid operations.
2007 Ban Ki-moon (South Korea) becomes UNSG.
In March, citing Teheran’s refusal to end its development of
a nuclear weapons capability, the UN Security Council
unanimously strengthens economic sanctions against Iran.
In May, the UN launches ‘‘The International Compact with
Iraq’’ to help establish economic and human security in the
war-torn nation.
A joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID)
enters Sudan’s Darfur region.
2008 In March, the UN Security Council further extends
economic and travel sanctions against Iran as the Iranian
government continues its nuclear program.
In May, the ruling military junta in Myanmar allows UN
humanitarian aid workers into the country after a
disastrous cyclone hit the nation.
After earthquakes in Sizhuan province numerous UN
organizations participate for the first time in large-scale
humanitarian operations in the People’s Republic of China.
In June, the World Food Summit in Rome, addresses the
prospect of rapidly rising global food prices. More than four
billion dollars of additional aid to fight hunger and improve
agricultural development in the worst affected regions are
pledged.
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Glossary: acronyms of major UN organs and agencies used in the text
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council
FAO Food and Agricultural Organization
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICJ International Court of Justice
ILO International Labor Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
ITU International Telegraph Union
MSC Military Staff Committee
OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
ONUC United Nations Operation in the Congo
UNCHR United Nations Commission on Human Rights
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO United Nations Education
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Council
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
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UNMOGIP UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan
UNSC United Nations Security Council
UNSG United Nations Secretary General
UNTSO United Nations Truce Supervision Organization
WFP World Food Program
WHO World Health Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
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References
Introduction
1. Henry Cabot Lodge, cited in James B. Simpson, Simpson’s
Contemporary Quotations (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988).
Chapter 1
1. Woodrow Wilson, quoted from Congressional Record, 65th Cong.,
3rd sess., Senate Document No. 389, 12–15.
2. Kofi Annan, ‘‘Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance speech,’’ December 10,
2001, Oslo, Norway. http://nobelpeaceprize.org/eng_lect_2001b.
html
Chapter 2
1. Hammarskjöld interview in Time magazine, June 27, 1955.
2. Trygve Lie, cited in James Barros, Trygve Lie and the Cold War:
The UN Secretary General Pursues Peace (De Kalb, IL: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1989), 341.
Chapter 3
1. Bhutto, cited in New York Times, Dec. 16, 1971.
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Chapter 4
1. Pearson Speech in Irwin Abrams, Words of Peace: The Nobel Peace
Prize Laureates of the Twentieth Century—Selections from Their
Acceptance Speeches (New York: Newmarket Press, 2003).
2. As explained on the UN’s website: www.un.org/peace/
peacebuilding/
3. Ibid.
Chapter 5
1. Albornoz, cited in the New York Times, Sept. 22, 1985.
2. Concept and Measurement of Human Development. Human
Development Report, 1990, can be found on: http://hdr.undp.org/
en/reports.
3. Development and International Economic Cooperation: An
Agenda for Development, can be found at: www.un.org/Docs/SG/
ag_index.htm.
4. Globalization with a Human Face: 1999 Human Development
Report, can be found on: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/
hdr1999/
Chapter 6
1. Dag Hammarskjöld’s speech at the 180th anniversary of Virginia
Declaration of Human Rights, May 20, 1956, cited in Peter
B. Heller, The United Nations under Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953–
1961 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 147.
2. Roosevelt, cited in http://www.udhr.org/history/Biographies/
bioer.htm
3. John Bolton’s remarks to the Federalist Society, Nov. 14, 2002,
can be found on the State Department website: www.state.gov/
t/us/rm/15158.htm.
4. UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251, www.ohchr.org/
english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/A.RES.60.251_En.pdf
Chapter 7
1. Saturday Review, Apr. 15, 1980.
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Further reading
It goes without saying that the literature on the various aspects of
the UN is vast and the suggestions provided here necessarily limited.
Some of the best general accounts covering most aspects of the world
organization include: Frederick H. Gareau, The United Nations and
Other International Institutions: A Critical Analysis (Chicago:
Burnham, 2002); Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, and Roger
A. Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics (Boulder,
CO: Westview, 2004). One can also benefit from reviewing the UN’s
own Basic Facts about the United Nations (New York: United Nations,
2004, or later edition) and Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, The
Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007). For a readable general history and evaluations
of the UN readers can turn to Paul Kennedy, The Parliament of Man:
The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations (New York:
Random House, 2007).
Chapter 1: The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN
Burgess, Stephen F. The United Nations under Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
1992–1997. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Firestone, Bernard J. The United Nations under U Thant, 1961–1971.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Gaglione, Anthony. The United Nations under Trygve Lie, 1945–1953.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Heller, Peter B. The United Nations under Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953–
1961. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
158
Lankevich, George J. The United Nations under Javier Pérez de
Cuéllar, 1982–1991. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Mingst, Karen, and Margaret Karns. The United Nations in the 21st
Century (Dilemmas in World Politics). Boulder, CO: Westview,
2006.
Ryan, James Daniel. The United Nations under Kurt Waldheim, 1972–
1981. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Schlesinger, Stephen. Act of Creation: The Founding of the United
Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and
Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World. Boulder, CO:
Westview, 2003.
Traub, James. Best of Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of
American Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
Chapter 2: An impossible hybrid: the structure of the UN
Alger, Chadwick. The United Nations System. Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-CLIO, 2006.
Fasulo, Linda. An Insider’s Guide to the UN. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2003.
Gordenker, Leon. The UN Secretary-General and Secretariat. London:
Routledge, 2005.
Jolly, Richard. The UN and Bretton Woods Institutions. New York:
St. Martin’s, 1995.
Peterson, M.J. The United Nations General Assembly. London:
Routledge, 2005.
Taylor, Paul, and A. J. R. Groom, eds. The United Nations at the
Millennium: The Principal Organs. London and New York:
Continuum, 2000.
Chapter 3: Facing wars, confronting threats: the UN Security Council in action
Gharekhan, Chinmaya. The Horseshoe Table: An Inside View of the UN
Security Council. New York: Longman, 2006.
Krasno, Jean E., and James S. Sutterlin. The United Nations and Iraq:
Defanging the Viper. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Luck, Edward C. The UN Security Council: A Primer. London:
Routledge, 2006.
Malone, David. The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the
21st Century. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
159
F u rth
e r re a d in g
Pugh, Michael, and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, eds., The United
Nations & Regional Security: Europe and Beyond. Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 2003.
Sutterlin, James S. The United Nations and the Maintenance of
International Security: A Challenge to Be Met. Westport, CT:
Praeger, 2003.
Chapter 4: Peacekeeping to peacebuilding
Boulden, Jane. The United Nations and Mandate Enforcement: Congo,
Somalia, and Bosnia. Kingston, Ontario: Centre for International
Relations, Queen’s University, 1999.
Doyle, Michael. Making War and Building Peace: United Nations
Peace Operations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Hill, Stephen. United Nations Disarmament Processes in Intra-state
Conflict. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
LeBor, Adam. ‘‘Complicity with Evil’’: The United Nations in an Age of
Modern Genocide. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
Paris, Roland. At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Russett, Bruce, and John O’Neal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy,
Interdependence, and International Organizations. New York:
Norton, 2001.
Thakur, Ramesh. The United Nations, Peace and Security: From
Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Chapter 5: Economic development to human development
Berthelot, Yves, ed. Unity and Diversity in Development Ideas:
Perspectives from the UN Regional Commissions. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2004.
Emmerij, Louis, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss. Ahead of the
Curve?: UN Ideas and Global Challenges. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2001.
Jolly, Richard, et.al. UN Contributions to Development Thinking and
Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Murphy, Craig N. The United Nations Development Programme: A
Better Way? New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
160
T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
Singer, Hans, and D. John Shaw. International Development Co-
operation: Essays on Aid and the United Nations System.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001.
Taniguchi, Makoto. North-South Issues in the 21st Century: A
Challenge in the Global Age. Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 2001.
Toye, John, and Richard Toye. The UN and Global Political Economy:
Trade, Finance, and Development. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004.
Chapter 6: Rights and responsibilities: human rights to human security
Clapham, Andrew. Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007.
Dutt, Sagarika. UNESCO and a Just World Order. New York: Nova
Science Publishers, 2002.
Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: Norton,
2007.
Loescher, Gil. The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Shaw, D. John, The UN World Food Programme and the Development
of Food Aid. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.
Steiner, Niklaus. Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees and
Human Rights. London: Routledge, 2003.
Thakur, Ramesh. The United Nations, Peace and Security From
Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
White, Nigel. The United Nations System: Toward International
Justice. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
Chapter 7: Reform and challenges: the future of the UN
Bowles, Newton. The Diplomacy of Hope: The United Nations since the
Cold War. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Muravchik, Joshua. The Future of the United Nations: Understanding
the Past to Chart a Way Forward. Washington, DC: AEI Press,
2005.
161
F u rth
e r re a d in g
Index
A ABM. See Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty
Abu Ghraib, 124
Afghanistan, 64, 80, 107, 110
African Union, 29, 55, 140
‘‘Agenda for Democracy,’’ 23,
152
‘‘Agenda for Development,’’ 23,
152
‘‘Agenda for Peace,’’ 23, 81, 152
‘‘Agenda for Protection,’’ 133
Albornoz, Miguel A., 92
Algeria, 79
Annan, Kofi, 39–40, 87–88,
132
CHS established by, 126
Nobel Peace Prize received by,
23, 145, 152
Panels created by, 138, 143
UNDG and, 142
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)
Treaty, 67
apartheid, in South Africa, 115
Arbour, Louise, 120
asylum seekers, 130 f
Aung San Suu Kyi, 117
Ayala Lasso, José, 119
B Banco del Sur (Bank of the
South), 43
Ban Ki-moon, 5, 29, 39, 148, 153
Berlin, 56–57
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 54
Bolton, John, 122
Bosnia, NATO in, 140
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 39, 84,
101, 152
Brahimi Report, 87, 88 f, 139, 152
Bretton Woods Institutions, 94
Brown, Gordon, 143
Brown, Mark Malloch, 98
Bunche, Ralph, 20
Bush, George H. W., 63
C Cambodia conflict, 84
Chavez, Hugo, 43
Chiang Kai-Shek, 57 f
child mortality, 99, 109
China, 3. See also People’s Republic
of China (PRC)
Communist, 57
in nuclear club, 67
Vietnam attacked by, 80
162
CHS. See Commission on Human
Security
Churchill, Winston, 18
Clemenceau, Georges, 10
Clinton, Bill, 122
Cold War, 17–20, 38–39, 50–51
gradual globalization of, 60
IAEA and, 66
nuclear shadow of, 67
peacekeeping and, 79
post, 23–25
SC and, 55
Commission on Human Rights,
124, 138 f
Commission on Human Security
(CHS), 126
Commission on International
Development, 106
Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty
(CTB), 67, 152
Conference Building, 2
Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe
(CSCE), 115
Congo, 37, 78–79
CSCE. See Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe
CTB. See Comprehensive Test-Ban
Treaty
Cuba, Guantánamo Bay, 124
Cuban missile crisis, of 1962, 61–62,
65–66
D Dag Hammarskjöld Library, 2
Darfur, Sudan, 3, 132
internally displaced people in, 134
peacekeeping in, 140
‘‘Declaration by United Nations,’’
13, 149
decolonization, 20–23, 60, 95
Delivering as One, 143 f–144 f, 153
Department of Peacekeeping
Operations (DPKO), 82
Dervis, Kemal, 98
development aid, 22, 142
DOMREP. See Mission of the
Representative of the Secretary
General in the Dominican
Republic
DPKO. See Department of
Peacekeeping Operations
Dumbarton Oaks Conference, 149
E Earth Summit, 152
East-West
confrontation, 62
rivalry, 77
economic aid, 5
Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), 27, 28t, 41–44
ECOSOC. See Economic and Social
Council
Egypt, 21, 60, 75, 84
ElBaradei, Mohammed, 66
EPTA. See Expanded Programme
of Technical Assistance
ERP. See European Recovery
Program
ethnic cleansing, 72, 85
EU. See European Union
European Recovery Program
(ERP), 93
European Union (EU), 47, 148
Europe, concert of, 8
Expanded Programme of
Technical Assistance
(EPTA), 98
F FAO. See Food and Agricultural
Organization
Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO), 46
France, 3, 10, 12, 67,
79–80
In d e x
163
G GATT. See General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade
General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), 43
General Assembly, 2, 27, 28t,
33–36
budget set by, 47
committees, 35
power of, 61
resolution 377/‘‘United for
Peace,’’ 59
resolutions set despite P-5 veto
in, 54
weakness of, 35
‘‘Generations,’’ of Peace Operations,
76 f–77 f
Geneva, 6
genocide, 72, 85
Germany, 11–12, 56
Great Britain, 3, 10, 12
Great Depression, 91
‘‘Great Power unanimity,’’ 52
Group of 77 (G-77), 96–97
Guantánamo Bay, 124
Guatemala delegation, 14
Guéhenno, Jean-Marie, 141
Gulf War, 55
SC and, 86
undermining credibility of
UN, 63
H The Hague, 8
Haiti, 141
Hammarskjöld, Dag, 37, 60, 150–51
death of, 79, 120
human rights philosophy of, 111
Library, 2
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to,
151
Time interview with, 26–27
as UNSG, 38–40
HDI. See Human Development
Index
HDR. See Human Development
Report
Helsinki Conference on Security
and Cooperation, 125
High Commission for Refugees,
127, 149
High-Level Panel on Threats, 138 f,
152
High-Level Panel on UN System-
wide Coherence, 143
High Panel Report on Global
Security Challenges, 139
HIV/AIDS, 102
Hull, Cordell, 150
Human Development Index
(HDI), 100
Human Development Report
(HDR), 99
of 1990, 100
of 1999, titled ‘‘Globalization with
a Human Face,’’ 101
human mortality rates, 99–101
human rights, 4, 41, 111–34
philosophy of Hammarkjöld, 111
reform, 145–47
violation investigations, 116
Human Rights Council, 122–25,
153
human security, 125–27
human trafficking, 139
Hungary, 21
Hussein, Saddam, 64
I IAEA. See International Atomic
Energy Agency
ICC. See International Criminal
Court
IDA. See International
Development Association
ILO. See International Labor
Organization
T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
164
IMF. See International Monetary
Fund
India, 34, 53
infectious disease, 139
internally displaced people, 130 f
International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), 46, 51, 65–69
International Bill of Human Rights,
4, 112–13, 114t, 151
International Committee of the Red
Cross, 131
‘‘The International Compact with
Iraq,’’ 153
International Court of Justice, 8, 16,
27, 28t, 32
International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights, 113
International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 113
International Criminal Court (ICC),
122–25, 146, 152
International Development
Association (IDA), 96–97
International Labor Organization
(ILO), 27
international law, 1, 4
International Monetary Fund
(IMF), 41–44, 42 f, 48, 94
International Peace Conference, 8,
149
International Peace Operations
Association (IPOA), 30
International Refugee Organization
(IRO), 128
International Telecommunications
Union (ITU), 149
international trade, 95
IPOA. See International Peace
Operations Association
Iran, 153
Iraq, 67, 107
Kuwait invaded by, 63
nuclear weapons in, 68
2003 intervention of, 7
UNSC and, 62–65
US led invasion of, 40, 64
IRO. See International Refugee
Organization
Iron Curtain, 18
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 76
Israel, peacekeeping in, 75
Italy, 10
ITU. See International
Telecommunications Union
J Japan, 10–11, 15, 65, 91–93
K the Khmer Rouge, 84, 118
Khrushchev, Nikita, 34
Korean conflict, 58–60
Korea, North, 67
Korean War, 19, 21, 150
Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of, 63
L LCJ. See London International
Court of Justice
League of Nations, 8–12, 30, 147
Covenant, 15–16
founding of, 149
as model for future of UN, 10
World War II and, 11
Lie, Trygve, 38–39, 150
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr., 2
London International Court of
Justice (LCJ), 150
Lumumba, Patrice, 78
M MacArthur, Douglas, 58
Mali, Jakob, 58
Managing Directors, of IMF, 42 f
Mao Zedong, 57 f
In d e x
165
Cultural Revolution campaign
by, 118
Great Leap Forward campaign
by, 117
Marshall Plan, 93, 95
McNamara, Robert, 97, 106
MDGs. See Millennium
Development Goals
Middle East, 74
peacekeepers in, 80
violence against women in, 121
Military Staff Committee (MSC), 3,
54–55, 69
Millennium Declaration, 143
Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), 5, 39, 92, 101–3,
102 f, 108–9, 141, 144 f, 152
Millennium Development
Program, 24
Milošević, Slobodan, 120
Mission of the Representative of the
Secretary General in the
Dominican Republic
(DOMREP), 80
Montreal Protocol. See Treaty on
the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT)
‘‘A More Secure World,’’ 152
MSC. See Military Staff Committee
Munich Conference, of 1938, 12
Myanmar, 117, 153
N NAM. See Nonaligned Movement
Nansen, Fridtjof, 127
Nansen International Office for
Refugees, 127, 149
Nansen passport, 127
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 21, 60, 75
nation-state, 146
NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
‘‘new world order,’’ 63
Nobel Peace Prize, 40, 66
Annan awarded, 23, 145, 152
Hammarskjöld awarded, 151
Hull awarded, 150
IAEA awarded, 153
Nansen office awarded, 149
Pearson awarded, 71, 106, 150
UN awarded, 152
UNHCR awarded, 131, 150
UNICEF awarded, 105, 151
UN peacekeepers awarded, 81
UN Peacekeeping Operations
awarded, 152
Wilson awarded, 149
Nonaligned Movement (NAM),
22, 95
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), 18, 29, 55, 77
NPT. See Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons
nuclear club, 66–67
nuclear terrorism, 139
nuclear threats, 65–69
nuclear weapons, 51, 138 f
in Iraq, 68
UN and, 66
O ODA. See official (government)
development assistance
OECD 2005 Paris Declaration on
Aid Effectiveness, 143
Office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights (OHCHR),
119–22
official (government) development
assistance (ODA), 106
OHCHR. See Office of the High
Commissioner for Human
Rights
ONUC. See UN Operations in
Congo
Operation Desert Storm, 63, 86
organized crime, 138 f
T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
166
P P-5. See Permanent Five
Pakistan, 53
Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO), 151
‘‘Partners in Development,’’ 106
Peacebuilding Commission, 88 f,
90, 138
‘‘peace enforcement’’ mission, 78
peacekeepers (blue-helmeted
soldiers)
deaths among, 82
Egyptian, 84
in Middle East, 80
Nobel Peace Prize received by, 81
total number of, 86
peacekeeping, 71
Cold War and, 79
in Egypt, 75
failures in, 87
funding, 87–88
in Israel, 75
missions, 74–80, 76 f–77 f, 87–
88, 152
overreach, 82–85
size of UN, force, 83 f
in Sudan, 140
Suez crisis and, 74–78
UN Charter and, 73–74
Peacekeeping Operations, Nobel
Peace Prize awarded, 152
Peace Operations, 24, 73
‘‘Generations,’’ of, 76 f–77 f
reform for, 139–41
Pearl Harbor, 13
Pearson, Lester B., 71, 72, 74–75,
106, 150
People’s Republic of China (PRC),
18–20, 34, 52, 58, 65, 151
Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier, 39, 152
Permanent Court of International
Justice, 149
Permanent Five (P-5), 15, 51–70,
56, 137
Persian Gulf, 86
PLO. See Palestinian Liberation
Organization
policing power, 73–74
Port-au-Prince, 141
poverty, 138 f
PRC. See People’s Republic of China
Programme for Action, 119
Programs and Funds, 45
R refugee, 127–31, 129 f
camps, 131
problem multiplication, 131–33
Refugee Convention, of 1933, 128
Republic of China (ROC). See
Taiwan
Resolution
242, 151
377/‘‘United for Peace,’’ 59t
998, 74, 75 f
returnees, 130 f
Robinson, Mary, 119, 121
the Rome Statute, 122
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 20, 112, 113
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 14, 150
Russian Revolution, 127
Rwanda, 72, 85, 87
S SALT I agreement, 66
Sarajevo, 84
SC. See Security Council
Security Council (SC), 3, 27, 28t,
30–33
in action, 50–70
Cold War and, 55
conflicts ignored by, 62
first members of, 17
Gulf War and, 86
increasing power of, 7
membership, 32, 136–37
reform needs of, 69–70, 135–39
In d e x
167
in ‘‘unipolar’’ world, 69–70
Seiko, Mobutu Sese, 78
sexual exploitation, 139
Six-Day War, 75, 151
social progress, 1
socioeconomic advancement, 1
South Africa
apartheid in, 115
NPT and, 68
violence against women in, 121
Soviet Union, 3, 11
Afghanistan invaded by, 80
as strongest nation on Earth, 13
veto by, 53
Specialized Agencies, 45, 48
Srebrenica massacre, 120
Stalin, Joseph, 17, 150
state collapse, 139
stateless people, 130 f
Stevenson, Adlai, 61–62
Sudan. See Darfur, Sudan
Suez Crisis, 60, 71,
74–78, 106
Sweden, 37
Switzerland, Geneva, 10
T Taiwan, 19–20, 58, 151
Taliban, 64
Taylor, Charles, 146
terrorism, 138 f
Thant, U, 39, 151
Three Sisters, 41–44
Tibet, 119
Time, 26
trachoma, 104
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),
67, 68t, 151
Treaty on the Protection of the
Ozone Layer (the Montreal
Protocol), 23
Truman, Harry, 18
Trusteeship Council, 16, 27, 28t
tuberculosis, 103
Tuvula, 34
U UN. See United Nations
UN African Union peacekeeping
force (UNAMID), 153
UN air force, 141
UNAMID. See UN African Union
peacekeeping force
UNAMIR. See UN Assistance
Mission for Rwanda
UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda
(UNAMIR), 85
UN Charter, 15, 59, 91, 141, 146
chapter 7 of, 31–32
description of, 16 f
Great Power prerogatives
and, 32
peacekeeping and, 73–74
signing of, 14
UN Children’s Emergency Fund
(UNICEF), 103
doctor, 104
Nobel Peace Prize awarded to,
105, 151
UNCHR. See UN Commission on
Human Rights
UN Commission on Human Rights
(UNCHR), 112–14, 117–18,
123–25, 150
UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), 22,
96–98
UN conference on women, 151
UNCTAD. See UN Conference on
Trade and Development
UN Development Group (UNDG),
142
UN Development Programme
(UNDP), 98–99, 104, 108,
142, 151
UNDG. See UN Development
Group
T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
168
UN Disengagement Observer Force
(UNDOF), 80
UNDOF. See UN Disengagement
Observer Force
UNDP. See UN Development
Programme
UN Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), 112
UN Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), 45–46
UNEF. See UN Emergency Force
UN Emergency Force (UNEF),
75–76, 77 f
UN Environment Conference, 151
UN Environment Programme
(UNEP), 23, 151
UNEP. See UN Environment
Programme
UNESCO. See UN Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
UNFICYP. See UN Peacekeeping
Force in Cyprus
UNHCR. See UN High
Commissioner for Refugees
UN Headquarters, 2
UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), 20, 29,
45, 127–31, 150, 152
people of concern for, 129 f–130 f
UNHRC. See UN Human Rights
Council
UN Human Rights Council
(UNHRC), 123, 127–31
UNICEF. See UN Children’s
Emergency Fund
UNIFIL. See UN Interim Force in
Lebanon
UN Interim Force in Lebanon
(UNIFIL), 80
UN International Children’s Fund
(UNICEF), 44–45
United Nations (UN)
brief history of, 8–25
charges of corruption within, 40
funding of, 148
future of, 135–48
global economic power within, 41
Gulf War undermining
credibility of, 63
headquarters, 2
League of Nations as model for
future of, 10
membership, 21, 22 f, 24
military operations, 3
nuclear weapons and, 66
operating budget, 45–46, 47 f
promise of, 1–7
reform, 40
strengths/weaknesses of, 48
structure of, 26–49
system, 28 t
as undemocratic institution, 69
US using, 135–36
weakness of, 35
United States (US), 3, 5, 11, 13, 53,
92, 148
as strongest nation on Earth, 13
as superpower, 63, 86
UN and, 135–36
Vietnam War and, 80
Universal Declaration for Human
Rights, 4, 20, 112, 133, 150–51
universal jurisdiction, 4
Universal Postal Union, 149
UNMIBH. See UN Mission in
Bosnia and Herzegovina
UN Military Observer Group in
India and Pakistan
(UNMOGIP), 74, 150
UN Mission in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (UNMIBH), 29
UNMOGIP. See UN Military
Observer Group in India and
Pakistan
UNOMOZ. See UN Operations in
Mozambique
UN Operations in Congo (ONUC),
78–79, 150
In d e x
169
UN Operations in Mozambique
(UNOMOZ), 83
UN Operations in Somalia
(UNOSOM I & II), 85
UNOSOM. See UN Operations in
Somalia
UN Peacebuilding Commission,
139, 153
UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus
(UNFICYP), 80
UN Peacekeeping Operations,
81–82
funding for, 87–88
Nobel Peace Prize awarded
to, 152
reform of, 87
UN Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (UNRRA),
128, 149
UNRRA. See UN Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration
UN Secretariat, 1, 2, 16, 36
UN Secretary-General (UNSG),
36–41, 138 f, 140
list of all, 39 t
selection of, 37
UNSF. See UN Special Fund
UNSG. See UN Secretary-General
UN Special Fund (UNSF), 98
UN Special Rapporteurs, 116 f
UNTAG. See UN Transition
Assistance Group
UN Transition Assistance Group
(UNTAG), 83
UN Truce Supervision
Organization (UNTSO), 74,
150
UNTSO. See UN Truce Supervision
Organization
US. See United States
V vaccination projects, 104
Valdés, Juan Gabriel, 141
Versailles Peace Conference, 9
Versailles Treaty, 9–10
veto power, 51, 52 f–53 f, 73,
136–37
Vieira de Mello, Sergio, 119
Vienna Declaration, 119
Vietnam, 62, 118
China attack on, 80
war, 80
W Waldheim, Kurt, 39, 151
War, 138 f. See also Gulf War;
Korean War; World War I;
World War II
Korean, 19
Six-Day, 75, 151
Vietnam, 80
world at, 11–13
Warsaw Pact, 55
weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), 64
Western dominance, 43
WFP. See World Food Program
WHO. See World Health
Organization
Wilson, Woodrow, 8, 10, 63, 147
Nobel Peace Prize received
by, 149
WMD. See weapons of mass
destruction
WMO. See World Meteorological
Organization
Wolfwitz, Paul, 97
World Bank, 5, 41–44, 48, 94,
96, 142
fragile states of 2005, 109 f
presidents of, 42 f
World Bank Global Monitoring
Report, 108
The World Conference on Human
Rights, 118
World Food Program (WFP), 105
World Food Summit, 153
T h e U n it e d N a ti o n s
170
World Health Organization
(WHO), 23, 44, 46, 152
World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), 6
World Summit, 143, 152
World Tourism Organization, 6
World Trade Organization (WTO),
42–44, 94
World War I, 8–9
World War II, 3, 13, 17, 32–33
European refugees of, 20
Great Depression and, 91
League of Nations and, 11
reconstruction after, 92–94
WTO. See World Trade
Organization
Y Yugoslavia (former), 72, 85
Z Zam Zam displaced persons
camp, 132
Zorin, Valentin, 62
In d e x
171
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43. Continental Philosophy
44. Galileo
45. Freud
46. Wittgenstein
47. Indian Philosophy
48. Rousseau
49. Hegel
50. Kant
51. Cosmology
52. Drugs
53. Russian Literature
54. The French Revolution
55. Philosophy
56. Barthes
57. Animal Rights
58. Kierkegaard
59. Russell
60. Shakespeare
61. Clausewitz
62. Schopenhauer
63. The Russian Revolution
64. Hobbes
65. World Music
66. Mathematics
67. Philosophy of Science
68. Cryptography
69. Quantum Theory
70. Spinoza
71. Choice Theory
72. Architecture
73. Poststructuralism
74. Postmodernism
75. Democracy
76. Empire
77. Fascism
78. Terrorism
79. Plato
80. Ethics
81. Emotion
82. Northern Ireland
83. Art Theory
84. Locke
85. Modern Ireland
86. Globalization
87. Cold War
88. TheHistoryof Astronomy
89. Schizophrenia
90. The Earth
91. Engels
92. British Politics
93. Linguistics
94. The Celts
95. Ideology
96. Prehistory
97. Political Philosophy
98. Postcolonialism
99. Atheism
100. Evolution
101. Molecules
102. Art History
103. Presocratic Philosophy
104. The Elements
105. Dada and Surrealism
106. Egyptian Myth
107. Christian Art
108. Capitalism
109. Particle Physics
110. Free Will
111. Myth
112. Ancient Egypt
113. Hieroglyphs
114. Medical Ethics
115. Kafka
116. Anarchism
117. Ancient Warfare
118. Global Warming
119. Christianity
120. Modern Art
121. Consciousness
122. Foucault
123. Spanish Civil War
124. The Marquis de Sade
125. Habermas
126. Socialism
127. Dreaming
128. Dinosaurs
129. Renaissance Art
130. Buddhist Ethics
131. Tragedy
132. Sikhism
133. The History of Time
134. Nationalism
135. The World Trade
Organization
136. Design
137. The Vikings
138. Fossils
139. Journalism
140. The Crusades
141. Feminism
142. Human Evolution
143. The Dead Sea Scrolls
144. The Brain
145. Global Catastrophes
146. Contemporary Art
147. Philosophy of Law
148. The Renaissance
149. Anglicanism
150. The Roman Empire
151. Photography
152. Psychiatry
153. Existentialism
154. The First World War
155. Fundamentalism
156. Economics
157. International Migration
158. Newton
159. Chaos
160. African History
161. Racism
162. Kabbalah
163. Human Rights
164. International Relations
165. The American
Presidency
166. The Great Depression
and The New Deal
167. Classical Mythology
168. The New Testament as
Literature
169. American Political
Parties and Elections
170. Bestsellers
171. Geopolitics
172. Antisemitism
173. Game Theory
174. HIV/AIDS
175. Documentary
Film
176. Modern China
177. The Quakers
178. German Literature
179. Nuclear Weapons
180. Law
181. The Old Testament
182. Galaxies
183. Mormonism
184. Religion in America
185. Geography
186. The Meaning of Life
187. Sexuality
188. Nelson Mandela
189. Science and Religion
190. Relativity
191. History of Medicine
192. Citizenship
193. The History of Life
194. Memory
195. Autism
196. Statistics
197. Scotland
198. Catholicism
199. The United Nations
200. Free Speech
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The best hope of mankind?: A brief history of the UN
- 2 An impossible hybrid: the structure of the United Nations
- 3 Facing wars, confronting threats: the UN Security Council in action
- 4 Peacekeeping to peacebuilding
- 5 Economic development to human development
- 6 Rights and responsibilities: human rights to human security
- 7 Reform and challenges: the future of the United Nations
- Chronology
- Glossary: acronyms of major UN organs and agencies used in the text
- References
- Further reading
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y
- Z
