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Introduction
The United Nations is a part of the UN System which encompasses a wide range of organs (agencies) and programmes under its canopy. Some of the specialised agencies include the ICJ (International Court of Justice), the World Bank, The UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and so on. All the members are a part of the General Assembly. The membership of new countries is decided upon a decision of the Security Council, which consists of 5 permanent states and 10 non-permanent elected member states. The United Nations is headquartered in New York City, USA. and the organisation is headed by the Secretary-General. There were a total of 51 founding members in the United Nations Organisation. Presently, around 193 countries are a part of the U.N.
History
After world war two ended in 1945, representatives of 51 nations met in a conference in San Francisco, California from April 25 to June 26, 1945. The conference lasted for two months, in which the UN Charter was drafted. It proposed the creation of a new international organisation called the United Nations. Its goal was to prevent any major war or conflict in the future akin to the one the world had just witnessed and promote peace throughout the world. The United Nations became operational on October 24, 1945. A new organisation was born and the world entered into a new era of peace which was comparatively more stable. The United Nations has managed to prevent major conflicts on the scale of world wars throughout its history and has become the forum where nations extend the hand of friendship.
Purpose of United Nations
The United Nations has mainly four purposes:
- Maintaining peace throughout the world.
- Initiate and develop friendly relations between member countries.
- To aid the nations in working together for the common causes of improving poverty scenarios, conquering hunger, disease and illiteracy, and to encourage respect towards each other’s rights and freedoms.
- To become the epicentre for harmonising the nations to achieve all these goals.
Main Bodies of United Nations
- General Assembly: The General Assembly is the main cognitive and policy-making body of the United Nations with a universal representation, that is, all the member states are represented in the General Assembly. The General Assembly meets annually every September to discuss and debate the issues pertaining to peace and security. It also elects a General Assembly president to serve a one year term period.
- Security Council: This council has the primary responsibility of maintaining peace throughout the world under the UN Charter. Each member of the council has one vote. The council determines the events which can be a potential threat to peace and security and calls upon its members to help the involved parties in settling the threat peacefully by diplomatic means. The Security Council is presided over by a Presidency, which changes every month. It has a total of 15 members, out of which 5 are permanent.
- Economic and Social Council: It is the principal body for coordination, review and dialogue on economic issues along with the implementation of development goals that have been internationally agreed upon. It also serves as the forum for the discussion on sustainable development goals. It has 54 members in total, elected by the General Assembly for overlapping three-year terms.
- Trusteeship Council: Established in 1945, under Chapter XIII of the UN Charter, its main goal was to supervise the functioning of the 11 Trust territories placed under the administration of the seven members of the council. The members had to ensure the development of the local government in these states. The council was suspended in 1994 after most of the Trust territories had attained independence. It can meet again on the recommendation of the President or at the request of majority members of the council, the General Assembly or the Security Council.
- International Court of Justice: This court is the main judicial organ of the United Nations and is headquartered at the Hague, Netherlands. The main function of this body is to settle the disputes between member states in accordance with international law and provide opinions as advice on issues submitted or referred to it.
- Secretariat: The Secretariat is made up of the Secretary-General and the international UN staff members who carry out the day to day administration of the United Nations Systems as mandated by the General Assembly. The head of this body, the Secretary-General, is appointed for a five-year term by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council. The secretariat also functions as the patron of the organisation and for the world’s population especially, the poor and vulnerable.
Success of the United Nations
It cannot be properly determined whether the initiative of the UN has been a success or not. However, the popular mandate is that the United Nations, while has its own set of failures, with the current Russian invasion of Ukraine the latest addition, it has helped in preventing countless conflicts and has enabled the countries to peacefully resolve their differences. Apart from this, it has also played a role in pushing the world towards sustainability and has also made efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of countries. For its efforts towards peacekeeping, the United Nations even won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
Some of the major victories of the United Nations are as follows:
- Ceasefire during 1948 Arab-Israeli war
- Ceasefire during Indo-Pak Kashmir conflict (1947)
- Assisted decolonisation of Congo and West New Guinea
- Withdrawal of Libya from a strip of contested territory in accordance with an ICJ order.
- Expelling Iraq from Kuwait
Interesting Facts about UNO
- After the second world war,51 countries met in San Francisco with a common goal to maintain international peace and security and the purpose of signing a document which was the United Nations Charter founding the United Nations Organisation (UNO) on 24 October 1945.
- Recently there are 193 member states in the UNO.
- Antonio Guterres is the 9th Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation.
- At present, the member states are working together to fight climate change
- Central to the organisation are five principal organs established by the UN Charter, Four of the five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters in New York City, while the ICJ is seated in The Hague
- In 2001, the United Nations, as an organisation, and Kofi Annan, as Secretary-General, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Conclusion
The UN is an international body to promote peace and friendship along with the emancipation of the vulnerable, throughout the world. While it has its own set of limitations and drawbacks, it has so far managed to prevent any large scale conflict involving major world powers.
