Unit 10 The United Nations Key terms

Eurowhites – A term to distinguish the whites of Europe and of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and other countries whose cultures were founded on or converted to European culture from other races and eth­nic groups, including Caucasian peoples in Latin Ameri­ca, the Middle East, South Asia, and elsewhere

FY (fiscal/financial year) – a period of twelve months, used by government, business, and other organizations in order to calculate their budgets, profits, and losses.

IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) – an international organization set up in 1957 to promote research into and the development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes

Limited membership council – A representative organization body of the UN that grants special status to members who have a greater stake, responsibility, or capacity in a particular area of concern. The UN Security Council is as example.

Norms – A principle of right action that is binding on members of a group and that serves to regulate the be­havior of the members of that group. Norms are based on custom and usage and may also become part of formal law. Norms are recognized in international law under the principle of jus cogens (just thought), which states that a standard of behavior accepted by the world com­munity should not be violated by the actions of a state or group of states. In domestic systems, "common law" is equivalent to norms in the international system

OAS (Organization of American States) - an association including 30 countries of North and South America (but for Canada), originally founded in 1890 for largely commercial purposes. From 1948 it has aimed to work for peace and prosperity in the region and to uphold the sovereignty of member nations. Under the USA’s pressure Cuba was expelled from the organization in 1962. Its headquarters are in Washington DC.

Peacekeeping – The use of a United Nations military force to function as a buffer between disputants in order to prevent fighting.

Plenary representative body – An assembly, such as the UN’s General Assembly, that consists of all members of the main organ

Secretariat – The administrative organ of the United Nations headed by the secretary-general.

UN General Assembly (UNGA) – The main representative body of the United Nations, composed on all 191 member-states

UN Security Council (UNSC) – The main peacekeeping organ of the United Nations

United Nations (UN) – An international body creates with the intention to maintain peace through cooperation of its member-states. As part of its mission, it addresses human welfare issues such as the environment, human rights, population, and health.

Veto - A negative vote cast in the UN Security Council by one of the five permanent members; has the effect of defeating the issue being voted on.

Text 1 Focus on the un

The United Nations (UN) is the best-known global organization. What distinguishes it from most other IGOs is its nearly universal membership, including today 190 independent states from every region. The UN’s nearly fourfold growth from the fifty-one states that joined it at the UN’s birth in 1945 has been spectacular, but the admission process from the start been governed by political conflicts that show the extent to which the organization reflects the relationships of the five great powers that created it and govern it through veto authority in the Security Council.

Standards for admitting new members is one point of occasional controversy. In principle, any sovereign state accepting the UN’s regulations and principles can join, but the great powers have often let realpolitik political considerations dictate what countries were admitted. One instance occurred in 1998 when the General Assembly gave the Palestinians added legitimacy by voting overwhelmingly to give them what amounts to an informal associate membership. The Palestinians cannot vote but they can take part in debates in the UN and perform other functions undertaken by states.

Successor state status can also sometimes be a political issue. With little fanfare, the UN agreed to recognize Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union. This meant, among other things, that Russia inherited the USSR’s permanent seat and veto on the Security Council. Taking the opposite approach, the UN in 1992 refused to recognize the Serbian-dominated government in Belgrade as the successor to Yugoslavia to (re)apply for admission. Once dictator Slobodan Miloshevic was toppled, Yugoslavia did reapply, and was (re)admitted in 2000.

Withdrawal, suspension, and expulsion is another membership issue. Nationalist China (Taiwan) was, in effect, ejected from the UN when the “China seat” was transferred to the mainland. In a move close to expulsion, the General Assembly refused between 1974 and1991 to accept the credentials of South Africa’s delegate because that country’s apartheid policies violated the UN Charter. The refusal to recognize Yugoslavia in 1992 as a successor state was, in effect, an expulsion of that country based on its bloody repression of Bosnians, Croats, and others.

System and structure: representative bodies

The UN's limitations are perhaps rooted in the ways it is organized for its ambitious and wide-ranging purposes. The Security Council is one of six principal organs established by the UN Charter; the others are the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice.

Most IGOs have a plenary representative body that includes all members. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the UN's plenary organ. Plenary bodies normally have the authority to involve themselves in virtually all aspects of their organizations.

Unlike the Security Council, which is empowered by the UN Charter to initiate actions including the use of force, the General Assembly can only make recommendations. The founders of the UN did not foresee that this limited mandate would later be expanded to allow the General Assembly to participate with the Security Council in managing security. The General Assembly, which has grown in numbers and importance, has assumed wider responsibilities and is now the primary body for addressing security as well as social and economic problems. The growth of the General Assembly's power may not be sufficient, however. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted in Tokyo in May 1997, the original UN design is outdated: it "reflects the world of 1945 and not the eco­nomic and political realities of today," and this failure to adapt to changing times lies at the core of complaints that the UN is unprepared to control the threats facing humanity in the twenty-first century.

A second type of representative organization body is a limited membership council. The theory here is that some members have a greater stake, responsibility, or capacity in a particular area of concern. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has 15 members. Ten are chosen by the UNGA for limited terms, but 5 are permanent members. These 5 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were the leading victorious powers at the end of World War II and were thought to have a special peacekeeping role to play. These 5 countries have served continuously since 1945 as permanent members on the Security Council; more than half of the other 185 members have never served on the Council.

The special status enjoyed by the five permanent members of the UNSC is a simmering issue in the UN. The existing membership has never been fully realistic and is becoming less so as time goes by. One issue, as the German mission to the UN puts it, is, "The Security Council as it stands does not reflect today's world which has changed dramatically since 1945." Reflecting current realities, Germany, India, Japan, and some other powerful countries have begun to press for permanent seats for themselves.

Another issue is geographic and demographic imbalance. Geographically, Europe and North America have four of five permanent seats, and those four per­manent members are also countries of predominantly Eurowhite heritage. African countries are offended that their continent has no permanent seat on the Council.

Whatever may be just, however, change will be hard to achieve. One difficulty is that any Charter revision must be recommended by a two-thirds vote of the UNSC (where each of the five permanent members has a veto), adopted by a two-thirds vote of the UNGA, and ratified by two-thirds of the members according to their respective constitutional processes. The permanent UNSC members are opposed to surrendering their special status. It will also be difficult to arrive at a new formula that satisfies the sensitivities of other countries and regions. For example, the thought of India having a permanent seat alarms Pakistan, Therefore, the prospects for reform remain dim. As an Italian diplomat has noted, "The only matter that we would seem to have agreed on is that we are in profound disagreement on how to enlarge the Council."

Political Leadership

The UN's administrative structure is called the Secretariat, and the secretary-general is the CEO.

Selection The UN secretary-general is nominated by the UNSC, and then elected by the General Assembly for a five-year term.

Role: Activism versus Restraint An issue that swirls around IGO executives is their proper role. The role orientations of the UN secretary-general can range between activism and restraint. In the UN Charter, for example, the Secretariat is the last major organ discussed. That placement indicates the limited, largely administrative role that the document's drafters intended for the secretary-general.

Whatever was intended, the first two secretaries-general, Trygve Lie of Norway (1946-1953) and Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden (1953-1961), were activists who steadily expanded the role of their office. Hammarskjold argued that he had a "responsibility" to act to uphold the peace "irrespective of the views and wishes of the various member governments". Hammarskjöld's approach was epitomized during the civil war that followed the independence of the Belgian Congo in 1960. The secretary-general aggressively used UN military forces to try to restore peace.

The Soviets were so upset at the activist and what they saw as a pro-Western stance of Hammarskjold that they pressed for successors with more restrained con­ceptions of the role of secretary-general. Over time, however, secretaries-general have once again tended toward activism. The sixth secretary-general, Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996), believed that "if one word above all is to char­acterize the role of the secretary-general, it is independence. The holder of this office must never be seen as acting out of fear or in an attempt to curry favor with one state or groups of states." Just as Hammarskjold's activism had led him into disfavor, so too did Boutros-Ghali's views. As a result, Boutros-Ghali was forced from office after one term.

In the aftermath of his ouster, the Security Council nominated and the General Assembly elected Kofi Annan of Ghana as the UN's seventh secretary-general. Annan is the first secretary-general to have spent almost his entire career as a UN diplomat rather than as a diplomat for his country. Annan was chosen because of Washington's view that he would be a cautious bureaucrat, and this coupled with his quiet demeanor led many observers to speculate that he would not act independently.

Those predictions were inaccurate. Since taking office in 1997, Annan has demonstrated a willingness to exercise lead­ership and even differ with the United States. He has done so more diplomatically, however, than the sometimes sharp-tongued Boutros-Ghali. This has earned Annan generally smooth relations with Washington and other major capitals. Certainly he is soft-spoken; but that does not mean soft. Annan strongly supported the idea that the UN and its secretary-general should act with independence when nec­essary.

Early in this tenure, Annan had the opportunity to dem­onstrate his willingness to live up to his words about doing it "my way" if necessary. A crisis boiled up in early 1998 over Iraq's refusal to allow UN weapons inspectors free access to some sites. Both Baghdad and Washington seemed to be spoiling for a fight. Annan worked with the Security Council members to derive a UN position, but the United States let it be known that it would oppose Annan's intervention unless the UNSC position was acceptable to Washington. The Clinton administration's position was too obdurate, and Annan forced the issue by indicating that he would go to Iraq with or without U.S. approval.

Whatever the reaction of Washington or other capitals to any of Annan's specific actions, the overall reaction has been one of acclaim. He was accorded a high honor when in June 2001 on unanimous recommendation of the Security Council, the General Assembly voted without dissent to reappoint him to a second term as secretary-general beginning in January 2002. Then in October 2001 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work toward making "a better organized and more peaceful world."

Bureaucracy

The secretary-general appoints the other principal officials of the Secretariat, but he must be sensitive to the desires of the dominant powers in making these appointments and must also pay attention to the geographic and, increasingly, to the gender composition of the Secretariat staff. Controversies have occasionally arisen over the distribu­tions, but in recent years the focus of criticism has been the size and efficiency of the staffs of the UN headquarters in New York and its regional offices (Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna). It is also the case, however, that the charges that the UN and its associated agencies are a bureaucratic swamp need to be put in perspective.

For instance, the UN Secretariat has trimmed its staff over 25 percent, from 12,000 in 1985 to 8,700 in 2002. Some perspective on such data can also be gained by comparing the UN bureaucracy to local governments and to companies. The city of New Orleans (pop. 485,000), for instance, employs more people (10,100) than does the UN (pop. 6,100,000,000). Indeed, McDonald's has more than five times as many employees devoted to serving the world hamburgers, French fries, and shakes than the UN has people devoted to serving the world's needs for peace, health, dignity, and prosperity.

Financing

The United Nations Budget The United Nations is beset by severe and controversial financial problems. There are several elements to the extended UN budget. The first is the core budget for headquarters operations and the regular programs of the major UN organs. Second, there is the peacekeeping budget to meet the expenses of operations being conducted by the Security Council. The third budget element is called the voluntary contributions budget, which funds а number of UN agencies such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The UN is almost entirely dependent on the assessment it levies on member-countries to pay its core and peacekeeping budgets. This assessment is fixed by the UNGA based on a complicated formula that reflects the ability to pay. According to the UN Charter, which is a valid treaty binding on all signatories, members are required to meet these assessments and may have their voting privilege in the General Assembly suspended if they are seriously in arrears. There are nine coun­tries that have assessments of 2 percent of the budget or higher. They and their percentages of the core budget assessment are: the United States (22.0 %), Japan (19.6 %), Germany (9.8%), France (6.5%), Great Britain (5.6%), Italy (5.1%), Canada (2.6%), Spain (2.5%), and Brazil (2.2%). There are another nine countries that pay between 1 and 2 percent. The "target" voluntary budget payments are the same as the core budget. Because of their special responsibility (and their special privilege, the veto), permanent UNSC members pay a somewhat higher assessment for peacekeeping, with the U.S. share at 25 percent.

The assessment scheme is criticized by some on the grounds that while the 18 countries with assessments of 1 percent or higher collectively pay 90 percent of the UN budget, in FY1999 they cast just 9 percent of the votes in the UNGA. One result of the gap between contributions and voting power has been disenchantment with the organization by a number of large-contributor countries who sometimes find themselves in the minority on votes in the UNGA.

Such numbers are something of a fiction, however, because some countries do not pay their assessment. In early 2002 member-states were in arrears by $3.4 billion. As a result, the UN's financial situation constantly teeters on the edge of crisis at the very time it is being asked to do more and more to provide protection and help meet other humanitarian and social needs. During FY2003, for example, the UN's peace­keeping budget was only about half the public safety (police and fire departments) budget of New York City.

The United States and the UN Budget The key to the UN's financial difficulties is the United States, which is the largest debtor. In early 2002, it owed $1.4 billion to the UN, accounting for 38 percent of the UN deficit. About one-third of that arrearage is for the core budget, about two-thirds for the peacekeeping budget. The build-up of the U.S. debt began in the late 1970s. The U.S. refusal to pay evoked mounting criticism, even from Washington's allies. The British foreign secretary said that for Americans to continue to vote in the UN without paying their assessment was tantamount to "represen­tation without taxation."

Finally, with the United States facing a loss of its vote in the UN for nonpayment of its obligations, Congress in 1999 authorized gradually paying off the arrearage if the United Nations instituted a series of reforms, such as cutting the size of its staff, and dropping the U.S. assessments. These steps were taken by the UN in 2000, and Congress has authorized some extra funding beyond the yearly assessment. Unanticipated peacekeeping expenditures have meant that the total U.S. debt has not decreased, but at least it is not rising as it had been.

Table 1 The Structure of the United Nations

General Assembly All 109 UN members One vote per member	United Nations	International Court of Justice 15 judges Serve 9-year term
Security Council 15 members 5 – permanent, 10 serve 2-year terms Veto power for permanent members		Economic and Social Council 54 members Serve 3-years terms One vote per one member
Secretariat Headed by Secretary-General Serves 5-year term	Associated Agencies 20 intergovernmental organizations such as World Health Organization, World Bank, Food and Agricultural Organization	Trusteeship Council Task completed No longer meets

Comprehension