The UN today, what is it?
The United Nations (UN) – founded in 1945 – is an IGO comprised of 193 members which aims to maintain international peace and security, develop amicable bilateral and multilateral relations and facilitate international cooperation. Today, the UN is considered to be the most significant IGO and has objectives ranging from peacekeeping, to human rights protection, to economic development and climate change reduction.
The UN has four main objectives and has many subsidiary committees which work towards these objectives. Firstly, the UN promotes/protects global peace and security; this is achieved through the UNSC [passes resolutions and authorises peacekeeping/military action to protect global security (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter)] and the ICJ [makes rulings in international law when states disagree over sovereignty]. The UN also promotes/protects human rights internationally – the UNHRC and UNHCHR facilitate and oversee this objective. Advancing world human and economic development is also a main objective which is achieved through the ECOSOC, UNDP and Millenium Development-Goals. Lastly, the UN also tackles transnational issues and crises such as climate change; for example, the UN has led many international summits on climate change which works towards binding global agreement on reducing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Where did the UN come from and why?
The United Nations Organisation (UNO) is renowned for defeating Japanese fascism in the Second World War. Roosevelt – the US president at that time – presented the concept of emulating the successes of the UNO and creating the United Nations (UN). He believed that keeping an organisation to preserve peace and maintaining international harmony would be invaluable to the world as both WWI and WWII threatened to tear alliances and the world apart. Roosevelt was a close bystander of the creation and failures of the UN’s predecessor (ie. the League of Nations) and believed that the UN would be a more sustainable organisation which was more in keeping with the realities of world power which wouldn't be like the league, something which could pass worthy resolutions which were unenforceable and ignored.
Therefore, it is easy to say that the UN was birthed out of the Second World War in the United States’ altruistic effort to maintain global harmony and to inhibit future discord. Since then, the UN has grown and tackles many of the original issues (eg. it works towards promoting human rights) but has also begun combatting more contemporary crises such as the transnational threat of climate change.
How the UN Security Council works?
The UN Security Council (SC) is comprised of five main nations (the Permanent 5 [P5]): People’s Republic of China, France, Russian Federation, United States of America and United Kingdom; it also has eleven other members in each conference – these eleven member are on a rotational basis and are not permanently involved. What is unique about the power structure of the UNSC is the concept of ‘veto’: P5 nations have the opportunity to veto any resolution, amendment or clause in committee and the concept of veto is incredibly important as the UNSC, unlike any other UN subcommittee, has legally binding resolutions. This means that whatever is agreed in the resolution must come to fruition so if one of the P5 nations believe that the resolution has the potential to harm their nation or a conflict in which they are a stakeholder, they use the ‘veto’ in order to secure national interest. Many believe that the power paradigm in the UNSC is relatively outdated as it doesn’t make sense for some more powerful nations (eg. India and Japan) to not be represented as a P5 nation while countries such as France are. Initially, the UNSC was delegated to just deal with conflicts involving hard or soft power (such as the Korean War) but it now deals with much more contemporary transitional crises such as the issue of HIV/AIDS. Another thing which is interesting about the UNSC is that it debates each resolution clause by clause as it forces nations to be more aware of the repercussions of each clause. As mentioned before, the resolutions are legally binding so all nations must voice their concerns with the resolution (if they have any) in order to make sure that the UNSC implements altruistic and non-demeaning policies.
But is the UNSC actually effective? If we analyse international relations from a Structural Realist’s perspective, we could argue that its not as every nation would be acting in self-interest due to perpetual fear. And, even though realism is just a theory, we can see this notion coming to life: for example, the Rise of China as a regional hegemony in Asia is terrifying the world hegemony (ie. the USA) so this is leading to inevitable clashes. Because every nation is looking out for their own self-interest, many conflicts are not being solved as the P5 nations are using their own veto powers. In addition to this, one large failure of the UNSC was during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 where France used its P5 powers to inhibit the UN’s presence in Rwanda which inevitably led to mass slaughter – this was a large failure that was caused by the international community. Luckily, the UN learns from their mistakes (ie. they established the Responsibility to Protect [R2P] in 2001 following the egregious mistake). Because the UN is constantly evolving and the UNSC is relatively outdated in terms of political structuring, I hypothesise that there will be some large shifts in the P5 powers but it won’t be anytime in the future as there is too much of a Cold War going on between the US and China.
What is the place of human rights in international politics?
"Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status" (UN Org.); basic human rights are codified in the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], ICCPR, CEDAW etc and they play large roles in international politics. International human rights law establishes the obligations that governments have: they have to act in certain ways and inhibit specific actions in order to protect, promote and bolster human rights. Although human rights are largely non-legally binding (unless the specific right is codified in a nation's constitution) and are considered to be 'normative projections of the West' (ie. they are incompatible with the culture in many Eastern nations such as countries in the Middle East), they play a large role in international politics for a variety of reasons. Firstly, and arguably the most important reason, is the R2P. The R2P is often referred to as the 'solution to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994' as it lays out the rules that nations (member nations of the UN) must intervene in other countries when one of the four is happening: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. All of the four aforementioned crimes are crimes which perpetuate a culture incompatible with human rights. Therefore, when human rights are violated to large extremes (eg. the Rohingya Crisis), nations are morally and somewhat-legally obliged to intervene and, therefore, shapes the way that international politics behaves.
In addition to this, we must also consider the implications of human rights. Many nations are more willing to engage in bilateral/multilateral discourse and decisions when all nations respect the intrinsic value of humanity (ie. they uphold human rights). NGOs, MNCs and other companies are more likely to bring their businesses to nations where people are safe, protected and are entitled to their human rights. These two elements of human rights implications give rise to political and economic power which are commonly referred to as the 'foundations of politics'. Human Rights helps a nation be more involved in international politics and less condemned by the global order (ie. they are less likely to face sanctions, public condemnation and their sovereignty is less likely to be eroded).
Emergency help: how does the UN respond to crises?
The UN is often perceived as an unbiased political entity: this means that the UN is not intervening/effecting change with an ulterior motive. The UN is getting involved in crises (and is often invited by the nation itself to get involved) for the pure reason to secure international and national order and peace – it is not like NGOs/MNCs which have an economic/political reputation to uphold. Because of this, the UN is often called to action and needed to assist in nations where crises are breaking out. The UN uses its subsidiary bodies (eg. the UNSC and UNHRC) to create policies stemming from multifaceted reasoning to tackle issues holistically – for example, the World Food Organisation got involved in the North Korean crisis by providing food while more politically-inclined subsidiaries took a more democratic approach to the DPRK and tried to negotiate deals to alleviate stress caused by the crisis. The UN also takes action even when not incentivised by the specific nation housing the crisis and this is due to multiple conventions (eg. the Geneva Convention(s)), policies (eg. R2P) and other international humanitarian law which morally and somewhat-legally incentivises involvement. The UN creates policies through the various subsidiary bodies and uses political power to enable change and intervention too.