Now, I became very familiar with many issues that are taking place in the world currently, however I was questioning myself who is responsible for the things which are happening. Fortunately, I got the answering during this week’s lecture which was delivered by Omar Faruq. The main actors are the world leaders, and UN is the biggest platform where they all meet to change the world into a better place. In this essay, I will briefly describe the structure of the UN, its aims and roles and in the next reflection I will examine how far UN achieved it missions specially peace keeping.
UN was established after the World War II aiming to prevent future wars and restore peace and tranquility in the world. It was established because of the failure of the League of Nations. League of Nations was the first big organization in which was established to keep peace after the First World War. However, due to some reason, it failed and could do nothing to stop the eruption of the Second World War. Thus, UN was created to replace the failed league and keep peace and promote international relations among its members. It consisted of 194 states and each state is represented in the UN by its government. It has several bodies which make it easier to function and the two most important ones are The General Assembly and The Security Council. The General Assembly is the principal political organ of the United Nations and has the most comprehensive functions. All 193 UN member states are represented in the General Assembly, and all have the same rights.
The General Assembly is the only plenary organ and thus occupies an exceptional political position which makes it the pivot for all the UN’s activities. The Security Council works under article 24 of the UN charter which bears it the the responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. It endeavors to prevent, contain and settle conflicts which pose a threat to peace. The Security Council meets this obligation almost exclusively by negotiating and adopting texts. Since this council consists of the driving countries of the UN, they have the ability to use Veto power to dismiss or accept an issue. The other bodies include Secretariat with the Secretary-General, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice and Trusteeship Council. They also do important task for the organizations which are aimed to improve the living standards of the member states. In addition to the principal organs, there are a multitude of subsidiary organs, special organizations, specialized agencies and other intergovernmental institutions, which, for the most part, were established after the founding of the United Nations in 1945.
UN has done a lot to improve peace and promoted the cooperation among the states. It has also done huge improvements in the fields of health and social well-being. It constantly provides help to those who are suffering from natural disasters such as earth quakes or manmade disasters such as wars. It has also achieved to solve conflicts and developed friendly relations between nations. It has done great job eliminate poverty, disease and illiteracy in the world. Despite doing such a huge efforts to change the world into a better place, UN still needs a improvements in many ways. It is really shame for a world organization like UN to claim they are doing enough while the suffering and the problems of the world is increasing. In my view, this is caused by the fact the UN is run by the powerful countries which want to manipulate it the way they want.
For example, US used veto power, when deciding the Palestine future. They clearly supported Israel to continue its occupation and killing of the civilians. Of course, no country has agreed and it was very illogic to accept Israeli treatment to Palestinians. Another example which showings that UN is not even close to achieve its missions is, it is proved that aid given to many countries specially medical ones are infected with HIV and I witnessed this in one of the hospitals in my country. The doctors found that a needles used for checking HIV, were infected with HIV. This shows that though UN claims it’s there to serve for the human beings, there is a big motive behind its existence. Therefore, I contend that UN is not for all, and for this reason it is ignoring some important issues that are happening in the world.
I will not deny that UN has spared no effort in improving the living standard of the world population, and it saved millions of lives from wars, conflicts and disasters. However, it is not the right thing for the UN to claim they are doing their best, and as the largest organization in the world they have try to do much more better than this. This can only be achieved if UN applies its aims truly and overcome the manipulations of the powerful member states. We dream and expect a better UN where the people from powerful countries and the ones from the weak nations have the same rights in decision making and development plans.
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