Why International Organisations?

Read the two cartoons on this page. Both the cartoons comment on the ineffectiveness of the United Nations Organisation, usually referred to as the UN, in the Lebanon crisis in 2006. Both the cartoons represent the kind of opinions that we often hear about the UN.

On the other hand, we also find that the UN is generally regarded as the most important international organisation in today’s world. In the eyes of many people all over the world, it is indispensable and represents the great hope of humanity for peace and progress. Why do we then need organisations like the UN? Let us hear two insiders:

“The United Nations was not created to take humanity to heaven, but to save it from hell.” — Dag Hammarskjold, the UN’s second Secretary-General.

“Talking shop? Yes, there are a lot of speeches and meetings at the U.N., especially during the annual sessions of the General Assembly. But as Churchill put it, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Isn’t it better to have one place where all… countries in the world can get together, bore each other sometimes with their words rather than bore holes into each other on the battlefield?” — Shashi Tharoor, the former UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

These two quotes suggest something important. International organisations are not the answer to everything, but they are important. International organi-sations help with matters of war and peace. They also help countries cooperate to make better living conditions for us all.

International organisations are helpful  in  another  way.  Nations can usually see that there are somethings  they  must  do  together.There  are  issues  that  are  so challenging that they can only bedealt with when everyone workstogether. Disease is an example.Some  diseases  can  only  be eradicated if everyone in the world cooperates  in  inoculating  or vaccinating their populations. Ortake   global   warming   and its  effects.  As  temperatures  risebecause  of  the  increase  ingreenhouse    gases    in    the atmosphere, there is a danger that sea  levels  will  also  rise,  there by submerging many coastal areas ofthe world including huge cities. Ofcourse,  each  country  can  try  to find its own solution to the effectsof global warming. But in the enda more effective approach is to stop the warming itself. This requires atleast  all  of  the  major  industrialpowers to cooperate.

Unfortunately, recognising the need for cooperation and actually cooperating are two different things. Nations can recognise the need to cooperate but cannot always agree on how best to do so, how to share the costs of cooperating, how to make sure that the benefits of cooperating are justly divided, and how to ensure that others do not break their end of the bargain and cheat on an agreement. An international organisation can help produce information and ideas about how to cooperate. It can provide mechanisms, rules and a bureaucracy, to help members have more confidence that costs will be shared properly, that the benefits will be fairly divided, and that once a member joins an agreement it will honour the terms and conditions of the agreement.

With the end of the Cold War, we can see that the UN may have a slightly different role. As the United States and its allies emerged victorious, there was concern amongst many governments and peoples that the Western countries led by the US would be so powerful that there would be no check against their wishes and desires. Can the UN serve to promote dialogue and discussion with the US in particular, and could it limit the power of the American government? We shall try to answer this question at the end of the chapter.

Evolution of the UN

The First World War encouraged the world to invest in an international organisation to deal with conflict. Many believed that such an organisation would help the world to avoid war. As a result, the League of Nations was born. However, despite its initial success, it could not prevent the Second World War (1939-45). Many more people died and were wounded in this war than ever before.

The UN was founded as a successor to the League of Nations. It was established in 1945 immediately after the Second World War. The organisation was set up through the signing of the United Nations Charter by 51 states. It tried to achieve what the League could not between the two world wars. The UN’s objective is to prevent international conflict and to facilitate cooperation among states. It was founded with the hope that it would act to stop the conflicts between states escalating into war and, if war broke out, to limit the extent of hostilities. Furthermore, since conflicts often arose from the lack of social and economic development, the UN was intended to bring countries together to improve the prospects of social and economic development all over the world.

By 2011, the UN had 193 member states. These includeed almost all independent states. In the UN General Assembly, all members have one vote each. In the UN Security Council, there are five permanent members. These are: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. These states were selected as permanent members as they were the most powerful immediately after the Second World War and because they constituted the victors in the War.

The UN’s most visible public figure, and the representative head, is the Secretary-General. The present Secretary-General is António Guterres. He is the ninth Secretary-General of the UN. He took over as the Secretary-General on 1 January 2017. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal (1995-2002) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2005-2015).

The UN consists of many different structures and agencies. War and peace and differences between member states are discussed in the General Assembly as well as the Security Council. Social and economic issues are dealt with by many agencies including the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Human Rights Commision (UNHRC), the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), among others

Reform of the UN after the Cold War

Reform and improvement are fundamental to any organisation to serve the needs of a changing environment. The UN is no exception. In recent years, there have been demands for reform of the world body. However, there is little clarity and consensus on the nature of reform.

Two basic kinds of reforms face the UN: reform of the organisation’s structures and processes; and a review of the issues that fall within the jurisdiction of the organisation. Almost everyone is agreed that both aspects of reform are necessary. What they cannot agree on is precisely what is to be done, how it is to be done, and when it is to be done.

On the reform of structures and processes, the biggest discussion has been on the functioning of the Security Council. Related to this has been the demand for an increase in the UN Security Council’s permament and non-permanent membership so that the realities of contemporary world politics are better reflected in the structure of the organisation. In particular, there are proposals to increase membership from Asia, Africa and South America. Beyond this, the US and other Western countries want improvements in the UN’s budgetary procedures and its administration.

On the issues to be given greater priority or to be brought within the jurisdiciton of the UN, some countries and experts want the organisation to play a greater or more effective role in peace and security missions, while others want its role to be confined to development and humanitarian work (health, education, environment, population control, human rights, gender and social justice).

Let us look at both sets of reforms, with an emphasis on reform of the structures and processes.

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, launches UN @ 70 to celebrate the 70th Anniversary in New Delhi in 2015 (UN Photo/Mark Garten)

The UN was established in 1945 immediately after the Second World War. The way it was organised and the way it functioned reflected the realities of world politics after the Second World War. After the Cold War, those realities are different. Here are some of the changes that have occurred:

In this situation, in 1989, as the Cold War was ending, the question facing the world was: is the UN doing enough? Is it equipped to do what is required? What should it be doing? And how? What reforms are necessary to make it work better? For the past decade and a half, member states have been trying to find satisfactory and practical answers to these questions.

Reform of structures and processes

While the case for reform has widespread support, getting agreement on what to do is difficult. Let us examine the debate over reform of the UN Security Council. In 1992, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution. The resolution reflected three main complaints:

• The Security Council no longer represents contemporary political realities.
• Its decisions reflect only Western values and interests and are dominated by a few powers.
• It lacks equitable representation.
• In view of these growing demands for the restructuring of the UN, on 1 January 1997, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan initiated an inquiry into how the UN should be reformed. How, for instance, should new Security Council members be chosen?

In the years since then, the following are just some of the criteria that have been proposed for new permanent and non-permanent members of the Security Council. A new member, it has been suggested, should be:

• A major economic power
• A major military power
• A substantial contributor to the UN budget
• A big nation in terms of its population
• A nation that respects democracy and human rights
• A country that would make the Council more representative of the world’s diversity in terms of geography, economic systems, and culture

Clearly, each of these criteria has some validity. Governments saw advantages in some criteria and disadvantages in others depending on their interests and aspirations. Even if they had no desire to be members themselves, countries could see that the criteria were problematic. How big an economic or military power did you have to be to qualify for Security Council membership? What level of budget contribution would enable a state to buy its way into the Council? Was a big population an asset or a liability for a country trying to play a bigger role in the world? If respect for democracy and human rights was the criteria, countries with excellent records would be in line to be members; but would they be effective as Council members?

Furthermore, how was the matter of representation to be resolved? Did equitable representation in geographical terms mean that there should be one seat each from Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean? Should the representation, on the other hand, be by regions or sub-regions (rather than continents)? Why should the issue of equitable representation be decided by geography? Why not by levels of economic development? Why not, in other words, give more seats to members of the developing world? Even here, there are difficulties. The developing world consists of countries at many different levels of development. What about culture? Should different cultures or ‘civilisations’ be given representation in a more balanced way? How does one divide the world by civilisations or cultures given that nations have so many cultural streams within their borders?

A related issue was to change the nature of membership altogether. Some insisted, for instance, that the veto power of the five permanent members be abolished. Many perceived the veto to be in conflict with the concept of democracy and sovereign equality in the UN and thought that the veto was no longer right or relevant.

In the Security Council, there are five permanent members and ten non-permanent members. The Charter gave the permanent members a privileged position to bring about stability in the world after the Second World War. The main privileges of the five permanent members are permanency and the veto power. The non-permanent members serve for only two years at a time and give way after that period to newly elected members. A country cannot be re-elected immediately after completing a term of two years. The non-permanent members are elected in a manner so that they represent all continents of the world.

Most importantly, the non-permanent members do not have the veto power. What is the veto power? In taking decisions, the Security Council proceeds by voting. All members have one vote. However, the permanent members can vote in a negative manner so that even if all other permanent and non-permanent members vote for a particular decision, any permanent member’s negative vote can stall the decision. This negative vote is the veto.

While there has been a move to abolish or modify the veto system, there is also a realisation that the permanent members are unlikely to agree to such a reform. Also, the world may not be ready for such a radical step even though the Cold War is over. Without the veto, there is the danger as in 1945 that the great powers would lose interest in the world body, that they would do what they pleased outside it, and that without their support and involvement the body would be ineffective.

Jurisdiction of the UN

The question of membership is a serious one. In addition, though, there are more substantial issues before the world. As the UN completed 60 years of its existence, the heads of all the member-states met in September 2005 to celebrate the anniversary and review the situation. The leaders in this meeting decided that the following steps should be taken to make the UN more relevant in the changing context.

• Creation of a Peacebuilding Commissio
• Acceptance of the responsibility of the international community in case of failures of national governments to protect their own citizens from atrocities
• Establishment of a Human Rights Council (operational since 19 June 2006)
• Agreements to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
• Condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations
• Creation of a Democracy Fund
• An agreement to wind up the Trusteeship Council

It is not hard to see that theseare equally contentious issues forthe    UN.    What    should    a Peace building  Commission  do?There are any number of conflictsall  over  the  world.  Which  ones should it intervene in? Is it possibleor even desirable for it to intervene in  each  and  every  conflict? Similarly, what is the responsibility of the international community in dealing with atrocities? What arehuman  rights  and  who  shoulddetermine  the  level  of  human rights violations and the course ofaction to be taken when they areviolated?  Given  that  so  manycountries  are  still  part  of  the developing world, how realistic isit  for  the  UN  to  achieve  anambitious  set  of  goals  such  asthose  listed  in  the  Sustainable Development Goals? Can there beagreement  on  a  definition  of terrorism? How shall the UN use funds to promote democracy? Andso on.

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan since 2003 has attracted empty promises by the International Community. How do you think the UN can intervene in situations like this? Would that require a change in its jurisdiction?

India and the UN Reforms

India has supported the restructuring of the UN on several grounds. It believes that a strengthened and revitalised UN is desirable in a changing world. India also supports an enhanced role for the UN in promoting development and cooperation among states. India believes that development should be central to the UN’s agenda as it is a vital precondition for the maintenance of international peace and security.

One of India’s major concerns has been the composition of the Security Council, which has remained largely static while the UN General Assembly member-ship has expanded considerably. India considers that this has harmed the representative character of the Security Council. It also argues that an expanded Council, with more representation, will enjoy greater support in the world community.

We should keep in mind that the membership of the UN Security Council was expanded from 11 to 15 in 1965. But, there was no change in the number of permanent members. Since then, the size of the Council has remained stationary. The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly members now are developing countries. Therefore, India argues that they should also have a role in shaping the decisions in the Security Council which affect them.

India supports an increase in the number of both permanent and non-permanent members. Its representatives have argued that the activities of the Security Council have greatly expanded in the past few years. The success of the Security Council’s actions depends upon the political support of the international community. Any plan for restructuring of the Security Council should, therefore, be broad-based. For example, the Security Council should have more developing countries in it.

Not surprisingly, India itself also wishes to be a permanent member in a restructured UN. India is the second most populous country in the world comprising almost one-fifth of the world population. Moreover, India is also the world’s largest democracy. India has participated in virtually all of the initiatives of the UN. Its role in the UN’s peacekeeping efforts is a long and substantial one. The country’s economic emergence on the world stage is another factor that perhaps justifies India’s claim to a permanent seat in the Security Council. India has also made regular financial contributions to the UN and never faltered on its payments. India is aware that permanent membership of the Security Council also has symbolic importance. It signifies a country’s growing importance in world affairs. This greater status is an advantage to a country in the conduct of its foreign policy: the reputation for being powerful makes you more influential.

Despite India’s wish to be a permanent veto-wielding member of the UN, some countries question its inclusion. Neighbouring Pakistan, with which India has troubled relations, is not the only country that is reluctant to see India become a permanent veto member of the Security Council. Some countries, for instance, are concerned about India’s nuclear weapons capabilities. Others think that its difficulties with Pakistan will make India ineffective as a permanent member.Yet others feel that if India is included, then other emerging powers will have to be accommodated such as Brazil, Germany, Japan, perhaps even South Africa, whom they oppose. There are those who feel that Africa and South America must be represented in any expansion of the permanent membership since those are the only continents not to have representation in the present structure. Given these concerns, it may not be very easy for India or anyone else to become a permanent member of the UN in the near future.

The UN in a Unipolar World

Among the concerns about the reform and restructuring of the UN has been the hope of some countries that changes could help the UN cope better with a unipolar word in which the US was the most powerful country without any serious rivals. Can the UN serve as a balance against US dominance? Can it help maintain a dialogue between the rest of the world and the US and prevent America from doing whatever it wants?

US power cannot be easily checked. First of all, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the US stands as the only superpower. Its military and economic power allow it to ignore the UN or any other international organisation.

Secondly, within the UN, the influence of the US is considerable. As the single largest contributor to the UN, the US has unmatched financial power. The fact that the UN is physically located within the US territory gives Washington additional sources of influence. The US also has many nationals in the UN bureaucracy. In addition, with its veto power the US can stop any moves that it finds annoying or damaging to its interests or the interests of its friends and allies. The power of the US and its veto within the organisation also ensure that Washington has a considerable degree of say in the choice of the Secretary General of the UN. The US can and does use this power to “split” the rest of the world and to reduce opposition to its policies.

The UN is not therefore a great balance to the US. Nevertheless, in a unipolar world in which the US is dominant, the UN can and has served to bring the US and the rest of the world into discussions over various issues. US leaders, in spite of their frequent criticism of the UN, do see the organisation as serving a purpose in bringing together over 190 nations in dealing with conflict and social and economic development. As for the rest of the world, the UN provides an arena in which it is possible to modify US attitudes and policies. While the rest of the world is rarely united against Washington, and while it is virtually impossible to “balance” US power, the UN does provide a space within which arguments against specific US attitudes and policies are heard and compromises and concessions can be shaped.

The UN is an imperfect body, but without it the world would be worse off. Given the growing connections and links between societies and issues—what we often call ‘interdependence’—it is hard to imagine how more than seven billion people would live together without an organisation such as the UN. Technology promises to increase planetary interdependence, and therefore the importance of the UN will only increase. Peoples and govern-ments will have to find ways of supporting and using the UN and other international organisations in ways that are consistent with their own interests and the interests of the international community more broadly.