Effectiveness of United Nations - Essay Example

?Effectiveness of United Nations Established on 26 June 1945 in the aftermath of World War II, United Nations is now an organization with sixty five years of existence on the globe. Beside social, economic, and humanitarian issues, the chief motivation and rationale behind its foundation was to achieve the global peace and stability. Therefore, human progress and prosperity along with peace and security can be safely declared as the measuring yard for the effectiveness of the United Nation. This is what the United Nations charter talks about, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.” (UN Charter, 2011). The charter is the plays a pivotal role in the existence and growth of organizations and they either cease to exist or lose their effectiveness if they fail to keep pace with founding principles and charters. The best example of this universal law is the extinction of League of Nations, established after World War I to extend peace and cooperation among nations, but couldn’t put off the World War II. The Treaty of Versailles states the rationale behind the existence of League of Nation as, "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security." (United Nations, 2011). Therefore, the efficacy and worth of United Nations can be measured in terms of the peace and security it brings to the nations and humanity. However, it does not mean in letter or sprit that the efforts of United Nations to bring prosperity and value to humanity does not conform and contribute to its worth and effectiveness. One of the important components of the UN charter is stated as, “To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” (UN Charter, 2011). In the light of aforesaid, a discussion is carried out over the effectiveness of United Nations in the resolution of social and political crisis that happened to strike the humanity in the recent past. On the brighter side of the issue we can deduce that United Nations has successfully avoided the emergence of World War III despite the occurrence of the incidents that have a full potential of engaging nations into a gigantic conflict. May it be a cold war scenario or the terrorist attacks on twin towers of USA. United Nations has tackled raging and roaring national sentiments and channelized them to achieve the objectives of global peace and security to some extend if not to a desirable level. The effectiveness of United Nations in the War against Terror was pivotal as far the out breaking of a wider conflict is concerned, but its role as a free global organization was widely questioned because of American influence on the Security Council’s resolutions. Apart from the diplomatic pressures exercised on the member states to achieve unanimity of stance against an enemy quite vague and unknown until nine-eleven, the war against terror and al Qaeda was instigated at quite large scale. The Afghanistan was declared as the chief suspect of the al Qaeda and its leadership hideout and safe heaven. However, today after about ten years of all-out efforts to eliminate al Qaeda and terrorism, which are more often than not taken as synonyms, the war against terror could not meet a successful end. Thus, has raised several questions on the effectiveness of Security Council’s resolutions for the use of power in the region. This is what official US reports suggests, “By early 2011, senior leaders, including the Commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), General David Petraeus, were pointing to discrete progress on the ground, though noting that such progress was still “fragile and reversible”.” (Dale, 2011). The war against terror despite its enormous support from member states in the Security Council has challenged the effectiveness of UN to avoid such a prolonged war. The worst side of this crisis is the absence of a declared result and measureable success in terms of international peace, security and stability. The proclaimed successful achievement of military objectives by American and allied forces in the region could not deliver the chief objectives of the United Nations, the peace and stability in the region and the elimination of Al-Qaida and Taliban factor from world politics. In a Unipolar world today, the United Nations has an important and much more difficult role to play for the resolution of political conflicts than those of socio-economic crisis and natural disasters. Keeping itself from obvious inclinations and influences was not an easy ask even in the times of cold war when there was a balancing factor available to the United Nations and the American influence on its decisions was not as much evident as of today. The growing US influence over the major political conflicts and crises that came under discussion on the floor of United Nations has not only made UN effectiveness questionable but also dubious as a free representative of nations. Similarly, the long standing issues like Palestine, Indian held Kashmir, Georgia and Cypress etc. have marred the effectiveness of United Nations. The same is observed by Malone, “Within the UN Community, there is a widespread belief that complex pattern of tradeoffs has been worked out over the years. This may explain, for example, why the Council remains remarkably passive about long standing issues on which no obvious progress has been made, despite years of resolutions and statements issued by the council.” (Malone, p. 259, 2004) However, the role of United Nations in the natural disasters and crises like floods, earthquakes and other humanitarian assistants are not only effective but also admirable. May it be a Tsunami of Indonesia or Japan, peace keeping efforts in Congo, Serbia, and other states, floods in Pakistan or Australia and earthquake in any part of the world UN have set many examples of effective crisis management. Beside help and assistance extended by UN in natural disasters, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), World Food Program (WFP), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) are some other major organization providing crisis management assistance to the world under the umbrella of United Nations. The criticism for this scale of efforts is always possible because of organizational and procedural delays but the fact of the matter is that United Nations has launched a lot of benchmark performances in the domains of human resource development and protection. The international mandate of UN for crisis management provides this organization with a splendid opportunity of integrating and concentrating the international efforts in case of the any crisis may it be natural or otherwise. This requires an enormous amount of work to be done before the world is faced with a new challenge and a compact and smart organization to respond such challenges. The crisis management by various entities, funds and programs of United Nations have contributed a lot on standardizing such efforts. The far reaching, evenhanded and sizeable UN efforts in times of social and human crisis have gone a far way in effective management of crisis. Organizing and coordinating international efforts have further strengthened the effectiveness of UN in times of crisis. “The comparative advantage of the UN is based on its very nature and mandate that make it in principle an impartial agent without hidden political, economic or commercial agenda.” (Theisohn, 2007). The contributions of international community towards enhancing effectiveness of responses from UN over the past several decades have enabled this organization to set even more ambitious targets for its future operational effectiveness because with such a huge support and mandate there remains no justification for a poorly managed effort in times of crisis. The UN is striving hard to enhance its effectiveness in terms of reaching out to the people caught in catastrophic situations and to bring peace and comfort to humanity. The UN effectiveness may be questioned many a times justly but we have to bear in mind that anyhow it remains a human effort where a scope of improvement and enhancement is always conceivable. References Dale, Cathrine 2011, War in Afghanistan: Strategy, Operations, and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Reports of Congress, viewed 03 April, 2011, Malone M, David 2004, The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, USA Theisohn, Thomas 2007, Towards enhancing the effectiveness of the UN system in supporting capacity development: Background study to the TCPR 2007, viewed 03 April, 2011, UN Charter 2001, Charter of United Nations: Preamble, We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined viewed 05 April, 2011, United Nations 2011, United Nations Charter (1945), Our Documents, viewed 05 April, 2011, Read More