‘The UN is now an outdated body.’ Discuss. (45 Marks)
The United Nations (UN) was set up at the end of World War II to maintain peace and security amongst states, the successor to the League of Nations. However, the UN has attracted a great deal of criticism, often based on the belief that it is an outdated body. However, such criticisms fail to take account of how the UN has adapted and developed since 1945.
There have been various allegations that the UN is outdated. Considerable criticism has focused on the make-up of the Security Council, which continues to reflect the great power politics of 1945, with the USA, Russia, China, the UK and France being permanent members with veto powers. Pressure to reform the Security Council has grown considerably, with suggestions that new permanent members should include either major economic powers and significant UN contributors such as Japan and Germany, or rising states that can represent a broader range of continents such as Brazil and South Africa. The UN has also been criticised because its budgetary position has historically been based on the ability to pay, creating tensions within and between the global North and the global South. Considerable resentment has grown up in the USA, the largest contributor to all the UN’s budgets, as it is confronted by a General Assembly in which all states have equal voting rights. On the other hand, this budgetary imbalance has led to allegations that economically developed states are more favourably dealt with by the UN. A further line of criticism is that the UN largely operates as an intergovernmental body, which has very few means of enforcing its decisions and bringing transgressors into line. In that sense, the UN was formed by great powers that did not want it to develop the kind of authority which might limit their freedom of manoeuvre in the future. In an interconnected world in which challenges increasingly have a transnational if not global dimension, such weak intergovernmentalism may no longer be appropriate. This has been illustrated by the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and by difficulties in the UN carrying out its peacekeeping role.
On the other hand, the UN can also be defended. In relation to peacekeeping, its primary limitations are not so much internal as ones that stem from the politics of great power rivalry. Nevertheless, after the end of the Cold War the UN supported the trend towards humanitarian intervention, responding to the rise of interdependence and underlining the importance of human rights in global politics. Indeed, the UN has remained remarkably up-to-date in its willingness to expand its agenda and broaden its concerns, especially in relation to economic and social questions. This can be seen in global conferences that have been arranged to address pressing problems such as the environment and development (Rio, 1992), human rights (Vienna, 1993), population (Cairo, 1994), women’s issues (Beijing, 1995) and so on. The UN makes a major contribution to facilitating cooperation on development issues, by, for examples, its Human Development Reports and, since 2000, by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In these ways, the UN, despite limited resources, has responded to a growing sense of interdependence and the globalisation of human concerns.