The gruesome devastation of World War II made many countries acutely realise the paramount importance of peace in modern day politics. It was the commitment of many countries to maintain international security and peace that eventually gave birth to the idea of the United Nations. Eventually, the United Nations was constituted as an international body to facilitate development process, peaceful resolution of conflicts and maintaining of human rights.

In 2005, the UN celebrates its 60th year. Though, the UN came into effect on 24 Oct 1945, its genesis traces back still further. President Franklin Roosevelt, along with leaders of 26 Allied countries, first coined the term United Nations to describe their continued fight against the Axis powers. On 01 January 1942, 26 nations of the Allies gathered in Washington DC to sign the ‘Declaration by United Nations’. After World War II, however, the Allies extended the ambit of the term to include a worldwide body of nations.

The first blueprint of the UN was drafted at a conference organised by the US at the Dumbarton Oaks Estate in Washington DC in 1944. Besides the US, it was attended by Britain, the Soviet Union and China. They were termed as the ‘four horsemen’, who were later joined by France in declaring themselves as the five permanent members of the Security Council. The UN Charter, which was adopted on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, was very much similar to the Dumbarton Oaks blueprint. Today, the UN has come a long, long way and its initial list of member-countries has increased from 51 to 191. The massive decolonisation of the 60s and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a rapid growth in UN membership. Newly independent colonies turned countries in the 60s, eventually resulted in a major representation of third world countries at the General Assembly. Presently, except the Vatican City and Taiwan, all independent countries of the world are within the ambit of UN membership. The most recent members are Switzerland and Timor-Leste (East Timor), joining the UN in 2002.

The UN is based on six principal organs, part of what is collectively called the United Nations System:

• UN General Assembly

• UN Security Council

• UN Economic and Social Council

• UN Trusteeship Council (suspended operations in 1994)

• UN Secretariat

• International Court of Justice

The General Assembly has representatives from all 191 member states, each with one vote. For any major decision, two-thirds majority is required and for other regular decisions a simple majority is enough. However, what makes General Assembly a toothless tiger is that its decisions are not binding on UN members.

The Security Council is the most important and potent organ of the UN. Its decisions are binding on all UN members. It comprises 15 member-states, with 5 of them being permanent with veto rights. The UK, France, China, USA and Russia hold this exclusive power. Ten of the states are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms. Talks of India’s—and other frontrunners such as Brazil, Germany and Japan’s— aspirations for a permanent seat in the Security Council are rife in the media.

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, 18 of whom are elected each year by the General Assembly for a three-year term. Viewed separate from the specialized bodies it coordinates, ECOSOC’s functions, like those of other UN organs, include information gathering, advising member nations, and making recommendations. In addition, ECOSOC is well-positioned to provide policy coherence and coordinate the overlapping functions of the UN’s subsidiary bodies; it is in these roles that it is most active.

The Trusteeship Council was established to help ensure that non-self-governing territories were administered in the best interests of the inhabitants and of international peace and security. The trust territories— most of them former mandates of the League of Nations or territories taken from nations defeated at the end of World War II—have all now attained self-government or independence, either as separate nations or by joining neighboring independent countries. The last was Palau, which became a member of the UN in December 1994. Its mission fulfilled, the Trusteeship Council suspended its operation on 01 November 1994, and although under the UN Charter it continues to exist on paper, its future role and even existence remains uncertain. However, the formal elimination of the Trusteeship Council would require the revision of the UN Charter.

The Secretariat constitutes the body of international staff, servicing other principal organs of the UN. It is headed by the Secretary-General, who is appointed by the General Assembly on a five-year term, on the recommendation of the Security Council. The term is renewable. The Secretariat constitutes the international staff working in UN’s duty stations across the globe and they carry out the diverse nature of the day-to-day work of the UN. These range from administering peacekeeping operations to mediating international disputes, from surveying economic and social trends and problems to preparing studies on human rights and sustainable development.

The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the UN. Its seat is at The Hague, the Netherlands, and it comprises a team of 15 judges, who are elected for nine years by absolute majority, by the UN General Assembly and Security Council, sitting independently of each other. Elections are held every three years for one-third of the seats, and retiring judges may be re-elected.  The members of the court do not represent their governments but are independent magistrates. The court serves a dual purpose.  It settles legal disputes submitted to it by member-states, in accordance with international law, and gives advisory opinions on legal questions, referred to it by duly authorized international organs and agencies.

Over the years, the UN has achieved some noteworthy successes. The Montreal Protocol in 1987; a treaty for the protection of the Ozone layer and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996 deserve special mentions. It has also facilitated in democratisation of the political process in Cambodia (1993), South Africa (1994) and East Timor (2000), and provided many developing and underdeveloped countries with international aid and support, which has alleviated the incidence of poverty and starvation to some degree.

However, the UN has suffered its share of setbacks. Though, since its early days the UN has been making efforts to curb the outbreak of war, it has seldom met with success. In its very first resolution on 24 January 1946, the General Assembly had emphasized on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, but as its resolutions had no legal force, the pile of nuclear weapons continued. Eventually, the cold war led to an arms race by the then superpowers. But, despite the international body not being able to break the ice of the cold war, credit must go to the UN for preventing the cold war from turning ‘hot’.

Now, in a unipolar world, the arms race has subsided to some extent, but the hegemony of the US in global politics has increased manifold. As in the cold war era, the role of the UN here has not been entirely successful. It has not been able to control Uncle Sam’s ambition of becoming the world’s policeman. It was believed by many optimists that the end of cold war in 1989 would help the UN to function more effectively, but the reality is otherwise. For example, a more proactive and firm UN could have prevented the recent US war on Iraq in 2003. The UN Security Council had refused to endorse the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but Washington and London did have the temerity to ignore the UN and go ahead with their military operations. The event sadly reflected the UN’s role in today’s unipolar world. Eventually, the US managed to drag the UN into this war for all the wrong reasons. Two months after the outbreak of the war, Security Council Resolution 1483 was adopted. Following this, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed a Special Representative for Iraq, and the UN assumed minor responsibilities there, which not only sullied the UN’s international image, as it got identified with the war, but also resulted in the killing of 15 UN staff by the bombing of its Baghdad headquarters in August 2003. Thereafter, though the UN pulled out of Iraq in February 2004, US pressure again induced the UN to send a mission to Iraq, to help construct a new interim government.

Probably, the UN’s silent acceptance of US arm twisting can be attributed to the fact that the US is the largest contributor to the UN budget, besides of course being a permanent member of the Security Council. The UN’s regular budget for 2004 was US$1.5 billion, of which the US contribution was assessed at US$363 million.

There have been other blots too in the UN’s, by and large, benign image. The UN’s handling of the civil war in Bosnia and nation-building process in Somalia crisis also came in for a lot of international flak. And neither has the UN been able to chalk out a solution to the chronic Palestinian imbroglio nor could it prevent the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Kofi Annan did agree that “in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda….” It is true that the UN has been continuing its struggle for peace across the globe, but in this regard, it has had to resort to war many a time. Such is the irony of international politics. Since 1945, the UN has carried out 59 peacekeeping missions across the globe in which soldiers from 130 countries have been deployed. Countries are reimbursed by the UN at the rate of US$1,000 per solider per month, which for some economically deprived countries, can make a substantial contribution to military budgets.

Nevertheless, despite failures, the UN’s role in the new world order cannot be underestimated. The effectiveness of the UN has gone through many tests and trials these six decades—the four-decade long cold war being the chief among them—but is still the paramount international body to which countries can turn to for resolution of international political tensions and conflicts, curbing of global terrorism, restoration of human rights and alleviation of poverty and hunger. Besides striving for global peace, over the last six decades, the UN has voiced its concerns over a large number of socio-political and economic issues of immense global significance.

The drive to eliminate the ugly vestiges of apartheid, prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, and promotion of human rights and gender sensitivity are only some of its areas of operations where it has moved ahead with the twin forces of diplomatic negotiation and affirmative action. Thankfully, debate, dialogue and consensus are its main weapons in this increasingly violent world. Succinctly, over the years, the UN has emerged as the platform of socio-political conscience for this global village.

In fact, the body has assumed even greater relevance in the aftermath of 9/11 and the twin aggressions on Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN can play a crucial role in addressing the mounting tensions between the United States and the Islamic world, which if unchecked, can snowball into a modern crusade of sorts. And it is the UN that has the means to bridge the yawning economic gap between the developed and underdeveloped countries through its assorted development programmes, in this highly unequal world, where opulence and privation co-exist.

The UN recently framed eight millennium development goals, which broadly include eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promotion of gender equality and empowering of women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and evolving a global partnership for development. The UN has an ambitious target of achieving all these by 2015.

However, some reforms in the UN are the need of the hour, which will help to keep it in tune with the needs of the changing times. Many diplomatic heavyweights like Kofi Annan and US Ambassador John Bolton agree that reforms are overdue in the UN. However, views on what the reforms should be differ. Annan wants more muscle to the UN, which can guarantee human rights and help it stand firmly enough against atrocities within member-states and fight poverty more effectively. Bolton on the other hand has proposed a plethora of amendments to Annan’s reform package. He doesn’t want terrorism to be defined in any other way than is desired by the US and calls for a more lean and accountable UN bureaucracy.