Chapter 13: History: United Nations
On the morning of 25 April 1945, delegates from fifty nations walked into an opera house in San Francisco. The war in Europe had not yet ended; it would end a fortnight later. In the Pacific it was still being fought. They had come to write the charter of a new world organisation. Its aims were settled quickly. Peace, security, cooperation — nobody argued much about those. The hard argument was about power. Who would be able to stop the new organisation from acting? The five strongest of the victorious powers — the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, China and France — wanted permanent seats on its executive body, and the right to block any decision they disliked. Delegates from smaller states objected. An organisation in which some members could never be overruled, they argued, was not an organisation of equals. The smaller states lost that argument, and then accepted the loss. Their reasoning was practical rather than contented. The League of Nations had failed partly because the strongest states stayed outside it, or walked out of it. A new body built without the great powers inside would probably fail the same way. The Charter was signed on 26 June 1945. India, still under British rule, was among the fifty delegations that signed it. The United Nations formally came into existence on 24 October 1945. The bargain struck in that opera house is still the shape of the organisation today.
Diagram
Fig. 13.0-1 Caption: Delegates of fifty nations signed the United Nations Charter at San Francisco in June 1945. Brief: Source an archival photograph of the signing of the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference, June 1945. Label the year and the place. Emphasise the queue of delegations waiting to sign, not any single leader.
13.1 Why The United Nations Was Founded
Between 1914 and 1945 the world fought two general wars within a single lifetime. The second ended with cities in ruins across Europe and Asia, and with millions dead, displaced or without work.
The leaders who met while the fighting was still going on did not simply want peace. They wanted machinery that could keep the peace after they were gone, and that would be stronger than the machinery built in 1920.
That machinery is the United Nations. Its founding treaty is the Charter, the document that sets out the organisation’s aims, its organs, and the rules its members accept when they join.
What Pushed The World To Try Again
Five pressures, working together, explain why the organisation was built when it was.
The cost of two world wars. The wars killed and disabled enormous numbers of people, emptied treasuries, and left whole populations homeless. Governments concluded that a third such war could destroy far more than territory.
The failure of the League of Nations. The League had been created after the First World War to prevent exactly what happened in 1939, and it did not prevent it. A body with greater authority was wanted in its place.
The fear of a third world war. The settlement after the First World War had left resentments that helped cause the second. Leaders feared the same pattern repeating a third time.
The division of the world into two blocs. As the war ended, states were grouping around the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. A bloc is a group of states acting together in world affairs. The two distrusted each other deeply, and a neutral meeting place was needed where their disputes could be argued out.
The arrival of weapons of mass destruction. Atom bombs were used at the end of the war, and other states at once began working towards similar weapons.
The fifth of these changed the argument most sharply, because it changed what losing a war could mean.
13.1.1 What The League Of Nations Could Not Do
The League of Nations was set up in 1920, after the First World War, to settle disputes between states by discussion rather than by force. It rested on collective security — the idea that an attack on one member is treated as a threat to all members, who then act together against the aggressor.
The idea was sound. The League’s construction was not, and its weaknesses are worth naming precisely, because the Charter of 1945 was written to answer them.
Important states stood outside it. The United States never joined, although an American President had pressed hardest for the League’s creation.
Members could simply leave. Japan and Germany withdrew in 1933, and Italy in 1937, each after being criticised for its actions.
Decisions needed the agreement of all. A single objection could stop the League from acting at all.
It had no armed force of its own. It could recommend and it could condemn, but it depended entirely on member states to carry anything out.
When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, and when Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the League condemned both and stopped neither. It ceased to function when war broke out in 1939, and was formally wound up in 1946, its assets and some of its work passing to the new organisation.
Historians disagree about how much blame the League itself deserves. Some argue the design was fatally weak from the start. Others argue that no design could have worked while the strongest states were unwilling to enforce it. The evidence — the withdrawals, the unanimity rule, the absence of the United States — is used by both sides.
13.1.2 The Charter And The Founding At San Francisco
The new organisation was designed while the war was still being fought. The name came first: on 1 January 1942, twenty-six states fighting the Axis powers signed the Declaration by United Nations in Washington, pledging to fight on together. The phrase stuck.
In 1944, at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, officials of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China drew up detailed proposals for the organisation’s structure. At Yalta, in February 1945, the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed how voting in its executive body would work. The order of these steps is set out in the timeline.
The conference that wrote the final text met at San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June 1945. Fifty delegations signed the Charter on the closing day; Poland, unable to send a delegation in time, signed in October, making fifty-one original members in all. India, then still under British rule, was among the original members.
Signing was not the end of it. Each state then had to complete ratification — formal approval of a treaty by a state’s own government, under its own law, which turns a signature into a binding commitment.
The Charter took effect on 24 October 1945, once the five permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other signatories had ratified it. That date is now marked each year as United Nations Day.
Membership has grown from fifty-one to 193 states. Almost every recognised state in the world now belongs, the most recent to be admitted being South Sudan in 2011. Members are admitted by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council, so both bodies must agree before any state joins.
13.2 The Objectives And Principles Of The United Nations
An organisation of independent states cannot be told what to do. It can only be given aims its members agree to pursue, and rules its members agree to follow. The Charter therefore begins by stating both.
The aims appear twice over. They are announced in the Preamble — the opening statement of a document, which sets out why it was made — and then set down precisely in Article 1. The rules of conduct follow in Article 2.
The Preamble is the only part of the Charter written in the voice of ordinary people rather than of governments, and it says plainly what the war had taught its authors.
The phrase ‘twice in our lifetime’ is doing real work here. It tells the reader that the founders were not designing against war in the abstract. They were designing against a failure they had themselves watched happen.
13.2.1 The Main Objectives Of The United Nations
Article 1 of the Charter states the purposes of the organisation. There are four.
To maintain international peace and security. This includes taking collective measures to prevent and remove threats to peace, and to suppress acts of aggression — an aggression being an armed attack by one state on another.
To develop friendly relations among nations, based on respect for the equal rights of peoples and for self-determination — the principle that a people should decide its own political status and government rather than have one imposed from outside.
To achieve international cooperation in solving problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian kind, and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in reaching these common ends.
The fourth objective is easily skipped over, and it is the one that describes what the organisation does on most days. The United Nations is not a world government and cannot legislate for anybody. It is a place where states bring their positions, argue, and are pushed towards a common line.
The organisation’s later work is often summed up in three words — disarm, decolonise, develop. These are not the words of Article 1. They describe the three tasks that in fact took up much of its energy after 1945: limiting armaments, supporting the movement of colonies to independence, and raising living standards in poorer countries.
13.2.2 The Principles The Members Accept
The objectives say what the organisation is for. The principles in Article 2 say how members and the organisation must behave while pursuing them. There are seven.
The organisation rests on the sovereign equality of all its members — every member state controls its own affairs, and each counts as one state regardless of its size, wealth or armed strength.
Members must fulfil in good faith the obligations they have taken on under the Charter.
Members must settle their international disputes by peaceful means.
Members must refrain from the threat or use of force against any state.
Members must give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes under the Charter.
The organisation must ensure that states which are not members act in accordance with these principles, so far as is necessary for international peace and security.
The United Nations shall not intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state — that is, in a country’s internal affairs.
The last two sit uneasily together with the first. A body that must influence non-members, and that promises not to reach inside members, has drawn itself a boundary that is argued over constantly.
13.3 The General Assembly
All the organs of the United Nations sit at its headquarters in New York, in the United States, with one exception — the International Court of Justice, which sits at The Hague in the Netherlands.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations. A deliberative body is one whose work is discussion and decision by debate, rather than administration or enforcement.
It is the only organ in which every member state sits, and the only one in which the smallest state has exactly the same vote as the largest. Whatever the organisation collectively thinks on a question, it is here that the thinking is done out loud.
13.3.1 Composition Of The General Assembly
Every member of the United Nations is a member of the General Assembly. A state may send up to five representatives, but the delegation together casts one vote.
The Assembly meets in regular session once a year. The session opens on the Tuesday of the third week in September, and its main part usually runs to the third week of December.
At the start of each regular session the Assembly elects a President, along with twenty-one Vice-Presidents and the chairs of its six Main Committees. The presidency rotates each year among five regional groups of states, so that no region holds it repeatedly: African States; Asian States; Eastern European States; Latin American and Caribbean States; and Western European and Other States.
Special sessions can also be called. The Secretary-General convenes them at the request of the Security Council, or at the request of a majority of the members.
How The Assembly Decides
The Assembly works by voting, and it uses two different thresholds depending on how serious the question is.
Important questions need a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These include recommendations on peace and security, the election of the non-permanent members of the Security Council, the admission of new members, the suspension or expulsion of a member, and budgetary questions.
All other questions are decided by a simple majority of members present and voting.
A decision of the Assembly is expressed as a resolution — a formal statement of decision or opinion, adopted by vote and issued in the body’s own name.
On international questions, these resolutions are recommendations. No government is legally obliged to obey one. What they carry instead is the weight of declared world opinion, which is a real pressure on a state that finds itself in a minority of one or two.
On the organisation’s own affairs the position is different. When the Assembly approves the budget and apportions the contributions among members, that decision binds them.
13.3.2 Functions Of The General Assembly
The Charter gives the Assembly a wide field to discuss, and a narrower field in which it can act. Its main functions are these.
To discuss any question within the scope of the Charter, or affecting the powers of any organ of the United Nations, and to make recommendations on it.
To consider and make recommendations on cooperation in maintaining international peace and security.
To initiate studies and make recommendations promoting international political, economic, social and cultural cooperation.
To make recommendations for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
To receive and consider reports from the Security Council and the other organs.
To consider and approve the budget of the United Nations, and to apportion its expenses among the members.
To elect the non-permanent members of the Security Council and the members of the Economic and Social Council, and, voting separately from the Security Council, to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.
To appoint the Secretary-General, on the recommendation of the Security Council.
To admit new members, on the recommendation of the Security Council.
Admission shows how the two main organs are locked together, since neither can enlarge the organisation on its own. The steps are set out in the flowchart below.
Flowchart
FC 13.1 — How A State Is Admitted To The United Nations Caption: The procedure by which a state becomes a member, which requires both main organs to agree. Nodes: Applicant state applies to the Secretary-General, declaring that it accepts the obligations of the Charter → the application goes to the Security Council → the Council votes on a recommendation → if the recommendation carries, the application goes to the General Assembly → the Assembly admits the state by a two-thirds majority of members present and voting → the state takes its seat as a member; but if the Council does not recommend admission, whether for want of the required votes or because a permanent member votes against, the Assembly cannot admit the state.
The chain runs one way only. A state that wins wide support in the Assembly still cannot enter unless the Council has first recommended it, which places the decision in the hands of a much smaller body.
One Limit, And One Way Round It
There is a further limit on the Assembly’s reach. While the Security Council is exercising its Charter functions over a particular dispute or situation, the Assembly may not make a recommendation on that dispute unless the Council asks it to. The two organs are not meant to issue rival instructions in the same crisis.
That limit assumes the Council is working. In November 1950 the Assembly adopted the Uniting for Peace resolution to deal with the case where it is not.
13.4 The Security Council
The General Assembly can debate anything and decide almost nothing. The Security Council is its opposite: a small body with a narrow subject and real power over it.
The Charter gives the Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It is the executive body of the United Nations — the organ that acts, rather than the organ that deliberates.
Because a crisis does not wait for September, the Council is organised to sit at any hour. It functions continuously, and each member state must keep a representative at the headquarters at all times, so that the Council can be convened without delay.
13.4.1 Composition Of The Security Council
The Council has fifteen members, held on two entirely different terms.
Five are permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These were the principal victorious powers of 1945, and the Russian seat is the one formerly held by the Soviet Union. They are not elected and their seats do not expire.
Ten are non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for a term of two years by a two-thirds majority. A retiring member cannot be re-elected immediately, so the seats keep circulating.
The ten elected seats are shared out by region, so that no part of the world is left unrepresented: five go to African and Asian states, two to Latin American and Caribbean states, two to Western European and other states, and one to an Eastern European state. In practice the five African and Asian seats are divided three to Africa and two to Asia. Figure 13.4-1 shows how the fifteen seats are made up.
Diagram
Fig. 13.4-1 Caption: The fifteen seats of the Security Council, five held permanently and ten elected by region. Brief: Draw a ring of fifteen seats. Shade the five permanent seats in one colour and label them China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States. Shade the ten elected seats in a second colour, grouped and labelled by region — Africa and Asia 5, Latin America and Caribbean 2, Western European and other 2, Eastern Europe 1. Add a small note that elected seats change every two years.
The diagram shows the arithmetic of the Council, and that is all it shows. It cannot show that the two kinds of seat carry unequal power, which is a matter of the voting rule rather than of numbers. Nor can it show how the alliances between members shift from one dispute to the next.
The presidency of the Council rotates every month, following the English alphabetical order of the member states’ names. No state therefore holds the chair for long.
13.4.2 Voting And The Veto Power
Every member of the Council, permanent or elected, has one vote. What differs is the effect of a negative vote.
On procedural matters — such as whether to place an item on the agenda — a decision needs the affirmative votes of any nine of the fifteen members.
On all other matters, a decision needs nine affirmative votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members. In practice this means that a permanent member’s negative vote defeats a proposal however many others support it. That negative vote is called the veto.
An abstention, then, is not the same as a negative vote. A permanent member that dislikes a proposal but does not wish to kill it can abstain and let it pass.
The veto was the price of having the great powers inside the organisation, as the delegates at San Francisco understood when they accepted it. It was also, from the beginning, the answer to the question of what the United Nations cannot do: it cannot act against any of the five.
13.4.3 Functions Of The Security Council
The Council’s functions run from investigation at one end to armed force at the other. Its main powers under the Charter are these.
To maintain international peace and security in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
To investigate any dispute or situation that might lead to international friction.
To recommend methods of settling such a dispute, or the terms of settlement itself.
To formulate plans for a system to regulate armaments.
To determine whether a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression exists, and to recommend what should be done about it.
To call on members to apply sanctions — measures short of force, such as cutting off trade, financial dealings or transport, used to press a state to change its conduct.
To authorise military action against an aggressor where measures short of force are inadequate.
To recommend the admission of new members, and the suspension or expulsion of an existing member.
To recommend to the General Assembly the appointment of the Secretary-General, and, voting separately from the Assembly, to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.
The difference between the two main organs now becomes plain. The Assembly’s resolutions on international questions advise; the Council’s decisions on peace and security bind. The comparison is set out in the table.
13.5 The International Court Of Justice
Disputes between states are not always about power. Many are about law — where a boundary runs, what a treaty means, whether an obligation has been broken. Those are questions a court can answer.
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It sits at the Peace Palace in The Hague, in the Netherlands, and is the only principal organ that does not sit in New York.
It began work in 1946, taking the place of the Permanent Court of International Justice, which had worked in the same building since 1922 under the League of Nations.
13.5.1 Composition Of The Court
The Court is composed of fifteen judges, elected for nine-year terms of office. They may be re-elected.
Judges are elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council, each voting independently of the other. A candidate must win a majority in both, so neither organ can place a judge on the Court alone. Elections are held every three years for one-third of the seats, which keeps the Court’s membership continuous rather than replacing it all at once.
No two judges may be nationals of the same state. Beyond that, the Charter’s arrangement requires the Court as a whole to reflect the main forms of civilisation and the principal legal systems of the world, so that its law is not the law of one region only.
A judge must either hold the qualifications required in their own country for appointment to the highest judicial offices, or be a jurist of recognised competence in international law.
The most important rule about the judges is what they are not. They do not represent their governments. They sit as independent judges, and a judge is not expected to vote for the state whose national they are.
The Court elects its own President and Vice-President for three-year terms, and appoints its Registrar, the officer who keeps its records and runs its administration.
13.5.2 Jurisdiction And Functions Of The Court
Jurisdiction is the authority of a court to hear and decide a particular kind of case. The Court’s jurisdiction is limited in two ways that a national court’s is not — by who may appear before it, and by consent.
Only states may be parties in cases before the Court. An individual, a company or an organisation cannot bring a case there, however serious the grievance.
Consent is the harder limit. A state cannot be dragged before the Court against its will. It may accept the Court’s jurisdiction in three ways: by agreeing with the other state to submit that particular dispute; through a clause in a treaty providing that disputes under it go to the Court; or by declaring in advance that it accepts the Court’s jurisdiction generally in legal disputes.
Where such consent exists, the Court’s jurisdiction covers questions such as the interpretation of a treaty, any question of international law, whether an international obligation has been broken, and the reparation — that is, the compensation — due for such a breach.
In deciding, the Court applies international treaties and conventions in force, international custom, and the general principles of law recognised by nations. Judicial decisions and the writings of the most qualified scholars are used as subsidiary means of determining the law.
Advisory Opinions
The Court has a second, quite different function. It may give an advisory opinion — its considered view on a legal question, given to an organisation that asks for it, rather than a judgment between two parties.
This procedure is open only to the organs of the United Nations and to authorised agencies of the United Nations family. States cannot ask for an advisory opinion, and the opinion does not bind anybody. Its force is the authority of the reasoning.
Over the years, contentious cases and advisory opinions together have made the Court a major contributor to the codification of international law — the setting down of scattered custom and practice as clear, stated rules.
What Happens After Judgment
A judgment of the Court is decided by a majority of the judges present. It binds the parties in that case, and there is no appeal against it. The route a case takes, and what follows if a state ignores the outcome, is shown in the flowchart.
Flowchart
FC 13.2 — How A Case Reaches The Court, And What Follows Caption: The route of a dispute between two states through the International Court of Justice. Nodes: Two states have a legal dispute → jurisdiction is accepted, by special agreement, by a treaty clause, or by a prior general declaration → written and oral arguments are submitted → the Court decides by a majority of judges present → the judgment binds both parties and cannot be appealed → if a party complies, the dispute ends there; if a party fails to comply, the other may take the matter to the Security Council, which may make recommendations or decide on measures; but where no consent to jurisdiction exists, the Court cannot hear the case at all.
13.6 Major Agencies Of The United Nations
Peace and security are only part of what the founders wanted. The third objective in Article 1 — cooperation on economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems — needed a different kind of body altogether.
That work is done by the specialised agencies: separate international organisations, each with its own membership, budget and headquarters, brought into relationship with the United Nations and working alongside it in one field.
Three of them meet a student most often — one for children, one for health, and one for education, science and culture.
13.6.1 UNICEF
UNICEF is the United Nations Children’s Fund. Its headquarters is in New York, in the United States.
Its work is confined to one group of people and stretches across everything that group needs.
It works for child survival and health, supporting immunisation, and the treatment and prevention of childhood illness.
It works on nutrition, tackling malnutrition in young children and mothers.
It supports safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, which decide how many children fall ill in the first place.
It supports schooling, particularly for children who are hardest to reach, and works to keep girls in school.
It works to protect children from violence, exploitation and child labour.
It supplies relief to children in emergencies — in war, flood, earthquake and epidemic.
13.6.2 WHO
WHO is the World Health Organization. Its headquarters is in Geneva, in Switzerland.
Its task is the health of populations rather than the treatment of individuals, and its functions follow from that.
It directs and coordinates international work on health, and acts as the body through which governments deal with each other on health questions.
It sets international health standards and regulations, including the rules states follow when a disease crosses borders.
It works to control and eliminate communicable diseases — diseases that pass from person to person — through immunisation and organised campaigns.
It gives governments technical assistance, and trains health workers.
It collects, checks and publishes health information, so that countries can compare what is happening to them with what is happening elsewhere.
It responds to epidemics and health emergencies, and supports maternal and child health.
The last two functions are easier to understand from a single campaign than from a list.
13.6.3 UNESCO
UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Its headquarters is in Paris, in France.
Its field is the one the founders believed makes peace possible in the long run: what people learn, know and understand about one another.
It promotes education for all, and works against illiteracy.
It encourages cooperation and the exchange of knowledge in the sciences.
It works for the free flow of ideas and information, and for freedom of expression.
It identifies and helps protect cultural and natural heritage of outstanding importance, through the World Heritage List.
It promotes international understanding through education, science, culture and communication.
13.7 The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights
One of the purposes written into the Charter is respect for human rights. Three years after the Charter, the organisation set down what it meant by them.
Human rights are the freedoms and protections that belong to every person simply for being human — irrespective of religion, race, caste, sex, language, nationality or any other status. They are not granted as a reward and cannot be earned or forfeited by belonging to the right group.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the statement in which the United Nations set out those rights for the first time, as a common standard for all peoples and all nations. The General Assembly adopted it in Paris on 10 December 1948. That date is now marked each year as Human Rights Day.
The Declaration consists of a Preamble and thirty Articles. Together they list the rights it proclaims — among them liberty, equality before the law, life, and education.
Two words in its title carry its meaning. Universal means the rights are claimed for everyone, everywhere, and not only for the citizens of the states that voted for it. Declaration means exactly what it says: the document announces a standard. It is not a treaty, and it did not by itself create obligations enforceable in any court.
13.8 Summary
Five pressures explain why a new world organisation was built in 1945: the cost of two world wars within a single lifetime, the failure of the League of Nations, the fear of a third world war, the division of the world into two blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union, and the arrival of weapons of mass destruction.
The League of Nations, set up in 1920, rested on collective security but was weakly built, and the Charter of 1945 was written to answer its defects.
- The United States never joined; Japan and Germany withdrew in 1933 and Italy in 1937; decisions needed the agreement of all; and the League had no armed force of its own.
- It condemned Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 and stopped neither. It ceased to function in 1939 and was wound up in 1946.
The United Nations was designed during the war and founded at its close.
- The name was first used in the Declaration by United Nations, signed in Washington on 1 January 1942. Proposals were drafted at Dumbarton Oaks in 1944, and the Security Council voting formula was agreed at Yalta in February 1945.
- The San Francisco Conference sat from 25 April to 26 June 1945. Fifty delegations signed the Charter, and Poland’s later signature made fifty-one original members, India among them.
- The Charter entered into force on 24 October 1945, after ratification by the five permanent members and a majority of other signatories. That date is United Nations Day. Membership has since grown to 193 states.
Article 1 of the Charter states four objectives: to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations on the basis of equal rights and self-determination; to achieve international cooperation on economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and on human rights; and to be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations towards these ends.
Article 2 states seven principles: sovereign equality of members; fulfilment of Charter obligations in good faith; peaceful settlement of disputes; refraining from the threat or use of force; assisting the organisation in any action it takes; ensuring that non-members act in accordance with these principles so far as peace requires; and non-intervention in matters essentially within a state’s domestic jurisdiction.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ, and the only one in which every member sits.
- Each state may send up to five representatives but casts one vote. The regular session opens on the Tuesday of the third week in September. Important questions need a two-thirds majority of members present and voting, other questions a simple majority.
- Its resolutions on international questions are recommendations carrying world opinion, not legal force; its decisions on the budget bind members.
- It discusses any question within the Charter, approves the budget and apportions contributions, elects the non-permanent members of the Security Council, elects judges of the Court jointly with the Council, appoints the Secretary-General on the Council’s recommendation, and admits new members on the Council’s recommendation.
- It may not make recommendations on a dispute while the Security Council is dealing with it. Under the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950, however, it may act where the Council is deadlocked — though it can still only recommend.
The Security Council is the executive body, holding primary responsibility for international peace and security, and it functions continuously.
- It has fifteen members: five permanent — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and ten elected by the General Assembly for two years, distributed by region, with no immediate re-election. The presidency rotates monthly in English alphabetical order.
- Procedural decisions need nine affirmative votes. Other decisions need nine votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members, so a permanent member’s negative vote is a veto. An abstention is not a veto.
- It investigates disputes, recommends terms of settlement, plans for the regulation of armaments, determines that a threat to peace or act of aggression exists, applies sanctions, authorises military action, and recommends admissions and the appointment of the Secretary-General.
The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ, sitting at The Hague, and began work in 1946 in place of the Permanent Court of International Justice.
- Fifteen judges are elected for nine-year terms by the General Assembly and the Security Council voting separately, with one-third of the seats filled every three years, no two judges of one nationality, and judges sitting as independent judges rather than as representatives of their states.
- Only states may be parties, and only where jurisdiction has been accepted — by special agreement, by a treaty clause, or by a prior general declaration. Judgments bind the parties and cannot be appealed.
- The Court also gives advisory opinions to United Nations organs and authorised agencies, which are not binding. Under Article 94, a state failing to comply with a judgment may be taken to the Security Council — where the veto applies.
Three specialised agencies work alongside the organisation in their own fields: UNICEF, with headquarters at New York, for children’s survival, nutrition, water and sanitation, schooling, protection and emergency relief; WHO, at Geneva, directing international health work, setting health standards, fighting communicable disease, assisting governments and responding to emergencies; and UNESCO, at Paris, for education and literacy, scientific cooperation, the free flow of ideas, and the protection of world heritage.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, is the organisation’s statement of the rights belonging to every human being as a common standard for all nations. It has a Preamble and thirty Articles, and it declares a standard rather than creating an enforceable obligation. Human Rights Day is kept on 10 December.
13.9 Key Terms
- Advisory opinion — the Court’s considered view on a legal question put to it by an organ or authorised agency, given outside any dispute and binding on nobody.
- Charter — the founding treaty of the United Nations, setting out its aims, its organs and the rules its members accept.
- Collective security — the idea that an attack on one member is treated as a threat to all, who then act together against the aggressor.
- Human rights — the freedoms and protections belonging to every person as a human being, irrespective of religion, race, caste, sex, nationality or any other status.
- International law — the body of rules accepted as binding between states, built from the treaties they sign and the customs they follow.
- Jurisdiction — the authority of a court to hear and decide a particular kind of case.
- Preamble — the opening statement of a document, setting out why it was made.
- Ratification — formal approval of a treaty by a state under its own law, which turns a signature into a binding commitment.
- Resolution — a formal decision adopted by vote in a body such as the General Assembly, recording what it has agreed to say, to ask for or to do.
- Sanctions — measures such as cutting off trade, transport or financial dealings with a state, applied to force a change of conduct without using arms.
- Self-determination — the principle that a people should decide its own political status and government, rather than have one imposed from outside.
- Sovereign equality — the principle that every member state controls its own affairs and counts as one state, whatever its size, wealth or armed strength.
- Specialised agency — a separate international organisation, with its own membership and budget, brought into relationship with the United Nations by agreement to work in a particular field.
- Veto — the power of a permanent member of the Security Council to defeat a substantive proposal by voting against it, whatever the other members want.
13.10 Points to Ponder
The founders knew that the League had failed partly because the strongest states stayed outside it. Was granting those states a veto the only way to keep them inside, or were there other terms they might have accepted?
In the General Assembly, a state of a hundred million people and a state of a hundred thousand each cast one vote. Is that equality, or is it a different kind of inequality?
The Charter forbids the organisation from intervening in a state’s internal affairs. If a government is doing serious harm inside its own borders, at what point does that stop being an internal affair?
The International Court of Justice can hear a dispute only if the states concerned have agreed to let it. What does a court look like when the parties choose whether to be bound by it?
The Universal Declaration created no penalty for breach, yet governments still answer to it in public argument. In what sense is a standard without enforcement still doing work?
Almost every state in the world now belongs to the United Nations, and the organisation still cannot command a single soldier of its own. Does that make it weak, or is it the condition on which so many states were willing to join?
13.11 Objective Questions
The Charter of the United Nations entered into force on
- 26 June 1945
- 24 October 1945
- 1 January 1942
- 10 December 1948 [1 mark]
Which of the following is NOT one of the objectives stated in Article 1 of the Charter?
- To maintain international peace and security
- To develop friendly relations among nations
- To make laws binding on the citizens of member states
- To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations [1 mark]
A decision of the Security Council on a substantive matter requires
- a simple majority of members present and voting
- the unanimous vote of all fifteen members
- nine votes, including the concurring votes of the permanent members
- a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly [1 mark]
Fill in the blank: A judge of the International Court of Justice is elected for a term of ______ years. [1 mark]
State whether the following statement is true or false: An advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice binds the state about which it is given. [1 mark]
Match the agency in Column A with its headquarters in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. UNICEF | i. Paris |
| b. WHO | ii. New York |
| c. UNESCO | iii. Geneva |
- Assertion (A): A resolution of the General Assembly does not bind the government of a member state. Reason (R): Members of the United Nations remain sovereign states, and the Assembly was created to deliberate and recommend rather than to legislate.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true but R is false
- A is false but R is true [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): The League of Nations was unable to stop aggression in the 1930s. Reason (R): The League’s decisions required the agreement of all its members, and it commanded no armed forces of its own.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
- A is true but R is false
- A is false but R is true [1 mark]
13.12 Check Your Concepts
Define the veto power of the Security Council. [2 marks]
State the meaning of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and name the day on which its adoption is marked each year. [2 marks]
Give three reasons why the world’s leaders decided to establish a new organisation instead of continuing with the League of Nations. [3 marks]
Differentiate between the voluntary jurisdiction and the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. [3 marks]
Explain the composition of the Security Council, and state how its non-permanent members are chosen. [4 marks]
State the headquarters of UNESCO and explain any three of its functions. [4 marks]
With reference to the General Assembly, explain its composition, the way it takes decisions, and any three of its functions. [5 marks]
‘The General Assembly debates and the Security Council decides.’ Examine this claim by comparing the two organs in respect of their membership, their voting rules and the force of their decisions. [6 marks]
13.13 Show Your Skills
- Read the situation given below and answer the questions that follow. Two neighbouring states have quarrelled for years over the exact line of the boundary that runs along a river between them. Both are members of the United Nations. A treaty they signed long ago provides that disputes about the boundary shall be referred to the International Court of Justice. One of the two states now files a case; the other argues that the matter should be settled by negotiation alone.
- State where the Court sits and who alone may be a party to a case before it. [2 marks]
- Explain the ground on which the Court would have jurisdiction in this dispute. [2 marks]
- If the Court gives judgment and one state refuses to comply, what course is open to the other state? [2 marks]
- Study the described voting record and answer the questions that follow. A draft resolution is before the Security Council, calling on a state to withdraw its forces from territory it has occupied. When the vote is taken, fourteen members vote in favour. The fifteenth member, which holds a permanent seat, votes against. The President of the Council announces that the draft resolution has not been adopted.
- Name the power that has been exercised here, and state which members of the Council hold it. [2 marks]
- Explain why the outcome would have been different if that member had abstained instead. [2 marks]
- State one argument in favour of retaining this power and one argument against it. [2 marks]
- Study the described notice board and answer the questions that follow. A board at the entrance to a hill fort in India carries three lines of information: the name of the fort, the year it was entered on the World Heritage List, and the name of the United Nations organisation that maintains that list. Below it, a health centre in the same town displays a poster about a children’s immunisation drive, carrying the name of a second United Nations body.
- Name the organisation associated with the World Heritage List, state its headquarters, and mention any two of its functions. [3 marks]
- Name the body likely to be associated with the immunisation poster, and state two of its functions. [2 marks]
- State one thing about the working of either body that a notice board of this kind cannot tell you. [1 mark]