From Functional Unions to San Francisco

“The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General (1953–1961)

Established on 24 October 1945; began with 51 states, today 193 members. The only genuinely worldwide and universal international organisation, with a broad agenda across almost every field of governance — the premier platform for matters that cut across national borders, which no single state, however powerful, can settle alone. States use it to discuss, develop and expand international law on trade, human rights, freedom of navigation and maritime use, counter-terrorism and more. The General Assembly sits at the centre of the structure as the main venue for multilateral diplomacy.

Precursors — functional cooperation first, political union later

• International Telegraph Union, 1865 (later the International Telecommunication Union) and the Universal Postal Union, 1874 — both now UN specialised agencies. States first built international organisations from 1865 to cooperate on specific functional issues.
• International Peace Conference, The Hague (1899) → tools for peaceful settlement, averting war, codifying the rules of war → the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes → the Permanent Court of Arbitration (operational 1902).
• League of Nations (1919) → founded after the First World War under the Treaty of Versailles; the direct forerunner of the UN. Mandate: “to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security.” Dissolved on 20 April 1946, transferring its assets, library and archives to the new UN Secretariat.

Origins

• The term “United Nations” was coined by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• 1942 → 26 nations signed The Declaration of the United Nations, pledging to fight together against the Axis Powers (Rome–Berlin–Tokyo) and not to make a separate peace.
• 25 April – 26 June 1945 → the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco; representatives of 50 nations.
• Charter ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and most other signatories → the UN formally came into being on 24 October 1945.
• Seventy-five years on it still works for peace and security, international law, human rights and humanitarian relief — while taking on tasks its founders never anticipated: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and collective climate action.

The road to the Charter. 1865 · 1874 (Functional unions — Telegraph Union, Postal Union) → 1899 · The Hague (Peace Conference → Permanent Court of Arbitration (1902)) → 1919 · League (Treaty of Versailles; dissolved 20 April 1946) → 1942 · Declaration (26 nations; no separate peace with the Axis) → 1945 · San Francisco (50 nations → UN born 24 Oct 1945, 51 states)

Purposes and Principles of the Charter

The four purposes

1. To maintain international peace and security.
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for equal rights and the self-determination of peoples.
3. To cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems, and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
4. To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in attaining these common ends.

The five principles

• Sovereign equality of all members.
• Members fulfil their Charter obligations in good faith.
• Disputes settled by peaceful means, without endangering peace, security and justice.
• Members refrain from the threat or use of force against any other state.
• Neither the UN nor its members interfere in matters essentially within a state’s domestic jurisdiction.

The Organs at a Glance

The General Assembly

The chief deliberative body — the nearest thing the world has to a global parliament, and known as the “World Parliament of Nations”.

• Membership → every member state is represented; one state, one vote, on the basis of sovereign equality.
• Voting → ordinary questions by simple majority; important questions by a two-thirds majority.
• Powers → may discuss and make recommendations on any matter within the Charter. Its resolutions carry the weight of world public opinion, morality and law, but are not legally binding on members. It does not enact law like a national parliament.
• Key responsibilities → appoints the Secretary-General on the Security Council’s recommendation; elects the non-permanent members of the Council; approves the UN budget.
• Rests on the premise that a “war of words” is better than one fought with bombs.

The Security Council

The Charter gives it primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. It can meet at any hour, and its decisions are binding on members.

• Composition → 15 members. The P5 — permanent, veto-holding, nuclear-armed: China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States. Ten non-permanent members, elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.
• Functions → asks parties to settle peacefully; may set out principles of settlement or mediate; may direct the Secretary-General to investigate and report; works to secure a ceasefire once conflict breaks out; with the parties’ consent, deploys peacekeeping forces (troops or observers) to separate combatants and ease tension.
• Its decisions, unlike the Assembly’s, are legally binding and enforceable — through military action or economic sanctions — under the principle of collective security.

The veto — A “no” vote by any permanent member blocks a substantive decision. The Charter frames this as the “Great Power unanimity” rule.

ECOSOC, the Trusteeship Council and the Secretariat

Economic and Social Council

The absence of war does not by itself secure a peaceful order. The founders created machinery for social and economic advancement, to reduce the root causes of future conflict; ECOSOC carries this task.

• 54 members; usually meets for a two-month session each year.
• Coordinates the economic and social work of the UN and its specialised agencies — together known as the UN Family or UN System.
• Work includes the economic development of developing countries, development and humanitarian aid, promotion of human rights, action against discrimination against minorities, the spread of science and technology, and cooperation on housing, family planning and crime prevention.

Trusteeship Council

• Created under Chapter XIII of the Charter (1945) to supervise 11 Trust Territories administered by seven member states, and to prepare them for self-government and independence.
• All Trust Territories attained independence or self-government by 1994. Operations suspended on 1 November 1994; a resolution of 25 May 1994 dropped the requirement of annual meetings — it now meets only as and when needed.

Secretariat

• Services the other organs and administers the day-to-day work; over 41,000 staff worldwide, drawn from the 193 members.
• Staff serve as international civil servants and pledge not to take instructions from any government or outside authority.
• Headed by the Secretary-General, appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.

Nine Secretaries-General to date: Trygve Lie · Norway · Dag Hammarskjöld · Sweden · U Thant · Myanmar · Kurt Waldheim · Austria · Javier Pérez de Cuéllar · Peru · Boutros Boutros-Ghali · Egypt · Kofi Annan · Ghana · Ban Ki-moon · Republic of Korea · António Guterres · Portugal (current)

The International Court of Justice

Established in 1945 under the Charter as the principal judicial organ; seat at the Peace Palace, The Hague — the only main organ not based in New York. Judgments are enforced by the Security Council under the Charter — but a permanent member can veto enforcement.

Two-fold jurisdiction — Contentious cases — legal disputes submitted by states, decided in accordance with international law. Advisory proceedings — opinions on legal questions referred by authorised UN organs and specialised agencies.

The bench “as a whole must represent the principal legal systems of the world and the main forms of civilization.”

on the composition of the Court

Role in dispute settlement

• Uses negotiation, enquiry and mediation for the pacific settlement of disputes between states.
• Only states that are UN members and parties to the Court’s Statute, or that have accepted its jurisdiction, appear in contentious cases. Judgment is final, binding on the parties, and without appeal.

Achievements

• Guarantees every party a fair and impartial hearing — the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, where it asked Pakistan not to proceed with the execution.
• Laid down principles for judging disputes — baselines on territorial waters, fishing rights, and calculating the continental shelf.
• Settled the El Salvador–Honduras border dispute and the Cameroon–Nigeria conflict.
• Advisory opinions that set the tone for post-conflict affairs — declaring in 1971 that South Africa’s presence in Namibia was illegal; admitting the genocide case against Myanmar over Rohingya atrocities.

Limitations

• No jurisdiction to try individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity; jurisdiction is confined to states.
• Individuals, corporations, NGOs and other non-state bodies cannot participate directly, keeping many human-rights and humanitarian issues outside its reach.
• Can hear a dispute only when one or more states request it. Jurisdiction rests on consent, not compulsion.
• Lacks full separation of powers: permanent members can veto enforcement, even in cases they consented to be bound by.
• Larger powers such as the US, and allies like Israel, have openly refused to comply; developing countries criticise it for serving Western interests.

Prabhash Ranjan on the Russia–Ukraine dispute: the Court raised the question of whether a state may unilaterally use force against another to punish or stop an alleged genocide, but did not rule on whether Russia had violated the Genocide Convention, as that is a matter of merits — which suggests Russia’s use of force is hard to defend under the Convention. Cynics note that as a permanent member Russia can veto enforcement of ICJ decisions; yet the indifference of authoritarian populist governments to international law does not lessen its importance.

Way forward: the most far-reaching attempt yet to apply the rule of law to international disputes. Scholars call it the UN’s least effective body, with a modest effect on post-war international law — even so, it remains the archetype of international adjudication and, as the “principal judicial organ,” holds a special place among international courts.

Peace and Security: the Envisaged Role

Collective security — Aggression by one state against another is treated as an assault on all members. The Security Council is the key organ, and acts against an aggressor only when all five permanent members agree.

• The Cold War between the US and the USSR blocked the UN from resolving many crises, despite the Charter’s careful drafting. Even so, it mediated ceasefires and negotiations and supplied peacekeeping forces that helped defuse several conflicts.
• Its record in non-political work — refugee care, human rights, economic planning, health, population and hunger — has been far stronger.
• A veto halts action and negates the principle. During the Cold War (1945–1991) the Council was repeatedly paralysed by vetoes.

Collective security — the design, and the point at which it breaks. AGGRESSION (An attack on one member is an attack on all) → SECURITY COUNCIL (Binding decision — but only when the P5 concur) → ENFORCEMENT (Sanctions · authorised force · peacekeeping with consent). THE VETO: one “no” from a permanent member halts action and negates the principle.

The Record in Major Conflicts

On balance the UN has outperformed the League of Nations, especially where the interests of the major powers were not directly engaged (the Congo civil war, 1960–1964). Like the League, it has often failed where a great power’s interest was at stake (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).

Why Peace Enforcement Has Fallen Short

No standing UN army · No consensus among the P5 · The veto power of the P5 · Shortage of funds · Member states unwilling to cooperate

Socio-Economic Development — MDGs to SDGs

Most of the UN’s resources go to the Charter’s pledge to “promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development.”

UN Charter

• The organisation is popularly linked mainly to peace and security, but the premise here is different: economic and social well-being is a precondition for lasting peace.
• It sets priorities and goals for cooperation and provides a forum, through global conferences, for new developmental agendas — the FAO, for instance, works against famine.
• It has brought human rights, sustainable development, environmental protection, good governance and the advancement of women into the development paradigm.
• The accepted approach today is sustainable development — growth that combines economic opportunity, social well-being and environmental protection.
• Millennium Declaration (2000) → the Millennium Summit adopted the eight MDGs: measurable, time-bound goals for 2015 — eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, environmental sustainability, gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria, and a global partnership for development.
• 2030 Agenda (2015) → world leaders endorsed the 17 SDGs; formally adopted on 1 January 2016.
• Three further 2015 agreements underpin the global development agenda: the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (financing for development), the Paris Agreement (climate change), the Sendai Framework (disaster risk reduction).

Achievements

• Decolonisation — among its finest contributions. Eighty current members were colonies in 1945; the UN helped many of some 750 million people gain freedom, and made international relations more democratic.
• Peacekeeping — since 1945, UN forces have mediated 172 peaceful settlements across more than 60 field missions; peacekeepers currently work in around 20 hotspots.
• Human rights — a complete body of human-rights law: civil, political, economic, social and cultural. The International Bill of Human Rights comprises the UDHR (1948) and the two International Covenants of 1966.
• Global law — more international law produced in seven decades than in all prior history: Genocide Convention (1948), ICCPR (1966), ICESCR (1966), ICERD (1966), CEDAW (1979), UNCLOS (1982), Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), CTBT (1996).
• Poverty and hunger — feeds and aids around 80 million people across 80 countries; vaccinates millions of children and saves some 3 million lives a year; protects and assists 67.7 million people fleeing persecution, famine and war; supports maternal health for over a million women each month.
• Development goals — completed the eight MDGs; now pursues the 17 SDGs to 2030.
• Adjudication — the ICJ has settled significant disputes, though the veto has limited its reach at key moments.
• Climate and humanitarian scale — works with 195 countries to hold warming below 2°C; 104,000 peacekeepers in 14 operations; addresses a global water problem affecting over two billion people; a US$24.7 billion appeal for the humanitarian needs of 145 million people; assists about 50 states a year with elections.
• Nobel recognition — the UN Peacekeeping Forces (1988); the UN and Secretary-General Kofi Annan jointly (2001); the World Food Programme (2020).

Shortcomings and Failures to Protect

• Nuclear disarmament — despite the NPT (in force from 1970), states including North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India developed nuclear weapons in defiance of the NPT and the Partial Test Ban Treaty, exposing the UN’s inability both to advance disarmament and to enforce rules on violators.
• International Criminal Court (established 2002) — has charged several war criminals, but is criticised for targeting African leaders while Western states that also committed war crimes go unprosecuted.
• Failures to protect — over 800,000 killed in Rwanda in 100 days; 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed at Srebrenica’s “safe zone” (1995); an estimated 300,000 dead in Darfur; more than 13,000 killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria.
• The “Body Count” assessment attributes, as a result of US foreign policy, “over 220,000 people… killed in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan,” along with a million deaths in Iraq.
• Gaza — 2,200 Palestinians killed as homes, schools, hospitals and UN shelters were bombed. With the US vetoing action against Israel, the Security Council failed to act.
• Arab Spring and after — regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen; over 40,000 dead in Libya, over 220,000 in Syria, more than 50 million displaced, and the rise of ISIS.
• Structural resistance — the Security Council is charged with being arrogant, secretive and undemocratic, yet the veto powers resist change, while great-power breaches of the Charter keep eroding the organisation’s effectiveness.

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay warned that “Israel was purposefully violating international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes.”

Navi Pillay

“Short-term geopolitical considerations and national interest, narrowly defined, have repeatedly taken precedence over intolerable human suffering and grave breaches of — and long-term threats to — international peace and security.”

Navi Pillay, to the Security Council

Collective Security under the Charter — the Challenges

Article I of the Charter calls for “effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of peace.”

UN Charter, Article I

• Sovereignty over collective action → states are unwilling to place collective action above their own sovereign interests. Critics hold that collective security has never been fully implemented worldwide, and would carry real meaning only if it extended equally to strong and weak states.
• Over-reliance on a few powers → the Council depends heavily on states such as the US, UK, Germany and Japan for support; this dependence lets them act independently during conflicts without Council authorisation.
• Lack of regional diversity → the narrow composition of the Council weakens its capacity to maintain peace. Small and medium states feel excluded, since the system benefits them only when the interests of a “big” power, above all the US, are at stake.
• An undefined, idealistic concept → collective security has never been defined by treaty and can therefore be exploited by powerful states in a lopsided Council. Its flaws must be addressed, including the newer duties never originally conceived — preventing terrorism and the spread of WMDs — and expanding the Council to manage the interests of states seen as driving these new threats.
• The flaws do not make the system useless; they mark the reforms it needs.