The term United Nations was founded when the representatives of the 26 states declared to fight together against the Axis powers. This was during the reign of the United States president Franklin Roosevelt in the year 1942. At this time, the nations cooperated on specific matters only. Before the United Nations, there was the League of Nations. United Nations took place officially in 1945. The United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France and China officially ratified United Nations charter. This essay shall assess the contemporary United Peace operations.
At first, the nation’s established international organizations that helped to solve problems that they were facing during the war. U.S has always played a vital role in the functioning of the UN. It has acted as a critic and sustaining the organization. In 1865, the International Telegraph Union was founded and was followed by the Universal Postal Union in 1874 (Adams 2005). Both agencies have become the Specialized Agencies of the UN. The first peace conference was held in The Hague in 1899. It focused on the instruments that were necessarily for peaceful crises resolution and preventing wars. The objectives were settled, and started working under the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. The members also founded a Permanent Court of Arbitration. This whole process started to work in 1902.
Traditionally, the UN has been following a set of unwritten guidelines in order to ensure peace. It follows guidelines mainly through experience from other people or states. The peacekeeping operation started in 1948. This was when the first united military officers were positioned in the Middle East during the cold war. At that time, the key roles of the United Nations had been limited to maintaining fires, ceasing them and stabilizing situations on the ground. The efforts were made at the political level, in order to solve conflicts in the most peaceful way (Weiss, Sam 2007). Even to day, this model still stands for countries with political conflicts. Studies have shown that the major causes of war in countries or states are political feuds. This feud is likely relapses again after the first five to ten years. In the past few decades, the United Nations peacekeeping has evolved into a complex program. It ensures peace throughout the globe (Armstrong, Lorna 2004).
The new environment has given change to the United Nations. They now have to use multi-dimensional operations in order to solve a conflict in warring areas. These operations are deployed after a dangerous aftermath in a violent internal conflict (Armstrong, Lorna 2004). The people deployed may include military, police, and the civilian members within the countries capability. These three groups ensure an integrated implementation of a peace agreement with comprehensive statements.
In the current United Nations peace operations, the government of a certain state may request for the intervention of United Nations. This may happen without necessarily having an aftermath of war. This has helped avoid war breakout in many nations. In case this government does not have a formal peace agreement the United Nations help it to make one through the transitional government. The Security Counsel has also allowed this multi-dimensional peace keeping in the United Nations (Weiss, Sam 2007). The Security Counsel states that the United Nations may temporarily assume the administrative and the legislative functions of a state. This will ensure that authority is transferred from one sovereign entity to another until the sovereignty questions and conflicts are resolved. This also helps the nation to establish new structures in the administration.
If the United Nations deploys their peace operations in a state with the aftermath, they face many challenges. Their ability to provide security for the whole population and maintain public order at the same time is usually very weak. Because of this, some parts of the country continue to fight. Basic infrastructure continues to be destroyed. In addition, people are often displaced. The society in these warring actions may be divided along religion regions, ethnic groups, race and adverse abuse of human rights are abused during these conflicts. This further complicates the United Nations mission in achieving national reconciliation.
The United Nations has therefore deployed its members in countries globally, as part of a much broader international effort. Establishing the necessary security conditions has made the conflicts that lead to be eliminated. There is free flow of people. There is also humanitarian and goods assistance. Civilians account for internal armed conflict and therefore they make the vast majority of the casualties(Meisler 2011). They are forced to migration in neighboring countries, and are forcibly uprooted from their pervious homes. In the countries where they go, they may not be welcomed. As a result, the United Nations play a role in ensuring that the peacekeeping operations ensure protection for the civilians who are under forthcoming threat for physical violence. This requires cooperation from the police, military and civilians. The three must be mainstreamed in the peacekeeping operation for it to protect the immigrants. The NGOs also take part in this area. The United Nations have the capability to ensure a comprehensive response to a complex crisis. This has been done through the concept of integrated missions. This concept helps to maximize the overall impact of the peace keeping operation.
The new multi –dimensional United Nations play a direct role in politics, unlike the traditional United Nations. The former uses the Security Counsel in order to promote national political dialogue and reconciliation. It also helps to provide good offices. Therefore, the peace operations enjoy a high degree of the international community because it gives them considerable leverage over the parties(Conforti 2005). This leverage can be used to build and sustain a political harmony around the process. It helps maintain pressures on the parties promote good governance and implement key institutional reforms. It also ensures that the critical role of the United Nations systems and the international actors from all spheres. This is made possible a guide with similar strategic vision and mission. The UN has an agreement with all its members to share the resources of one country to the other freely. This encourages interrelation.
The cold War greatly hindered the functioning of the UN for the first 45 years. Since the cold war ended there have been more peacekeeping operations. However, even after the cold war there have been states that have been suffering with only little help from United Nations. For example, Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. This has tampered with enthusiasm for the missions of peacekeeping. As a result, there have been several reforms in the UN operations. Africa states have been having many conflicts in the recent years for example, in Kenya during the year 2007 when there was ethnic crises after elections. The Security Council found itself under pressure because they could not contain the violence. These crises led to many death, rape cases and internal displacement of Kenyan civilians.
In January 1997, six months after Kofi Annan took office as the secretary general of the United Nations. He proposed that he would make reforms (Conforti 2005).He set out an agenda that was meant to make the whole system of the United Nations stronger than before. These included better management and coordination throughout the rights promotion and peacekeeping. However, his reforms have faced many challenges including lack of funds.
External audits and investigators have accused United Nations of fraud, corruption, substantial mismanagement in the procurement. The worse scenarios are where the UN peacekeepers are accused widespread cases if sexual exploitation. The UN has limited authority in punishing such lawbreakers. It has failed to take responsibility of investigating these troops who are being accused of misconduct. The Security Council has yield to pressure to suppress situations such as in Somalia.
Some countries have had unfriendly relations with the UN. In the history, Israel has marked the first state to win the suspension of the review of human rights by UNHCR. Israel has boycotted the human rights forum by the over the residents fear in the occupied territories. The resolution on Palestinians marked a historical event by rejecting the view of its practices as forwarded by United Nations. The Israel’s representatives refused to attend the meeting which was planned by the United States, and the human rights control has confirmed to this.
In the previous years, Israel had worked with the council and had willingly participated in the review of its human rights by the council. However, in March last year the state decided to end any relation with the UN claiming that the council was demonizing Israelites on the issue of illegal settlements and the human rights of the Palestinians(Mazower 2009). The cooperation ceased after the UN set up a committee to scrutinize the effects the Israel settlements. The country claims that the UN has passed more resolutions to Israel than other countries and referred to it as being biased. Israel cut the ties with UN in March. The Egypt representative said that harsh measure has to be undertaken by the UN because a soft measure would lead to more cases of disregard for international law. The UN president, Mr. Remigiusz Henczel who comes from Poland said that although Israel is not a member of the council, it is required to undergo the Periodic Reviews. That is because of its human rights position. However, on Tuesday Israel representatives missed the session. The countries officials say that days after the holocaust remembrance the Jews are still being demonized and the UN is adding up to the hatred.
The operations of the UN can be successful if both nations and the Security Council are made aware of the strengths and weakness of this program. The awareness would help predict the future, in order to make the peace operations effective (Kenberry 2001). This will require that the United Nation members and representatives to sit and discus their current situation in their countries. This will help determine the areas that are prone to conflict and intervene before it is too late. They should also improve on their reforms. Lack of fundamental reforms means that states will continue to face these problems.
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United nations have several weaknesses. Since it was started at the end of World War II. The UN had to stop over 150 wars after that (Claude 1959). This shows that, the peacekeeping mission is on doubt. The civilians still suffer, as long as the war is started they hold bitterness for their enemies and this means that another war is still possible.
As seen above, the case of Israeli shows that UN has reduced the amount of democracy that is given to nations. They are forced to do things without proper negotiation. The countries that have withdrawn from the United Nations have increased over time. In 1974, the people who had refused were 2.4 million, but today this figure has risen to 27 million people (Claude 1959). The peacekeeping mission has failed in that people are still being biased and attacked on the bases is of color, sex, religion and the like. For example, Sudan in the previous years, people were killed because of their religion. Many countries have boycotted the treaties and the international law that UN imposes on them. Instead of imposing these rules, UN should make the nations follow the international law peacefully.
Before the Berlin war, United Nations had a few military deployed in its states. After this war, its mission now involved the multi dimensional peacekeeping. No matter how the UN tries to keep the peace in the world, its fate is entirely dependent on a number of factors. The civilians pay a major role in maintaining peace in their countries (Carr, Michael 2001). Another reason is the rule of law and the human rights of the land. The third reason is history of elections in that particular country. For example, the Kenyan elections come with a lot of tension for the civilians because they have been having post election violence since1992.
There have been difficult situations in some countries during the mid-1990s such as Bosnia-Herzegovina. This made the United Nations to re-assess its peacekeeping approach. The Panel on United Nations peace operations gave a report known as Brahimi Report (Barnett, Martha 2004). This report had deep critics of the operations that the UN had made. The report also suggested ways in which the United Nations could rectify their mistakes. This report is an aid to have had just minimum requirements for any peacekeeping operation. However, UN had not met these requirements and the panel had to sit down and organize how the recommendations in the report would be implemented. Some of the suggestions included a pre-mandate mechanism of financing.
In 1999, the East Timor required an interim administration, and the United Nations was given this role. The year after UN was supposed to do the same with Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and democratic republic of Congo (Barnett, Martha 2004. This led to overstretching the peacekeeping operations. In peacekeeping, the UN has to look for well trained military personnel with the right equipments. Apart from this they search for troops who can withstand the dangerous operations. However, this proves to be a difficult task each time (Mazower 2009). The member states that have such troops often refuse to make their troops available for the peacekeeping operations. They give reasons such as, they are risking their people and they would not like to form grudges with the country that already have conflicts. The military in the field also face various challenges fro the civilians.
In order to solve the problems that the United Nations is facing, other bodies should intervene. For example, the inter-parliamentary union should take a major role on ensuring that the member states are informed about the importance of the United Nations. Another role is to ensure that their state government offer troops to the UN when they are needed(Kenberry 2001). Although the United Nations has been facing several challenges in its peace keeping operations, its work is highly appreciated. It has helped in solving conflicts throughout the world. For example,in Congo , and Somalia in Africa. Guatemala and Haiti in America. Cambodia and East Timor in Asia. Georgia and Croatia in Europe. Yemen and Iraq in Middle East, among others.
(Adams 2005)
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