Growing in Importance:
- The UN was the first post-war IGO to be established and has grown in importance.
- It is responsible for ‘global governance. Set up after World War Two to try and govern and help with global economics, human rights, peace, environment and health.
- Governance: An umbrella term that includes all the ways that codes, rules, regulations are attempted and enforced.
- The UN has been at the forefront of many global conventions such as climate change, development goals and poverty numbers.
- Responsible for global human rights and how humans should be protected and respected e.g. right to life, freedom, fair trial, education etc.
- Made up of 193 states in the general assembly and five permanent members of the security council (UK, China, USA, Russia and France). They do not always agree, and this can be a problem, whilst the UN is meant to help with geopolitical problems in practice, this is difficult.
UN
Intervention – 3 Ways:
- Economic Sanctions: Help to pressurise a country to change without using military action. Many have been applied to North Korea to try and force them to stop building nuclear missiles. A problem is that China is supporting NK.
- Direct Military Action: Send peacekeeper[s] [missions] to help avert crisis. But, doesn’t always work. The UN wanted to go into Syria, but Russia and China vetoed it and the UN never went in. Did try and get some food and aid into Syria.
- The UN also ‘did nothing’ in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, peacekeepers were sent but were scared to be dragged into conflict and so didn’t do anything. 800,000 people died. Recently 20,000 peacekeepers were placed but gathered mixed results as many have been saved but still lots of deaths.
- Aid: Environmental issues such as climate change through the IPCC. Has helped global governance as countries work together to reduce emissions of GHGs. Paris Agreement is an example, but they are non-binding and don’t always work and America pulled out of the deal in 2017.
Unilateral
Intervention:
- USA, UK and Russia have all acted outside the jurisdiction of the UN – they have undertaken military action without UN approval.
- Russia annexed Crimea to stop the rebels from threatening Russia, the UN did not approve it yet there was nothing done to stop it.
- Strong military action was seen after 9/11 when the UK and USA sought to invade Iraq on account of there being weapons of mass destruction, but the UN wanted to send in people to spot them, yet the UK and USA acted without UN approval.
- The war on terror has played a significant role in establishing unilateral movement.
Evaluation:
- Clear that the UN plays an important role in global governance and it has improved peace throughout the world but the failures they have are massive and they have not been able to stop certain outcomes e.g. Russia.
- The ever-more disagreeing security council can cause issues and unilateral action undermines the IGO.
- Only the future will tell if the UN can agree.