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STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Running head: STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE UNITED NATIONS 1
Strengths and Weaknesses of the United Nations
Student’s Name
Institution’s Affiliation
Present the strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations Organization.
This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations organization. To achieve this, it looks at the complexities and the conflicts involved in the organization, the laws that govern the organization’s functions and the discrepancies that arise when voting and making significant decisions. The strengths and weaknesses are also based on the organization’s general performance and efficiency in achieving its objectives.
One of the significant strengths of the United Nations Organization is on the issue of diversity. The United Nations Organization appreciates diversity in that it has covered a wide range of states’ membership, comprising of 193 out of 195 states. The wide membership of states makes the organization literary strong especially when it comes to the contributions in the organization. The organization, therefore, creates a common pool of funds where the needy members can benefit. Besides, by having attracted the membership of many such states in the world, organizational loyalty is enhanced, and therefore this limits the chance of internal quarrels and conflicts among the member states. The diversity in membership also goes together with the organization’s primary objective, which is to maintain peace and security across the world. The goal is likely to be accomplished since many countries are members of these organizations and therefore reducing the chances of suspicion among each other (Thakur, 2016).
The other way in which the organization appreciates diversity is that it has decentralized its capitals. Despite it having its main headquarters in New York, it has other regional offices in Juneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. The decentralization, therefore, makes its operations and administration easy and effective. Additionally, the organization has diverse official languages. Despite having English as the primary official language, it has other formal words, which include French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian (Shepherd, 2015). The diversity of styles enhances the spirit of the membership since the members feel recognized in the organization. Also, the members do not think the biases which might come as a result of the language in the organization.
The United Nations organization also appreciates the members’ economic situations. For instance, in the budgeting of the organizations, the contributions are based on the economic power of each member state. For example, the economic superpowers, which is the USA, Germany, China, Britain, France, and Russia contribute more than three-quarters of the total annual budget. Money collected from the states is used to cater for life-threatening situations among the member states such as drought, famine and natural disasters such as earthquakes and disease epidemics such as Ebola. The money is also spent in the maintenance of peace and security across the world. For instance, it is used to organize troops to fight terrorist activities in the terrorist stricken countries such as Nigeria, Iraq, and Somalia (Binder & Heupel, 2015). Therefore, by doing all these activities, the organization supports the economic growth of the member states since the whole matter can be viewed as redistribution of wealth among the member states.
The United Nations organization is also organized in a functional structure which enables the body to function effectively due to the specialization of functions. For instance, it has the UN General Assembly in which each member state has a seat. The General Assembly’s primary purpose is to make policy recommendations, resolutions and declarations and also appoints the judges in the International Court of Justice. The organization also has a body known as the Security Council which consists of the four superpowers as the permanent members, and then the other fifteen members serve a two-year term. The primary function of the Security Council is to deploy the peacemaking troops, ordering ceasefires and imposing sanctions to peace threatening states. It also consists of the international court of justice which is based at The Hague, Netherlands, whose main function is to prosecute people who have committed international crimes such as organizing the massive killing of people or being involved in terrorism. It also provides doctors and other health care assistance through the WHO and other aid in the form of food and additional help in case of a disaster through the Red Cross Organization. These and other specialized UN agencies such as the UNESCO help in simplifying the roles of the organization which results in easy accomplishments of its tasks (Bailey et al., 2017).
The United Nations organization also limits the powers of an individual state and at the same time, acting as an avenue for personal leadership. In this case, all the member states must operate within the organizational rules and regulations. For instance, the UNO campaigns against the manufacture and stocking of deadly arms such as the atomic bombs. However superior the state is, it must operate within that special regulation, failure to which a state is faced with economic sanctions such as heavy fines (Binder & Heupel, 2015). Also, the country might be forced to quit the organization so that all the other member states are against it. As an avenue for personal state leadership, the UNO has fought for the decolonization of states since its formation in 1946. The organization admitted 40 new members between 1955-1965 when decolonization process was at the peak, resulting in many countries getting their independence. This way, the organization provides a forum for states to govern themselves for fighting for their freedom.
One of the weaknesses of the organization is the way decisions are arrived at. The UN charter stipulates that for any resolution to be passed, it has to be supported by the at least three-quarters of the general assembly, which consists of the representatives of the member states. Also, the idea to be passed must be supported by all the five superpowers. The problem arises when there are personal state conflicts among all or some of the superpowers. Some may opt to prevent the passing of any decision as far as their interest is concerned. For instance, during the cold war period when we had the world divided in to two main belts, with the eastern belt adopting the communist ideology and the western belt adopting the capitalist ideology, there emerged conflicts in the UN decision making, with the USA preventing the passing of decisions in an attempt to punish East China due to its communist ideology (Binder & Heupel, 2015). This happened in the years 1950-1971 when the US stopped blocking the passing of decisions to maintain its good relationship with mainland China. However, with the significant mandate to decision making having been left on the hands of five superpowers, there is still a threat to such conflicts to occur.
Also, the United Nations Organization does not have an army by itself. It, therefore, becomes difficult for the Security Council to assign peacemaking troops whenever the need arises. The council depends on the members’ support with the troops, and sometimes, the members might not be willing to provide their armed forces to assist in the organization’s peacemaking operations. (Conforti & Focarelli, 2016). This acts as a blow to the whole organization considering that its main objective which is to maintain international peace and security might not be accomplished.
The United Nations Organization has a weakness when it comes to mediations between two or more different states. The United Nations Charter does not give power to the international court of justice, the Trusteeship Council and the Economic and Social Council to enforce decisions just in case any party does not agree with the United Nations’ opinion (Gordon, 2016). Therefore it becomes difficult to use negotiation as a means of solving conflicts in the case where the parties involved in the dispute does not support the view of the United Nations.
Lastly, the United Nations Organization may suffer from a shortage of funds as it depends on the contributions of the individual members. Some members may fail to finance the peacekeeping missions of the organization especially when the member feels that the operations are against the member’s vested interest. It again gives the organization a severe blow in maintaining world peace and security (Bailey et al., 2017)
In conclusion, the United Nations organization has proved to have many strengths which include the diversity, the specialization of roles, fostering the economic recovery of its members, free way of electoral process within the organization, among others. This way, the organization has succeeded in its primary function which is to maintain international peace and security. It has also succeeded in providing health care donations and even donations to assist in disaster management. However, it also has some weakness such the conflicts which may arise when making decisions in the General Assembly, lack of the army by itself and even the failure of some members to offer financial assistance due to the individual members’ self-interest. These weaknesses have caused great strain for the organization to achieve its goals.
References
Bailey, M. A., Strezhnev, A., & Voeten, E. (2017). Estimating dynamic state preferences from United Nations voting data. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(2), 430-456.
Binder, M., & Heupel, M. (2015). The legitimacy of the UN Security Council: Evidence from recent General Assembly debates. International Studies Quarterly, 59(2), 238-250.
Conforti, B., & Focarelli, C. (2016). The law and practice of the United Nations. BRILL.
Gordon, W. (2016). The United Nations at the crossroads of reform. Routledge.
Shepherd, L. J. (2015). Constructing civil society: Gender, power, and legitimacy in United Nations peacebuilding discourse. European Journal of International Relations, 21(4), 887-910.
Thakur, R. (2016). The United Nations, peace and security: from collective security to the responsibility to protect. Cambridge University Press.