The Effectiveness of United Nations at Promoting and Maintaining World Order

To what extent is the United Nations effective at promoting and maintaining world order? HSC Legal Studies - Task 4 The United Nations has only been partially effective at promoting and maintaining world order. Throughout its 73-year history, the UN has shown that although it can achieve some successes with regard to world order, it also suffers from the arthritis of bureaucracy, as well as differing standards of different nations when it comes to addressing world order issues. Despite limited effectiveness in achieving world order, the United Nations does provide effective promotion as it sets an international benchmark for world order standards through its legislative and judicial bodies. This is highly desirable compared to the alternative of there being nothing.

The United Nations has created and maintained various judicial bodies to maintain world order, which have had a mixed array of results. The United Nations is responsible for the ICC (International Criminal Court), Permanent Court of Arbitration, numerous ad hoc tribunals (i.e. the ICTY), as well as other minor courts. The ICC is heavily problematic due to its creation under the Rome Statute (1998), as well as in its practical implementation. The nature of the legislation and state sovereignty is that nations can opt-in or out, creating a patchwork quilt of accountability across nations. Furthermore, it has achieved 3 convictions since 2002 at a cost of US$1bn, which makes it highly resource efficient. However, throughout the other indictments issued, the ICC has a record of botched investigations, limiting practical effectiveness. Ugandan human rights lawyer, Nicholas Opiyo, has stated that the “ICC made mistakes with the [Lord’s Resistance Army] case from the outset,” in response to allegations of ICC mishandling the case. However, UN ad hoc tribunals like the ICTY and ICTR have proven to be an effective means of achieving justice. Since the 1990s, there have been 95 indictees for the ICTR and 161 for the ICTY, many of whom have been highly influential. The Guardian declared in 2017 that the ICTY has “bought justice, if not perfect closure, where mayhem and murder once reigned.” This is particularly poignant given that masterminds of breaches of world order have been accountable, as shown in The Prosecutor vs Ratko Mladić (IT-09-92) and The Prosecutor v Radovan Karadžić which held senior Serbian leaders accountable. However, it too has been criticised as a “winner writes the history books” perspective on world order issues. Hoare, himself a British-Bosnian, writes that 68% of ICTY indictees were Serbian and that it was a “failure of international justice for all parties.”

Therefore, the United Nations’ judicial tools to address world order methods have had varying effectiveness at maintaining world order, however, it must be said that international courts set a benchmark for global standards, thus have some effectiveness at promoting world order. The United Nations’ peacekeeping forces across the world have been infamous for mismanagement and have been plagued by bureaucracy yet have managed to achieve some effectiveness at maintaining world order. The Srebreniča massacre has been described as a failure on the UN’s behalf, due to its failure to adequately allow Dutch forces to operate against the Serbs. The Independent wrote in 2015 that “survivors still blame Dutch troops for not doing enough.” In this instance, the UN constantly denied DUTCHBAT crucial airstrikes to protect civilians for fear of reprisals on other UN troops. Furthermore, split second decisions had to be authorised by bureaucrats in New York. This also occurred in Rwanda, where the Guardian writes that an audio recording exists of Belgian peacekeepers saying, “there are killings, and New York doesn’t give a damn.” Furthermore, command systems were unnecessarily bureaucratic and command priorities were mixed up, leading to loss of civilian life.

On the other hand, the UN had success in East Timor, yet it is still debated if this was exclusively the UN’s doing Within 2 weeks of a crisis developing in 1999, Resolution 1264 (1999) was passed, creating INTERFET to restore peace and protect the East Timorese. The UN had learnt a lesson from the horrors of the 1990s and allowed countries with a larger vested interest to have a larger command presence and ceased running all decisions past New York. MAJGEN Smith (Ret’d) of the Australian Army wrote that “reconstruction was exemplary,” however, “these conditions for success were rare.” The BBC also wrote in 2012 that the UN response was positive, but it “still displayed its characteristic faults.” Thus, UN success at promoting and maintaining world order was partially due to improvements learnt from the 1990s. Therefore, the UN acknowledges that unnecessary bureaucracy, and large mistakes have hampered the promotion and maintaining of world order through its peacekeeping missions. In recent years, the UN has failed to clearly respond to world order threats posed by players willing to alter the status quo. Due to stalemate in the Security Council, since the Russian invasion of Crimea, the UN has done little to restore world order to the region. Russia’s illegal annexation seeks to challenge US hegemony, enjoyed since 1992. The UN Charter (1945) under art.2(4) has allowed Ukraine to defend itself with force, however, one would argue that the UN should have the right to now intervene under Article 2(7), yet cannot due to Russia’s veto power in the Security Council. Ukraine has instead attempted to protect their own citizens in the interim through force and also Law No 1207-VII (Ukraine) which protects the rights of those in occupied territories. Furthermore, China has begun creating a new Sinocentric sphere of influence through expansionist policy into the South China Sea.

Despite the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a UN organ, ruling against China’s expansion in Philippines v China (No 2013-19) and the UN’s own legislation, specifically Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, agreeing with the Philippines, little more in concrete substance has been done to challenge China. Their foreign ministry has blatantly said its illegal actions are “completely appropriate and legal.” The UN has not maintained or promoted world order in this instance as it has failed to hold China to account for its actions and does nothing to stop it opting out of its international obligations when it feels like it. Much the same can be said of the UN responses to the invasion of the Crimea, where little has been done to counter Russian aggression. Ergo, in conclusion, the UN has had a mixed array of results with regards to promoting and maintaining world order. Its international courts provide a international benchmark, yet some like the ICC have done little to maintain world order, whilst its ad hoc tribunals like the ICTY have provided some justice. Meanwhile, the UN’s peacekeeping elements have in some cases completely failed people it was supposed to protect, but recent successes in East Timor may be attributed to more favourable conditions rather than improvements to the UN system. Finally, the UN has done virtually nothing to counter nations seeking to flex their military muscle in recent years, with Russia and China both being left unaccountable, with the exception of one, weak, non-binding ruling in the PCA against China. This can be attributed to gridlock in the Security Council, which when we examine the UN’s history, has been a key cause of ineffectiveness for the UN when promoting and maintaining world order. Feedback: ICC is not relevant to the question (not a UN agency – it’s a treaty body). Analysis is solid. What about veto power? That would be worth addressing directly. A very well written and original response, that contains sophisticated analysis that is well-supported by evidence. Main parts to improve are to have more of a thread that ties your thesis together, and deal with some of the key issues in the UN. Conclusion could be shorter, to give your time to write another body paragraph (just a suggestion). 22/25