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United Nations in Today’s World - Vital Or Redundant

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About this sample

About this sample

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Words: 1688 |

Pages: 4|

9 min read

Published: Jun 9, 2021

Words: 1688|Pages: 4|9 min read

Published: Jun 9, 2021

Table of contents

  1. Background
  2. Successes
  3. Peace
    Ending famine
    Containing the World Drug Problem
  4. Failures
  5. Rwanda Genocide
    Spreading Cholera in Haiti
    The Fall of Srebrenica and the Failure of UN Peacekeeping
  6. What I Want to Change
  7. My opinion

Background

The United Nations was founded on October twenty-fourth, 1945 after World War II. The UN started with fifty-one countries and currently has one hundred ninety-three member states who are striving to maintain peace between all of the nations(History of the United Nations). The reason the United Nations was created was to prevent another disaster like the Holocaust. The name United Nations was thought of by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The United Nations Charter was first signed on June twenty-sixth, 1945 by fifty at a conference(History of the United Nations). Poland was not able to attend the conference causing the representative to sign it a few months later which allowed Poland to became one of the original fifty-one “Member States”. The United Nations established different bodies called the General Assembly(main body), the Security Council, Economic Council, Social Council, and the International Court of Justice.

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Successes

Peace

Since 1945 (after World War 2), the amount of deaths from conflicts has declined. For example, fewer people died during the conflict in the first decade of the 21st century than in any other decade of the 20th century.

The UN has sent 69 peacekeeping missions to bad spots in the world over the last six decades. By doing this the United Nations has restored peace. By restoring peace in countries this has allowed many countries to recover from conflicts. Currently, there are peacekeeping operations throughout the world (about 16) that are being carried out with over 125,000 women and men from 120 countries. These people go to areas where others are not able to go to and help keep the peace.

Ever since the 90s, the UN has ended many conflicts through mediation or third parties acting with the United Nations support. Some examples of conflicts that ended are Liberia, Sierra Leone, the north-south conflict in Sudan, and Burundi. There is research that states the United Nations peacemaking/peacekeeping and conflict prevention activities as one of the main reasons the world wide conflict has decreased by forty percent the 90s. UN preventive diplomacy has ended multiple conflicts that could have turned violent.

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission is in favor of peace efforts in countries that are coming out of a conflict. This commission brings international financial institutions, international donors, governments and troop-contributing countries, and proposes different ideas to rebuild the peace in the country and to help them recover. The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund is currently funding 222 projects in 22 countries. They do this by delivering fast and flexible funding.

Ending famine

The world does not have the same amount of food in every place and there are still people who die from malnourishment every year, but since the war, the amount of people dying from famine has gone down from seventy million to a few thousand. The UN’s World Food Program is part of the reason famine problems have decreased so much.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN uses global efforts to get rid of hunger. The goal of this organization is for everyone to have access to food of high quality leading them to have healthy lives. This organization also helps countries that are developing to improve and modernize their forestry, agriculture, and fishing practices in ways that improve their people's health and living conditions

The World Food Programme (WFP) is a nonprofit organization fighting hunger around the world. It is the largest humanitarian effort and delivers assistance with food when there are emergencies. The program works with multiple communities each year to help improve the nutrition of people around the world. Every year, the World Food Programme helps about eighty million people living in around eighty countries. The program gives nutritional support and food to the people with the least money and people that are under-nourished. The Programme is working towards the Global Goal of Zero Hunger. In the year of 2014, the program was able to provide meals from schools or rations to bring home for over seventeen million children. The Programme uses cash transfers so people can buy their food. In 2014, about nine million people were able to buy their food this way. Lastly, the Programme also gives support to the humanitarian efforts from the logistics, telecommunications, and aviation fields.

Containing the World Drug Problem

The UN office that decreases the amount and wants for illegal drugs is the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. They use the three main conventions of the UN to help with drug control. This part of the UN works with countries to improve the overall security of the public and their health. They do this to prevent drug use and to help treat people with drug abuse. Since the UN has put effort into controlling the drug problem around the world they have helped and reversed the rise of drug abuse over the past twenty-five years. Some countries, in particular, the office is trying to improve drug control in Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Andean countries, West Africa, and Myanmar.

Failures

Rwanda Genocide

In 1994, the United Nations had an Assistance Mission to help Rwanda from the genocide. Genocide is when a large group of people is killed on purpose, especially people of a certain ethnic group or nation. Unfortunately, the peacekeepers were not able to stop the Hutus that were killing people and they killed about one million people in the Tutsi.

There was a report researching the United Nations and its role in Rwanda. It stated that the United Nations failed to protect Rwanda and how they completely ignored the situation at hand. They did not pay attention to the evidence given to them showing a genocide was planned. The report said the UN abandoned Rwanda when it needed them the most. The report was commissioned by a Secretary-General named Kofi Annan.

Annan stated that he was sorry on behalf of the United Nations for failing Rwanda. Annan started a report to find out what happened with the UN during the Rwanda Genocide and how the UN could learn from its mistakes. He put Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson in charge of the report and he found, 'Our conclusion is there is one overriding failure which explains why the UN could not stop or prevent the genocide, and that is a lack of resources and a lack of will - a lack of will to commit necessary to prevent the genocide,' Carlsson said.

The report showed that the UN and its Security Council did not pay attention to an assessment made by a UN human rights investigator located in Rwanda. The assessment, made in August 1993, showed the possibility of genocide in Rwanda. Once the genocide began and people were being killed the Security Council there was little will from them to help with a peacekeeping mission.

Spreading Cholera in Haiti

In 2010, there was an outbreak of Cholera (a deadly disease that affects the small intestine) in Haiti after an earthquake. Genetic testing shows that the source of the Cholera was a peacekeeping effort in Nepali. Over seven hundred thousand people were diagnosed with the disease and eight thousand people died from it. Despite this information, the UN claimed the outbreak did not come from them. A group of experts later determined that the source of Cholera was from a United Nations peacekeeping camp causing the UN to admit their role in the outbreak.

Officials from the UN are worried that if they are held as the main reason for the outbreak of the deadly disease then they will be met with many lawsuits against their peacekeeping efforts. The UN has been criticized for its little effort to help with the outbreak.

The disease is still infecting thousands of people in the country every year. Before the outbreak in 2010, Cholera had not been seen in Haiti for over a century. The disease has put a setback on Haiti especially because the outbreak came right after a devastating earthquake.

The Fall of Srebrenica and the Failure of UN Peacekeeping

When the town of Srebrenica fell in July of 1995, it showed how the safe areas in the community placed by the United Nations protection in 1993 did not help at all. The UN and its peacekeepers were not fulfilling many requests to help their stations in the town which allowed Bosnian Serb soldiers to take over. These soldiers executed and abused hundreds of men and boys and the UN soldiers did not interfere.

There was a report on how the UN did not handle the crisis properly and how its Bosnia peacekeeping force did not do its job. They reported on how the force destroyed multiple human rights after the safe areas fell.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina war and the fall of Srebrenica have shown that if a peace agreement is put in place there will have to be justice for the multiple human rights abuses. For the UN to make another peacekeeping effort in the towns and between the people they will need to help the victims in Srebrenica.

What I Want to Change

Something I would like to change about the United Nations is them paying more attention to the little things. For example, there was a UN human rights investigator located in Rwanda who made an assessment, in August 1993, showing the possibility of genocide in Rwanda. The UN ignored that warning and the genocide later happened. The UN also did not pay attention to what they were doing in their peacekeeping camps in Haiti. They ended up spreading Cholera all over Haiti which could have been prevented if they were more careful. Overall, the United Nations needs to pay more attention to some of the smaller countries and their problems instead of always looking at the bigger picture.

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My opinion

I believe that the United Nations is vital. Although the UN has made multiple mistakes, it has also had many successes that have helped the world. For example, since 1945 the amount of conflict-related deaths has declined. There were fewer conflict-related deaths in the first decade of the twenty-first century than in any other decade in the twentieth century. The United Nations has good intentions and wants to make the world better, but with many successes come some failures which will happen in any small business to a large organization. 

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Dr. Charlotte Jacobson

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United Nations In Today’s World – Vital Or Redundant. (2021, Jun 09). GradesFixer. Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/united-nations-in-todays-world-vital-or-redundant/
“United Nations In Today’s World – Vital Or Redundant.” GradesFixer, 09 Jun. 2021, gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/united-nations-in-todays-world-vital-or-redundant/
United Nations In Today’s World – Vital Or Redundant. [online]. Available at: <https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/united-nations-in-todays-world-vital-or-redundant/> [Accessed 29 Mar. 2024].
United Nations In Today’s World – Vital Or Redundant [Internet]. GradesFixer. 2021 Jun 09 [cited 2024 Mar 29]. Available from: https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/united-nations-in-todays-world-vital-or-redundant/
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