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The Security Council of the United Nations

   

Added on  2020-02-19

11 Pages3497 Words192 Views
Introduction: The United Nations (UN) was instituted in 1945 as an international organizationwith a view to ensure world peace. The UN had taken the place of the League of Nations as itwas unsuccessfulin preventingThe Great War. The United Nations was set up by 51 nations andled by the Allied powers after the Second World War. Now the UN has 193 members. Theconfiguration of the UN echoes the geopolitical conditions present at the time of its origin. TheSecurity Council of the UN is the body that has the responsibility to enforce its decisions. It hasfive permanent members, the United States, Russia, UK, China and France. In the beginning,Russia and China were not themembers of the Security Council, but they took the place of theSoviet Union and the Republic of China. It can be said that the UN is an organization of nations that have been intended to avert theincidents of war between nations, but this organization has struggled to deal with the issues ofcivil and ethnic strife within the nations. Particularly after the end of Cold War, there has been ashift in the trends in conflict from international to intra-national conflicts. Hence, nations are nomore the defining framework when itcomes to describing a conflict (Fasulo, 2003). The UNSecurity Council, the enforcement tool of the UN had to deal with intra-State as well as non-statethreats by expanding the scope of jurisdiction even if questions have been raised regarding thesuitability of intervention by the UN in internal conflict situations (Kingsbury and Roberts, eds.1994). The United Nations still deals with the issues in context of relations between the states, although,many times there are common problems within the states. Similarly there are severalgovernments that are part of the UN and other authoritarian regimes butthey had come to power

by force. These do not echo the welfare of their people. Due to this reason, a large number of thepeople of the world feel that they do not have the presentation at the UN. Hence, it has beenproposed that representation should be given in the UN to the members of society, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and religious leaders who can stand for or better deal withthe disenfranchised populace and allow a larger role. There have been a number of broad trends that characterize the international environment afterthe end of the Cold War. There has been the rise of centrifugal and centripetal forces due towhich interdependence and also different types of conflicts were generated. The peace buildingarchitecture of the United Nations reveals several tensions and difficulties that are present inglobal governance today. The peace building framework of the UN was established to introducea concerted approach to the fragmented responses of the international community to the nationsthat were emerging from conflict (Scheffer, 1999). It was believed that the peace building effortsof the UN would act as an innovative experiment to break away from the usual business ofmyriad international actors who were involved in peace building. Therefore, although it wasbased at the UN, the peace building infrastructure, acted as a catalytic mechanism to introduce anew approach to peace building as it convened all the relevant actors, who belies the newresources and also served as a positively of actors, policy and knowledge (Meron, 1998). Therehave been a number of changes during the last few decades in international context and severalimportant lessons have been learned from the operations of the UN peace building architecture.It can be certainly claimed that during the last few decades, several lessons related with thesebuildings have been learned by the international community. During the 1990s, there was a seriesof ad hoc, piecemeal interventions in different countries ranging from Cambodia and El Salvadorand Sierra Leone which provided a wealth of experience to the international community and

resulted in the creation of new policies, entities, as well as new programs and practices(Robertson, 2002). Peace building was further institutionalized by the creation of peace buildingarchitecture in 2005 at the UN. It also confirmed its significance, as a part of the repertoire of theconflict management tools that are available with the UN to assist the nations in overcoming thelegacy of violent conflicts and also to stop their lapse or relapse in conflict. As mentioned above, after the end of the Cold War, there was a new generation of peacekeepingoperations. These new situations required more robust peacekeeping operations, so that they caneffectively deal with intra-state conflicts. However, in 1990s, UN was facing difficulties inachieving this objective, which changed the initial optimism towards a more pessimistic position.The complexity related with intra-state conflicts that were going on within the population of thecountry, along with the governments and significant managerial problems, neededmultidimensional peacekeeping missions. This was the decade when interventions in differentstates in conflict have been justified as the humanitarian intervention (Bassiouni, 1998).The peacekeeping operations that took place during this time left and negative trace - Bosnia,Rwanda, Somalia etc. As a result of the rarely successful peacekeeping operations of the UN, theorganization are to consider introducing major changes in the peace operations structure. As aresult of lack of consistency and determination of the mandate was not sustainable anymore.Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that peace operations are meant to intervene: to preventconflict where we can, to put a stop to it when it has broken out, or -when neither of those thingsis possible- at least to contain it and prevent it from spreading. The results of this change inperspective can be seen in the form of UN mandates in Sierra Leone and in Haiti.

“With growing awareness that a new problem is serious enough to warrant attention by theinternational policy community of states, new norms in which the newly acquired knowledge isembedded need to be articulated, disseminated, and institutionalized (Thakur and Weiss, 2009).Peacekeeping is a complicated concept that has complicated uses. As a result of the difficultcoordination that exists in the political sphere - the UN, secretary general, Security Council andmember states and also in the operational sphere, the type of conflict, parties confronted andgeographical area, the required distance he was not present that was necessary. For theseoperations to be effective. The problems start with the fact that there is no definition ofpeacekeeping, mentioned in the charter of the UN. There is no particular Article of the chapterthat precisely refers to the meaning of peacekeeping operations or the criteria to establish theseoperations or the guidelines related with the deployment of these operations. Secretary-GeneralBoutros-Ghali had stated that the peace operations entail the deployment of the UN in the field,hitherto with the consent of all the parties concerned and for the purpose of ending the conflictand to recover security in the area (Weller, 2002). Therefore, it can be said that the objective ofpeacekeeping forces is to protect the civilians, supervise the cease-fire, provide aid, ensure thedemobilization of military and elections so that the particular nation can be restored back topeace and stability.Annan had identified five policy pillars of a counterterrorism strategy. These were “dissuasion ofpeople from resorting to or supporting terrorism; denial of access to funds and materials toterrorists; deterrence of states from sponsoring terrorism; capacity development so states candefeat terrorism; and defense of human rights.” (Thakur and Weiss, 2009).

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