Role of United Nations in Maintaining and Promoting Peace and Security in the World

This essay critically analyses the role of the United Nations in maintaining and promoting peace and security in the world. It discusses the concept of peace, the UN's peace program, and its achievements and failures in peacemaking programs.

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Introduction
The United Nations came into prominence in 1945 after the devastation of the Second
World War with one fundamental mission that relied on the maintenance of international peace
and security. The UN primarily operates this by working in order to prevent war conflict and
further aiding organisations in conflict to make peace and creating the conditions to enhance
peace to hold and flourish. Such activities according to D’Amore (2014) often tend to overlap
and must be reinforced in order to be increase the efficiency level. The UN Security Council has
the fundamental responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. On the other
hand, the general assembly along with the secretary general primarily plays significant and
crucial complementary roles with the association of UN offices and bodies. The essay will
critically analyse the role of the United Nations in maintaining and promoting peace and security
in the world.
Discussion
Expanse standpoints on peace significantly underline positive and negative peace as well
as shed light on the description of peace as a state and as a process. According to Snyder (2017)
because of the definition of peace for the globalised world, scholars in the arena face challenges
in seeking a single definition to explain it. Similarly, Melin (2016) has argued that approximately
five decades following to the initial steps of peace research, peace has primarily remained a
challenged concept which has covered continuous disputes over its implication. In the view of
Snyder (2017), peace has been recognised as a political condition which increases the potential
of justice. However Bailliet and Larsen (2015) explanations rely on the fact that societies were
individuals get availability to justice for unethical deeds are claimed to be in a state of peace.
However on the other hand authors give an explanation for the condition of peace that it shows a

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deficit of universal denominator. Thus the idea of peace to one society may not be same for the
other.
Additionally it has been emphasized that for instance, society can be uneven or polarized
by uninterrupted conflict and tends to understand peace as the nonexistence of war (Santos &
Cravo, 2014). However theoretical assumptions of Hehir and Lang (2015) have stated that a
political community sustained by unwarranted structures organisations and policies tend to
connect peace with justice as well as freedom. Whereas individuals facing severe challenges and
suffering from material deprivation and lack of economic support to perceive the idea of peace in
relation to equity, justice, development and proper access to existential provisions of life.
Moreover Melin’s (2016) examination of peace relies on the issues of poverty, economic
deprivation and human rights abuses which tend to be a part of peace value and domain. These
perspectives however have claimed to that peace does not necessarily have been defined as the
nonexistence of war but to a certain extent secure the root causes of conflict. These factors have
significantly informed the United Nations’ programme for peace program in the early 1990’s
whereby the UN has identified peace building as a primary tool for opinionated organisations
which will change to reinforce and solidified peace to circumvent deterioration into conflict
(D’Amore, 2014). Furthermore the significant presence of economic and social issues in the
society has suggested a severe deficit of peace. As a result such a general explanation of peace
tends to consequently direct the assessment of the UN and its acknowledged peace objective.
The UN progressively has concerned itself in non-military factors of peacemaking as the
major proportion of it has been formed up to 50 missions between the early 1990’s and 2014
primarily on the condition of emergency reinforcement political, restoration and peace building
efforts. These efforts however have not only been emphasized on war devastated states but also

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shed light on the countries which encountered humanitarian adversities caused by natural
calamities such as Haiti. Moreover, the UN's referenda and intermediary power in Western
Sahara, Slovenia, Cambodia have been recognised as two indicators to its ever escalating
charitable peace programs with peace building maintenance program and services efficiently
preserved in the most peacekeeping undertakings in order to strengthen peace programs and
support as well as encourage human rights, impartiality, equality in addition to the rule of law
(Williams & Boutellis, 2014). Meanwhile global dynamics and extent of conflict state of affairs
have continued to illustrate and expand the peace making role of the United Nations. At this
stage, authors have argued that what may be supposed as overall failures in UN peace efforts
have been identified as the triple cases of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Consequently, there
have been found certain disillusionments the after the failures of the UN in these cases.
Bailliet and Larsen (2015) have stated that the United Nations non-military actions have
amplified over the past years to the degree to which other specialised organisations particularly
the ones under the ECOSOC have ever more involved in the domain of protective peacekeeping
through acts of humanitarian involvement, removal of dearth and health related matters which
have been strategies in order to stop the incidence of conflict and reduced the rate of
apprehensions specifically in weakened and deteriorating States. Hultman, Kathman and
Shannon (2014) have emphasized on this perspective whereby the United Nations’ primary role
has been to maintain the peace and stability in the world which has been severely dominated by
war negotiations and conflict between communism and capitalism. However in recent times the
role of United Nations have been restructured and seeking for a new role in the world which has
been primarily structured by the dynamics of worldwide entrepreneurship whereby conflict
gradually emerges from undermining and fluctuations the delivery of wealth and resources.

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These factors however have implied that the role of the UN in upholding peace has been
conflated with the aim of efficiently guaranteeing financial as well as communal progress where
the two have been merged in the shift from conventional peacekeeping two multidimensional or
stimulating peacekeeping efforts (Kirby & Shepherd, 2016).
Santos and Cravo (2014) have claimed that it is important to comprehend the aspects
where the United Nations recorded considerable achievements and omnipresent failures in its
peace efforts. Hultman, Kathman and Shannon (2014) have considered that the accomplishment
of the United Nations in peacemaking programs has been mixed. According to the scholars it is
restricted basically in providing means for a undisturbed resolution of global conflicts as well as
maintenance of peace the United Nations record has been on achievement in negotiating a
ceasefire between India and Pakistan in 1959 and bringing about peace in the Belgian Congo in
1960and further in recent times linking supervision of free and fair elections which lead to the
self-regulating activities of the nation (Hehir & Lang, 2015).
At this juncture, the UN has been dealing with extensive negative criticisms. Moreover,
majority of the critics of the UN according to authors have emphasized on the institutional
challenges which the UN face related to global affairs in addition to the UN capability in global
security crisis (Sethi & Schepers, 2014). Furthermore, Dreher et al. (2014) have opined that the
UN rather than serving a decisive role for global peace security and development has involved
itself in the crisis. According to Williams and Boutellis (2014), the UN can be supported on its
organizational values, theoretical and ideological principles in addition to political and
opinionated principles. Meanwhile, on the political and diplomatic principles, the UN has been
facing criticisms on its level of proficiency in dealing with certain cases which have not been
based on Security Council resolution such as Darfur, the Rwanda genocide. Additionally in

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certain cases, the UN has been indicated for increasing level of complexity in some of these
areas of crises.
Meanwhile, Hobson, Bacon and Cameron (2014) have criticized that the UN, on the
Israeli-Palestine emergency along with other Arab-Israeli conflicts and the inability of the UN to
address them. Moreover, non charlant attitude of the United Nations towards immense human
rights defiance in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia (US Allies) and Libya amongst others have been
observed by scholars. Curran and Holtom (2015) have noted that while at the foundation
membership has been inadequate to those of the identical ideological direction which can
cooperatively support on issues. Another form of criticism which the UN has been involved in
has relied on the allegation of certain groups that the UNPFA has provided support for
government programmes which supported compulsory abortion and coercive sterilization.
Conclusion
Hence to conclude, sociologist have considered that in the standard of causation which
has implied that every consequence tends to have a cause, thus, the present challenges which the
UN has been encountering with regard to global peace, security and development can be
explained by identifying the areas of causes and removing them. From the discussion, it has been
argued that the main grounds of the problems to be found in the global economic system with its
globalization programme which has shaped achievers and losers, intensified inequality between
and within nations and further developed one section of the global area by extending dismal
poverty deficiency, illness, environmental deprivation and conflicts to the other. The essay has
efficiently conceptualized peace efforts and applied it as a critical framework in successfully
comprehending the role of UN in promoting peace and security.

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