United Nations & its Organs

• The United Nations (UN) is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made up of 193 Member States. (To Provide Peace & Security).
• Its mission and work guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter and implemented by its various organs and specialised agencies.
• Its activities include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development and upholding international law.

History

• In 1899, the International Peace Conference was held in The Hague to elaborate instruments for settling crises peacefully, preventing wars and codifying rules of warfare.
• It adopted the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes and established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which began work in 1902. This court was the forerunner of UN International Court of Justice.
• The forerunner of the United Nations was the League of Nations, an organization conceived in circumstances of the First World War, and established in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security. {because of Hitler Germany come out, USA not sign it}, So it led to failure.
• The International Labour Organization (ILO) was also created in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles as an affiliated agency of the League.
• Atlantic Charter,1941
• The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A document called The Declaration by United Nations was signed in 1942 by 26 nations, pledging their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers (Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis) and bound them against making a separate peace.
• The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the period following the end of World War II. (No Territorial Aggrandisement {No territorial changes against wishes of the people}.
• The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic Charter, outlined US and UK aims for the world as follows:
• no territorial aggrandizement;
• no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination);
• restoration of self-government to those deprived of it;
• reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; (General agreement on Trade & Tariff [GATT], at 1996 became World Trade Organisation [WTO]).
• freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations. Adherents to the Atlantic Charter signed the Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942, which was the basis for the modern United Nations.
• United Nations Conference on International Organization (1945).
• Conference held in San Francisco (USA), was attended by representatives of 50 countries and signed the United Nations Charter.
• The UN Charter of 1945 is the foundational treaty of the United Nations, as an inter-governmental organization.

Six Principal organs of the United Nations:

1. the General Assembly,
2. Security Council,
3. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),
4. Trusteeship Council,
5. International Court of Justice (ICJ), and
6. the UN Secretariat,

• Specialized agencies, and affiliated organizations.

General Assembly

• The General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the UN.
• All 193 Member States of the UN are represented in the General Assembly, making it the only UN body with universal representation.
• Each year, in September, the full UN membership meets in the General Assembly Hall in New York for the annual General Assembly session, and general debate, which many heads of state attend and address.
• Decisions on important questions, such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters, require a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly.
• Decisions on other questions are by simple majority.
• The General Assembly, each year, elects a GA President to serve a one-year term of office.
• 6 Main Committees: Draft resolutions can be prepared for the General Assembly by its six main committees:
1. First Committee (Disarmament and International Security),
2. Second Committee (Economic and Financial),
3. Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural),
4. Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization),
5. Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary),
6. Sixth Committee (Legal).
• Each Member State may be represented by one person on each Main Committee and on any other committee that may be established upon which all Member States have the right to be represented.
• Member States may also assign advisers, technical advisers, experts or persons of similar status to these committees.

Security Council

• The Security Council has primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security
• It has 15 Members (5 permanents and 10 non-permanent members).
• Each Member has one vote.
• Under the Charter, all Member States are obligated to comply with Council decisions.
• The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression.
• It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement.
• In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.
• The Security Council has a Presidency, which rotates, and changes, every month.
• The Security Council consists of fifteen members.
• The great powers that were the victors of World War II – the Soviet Union (now represented by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, Republic of China (now represented by the People's Republic of China), and the United States – serve as the body's five permanent members.
• These can veto any substantive resolution, including those on the admission of new member states or nominees for the office of Secretary-General.
• In addition, the council has 10 non-permanent members, elected on a regional basis to serve a term of two years.

Economic and Social Council

• The Economic and Social Council is the principal body for coordination, policy review, policy dialogue and recommendations on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as implementation of internationally agreed development goals.
• It serves as the central mechanism for activities of the UN system and its specialized agencies in the economic, social and environmental fields, supervising subsidiary and expert bodies.
• It has 54 Members, elected by the General Assembly for overlapping three-year terms.
• It is the United Nations’ central platform for reflection, debate, and innovative thinking on sustainable development.
• Each year, ECOSOC structures its work around an annual theme of global importance to sustainable development. This ensures focused attention, among ECOSOC’s array of partners, and throughout the UN development system.
• It coordinates the work of the 14 UN specialized agencies, ten functional commissions and five regional commissions, receives reports from nine UN funds and programmes and issues policy recommendations to the UN system and to Member States.
• The specialised agencies of the United Nations are autonomous organisations working within the United Nations System, meaning that while they report their activities to the Economic and Social Council, they are mostly free to their own devices. Each individual agency must negotiate with the Council as to what their relationship will look and work like.

Trusteeship Council

• It was established in 1945 by the UN Charter, under Chapter XIII.
• Trust territory is a non-self-governing territory placed under an administrative authority by the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations.
• A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League of Nations.
• United Nations trust territories were the successors of the remaining League of Nations mandates, and came into being when the League of Nations ceased to exist in 1946.
• It had to provide international supervision for 11 Trust Territories that had been placed under the administration of seven Member States, and ensure that adequate steps were taken to prepare the Territories for self-government and independence.
• By 1994, all Trust Territories had attained self-government or independence. The Trusteeship Council suspended operation on 1 November 1994.

International Court of Justice

• The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
• The ICJ comprises a panel of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms.
• Its seat is at the Peace Palace in The Hague (Netherlands).
• It is the only one of the six principal organs of the United Nations not located in New York (United States of America).
• The Court’s role is to settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies.
• The ICJ is the successor of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), which was established by the League of Nations in 1920 and began its first session in 1922.
• After the Second World War, both the League and the PCIJ were succeeded by the United Nations and ICJ, respectively.
• The Statute of the ICJ draws heavily from that of its predecessor, and the latter's decisions remain valid. All members of the UN are party to the ICJ Statute.
• In order to be elected as a judge , a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the votes in both bodies.
• In order to ensure a measure of continuity, one third of the Court is elected every three years and Judges are eligible for re-election.
• ICJ is assisted by a Registry, its administrative organ. Its official languages are English and French.
• The 15 judges of the Court are distributed in following regions:
• Three from Africa.
• Two from Latin America and Caribbean.
• Three from Asia.
• Five from Western Europe and other states.
• Two from Eastern Europe.
• Unlike other organs of international organizations, the Court is not composed of representatives of governments.
• Members of the Court are independent judges whose first task, before taking up their duties, is to make a solemn declaration in open court that they will exercise their powers impartially and conscientiously.
• In order to guarantee his or her independence, no Member of the Court can be dismissed unless, in the unanimous opinion of the other Members, he/she no longer fulfils the required conditions. This has in fact never happened.
• Judge can be removed only other 14 judge consider, he/ she is need to remove.

Jurisdiction and Functioning

• ICJ acts as a world court with two-fold jurisdiction i.e. legal disputes between States submitted to it by them (contentious cases) and requests for advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by United Nations organs and specialized agencies (advisory proceedings).
• Only States which are members of the United Nations and which have become parties to the Statute of the Court or which have accepted its jurisdiction under certain conditions, are parties to contentious cases.
• States have no permanent representatives accredited to the Court.
• They normally communicate with the Registrar through their Minister for Foreign Affairs or their ambassador accredited to the Netherlands.
• When they are parties to a case before the Court they are represented by an agent.
• Since international relations are at stake, the agent is also as it were the head of a special diplomatic mission with powers to commit a sovereign State.
• The judgment is final, binding on the parties to a case and without appeal (at the most it may be subject to interpretation or, upon the discovery of a new fact, revision).
• By signing the Charter, a Member State of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the Court in any case to which it is a party.
• A State which considers that the other side has failed to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court may bring the matter before the Security Council, which is empowered to recommend or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgment.
• The procedure described above is the normal procedure. However, the course of the proceedings may be modified by incidental proceedings.
• ICJ discharges its duties as a full court but, at the request of the parties, it may also establish ad hoc chambers to examine specific cases.
• Advisory proceedings before the Court are only open to five organs of the United Nations and 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations family or affiliated organizations.
• Opinions provided by the court in advisory proceedings are essentially advisory and not binding.
• India’s nominee to International Court of Justice (ICJ) Dalveer Bhandari (70) was re-elected to fifth and the last seat of world court. (Fourth India Judge)
• Bhandari received 183-193 votes in United Nations General Assembly and secured all 15 votes in UN Security Council (UNSC).
• He was elected after Britain withdrew its candidate from the election.
• This is the first time since the ICJ was established in 1945 that there will be no British judge in ICJ. Bhandari is fourth Indian judge to be elected to ICJ after B.N. Rau, Nagendra Singh and RS Pathak.

Secretariat

• The Secretariat comprises the Secretary-General and tens of thousands of international UN staff members who carry out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly and the Organization's other principal organs.
• The Secretary-General is chief administrative officer of the Organization, appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council for a five-year, renewable term.
• UN staff members are recruited internationally and locally, and work in duty stations and on peacekeeping missions all around the world.
• But serving the cause of peace in a violent world is a dangerous occupation. Since the founding of the United Nations, hundreds of brave men and women have given their lives in its service.

Funds and Programmes

• The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
• United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment)
• United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)
• World Food Programme (WFP). (Give food to country which in need, India donate more. Ex: for Afghanistan, when Taliban capture it).

Why reforms?

• Changed Geopolitics: The Security Council's membership and working methods reflect a bygone era.
• Though geopolitics have changed drastically, the Council has changed relatively little since 1945, when wartime victors crafted a Charter in their interest and awarded "permanent" veto-wielding Council seats for themselves.
• Reforms Long Overdue: It was expanded only once in 1963 to add 4 non-permanent members. Although the overall membership of the UN has increased from 113 to 193 but no change in the composition of the UNSC happened.
• Inequitable economic and geographical representation: While Europe is over represented, Asia is under represented. Africa and South America have no representation at all.
• Crisis of legitimacy and credibility: Stalled reform agenda and various issues including its Interventions in Libya and Syria in the name of responsibility have put the credibility of the institution in jeopardy.
• North South Divide: The permanent UNSC membership of portrays the big North-South divide in the decision making of security measures. For instance, there is no permanent member from Africa, despite the fact that 75% of its work is focused on Africa.
• Emerging issues: Issues such as transnational threats, deepening economic interdependence, worsening environmental degradation also call for effective multilateral negotiations based on consensus yet all critical decisions are still being taken by the veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council.

India and UNSC reforms

• India has adopted a multi-layered strategy to assume the long awaited permanent seat in the Security Council consisting of two components: Maximising support in the UN General Assembly and Minimising resistance in the UN Security Council.
• India hopes that its continued engagement at various Global South forums such as G 77 and NAM, African Union would garner much needed numbers in the UNGA.
• (India Campion that support for UN Reforms or Make India as Permanent Member or Abolish Veto power treat nations equally).