Question

Pick one international organization (UN, EU, ICC, etc.). Explain its mission and function. Assess how issues of state sovereignty are dealt with for member countries. Use evidence (cite sources) to support your response

Answer 1

I believe the important of UN is the principle of law and order for the world peace and fairness of all. A world with the UN is to ensure all nations obey the same common law that protect the individuals as well as nations rights in the conduct of daily living and international relation. No nation big or small can deny human right or international law and get away with it. The whole idea of the UN is to ensure peace, lawful order, and fairness to all.

  

Some would say get rid of it, but actually there are pretty effective parts of the UN system (such as UNICEF and UNHCR) that deliver important services, advocacy and support the most vulnerable people such as children and refugees in difficult settings. We often undervalue the importance of these agencies because the scale and the scope of the challenges they face are so large. Let’s face it nobody has a solution to the influx of refugees and migrants from Syria and other countries to Europe, but UNHCR undeniably plays an important role.

Peacekeeping is another example of the UN taking on some intractable problems, often as a last resort and when the crises are at their peak. Peacekeeping is far from perfect and in places like Haiti has famously brought problems and lingered far too long. But in most conflict settings where peacekeepers are deployed, the scale of the challenge is enormous so on many fronts the mission is doomed to fail. That said, you can make the case that a mission and its activities are ‘important’ even it cannot prevent conflict from re-emerging in the long term or solve the root causes of conflict (this is a longer story but really peacekeeping is not designed to solve the root causes of conflict. That said no excuse for sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers or staff ever and the UN needs to do more on that).

The part of the UN you may be thinking about is the Security Council and General Assembly and the civil servants that support these bodies, largely in the Secretariat. These are pretty dysfunctional in comparison to the aspirations established when they were created. There are also a LOT of people employed to support them and the Secretariat is a real blast from the past in terms of bureaucracy and inefficiency. However, the question would be whether we would be safer if these bodies didn’t exist and there were no accepted place for states to convene. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need reform, but if it didn’t exist we might find ourselves inventing something like the UN today.

The UN also has symbolic value in terms of the values it embodies and the role it plays in establishing standards that human rights defenders and activists can ‘localize’ and nationalize for context. Think progress on the rights of women and children.