At the Global Level: The Three UNs

Global organizations, whether organized on a functional basis to include states from various regions but on a less-than-universal basis (for example, the Commonwealth of Nations or the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) or quasi-universal organizations like the UN, address one or more of these same four basic purposes. The United Nations, in its various programmes and agencies, which themselves often constitute separate IGOs, is devoted to all those purposes. In analysing the UN with this in mind I sometimes refer to "the three UNs" of security against violence, economic security, and security of human rights. Such a distinction is not meant to be applied as a rigid taxonomy of institutions, but simply as a way to appreciate how the institutions and their purposes can conveniently be clustered.

The first UN, that of security against violence, is perhaps the most obvious, at least to those of us in the developed world. It is epitomized by the Security Council, alone among UN organs authorized to use military force against Member States and able to require all Member States to cooperate, as for example in the enforcement of economic sanctions against an aggressor. Since virtually all states of the world are members of the UN, the function of external security is now essentially moot, but that of providing peace among members of the organization certainly is not. The function of collective security against a state deemed an aggressor has been exercised most recently and powerfully against Iraq. Yet with the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of many states which previously seemed stable, in recent years most Security Council-authorized operations have taken place in the context of civil wars largely internal to states. Such a development was not anticipated by the organization's founders. In this new role the UN, and its Member States, are still searching for the most appropriate means and principles of action.

The UN of security against violence, however, is not limited to the Security Council. As examples, consider the Secretary-General and the International Court of Justice. The Secretary-General has the capability of mediating or offering his good offices to resolve conflicts, as Javier Pérez de Cuéllar did effectively in the late stages of the Iran-Iraq war. And the International Court, while often usually lacking compulsory jurisdiction, has successfully adjudicated several dangerous disputes, including the Chad-Libya border conflict that had previously produced repeated bloody clashes. When states wish to use the ICJ for such purposes, it is there.

The second UN, that of economic security, is embodied, for example, in the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank, the IMF, and GATT (now the World Trade Organization), and also the UN Development Programme. Some of these institutions were initially devoted primarily to rebuilding economies devastated by World War II, but quickly turned to problems of development in the poor countries as well. They have been concerned to promote and stabilize economic interdependence, and to reduce poverty and stimulate economic development. They have taken on a special role in stabilizing economies in Eastern Europe, and in promoting market reforms both there and in many developing countries as they moved away from statist organizing principles. As such, these global institutions have underpinned economic interdependence and have become major instruments for the spread of free markets. Many other UN-related organizations have made other contributions to economic development and the alleviation of poverty. The World Health Organization and UNICEF, for example, deserve the credit for the global eradication of smallpox. UN agencies also have taken on important roles in worldwide environmental protection.

The alleviation of poverty is itself directed to some of the basic human rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its subsequent Conventions. Other basic human rights - political, social and cultural - have been furthered by other UN institutions. These include the Human Rights Commission, and the very demanding and effective work of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. With the economically oriented institutions, they have often played major parts in the rebuilding of societies shattered by civil war or wars of liberation. An agency frequently overlooked is the Electoral Assistance Unit of the UN Secretariat. It has supervised, monitored and otherwise assisted the holding of free elections in more than 60 countries, aiding transitions following the collapse of authoritarian regimes and civil wars. Examples include Cambodia, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Namibia. In this way, the UN has become an instrument of democratization - an unthinkable development prior to the end of the Cold War.

As with the EU, the activities of the "three UNs" have been undertaken for their own sake; for example, the alleviation of poverty is a goal in itself. But, also like the vision of the founders of the EU, these various purposes also have synergisms. Not only is peace sought directly by those organs of the UN overtly devoted to security from violence, but, in his Agenda for Peace and Agenda for Development3 Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared his belief that development and human rights were essential for stable peace. More generally, it is more than plausible that, conversely, peace facilitates and encourages economic development and the securing of human rights. In effect, a set of virtuous circles operates, with each of these causal arrows reinforcing the others. Nor is this vision limited to Boutros Boutros-Ghali and some of his contemporaries. It was clearly evident in the thought of many of the founders of the UN, in the United Kingdom and the United States, when they devised its institutions in 1945. For all their "realist" concerns with power politics and the institutions of collective security, these founders also found room for the liberal institutionalist vision of the broader underpinnings of a peaceful order that would in many instances make direct resort to the collective security operations unnecessary and virtually irrelevant.4

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 979