What the world needs today the most, is Peace and Harmony amid many other necessities! In a world that has innumerable issues, there is a dire need for some disciplined planning and visionary actions based on human values and with a mission to protect the humankind.
In the year 1945, after the World War II, 51 countries came together to commit themselves to maintain international peace, security, developing friendly relations amid nations and to perpetuate better living standards and social progress through one common platform-The United Nations! It was formed to essentially preserve international peace and security. The other overarching goals of the U.N have been to foster friendly relationships between its member countries, to solve international problems and promote human rights!
The UN provides a forum to its 193 Members States to express views and concerns and the international powers vested in its founding Charter. The U.N is formed of many entities such as the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the International court of justice, and the Secretariat. U.N uses the power of persuasion as it has no right to make binding laws. All nations contribute to the U.N budget and every member votes in the General Assembly meeting; hence, the countries that do not comply are in the minority.
For the past 75 years, the UN has been giving the world a common platform to grow and thrive while resolving worldly issues. It can essentially take actions on a wide range of issues such as Sustainable development, Refugee protection, Conflict prevention, Environment protection, Disaster relief, Counterterrorism, Disarmament and non-proliferation, Supporting democracy and Human rights, Clearing landmines, Gender equality, economic and social development, Women empowerment, expanding food production and anything that comes under the sole objective of making the life on the planet better in all aspects.
In addition to these issues; there are some other issues that U.N can work toward in the future such as freedom of movement and being able to travel freely across the globe, achieve uniform sustainable development across the world, global human resources planning, establishing a uniform culture to trade, exchange and communication.
Even if there is a long list of issues that the U.N handles on various levels, it was built to resolve and undertake services with four main purposes such as the following:
- To help resolve conflicts and maintain peace throughout the world
- To build coherent and amicable relations between nations of the world
- To be a common platform to encourage different nations to come together and work towards eradicating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, and strive for the overall; development of the world
- To be the core facilitator for harmonizing the actions of nations so as to give a proper structure and plan to achieve the goals
In an interconnected way; the U.N epitomises the strength in bringing nations together for making human life dignified and beautiful in every way. Here are some facts about UN:
- Some 91 million people in 83 countries get the benefit of assistance and food from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP)
- The UN has more than 100,000 peacemakers who help maintain peace in 14 operations conducted on 4 different continents all over the world.
- Today there are about 68.5 million forcibly displaced people in the world and the UN and its agencies are providing life-saving assistance and help to refugees and these forcibly displaced people
- The UN supplies vaccines to 45% of the world’s children
- Security human rights is a key pillar of the UN’s work and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the first document to detail the fundamental human rights that must be protected
- The UN population fund (UNFPA) work toward making motherhood safer and the UN and its agencies help over 1 million women a month to overcome complications involved in pregnancies
In addition to the above, there are several other initiatives by the U.N such as UNICEF program that works in 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives and give them a privileged life, the WHO that works towards a common goal of coordinating health initiatives on an international level, the World Bank that focuses on poverty reduction and improvement of living standards by providing low-interest loans, interest-free credit and much more. There are also other U.N specialized agencies such as the UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, U.N-Habitat, IMF etc. just to name a few. The U.N has most effectively worked in resolving several issues such as poverty, water and hunger crisis and much more!
Several facts reiterate the importance of having a utilitarian organization work towards a common goal and most importantly uniting the world for a better cause. However, though the success of the U.N and achieving its core objectives is evident, there are several questions that doubt the actual effectiveness of many of its programs.
Talks of how the U.N being amended in a different era and is hardly aligned with the current state of world affairs which raises questions of its relevance.
In its 75 years of existence; even though it has been hailed as the great hope for the world, it has been weighed down by incompetence, as it is a heavily bureaucratic organisation. U.N has been often criticised for its work in development being described as often fragmented and weak, as its governance was called inefficient and ineffective from time to time.
Several factors have contributed to the failure of the sole motive of the U.N and rather than serving the world with genuine intent; it somehow has ended up becoming a capitalist-driven political authority taking it far away from its core objectives. This isn’t good news for the world and somehow there is a dire need to restore the sanctity of the U.N’s initial mission.
Other Agencies:
There is the European EFTA, the Americas has the Organization of American States and also NAFTA, the African Union, the Asian Cooperation Dialogue and also the Commonwealth of the Independent States, SAARC and ASEAN are some of the other organisations that are already working on different levels for a better cause.
Conclusion:
All in all; though there have been many speculations about U.N being a highly politicised and bureaucratic organisation; today; in this myriad, complex world, the U.N still remains to be one of the most vital entities working towards global peace and progress; also instrumental in revolutionising several initiatives and helping the world in many ways than one.
