The United Nations
Founded in 1945, the United Nations is an international organisation aimed at:
- Maintaining international peace and security
- Protecting human rights
- Delivering humanitarian aid
- Promoting sustainable development
- Upholding international law.
The UN headquarters is located in New York, USA.
UN’s Success Areas
- Increment in the UN membership: Post- 1960’s decolonisation, the membership of the UN expanded from about 50 members to double.
- Decolonisation: It was the UN which played the lead role in the 1960 decolonisation and helped around 80 colonies in gaining their freedom.
- Involvement with civil society: The UN is no more an organisation of nations only, more and more UN bodies have begun engaging with the people within the nations, experts, intellectuals and media with time.
- Better sustenance: The UN has successfully sustained itself till now, as compared to the League of Nations, which is an achievement.
- Peacekeeping: The UN has successfully prevented World War – III.
UN’s Major Setbacks
- Arm races and Cold war: Although, the WW-III has been successfully prevented till date, violence, arm races, nuclear races and cold wars still occur among nations.
- Power suppressing principles: The world body still continues to see a tussle between ‘principle’ and ‘power’.
- While the hopes of a peaceful and just world are represented by the UN, the most powerful states are privileged by granting them commanding heights over international politics via the undemocratic instruments of veto power and permanent seats in the UN Security Council (UNSC).
- Not a multipolar organisation: The UN has been unable to present itself as a multipolar and multilateral organisation.
- At the time of formation, the UN had 5 permanent members with a total of 51 members, presently, it has 193 members but permanent members in the UN General Assembly are still 5.
- Laggard in holistic growth: The organisation had not been able to cope up with the increasing globalisation.
- The UN has been a laggard in overall development; no institutional arrangement is there to deal in particular with Pandemics or new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
The Significant Role of India
- India and the UN: India is one of the founding members of the UN.
- Since its independence and even before that,India has been an active participant in all initiatives undertaken by the UN like Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable development goals and various UN summits, including on climate change.
- Maintaining peace: As far as the peacekeeping ambit of the UN is concerned, India has performed quite well in maintaining peaceful and friendly relations with most of the nations.
- India and UNSC: India has been recently elected as a non permanent member of the UNSC and will be joining the latter from 1 January, 2021.
- The non permanent membership of India can be taken as an opportunity to convince the like-minded nations for fighting international terrorism.
- Moreover, India should also focus upon sitting upon the apex body in future; becoming a permanent member of the UN.
- Raising concern over need of reforms: India has realised the urgent need of reforms in the UN specially at the UNSC and has raised concerns over the issue.
What can India do?
- Perseverance: India must persevere and be determined about its position rather than bringing it out only on occasions.
- Alliance: It should make other allied nations that have ties with India realise its value and the power they can all gather together once India gets a permanent seat at the Security council.
- Balance its international and internal responsibilities: India must also see the added pressure it might receive if it becomes a member on the Security council and not have to compromise with its own internal issues.
- Principles over power: India’s tilt towards principles is what is appreciated and shall be continued to maintain its goodwill.