MODUL

E The United Nations and Contemporary

Lesson Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 Define global governance;
 Identify the roles and functions of the United Nations, and
 Determine the challenges of global governance in the twenty-first century.

Introduction

Although many internationalists like Bentham and Kant imagined the possibility of a
global government, nothing of the sort exists today. There is no one organization that various
states are accountable to. Moreover, no organization can militarily compel a state to obey
predetermined global rules. There is, however, some regularity in the general behavior of states.
For example, they more or less follow global navigation routes and, more often than not, respect
each other's territorial boundaries. Moreover, when they do not-like when Russia invaded
Crimea in 2014-it becomes a cause for global concern and debate. The fact that states in an
international order continue to adhere to certain global norms means that there is a semblance
of world order despite the lack of a single world government. Global governance refers to the
various intersecting processes that create this order.

There are many sources of global governance. States sign treaties and form
organizations, in the process legislating public international law (international rules that govern
interactions between states as opposed to, say, private companies). International non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), though not having formal state power, can lobby individual
states to behave in acertain way (for example, an international animal protection NGO can
pressure governments to pass animal cruelty laws). Powerful transnational corporations can
likewise have tremendous effects on global labor laws, environmental legislation, trade policy,
etc. Even ideas such as the need for "global democracy" or the clamor for "good governance"
can influence the ways international actors behave.

One lesson will not be able to cover the various ways global governance occurs. As
such, this lesson will only examine how global governance is articulated by intergovernmental
organizations. It will focus primarily on the United Nations (UN) as the most prominent
intergovernmental organization today.

What is an International Organization?

When scholars refer to groups like the UN or institutions like the IMF and the World Bank
(see Lesson 2), they usually call them international organizations (IOs). Although international
NGOs are sometimes considered as IOs, the term is commonly used to refer to international
intergovernmental organizations or groups that are primarily made up of member-states.18

One major fallacy about international organizations is that they are merely
amalgamations of various state interests. In the 1960s and 1970s, many scholars believed that
IOs were just venues where the contradicting, but sometimes intersecting, agendas of countries
were discussed-no more than talk shops. What has become more evident in recent years,
however, is that IOs can take on lives of their own. For example, as seen in Lesson 2, the IMF
was able to promote a particular form of economic orthodoxy that stemmed mainly from the
beliefs of its professional economists. IOs can thus become influential as independent
organizations. International relations scholars Michael N. Barnett and Martha Finnemore listed
the following powers of IOs.
First, IOs have the power of classification. Because IOs can invent and apply categories,
they create powerful global standards. For example, it is the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) that defines what a refugee is (see Lesson 10 for more). And since states
are required to accept refugees entering their borders, this power to establish identity has
concrete effects.20

Second, IOs have the power to fix meanings. This is a broader function related to the
first. Various terms like "security" or "development" need to be well-defined. States,
organizations, and individuals view IOs as legitimate sources of information. As such, the
meanings they create have effects on various policies. For example, recently, the United
Nations has started to define security as not just safety from military violence, but also safety
from environmental harm.21

Finally, IOs have the power to diffuse norms. Norms are accepted codes of conduct that
may not be strict law, but nevertheless produce regularity in behavior. IOs do not only classify
and fix meanings; they also spread their ideas across the world, thereby establishing global
standards. Their members are, as Barnett and Finnemore emphasized, the "missionaries" of our
time. Their power to diffuse norms stems from the fact that IOs are staffed with independent
bureaucracies, who are considered experts in various fields. For example, World Bank
economists come to be regarded as experts in development and thus carry some form of
authority. They can, therefore, create norms regarding the implementation and
conceptualization of development projects.

Because of these immense powers, IOs can be sources of great good and great harm.
They can promote relevant norms like environmental protection and human rights. But, like
other entrenched bureaucracies, they can become sealed-off communities that fail to challenge
their beliefs. For example, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz famously criticized
the IMF for using a "one-size-fits-all" approach when its economists made recommendations to
developing countries.

The United Nations

Having examined the powers, limitations, and weaknesses of IOs, the spotlight will now
fall on the most prominent IO in the contemporary world, the United Nations (UN). After the
collapse of the League of Nations at the end of World War II, countries that worried about
another global war began to push for the formation of a more lasting international league. The
result was the creation of the UN. Although the organization is far from perfect, it should be
emphasized that it has so far achieved its primary goal of averting another global war. For this
reason alone, the UN should be considered a success.

The UN is divided into five active organs. The General Assembly (GA) is UN's "main
deliberative policymaking and representative organ."23 According to the UN charter: "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 done by simple majority. Annually, the General Assembly elects a GA President
to serve a one-year term of office.24 All member states (currently at 193) have seats in the GA.
The Philippines played a prominent role in the GA's early years when Filipino diplomat Carlos P.
Romulo was elected GA president from 1949-1950.

Although the GA is the most representative organization in the UN, many commentators
consider the Security Council (SC) to be the most powerful. According to the UN, this body
consists of 15 member states. The GA elects ten of these 15 to two-year terms. The other five-
sometimes referred to as the Permanent 5 (P5)-are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. These states have been permanent members since the founding of the
UN, and cannot be replaced through election. The SC takes the lead in determining the
existence of a threat to the peace or an act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute
to settle the act by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of
settlement. In some cases, it can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorizing the use of
force to maintain or restore international peace and security. 25 Because of these powers,
states that seek to intervene militarily in another state need to obtain the approval of the SC.
With the SC's approval, a military intervention may be deemed legal. This is an immense power.

Much attention has been placed on the SC's P5 due to their permanent seats and
because each country holds veto power over the council's decisions. It only takes one veto vote
from a P5 member to stop an SC action dead in its tracks. In this sense, the SC is heir to the
tradition of "great power" diplomacy that began with the Metternich/Concert of Europe system
(see the previous lesson). It is especially telling that the P5 consists of the major
Allied Powers that won World War II. The Security Council will be further discussed in the next
section.

The third UN organ is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which is "the
principal body for coordination, policy review, policy dialogue, and recommendations on social
and environmental issues, as well as the implementation of internationally agreed development
goals."26 It has 54 members elected for three-year terms. Currently, it is the UN's central
platform for discussions on sustainable development.

The fourth is the International Court of Justice whose task "is to settle, in accordance
with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions
referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies, "27 The major
cases of the court consist of disputes between states that voluntarily submit themselves to the
court for arbitration. The court, as such, cannot try individuals (international criminal cases are
heard by the International Criminal Court, which is independent of the UN), and its decisions are
only binding when states have explicitly agreed to place themselves before the court's authority.
The SC may enforce the rulings of the ICJ, but this remains subject to the P5's veto power.
Localizing the Material

Did you know that Filipinos played a significant role in the creation of human rights
arbitration rules in the United Nations? In the late 1960s, the diplomat Salvador P. Lopez was
chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Lopez and other Filipinos helped
design the system whereby any citizen of any state may petition the UN to look into human
rights violations in a country That system exists until today. Human rights, therefore, are not
foreign impositions. They are part of our national heritage.
Finally, the secretariat consists of 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."28 As such, it is the bureaucracy of the
UN, serving as a kind of international civil service. Members of the secretariat serve in their
capacity as UN employees and not as state representatives.

Challenges of the United Nations

Given the scope of the UN's activities, it naturally faces numerous challenges. Chief
among these are the limits placed upon its various organs and programs by the need to respect
state sovereignty. The UN is not a world government, and it functions primarily because of
voluntary cooperation from states. If states refuse to cooperate, the influence of the UN can be
severely circumscribed. For example, the UN Council on Human Rights can send special
rapporteurs to countries where alleged human rights violations are occurring. If a country does
not invite the rapporteur or places conditions on his/her activities, however, this information-
gathering mechanism usually fails to achieve its goals.

However, perhaps the biggest challenge of the United Nations is related to issues of
security. As mentioned, the UN Security Council is tasked with authorizing international acts of
military intervention. Because of the P5's veto power, it is tough for the council to release a
formal resolution, much more implement it. This became an issue, for example, in the late
1990s when the United States sought to intervene in the Kosovo war. Serbian leader Slobodan
Milošević was committing acts of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Muslim Albanians in the
province of Kosovo. Hundreds and thousands of Albanians were victims of massacres, mass
deportations, and internal displacement. Amid this systematic terror, members of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, see Lesson 5), led by the United States, sought SC
authorization to intervene in the Kosovo war on humanitarian grounds. China and Russia,
however, threatenedto veto any action, rendering the UN incapable of addressing the crisis. In
response, NATO decided to intervene on its own. Though the NATO intervention was largely a
success, it, nevertheless, left the UN ineffectual.

Today, a similar dynamic is evident in Syria, which is undergoing a civil war. Russia has
threatened to veto any SC resolution against Syria; thus, the UN has done very little to stop
state-sanctioned violence against opponents of the government. Since Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad is an ally of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the latter has shied away from any policy
that could weaken the legitimacy of the former. As a result, the UN is again ineffectual amid a
conflict that has led to over 220,000 people dead and 11 million displaced. 29

Despite these problems, it remains important for the SC to place a high bar on military
intervention. The UN Security Council has been wrong on issues of intervention, but it has also
made right decisions. When the United States sought to invade Iraq in 2001, it claimed that
Iraq's Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that threatened the world.
However, UN members Russia, China, and France were unconvinced and vetoed the UN
resolution for intervention, forcing the United States to lead a small "coalition of the willing" with
its allies. It has since been discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and the
invasion of Iraq has caused problems for the country and the region that last until today.

Exercise 1: Answer the following questions.

1. Why is global governance multi-faceted?

2. How do international organizations take on "lives of their own?"

3. What are the challenges faced by the United Nations in maintaining global security?