United Nations

This article is about the United Nations, for other uses of "UN" or "Un", see UN (disambiguation)

United Nations

Flag of the United Nations
Official languages	English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish
Secretary-General	António Guterres
Established	as a wartime alliance: January 1, 1942 as an international organization: October 24, 1945
Member states	193
Headquarters	New York City, NY, USA
Official site	www.un.org
1 Other official names: Organisation des Nations unies Naciones Unidas Ühendatud Rahvaste Organisatsioon Egyesült Népek Szövetsége Vereinte Nationen Организация Объединённых Наций 联合国 امم متحدة

The United Nations, or UN, is an international organization established in 1945 for the purpose of securing world peace. It replaces its predecessor, the League of Nations, which had failed to prevent war between nations. It was founded by 51 nations led by the allied powers after World War II. The organization's structure still reflects the geo-political circumstances of its founding; specifically, on the United Nations Security Council, there are five permanent members with veto power — the United States of America, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and People's Republic of China (which replaced the Republic of China).

As an organization of governments designed to prevent war between nations, it has struggled to address issues of civil and ethnic strife within countries. Since it consists of governments, many of which have been imposed by force, it has often been charged with being elitist and not genuinely representing the majority of the world's peoples. There are many proposals to reform the UN to give Nongovernmental organizations, religious leaders, and other members of civil society who represent disenfranchised people a greater role in the United Nations.

Background and history

International security has traditionally been guaranteed by an arrangement of Great Powers. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe, consisting of France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, and Prussia created a period of international security and a climate for economic development in Europe. After World War II, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, China, and the United Kingdom were the five great powers which made up the security backbone of the United Nations. The ideas for International Law go back to the Roman Empire, and Hugo Grotius, who integrated a moral component to the traditional "Law of Nations" in his On the Laws of War and Peace (1625), is considered the founder if modern international law. The ideas for a federation of nations are frequently traced to the nineteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant and his book Perpetual Peace (1795).

International resolution of disputes was first addressed by an International Court Arbitration established at the Hague Conference in 1899. Participation was voluntary and it did not solve problems of national aggression. After World War I, a League of Nations was established as a world organization to promote, collective security, disarmament, and a legal approach to resolution of disputes. However, many nations, including the United States never joined the League of Nations and it found itself powerless to act against Italian aggression against Ethiopia in 1928 or to prevent World War II. The United Nations was designed to address the known shortcomings of it predecessors.

The term "United Nations" was coined by Franklin D. Roosevelt, during World War II, to refer to the Allies. Its first formal use was in the January 1, 1942 Declaration by the United Nations, which committed the Allies to the principles of the Atlantic Charter and pledged them not to seek a separate peace with the Axis powers. Thereafter, the Allies used the term "United Nations Fighting Forces" to refer to their alliance.

The idea for the United Nations was elaborated in declarations signed at the wartime Allied conferences in Moscow, Cairo, and Tehran in 1943. From August to October 1944, representatives of France, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR met to elaborate the plans at the Dumbarton Oaks Estate in Washington, D.C. Those and other talks produced proposals outlining the purposes of the organization, its membership and organs, as well as arrangements to maintain international peace and security and international economic and social cooperation. These proposals were discussed and debated by governments and private citizens worldwide.

On April 25 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organizations began in San Francisco. In addition to the Governments, a number of non-government organizations, including Lions Clubs International were invited to assist in the drafting of the charter. The 50 nations represented at the conference signed the Charter of the United Nations two months later on June 26. Poland, which was not represented at the conference, but for which a place among the original signatories had been reserved, added its name later, bringing the total of original signatories to 51. The UN came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.

Initially, the body was known as the United Nations Organization (UNO), but by the 1950s, English speakers were referring to it as the United Nations, or UN.

The UN describes itself as a "global association of governments facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, and social equity." As of 2005 it consists of 191 member states, including virtually all internationally-recognized independent nations.

Headquarters

UN headquarters in New York City

The UN is headquartered in New York City and Geneva. The organization is divided into administrative bodies, including the UN General Assembly, UN Security Council, UN Economic and Social Council, UN Trusteeship Council, UN Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice, as well as specifically created international bodies dealing with international problems, for example, the WHO and UNICEF. The organization's most visible public figure is the Secretary-General.

The United Nations headquarters building was constructed in New York City in 1949 and 1950 beside the East River on land purchased by an 8.5 million dollar donation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. UN headquarters officially opened on January 9, 1951. While the principal headquarters of the UN are in New York, there are major agencies located in Geneva, The Hague, Vienna, Bonn, Bangkok and elsewhere.

Membership and Structure

UN membership is open to all states that accept the obligations of the UN Charter and, in the judgment of the organization, are able and willing to fulfil these obligations.^[1] The General Assembly determines admission upon recommendation of the Security Council.

The United Nations is based on six principal organs, part of what is collectively called the United Nations System:

• UN Security Council
• UN General Assembly
• UN Secretariat
• UN Economic and Social Council
• UN Trusteeship Council
• International Court of Justice

Security Council

Main article: UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is the most powerful organ of the United Nations. It is charged with maintaining peace and security between nations. While other organs of the UN only make recommendations to member governments, the Security Council has the power to make decisions which member governments must carry out under the United Nations Charter. The decisions of the Council are known as UN Security Council Resolutions.

General Assembly

Main article: UN General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly (GA) is made up of all United Nations member states and meets in regular yearly sessions under a president elected from among the representatives.

As the only UN organ in which all members are represented, the Assembly serves as a forum for members to express official government positions, launch initiatives on international questions of peace, economic progress, and human rights. It can initiate studies; make recommendations; develop and codify international law; promote human rights; and further international economic, social, cultural, and educational programs.

Secretariat

Main article: UN Secretariat

File:KofiAnnan-StateDept.jpg

Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General since 1997.

The United Nations Secretariat is headed by the United Nations Secretary General, who is assisted by a staff of international civil servants worldwide. It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for their meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies. The United Nations Charter provides that the staff be chosen by application of the "highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity," with due regard for the importance of recruiting on a wide geographical basis.

The Secretary General's duties include helping resolve international disputes, administering peacekeeping operations, organizing international conferences, gathering information on the implementation of Security Council decisions, and consulting with member governments regarding various initiatives. Key Secretariat offices in this area include the Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Economic and Social Council

Main article: UN Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social cooperation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, 18 of whom are elected each year by the General Assembly for a three-year term. The president is elected for a one-year term. Each member of ECOSOC has one vote, and decisions are made by a majority of the members present and voting. ECOSOC meets once a year in July for a four-week session. Since 1998, it has held another meeting each April with finance ministers heading key committees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Viewed separate from the specialized bodies it coordinates, ECOSOC’s functions include information gathering, advising member nations, and making recommendations. ECOSOC seeks advice from nongovernmental organizations and has granted many NGOs consultative status. ECOSOC is well-positioned to provide policy coherence and coordinate the overlapping functions of the UN’s subsidiary bodies and NGOs.

Trusteeship Council

Main article: UN Trusteeship Council

The United Nations Trusteeship Council was established to help ensure that non-self-governing territories were administered in the best interests of the inhabitants and of international peace and security. The trust territories, most of them former mandates of the League of Nations or territories of nations defeated at the end of World War II, have all now attained self-government or independence, either as separate nations or by joining neighboring independent countries. The last was Palau, which became a member of the United Nations in December 1994.

Its mission fulfilled, the Trusteeship Council suspended its operation on November 1, 1994, and although under the United Nations Charter it continues to formally exist.

International Court of Justice

Main article: International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) (known colloquially as the World Court) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Its seat is in the Peace Palace at The Hague, the Netherlands. Established in 1946, as a successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice under the League of Nations, its main functions are to settle disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by the General Assembly or Security Council.

Financing

The UN system is financed in two ways: assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. In the case of the UN, the General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by national income statistics, along with other factors.

The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a 'ceiling' rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly agreed to revise the scale of assessments to make them better reflect current global circumstances.

As part of that agreement, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25 to 22 per cent; this is the rate at which the United States is assessed. The United States is the only member that meets that ceiling, all other members' assessment rates are lower. On the other hand, it is in arrears with hundreds of millions of dollars (see also United States and the United Nations). Under the scale of assessments adopted in 2000, other major contributors to the regular UN budget for 2001 are Japan (19.63%), Germany (9.82%), France (6.50%), the U.K. (5.57%), Italy (5.09%), Canada (2.57%) and Spain (2.53%).

Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR, and WFP) are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments. In 2001, it is estimated that such contributions from the United States will total approximately $1.5 billion. Much of this is in the form of agricultural commodities donated for afflicted populations, but the majority is financial contributions.

Aims and activities

International conferences

File:Vienna-Un-Building.jpg

UN offices occupy a portion of this complex in Vienna

The member countries of the UN and its specialized agencies — the "stakeholders" of the system — give guidance and make decisions on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings held throughout each year. Governing bodies made up of member states include not only the General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, and the Security Council, but also counterpart bodies dealing with the governance of all other UN system agencies. For example, the World Health Assembly and the Executive Board oversee the work of WHO. Each year, the United States Department of State accredits United States delegations to more than 600 meetings of governing bodies.

When an issue is considered particularly important, the General Assembly may convene an international conference to focus global attention and build a consensus for consolidated action. High-level United States delegations use these opportunities to promote United States policy viewpoints and develop international agreements on future activities. Recent examples include:

• The UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992, led to the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to advance the conclusions reached in Agenda 21, the final text of agreements negotiated by governments at UNCED;
• The International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt, in September 1994, approved a programme of action to address the critical challenges and interrelationships between population and sustainable development over the next 20 years;
• The World Summit on Trade Efficiency, held in October 1994 in Columbus, Ohio, cosponsored by UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the city of Columbus, and private-sector business, focused on the use of modern information technology to expand international trade;
• The World Summit for Social Development, held in March 1995 in Copenhagen, Denmark, underscored national responsibility for sustainable development and secured high-level commitment to plans that invest in basic education, health care, and economic opportunity for all, including women and girls;
• The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, in September 1995, sought to accelerate implementation of the historic agreements reached at the Third World Conference on Women held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985; and
• The Second UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), convened in June 1996 in Istanbul, Turkey, considered the challenges of human settlement development and management in the 21st century.

International Years and related

Main article: United Nations International Years

The UN declares and coordinates "International Year of the..." in order to focus world attention on important issues. Using the symbolism of the UN, a specially designed logo for the year, and the infrastructure of the UN system to coordinate events worldwide, the various years have become catalysts to advancing key issues on a global scale.

• UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador
• UNESCO World Heritage Sites
• UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador

Arms control and disarmament

The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure "the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources". The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first resolution of the first meeting of the UN General Assembly (January 24 1946) was entitled "The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy" and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction".

The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly and the UN Disarmament Commission. Items on the agenda include consideration of the possible merits of a nuclear test ban, outer-space arms control, efforts to ban chemical weapons, nuclear and conventional disarmament, nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen international security.

The Conference on Disarmament is the sole forum established by the international community for the negotiation of multilateral arms control and disarmament agreements. It has 66 members representing all areas of the world, including the five major nuclear-weapon states (the People's Republic of China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States). While the conference is not formally a UN organization, it is linked to the UN through a personal representative of the Secretary-General; this representative serves as the secretary general of the conference. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly often request the conference to consider specific disarmament matters. In turn, the conference annually reports on its activities to the General Assembly.

Peace-keeping

Main article: Peacekeeping

UN peacekeepers are sent to various regions where armed conflict has recently ceased, in order to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage the combatants from resuming hostilities, for example in East Timor until its independence in 2001. These forces are provided by member states of the UN; the UN does not maintain any independent military. All UN peacekeeping operations must be approved by the Security Council.

The founders of the UN hoped that it would act to prevent conflicts between nations, and make future wars impossible, by fostering an ideal of collective security. Those hopes have not been fully realized. From about 1947 until 1991, during the Cold War, the division of the world into two camps, both with veto power in the UN Security Council, made agreement on peacekeeping matters extremely difficult. However, this was a period of general stability in which nations did not often wage war with each other. However, following the end of the Cold War, there were many calls for the UN to become the agency resolve disputes and end genocides with countries. This was not a mandate of the original charter which sanctified national sovereignty. Nevertheless, the United Nations has sent troops into many nations to keep order based on the concepts of human rights and humanitarian intervention.

UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular scale, but including a surcharge for the five permanent members of the Security Council (who must approve all peacekeeping operations); this surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. In December 2000, the UN revised the assessment rate scale for the regular budget and for peacekeeping. The peacekeeping scale is designed to be revised every six months and is projected to be near 27% in 2003. The United States intends to pay peacekeeping assessments at these lower rates and has sought legislation from the U.S. Congress to allow payment at these rates and to make payments towards arrears.

Total UN peacekeeping expenses peaked between 1994 and 1995; at the end of 1995 the total cost was just over $3.5 billion. Total UN peacekeeping costs for 2000, including operations funded from the UN regular budget as well as the peacekeeping budget, were on the order of $2.2 billion.

The UN Peace-Keeping Forces received the 1988 Nobel Prize for Peace. In 2001 the United Nations and Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the UN, won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."

For participation in various peacekeeping operations, the United Nations maintains a series of United Nations Medals which are awarded to military service members of various countries who enforce UN accords. The first such decoration issued was the United Nations Service Medal, awarded to UN forces who participated in the Korean War. The NATO Medal is designed on a similar concept and both the UN Service Medal, and the NATO Medal, are considered international decorations instead of military decorations.

Human rights

The pursuit of human rights has been a central theme of the United Nations. World War II atrocities and genocide led to a ready consensus that the new organization must work to prevent any similar tragedies in the future. An early objective was creating a legal framework for considering and acting on complaints about human rights violations. The United Nations is particularly concerned with the rights of minorities, refugees, women, children and others who do not have a political voice.

The UN Charter obliges all member nations to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights" and to take "joint and separate action" to that end. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common standard of achievement for all. It is not legally binding and was not ratified by many nations including the United States because it is seen an an infringement on national sovereignty, however it exerts significant moral force in international relations. The General Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues.

The UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), under ECOSOC, is the primary UN body charged with promoting human rights, primarily through investigations and offers of technical assistance in a "carrot and stick" approach. For example, the United Nations, for countries in transition to democracy, provides technical assistance in establishing free and fair elections, improving judicial structures, drafting constitutions, training human rights officials, and transforming armed movements into political parties.

The UN has helped run elections in countries with little democratic history including recently in Afghanistan and East Timor.

The UN also runs international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR, for the former Yugoslavia ICTY, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Ad-Hoc Court for East Timor.

Humanitarian assistance and international development

In conjunction with other organizations, such as the Red Cross, the UN provides food, drinking water, shelter and other humanitarian services to populaces suffering from famine, displaced by war, or afflicted by some other disaster. Major humanitarian arms of the UN are the World Food Programme (which helps feed more than 100 million people a year in 80 countries) and the High Commissioner for Refugees. At times UN relief workers have been subject to attacks.

Currently the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has projects in over 116 countries, over 89 million people are fed each year through the World Food Program.

The UN is also involved in supporting development, eg. by the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the largest multilateral source of grant technical assistance in the world. Organizations like the WHO, UNAIDS and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are leading institutions in the battle against AIDS around the world especially in poor countries. The UN Population Fund is a major provider of reproductive services especially in poor countries. It has helped reduce infant and maternal mortality in 100 countries.

Annually, the UN publishes the Human Development Index (HDI), a comparative measure listing and ranking countries based on poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors.

The UN promotes human development through various agencies and departments:

• World Health Organization eliminated smallpox in 1977 and is close to eliminating polio.
• World Bank / IMF
• UNEP
• UNDP
• UNESCO
• UNICEF
• UNHCR

Treaties and international law

The UN negotiates treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to avoid potential international disputes. Disputes over use of the oceans may be adjudicated by a special court. The International Court of Justice is the main court to adjudicate disputes among states.

Reforming the UN

Since its inception, there have been many calls for reform of the United Nations. However, in recent years a consensus has developed both inside and outside the UN that reform is necessary for its survival. Some reforms of the United Nations would require a change in its charter.

Form of International Organization

One ongoing debate has involved world governance in general. There are three basic views of international organization:

1. Federalism: This view advocates some degree of world government, imposed from the top down. The UN would act like a state, with the power to pass and enforce laws and to tax. This view is promoted by the World Federalists and articulated in the book World Peace Through World Law by Clark and Sohn. There has been much fear that a world government would trump national sovereignty and become a world tyranny from which no one could escape.
2. Functionalism: This view believes that certain functional activities need international cooperation and standardization. For example, international aviation, international postal delivery, an international environment protection agency, an so on. Ernst Haas' book Functionalism in Theory and Practice elaborates this view. Many of the specialized UN agencies, like WHO, operate in this way.
3. Transactionalism: This view maintains that world organization will develop from the bottom up through the development of a world culture based on exchanges and transactions as people of different countries engage in commerce, travel, and forms of interaction among people. This view was articulated by professors Keohane and Nye at Harvard University.

Method of Representation

Representation is a major problem for the UN, both in terms of representation among states making up the UN and fair representation of all of the world's peoples by the people at the UN.

1. Security Council. The UN Security Council represents only 13 of the 191 member states, and among those thirteen, five have permanent membership and veto power. Most states feel they do not have a voice on the Security Council, the only UN organ with real military and police power to enforce its decisions. As the world power structure at the time of the UN founding recedes into the background, its structure decreasingly reflect world power realities.

   Many proposals to reform the Security Council have been offered. Including regional representation, elimination of the veto power and permanent status of the five key members, and increasing the size of the Security Council are among the common suggestions.

2. General Assembly. The general assembly gives every member one vote. Thus the island nation of Trinidad with 12,000 inhabitants gets the same vote as the nation of China which has 1.2 billion people. Small nations can gang up on large nations and make decisions that can serve a few people at the expense of many. Such representation undermines the legitimacy of decision-making in the General Assembly.

   Proposals for reform include proportional representation based on population and a bicameral assembly.

3. A Forum of State Leaders. As a forum for governments, many people feel the UN supports regimes, not people. In many nations dictators represent only their own self interest, or the interest of their ethnic group. Decisions take that support such regimes are often view by oppressed peoples as collusion of the UN in oppression. While the organization can stand for international human rights in theory, its structure actually supports human rights violations in practice.

   Proposals for reform include increased recognition of NGOs and civil society, and parallel organs like an inter-religious council that speaks on behalf of the dispossessed and equal opportunity and justice for all people.

Failure to act (or succeed) in security issues

The UN has had difficulty in carrying out several of its peacekeeping efforts, evoking comparisons to the weakness of the League of Nations. This was highlighted in 2003 by controversy surrounding the United States-led invasion of Iraq which conducted in the face of strong disapproval by a majority of members; by Iraq's converse direct defiance of UN weapons and humanitarian resolutions; and by Israel's decade-long defiance of resolutions calling for the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. These perceived failures stem from the UN's structure which emphasizes the sovereignty of nations, voluntary membership, and places force in the hands of the Security Council, not the membership at large. Here are some examples of failures:

• Failure to act during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when current Secretary General Kofi Annan oversaw peacekeeping forces there.
• Failure by MONUC (UNSC Resolution 1291) to effectively intervene during the Second Congo War, which claimed nearly five million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1998-2002 (with fighting reportedly continuing), and in carrying out and distributing humanitarian relief.
• Failure to intervene during 1995 killings in Srebrenica, despite the fact that the UN designated it a "Safe Haven" for refugees and assigned 600 Dutch peacekeepers to protect it.
• Failure to successfully deliver food to starving citizens of Somalia; the food was usually seized by local warlords instead of reaching those who needed it. A US/UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.

The extent to which the United Nations should act as a World Government with more power to intervene in national disputes is under continual debate, and includes issues of whether its Charter can be reformed or a successor organization should be created.

Politicization of the United Nations

Self-policing has been difficult at times. The nature of the General Assembly structure, giving one vote per nation, regardless of the size or qualifications of nations, has led to politicization of well-intended efforts. For example, inclusion on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights of nations, such as Sudan, Cuba and Libya, which demonstrably have abysmal records on human rights, and Libya's chairmanship of this Commission, has essentially stymied much human rights activity and delegitimized the commission itself.

Financial Waste and Scandals

Lack of checks and balances and transparency within the UN has led to financial waste and scandals. An example is the Oil-for-Food Program established by the United Nations in 1996 and terminated in late 2003. This was intended to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs of ordinary Iraqi citizens who were adversely affected by the international economic sanctions placed on the government. The goal of the sanctions was to prevent the Iraqi government from rebuilding its military in the wake of the first Gulf War. It was Oil-for-Food Program was discontinued in 2003 amidst allegations of widespread abuse and corruption; the former director, Benon Sevan of Cyprus, was first suspended, and then resigned from the United Nations after an interim progress report[2] of a UN-sponsored investigatory panel led by Paul Volcker concluded that Sevan had accepted bribes from the former Iraqi regime and recommended that his UN immunity be lifted, to allow for a criminal investigation.[3]

Under UN auspices, over US$65 billion worth of Iraqi oil was sold on the world market. Officially, about US$46 billion used for humanitarian needs, with additional revenue paying Gulf War reparations through a Compensation Fund, supporting UN administrative and operational costs for the programme (2.2 per cent), and paying costs for the weapons inspection programme (0.8 per cent).

Also implicated in the scandal is United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose son Kojo Annan was accused of having benefited from illegally procured UN oil-for-food contracts on behalf of a Swiss company, Coctecna.

The UN in popular culture

The existence of the UN as a large, world-encompassing government organization has prompted many ideas about world government and world democracy. The UN is also often the subject of conspiracy theories.

An education activity called Model United Nations has grown popular in schools worldwide. Model UN has students simulate (usually) a body in the United Nations system, like the Economic and Social Council, the Economic and Finance Committee of the General Assembly, or the Executive Committee of UNICEF, to help them develop skills in debate and diplomacy.

The United Nations has been shown in several films. In the 1958 film North by Northwest, director Alfred Hitchcock wanted to film in the U.N but did not have permission. Shots were secretly done and recreated on a sound stage. The 2005 film The Interpreter is the first feature to be filmed on location in the United Nations. It features Nicole Kidman as an interpreter who becomes involved in international intrigue.

Fictional UN branches appear in many books, movies, and video games, including:

• United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition in Deus Ex
• United Nations Intelligence Taskforce in Doctor Who
• United Nations Naval Service in some David Feintuch novels
• United Nations Space Command in the Halo video game series
• United Nations Special Agency NERV in Neon Genesis Evangelion
• United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Force in the Godzilla series of films
• United Nations Global Defense Initiative from the Command and Conquer series of games
• United Nations International Critical Response and Tactical Team from the Clive Cussler novel Sahara

Notes

1. ^  With the exception of the Holy See, the sole permanent observer state, all internationally recognized independent countries are members. Other political entities, notably the Republic of China (Taiwan), Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), and Palestine, have de facto independence and/or some international diplomatic recognition from selected states, but are not UN members.

See also

• United Nations System
• United Nations General Assembly
• United Nations Association
• Oil-for-Food Programme
• 2005 World Summit on the Millennium Development Goals and Reform of the United Nations
• Mundialization
• League of Democracies: proposed replacement for the U.N.
• World political party

Further reading

• An Insider's Guide to the UN, Linda Fasulo, Yale University Press (November 1, 2003), hardcover, 272 pages, ISBN 0300101554
• United Nations:The First Fifty Years, Stanley Mesler, Atlantic Monthly Press (March 1, 1997), hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 0871136562
• United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations edited by Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury, Oxford University Press; 2nd edition (January 1, 1994), hardcover, 589 pages,ISBN 0198279264
• A Guide to Delegate Preparation: A Model United Nations Handbook, edited by Scott A. Leslie, The United Nations Association of the United States of America, 2004 edition (October 2004), soft cover, 296 pages, ISBN 1880632713
• "U.S. At War - International." Time Magazine XLV.19 May 7, 1945: 25-28.

External links

• United Nations - Official site
  • United Nations Charter - Charter text
  • United Nations Volunteers
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Website of the Committee for a Democratic UN (German and English versions)
• Website of the Global Policy Forum, an independent think-tank on the UN
• Economist.com background
• Agenda for Peace B.-Boutros Ghali

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• United Nations  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "United Nations"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.