United Nations

The League of Nations now called the United Nations was founded in 1919. The League of Nations was composed shortly after the first world war in order to prevent any more wars. The League of Nations collapsed in 1939. On January 1 of 1942 United Nations was born. During WWII, 26 nations joined their forces to continue fighting against the Axis Powers. The United Nations Charter was drawn up by representatives of 51 nations and signed on June 26, 1945.

The United Nations was officially born on October 24, 1945 when the Charter was authorized by China, USSR, France, UK, USA and many other nations. The United Nations has three primary goals; to achieve and maintain world peace, to promote and develop good relations among all nations and to work together with other nations on solving economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems. Many other functions are done by the UN, they protect human rights, fight epidemics, poverty and famine, deliver aid in form of food, clot! hes and medicine. They provide monetary loans to developing countries through the World Bank to help them achieve their goals. The UN is composed of six major branches. General Assembly, The Security Council, Economic and Social Council, The Trusteeship Council, The International Court of Justice and the Secretariat. Each has a specific function in the smooth working of the United Nations. The major reason why UN was formed is to promote and ensure world peace. They accomplish this by helping nations settle their disputes, deter conflicts and stop fighting.

The United Nations is an organization that is involved in promotion of world peace. Many diplomatic actions are taken by the group to put and end to war and armed conflicts. The UN has an Agenda for Peace which can be separated into four groups. The four groups are: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding. Preventive Diplomacy tires to put and end to a conflict by getting the two nations to compromise before the conflict becomes violent. Peacemaking also tries to resolve the conflict diplomatically but after the bout becomes violent. Peacemaking tries to get the involved nations to cease-fire. Peacekeeping comes into play once cease-fire is established. UN peacekeeping forces come in to make sure that cease- fire is honoured and help to conclude the conflict. Peace building is the last stage thatpromotes peace and order by raising social structures, governments and legal systems. Peacemaking and Peacekeeping are two most important and crucial! stages after an armed conflict occurred. It is one of the UN greatest problems to decide when one stage ends and the other begins. In some cases the UN was to slow to react and the weaker nations have suffered enormous consequences. The United Nations have carried out more than 40 peacekeeping missions since 1948.

About 750 000 soldiers have served for the UN and more than 1 500 have lost their lives. In 1994 the UN helped to resolve a conflict in Guatemala, Central America. The UN ended a conflict which lasted 35 years and claimed over 100 000 people. In Europe the United Nations have also played a big role as peacekeepers. The UN was involved in bringing peace to former Yugoslavia and its surrounding nations. From 1992 to 1995 UN peacekeepers were working on bringing peace to Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia and Macedonia. These actions in Europe surely prevented a war between the nations involved. From time to time the UN fails to bring aid and peace to needing nations. One of the biggest problems for the UN is the time factor. It often takes time for the UN to decide weather or it is necessary for them to step in and assume control. The UN has to make sure that when they get involved in the conflict it will be solved fairly quickly and that the costs of such intervention will not be to high for them as well as the nations involved. The United Nations do not want to get involved in a conflict which will take a long time to resolve.

Such conflicts require large amounts of money, resources and human energy. The UN has a hard time to decide which conflicts they should intervene in and which ! they should not. This causes a problem because any conflict can cause a major war. "The achievement of the peacekeeping force for ^minor' conflicts is also very important. ^Minor' wars are not ^minor' to those caught up in them. The peacekeeping force may also prevent a conflict from spreading and becoming a major war." In recent times the UN is by many people considered to be a peacekeeping organization. This in fact cannot be avoided because of the job that the UN has. To the world wide public the UN is viewed as a world army, coming in as mercenaries whenever the higher powers call upon them. This is in part because of the way that the media shows them. Whenever there is a conflict the media shows armed man in their armed vehicles patrolling certain areas. The public then perceives the UN to be just an another army.

What the media does not cover is the ongoing negotiations between the UN and the involved nations. The public does not realize that armed enforcement by the UN is the last way of defense. UN is a very powerful organization that helps many countries that are in need. In many occasions the UN is required to step into a nation and solve its problems because they are not capable of! doing it themselves. In my opinion the UN is not given enough credit for what they do. Their actions have surely prevented a world war III to occur at one time or another. Many times the UN has failed to keep the peace, but it remained in the heart of the problem and helped the nations involved resolve their problems. The UN has been involved in many small conflicts which could have evolved to a bigger bout if not for their intervention. The United Nations is a great organization which works hard on making sure that there is peace on earth.