The United Nations (UN) currently has 193 member states with South Sudan being the most recent as of 2011. When the UN was formed after WW2 there were originally 52 members. The UN was formed due to the fact that the League of Nations was a complete failure after WW1 as the World was plunged back into War just 20 years later. The League of Nations failed in short because many states joined and then left and others such as the USA developed the idea but then never even joined. The UN was therefore set up for similar reasons however this time all of the Nations who were at the meeting joined and are still members to this day. Not only this but the UN has expanded and gained many members rather than lost members along the way just like the League of Nations did.
United Nations and its make up
The UN consists of four main areas and they are as follows; The Security Council (15 members of which 5 are permanent and have vetoing powers whilst the other 10 members are voted in on two year terms. Its main job is the maintenance of World peace and security). Then there is the General Assembly which is dubbed the parliament of nations as this is were all the representatives from each of the 193 member states sit and debate on any matter that is covered by the charter. Thirdly there is the Secretariat which has over 42,000 staff spread across the globe who administer the policies which are laid down by the UN. At the head of this is the Secretary General who at this moment in time is Ban Ki Moon and they are appointed on a 5 year term. Finally there is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) this council has 54 members who are elected by the General Assembly. This coordinates the economic and social work performed by the UN and its family of organizations such as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Has the UN been effective in its peacekeeping role?
One of the main reasons as to why the UN was set up was to maintain peace by both peacekeeping and peace building in all nation states throughout the World. There have been many both successful and unsuccessful actions that the UN has been involved in, in the last 60 years or so. But despite its effort have these missions been successful or not? There is no doubting the fact that the UN has carried out many successful peacekeeping missions such as in Cambodia, East Timor and Sierra Leone to name just a few. This missions no doubt saved thousands of lives. However as with everything you are remembered for the worst things that you do whilst everything good is forgotten about. This is no different for the UN who suffer from extreme criticism for the failures in which they have had. The UN has had three major peacekeeping roles since it was founded in 1945, namely Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. The Somalian failure did not result in as many deaths as the other two but it was just that the UN failed to enforce western values on the nation and the UN subsequently had to pull out in 1995 which led to the continual warlord like fighting. Not only this but it has far reaching consequences on people all around the World as Somalian pirates continued to take ships and there owners.
Then there is the Rwandan genocide which in my eyes is the biggest failure along with Bosnia in which the UN has faced. In this genocide 800,000 people were brutally murdered (UN estimate) however recent searches show that the number may actually be closer to 2 million. During the 3 months of continual slaughter in 1994 6 people were killed every minute. Over a quarter of a million were raped during the genocide many then suffering from HIV/AIDS and over 20,000 then gave birth due to having been raped. Of the 400,000 survivors of the Genocide 75,000 were orphans and as of 2007 (13 years later) 40,000 survivors were still without shelter. This was a failure for the UN as they had deployed French and Belgium peacekeepers to Rwanda however they had no grant from the UN to stop the bloodshed. So they ultimately just stood by and watched the continuous 100 day slaughter. The Bosnian crisis was also a disaster for the UN when in 1995 Serbian forces invaded a Dutch help camp that was supposed to be a shelter for the Bosnian Muslims however the attack resulted in the brutal murder of over 8000 people.
In my view the UN has obviously suffered from mass failures through the years however it has prevented many thousands more from dying. But I cannot look past the UN's failure in Rwanda which led to an unthinkable amount of deaths and the UN just stood by and watched this happen. So in my view the UN has not been effective in its peacekeeping role as it has been in certain nations in which it has just been there as an onlooker and almost just there to please the western world but in fact no action has been performed.
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