Ufrgsmun 2012. Un Reform
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UFRGSMUN 2012 UNITED NATIONS WORLD SUMMIT ON UN REFORM INTRODUCTION Established in 1945 under the Charter of the United Nations, the General Assembly occupies a central position as the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations. Comprising all 193 Members of the United Nations, it provides a unique forum for multilateral discussion of the full spectrum of international issues covered by the Charter. It also plays a significant role in the process of standard-setting and the codification of international law. The Assembly meets in regular sessions intensively from September to December each year, and thereafter as required. General Assembly’s resolutions are not binding and, therefore, considered recommendations, appointing and suggesting actions to be taken individually or in cooperation by member states and the United Nations. The regular flow of debate of high level plenary meetings is the General Speakers’ List and debate is moderated by the chair. All countries have one vote, either in procedural matters or substantive matters. There is no “veto power”, what means that, no matter which countries vote against, once a qualified majority (2/3 of countries in favor) is achieved in voting a resolution, it is approved. All member States take part in the sessions. However, in UFRGSMUN, the Secretariat and the Directors of the committee established a number of countries to be represented during the conference. ~ 1 ~ Exploring new possibilities. Treasuring the past. Topic: UN Reform Isadora Loreto da Silveira, Luíza Gimenez Cerioli, Matheus Machado Hoscheidt and Gustavo Henrique Feddersen 1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. The Post-World War I and the Flaws of the League of Nations The League of Nations (LON) was an international organization created in 1919, right after the end of the First World War. By that time, the horrors of the conflict made nations engage in the idea of a global institution that could avoid any other possibility of war. Even though it represented a groundbreaking initiative in the field of international cooperation, it faced serious contradictions from its very beginning, which culminated with its disastrous failure to prevent the Second World War. 1.1.1. The League’s Innovations The LON is considered as an innovative mechanism for promoting peace in the international system. It brought about for the first time the notion of “inter-governmentalism” through which“which states cooperate without surrendering significant parts of their national sovereignty” (MACQUEEN, 2011). Member States participate directly in the construction of resolutions and have, therefore, greater incentives to engage in collective decision-making processes. Multilateralism, “the commitment to collective, institutional responses to international changes” (MACQUEEN, 2011: p. 4), was another important principle of the organization. It reassured the need to deal with transnational problems through collective and consensual means. The Locarno Treaties (1925) 1, for example, evidences concerns with practical problems related to collective security under the aegis of the League (PEDERSEN, 2007). Another innovation of the League was its administrative structure, which was later taken as a model for the UN and several other international organizations. The League had three main organs: the Assembly, the Council and the Secretariat. The Assembly was composed by representatives of all member states, while the Council had representatives of great powers (initially the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Japan). Finally, the Secretariat was formed by a Secretary-General and his staff (PEDERSEN, 2007, p. 4-5). 1The Locarno Treaties were an attempt made by WWI European Allies and new states of Central and Eastern Europe to settle post-war territories. ~ 2 ~ UFRGSMUN 2012 1.1.2. The Reasons for the League’s Failure Three main flaws are usually considered to be the causes of the failure of the League and its consequent ending in 1946: 1) its lack of coercive power, 2) its revanchist approach and, above all, 3) the absence of the Unites States of America. Regarding the first flaw, economic sanctions were the strongest mean of enforcement possible inside the League. But even when economic sanctions were adopted, some members chose not to support them. As a result, the League lost much of its credibility. In this context, both Italy’s attack to Abyssinia in 1935 and Japan’s aggression against China in 1931 are examples of unpunished actions taken by its members (PEDERSEN, 2007). As for the second flaw, the revanchist approach, it is important to remark that the Treaty of Versailles, the main peace treaty of the WWI, was created during the Paris Peace Conference along with the negotiations to engender the League. In this regard, the League’s role as an international organization may have been influenced by the will of the winning Allies to favor their own interests. Consequently, the League of Nations was often seen as a source of unrest by Germany. For instance, the Publicity Section of the League, which was designed to be an instrument for expression of public opinion, was a place marked by nationalist and anti-pacifist opinions by the French side (PEDERSEN, 2007). At last, the US Congress refusal to accept American participation in the League left a huge gap in the organization. Firstly, because the United States were already one of the greatest powers after the WWI, and secondly because European nations, acquainted with a more conservative diplomacy, ended up heading the organization (MACQUEEN, 2011: p. 6). In fact, the League failed by not having created attractive internal mechanisms for Great Powers to pursue their interests and, therefore, participate. In this regard, the United States, barely affected by World War I, had few incentives to join a consensus-based institution that would limit their power. 1.2. Post-World War II, the creation of the United Nations and its main purposes 1.2.1. The Founding of the UN The United Nations came into existence on October 24 th , 1945, in San Francisco. Once the League failed to prevent another world war, the United Nations was founded as the second international organization committed with the preservation of peace among States. During its initial creative process, although the United Nations borrowed many characteristics from the League, the organization also created innovative mechanisms, which made the UN scope far wider than that of the LON in terms of results. Many of the negotiations for the UN foundation arose during World War II, as the frights of war led Allied Powers to recognize the ~ 3 ~ Exploring new possibilities. Treasuring the past. necessity of an effective organization in the field of international cooperation and security. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference, held in Washington D.C. in 1944, for example, formulated the most important decisions and settlements prior to the creation of the UN. At this Conference, the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR, and China agreed on the aims, structure and functioning of a world organization. Furthermore, the Moscow (1943), Teheran (1943), and Yalta (1945) Conferences also conducted relevant negotiations about the UN 2. Regarding the innovations of the UN, its institutional structure represented an important progress when compared to the League of Nations. For example, the veto power was devised to be an effective instrument to convince Great Powers, specially the United States and the USSR, to join the organization, providing them an exceptional hierarchical position inside one of the principal organs of the UN, the Security Council (UNSC)(PEDERSEN, 2007). 3 The concession of such a power, however, has been a source of controversies and criticism to the UN, either concerning this mechanism as a differential and unfair treatment, or pointing out the necessity of extending the veto power to other nations. 1.2.2. The Purposes of the UN Throughout World War II, many agreements and declarations pointed out the necessity of an international organization that could truly engage in the promotion of peace and in solving global problems that the League of Nations did not manage to deal with. The Inter-Allied Declaration (1941), the Atlantic Charter (1941), and the Declaration by United Nations (1942) are just a few examples (UNITED NATIONS). All of these documents already paved the way to UN’s pursuit of its long-run goals. Actually, many of the United Nations official objectives are the same as those of the League. Besides, the fact that they are all listed right in the First Article of the UN Charter evidences the organization’s strong commitment with its purposes. The UN purposes are listed as follows: 1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace; 2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace; 2The origin of the name “United Nations” is related to its use in the course of the World War II. By that time, the expression was used to indicate the Allied Nations, in opposition to the Axis Powers. It was US President Franklin Roosevelt, during the Moscow and Teheran Conferences, who first suggested the expression to be the name for an international organization (UNITED NATIONS WEBSITE). 3 The veto power is the power of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to obstacle the approval of any substantive draft Council resolution. ~ 4 ~ UFRGSMUN 2012 3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and 4.