Essay: Issues for the United Nations

ABSTRACT

Based on Dictionary.com, United Nations means

1. (Used with a singular verb) an international organization, with headquarters in New York City, formed to promote international peace, security, and cooperation under the terms of the charter signed by 51 founding countries in San Francisco in 1945.

Abbreviation: UN.

Compare General Assembly, Security Council.

2. (Used with a plural verb) the nations that signed the joint declaration in Washington, D.C., January 2, 1942, pledging to employ full resources against the Axis powers, not to make a separate peace, etc.

United Nations is an organization that include almost all the countries in the world that consist of nearly 190 member states. Its General Assembly, where every country has one vote, guides of policies and financial. The other important part of United Nations is the Security Council, where the powerful five countries that have their majority; Security Council will ask them to take care of crisis and peacekeeping. United Nations also including Economic and Social Council; the secretariat or administration department and International Court of Justice or International Court it’s allied with agencies that operate independently. For instance, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

United Nations established after World War II as replacement of League of Nations and have been served as forum for many international disputes, especially Arab-Israel conflict and missile of Cuban crisis. Unite Nations also involved with peacekeeping operation by sending lightly armed from neutral countries for cease-fires.

The founding Charter are include of:

• Tolerance and live in peaceful each other with the neighbouring countries,
• Provide international security and safety,
• Cease fire among the countries except for the public interest &
• Use international machinery to promote economic progress and sociality for all human being. 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UNSG) is the head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations.

The current Secretary-General is Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who took office on 1 January 2007. His first term expired on 31 December 2011. He was re-elected, unopposed, to a second term on 21 June 2011. His successor will be appointed by the General Assembly in 2016.

The Charter explains that Secretary – General as chief administrative officer of that  organization that can take action to implement any other functions as are entrusted to him by Security Council, General Assembly, Economic and Social Council and other United Organs.

Besides, the Charter gives power to the Secretary – General bring to the attention of Security Council any matters that their opinion may threaten sustain of international peaceful and security.

Considering the multiple and pressing challenges the United Nations faces today, what is the proper role of the Secretary-General as top international public servant? Discuss the required qualities and discipline of a Secretary-General in view of the practices and achievements of the successive Secretary-General.

United Nations

What is United Nations? The United Nations is an international organization that are founded in 1945. It is currently made up 193 member states. Member states is a state that is a member of an international organization of a federation or confederation. The membership are open for all country in the world. For instance, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, El Salvador and also our own country, Malaysia. The solely reason of the establishment United Nations is for the replacement of League of Nations that has been disband because of their failure to prevent world War II. The purpose of the establishment of this United Nations is to prevent the recurrence of great dispute, stressed that the main human rights, ensure respect for international law, as well as improving the living standards of people around the world. The mission and work of The United Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter. The founding Charter are include of:

• Tolerance and live in peaceful each other with the neighbouring countries,
• Provide international security and safety,
• Cease fire among the countries except for the public interest &
• Use international machinery to promote economic progress and sociality for all human being. 

The flag of United Nations

Members of United Nations

Challenges of the United Nations

1. New era of terrorism.

United Nation that has been existed for 70 years now, still unable to find ways to deal with the problems that they faces. Terrorism is  an action that creating fear for the sake of to achieve ideological objectives proportionate from for the sake of awn goals or perhaps ignoring the safety of the public deliberately. Terrorism is used to accomplish of the political organisation also nationalism organizations, religions and government issues. We all often remind that all the people around the world always must have to confront with pain and suffering of violence. Violence arbitrary cause innocent people that comes at wrong place on the wrong time coincidently throughout this bad incident. Against this scourge, it will be residences responsibility and the issue has been an agenda for United Nations for the decade. The terrorisms that happening now is dangerous that not just including assassination, wars between religions and also regarding to political issues.

Terrorism is actually divided into a few types which is state terrorism, religious terrorism, right and left wing terrorism, pathological terrorism, issue oriented terrorism, separatist terrorism and Narco-terrorism. Firstly, state terrorism is systematic used by government to control the populations in their country. State terrorism is entirely carried out by the main group that hold the power in certain country and not a non-governmental organization. For instance of what is happening to Syria that the violence has been used to suppression of democratic protestors in Syria.

Secondly, religious terrorism. Religious terrorism can be motivated by religious ideologies and grievances. It is really dangerous due to the fanatically attached and willing to sacrifice themselves to prove their loyalty in certain religion. Their ‘all in’ tactics has been practised including suicide bombing which is widely used by them. This is to encourage self-sacrifice and made possibly by religious teachings. Ideology of the terrorist group is always mistakenly considered that they are different politic radical (without violent). But actually, the terrorist ideas always reflect the groups that follow them are always ended with violence.

Finally, terrorism has become more violence. The old terrorism obviously kill public people and sometimes they will get a wide circles of victim. “Terrorism want a lot of people watching, not many people death”, is the mottos of the terrorist. But in the new era, they merge both of them kill a lot of people in front of the public so they can see with their own eyes, with no exceptional massively. There are plenty of statistics that recorded the rising of terrorism in uncertain terms that we cannot handle.

2. Make progress on coordinated fundraising.

International organization act as force multiplier. To solve the problem that cross international borders requires coordinated and international organization such as United Nations.

But, when it comes to get fundrai
sing to supports this action, they catch constraint for these. For the International Food Programme that gives aid of food for nearly 2 million refugees has been suspended because of lack of financial supports. Only after that suspension, they get the financial support from financial institution.

Problem faces in World Food Programme was because of too many commitment from donors were unfilled. Developing countries like China and India are punching above their weight and contribute more to the other developing countries. United States did not more likely to give fundraising bilaterally to the affected countries.

Residents at a Syrian refugee camp in the Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon prepare to greet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during his visit there today.

Secretary – General of United Nations

The Secretary – General of the United Nations (UNSG) is the head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary – General also acts as de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations. The current Secretary – General is Ban Ki – Moon of South Korea, who took office on 1 January 2007. His successor will be appointed by the General Assembly in 2016.

Ban Ki- Moon

Secretary-General of United Nations

Since 1 January 2007

The Role of Secretary – General

The Secretary General works as a symbol of United Nations ideals for the interest of citizen in world, especially the poor and vulnerable among them.

The Charter explains that Secretary – General as chief administrative officer of that  organization that can take action to implement any other functions as are entrusted to him by Security Council, General Assembly, Economic and Social Council and other United Organs.

Besides, the Charter gives power to the Secretary – General bring to the attention of Security Council any matters that their opinion may threaten sustain of international peaceful and security.

Security – General will fail if they not consider carefully of the concern of member states, but they must also uphold of the values and moral of United Nations, speaks and take action for harmonisation, even at risk from time to time, challenges or disagreement from the same Member States.

Moreover, day-to-day work of Secretary – General of the United Nations includes:

• Attending sessions with the United Nations
• Consultations with the world leaders, government officials, and the others
• Worldwide travels intended to make sure they communicate and interact with the Member States
• Informing the issues about the international concerns in organizational agenda. 

The International Criminal Court in The Hague upheld the conviction of jailed Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga in December 2014.

Every year, the Secretary – General make a report about United Nations that appraises activities and outlines future priorities.

The most vital role played by Secretary – General is the used of good deeds by them which are; their private, draw on his independence, impartially and integrity to prevent dispute from arising, increasing and spreading.

Furthermore, the personal skills of Secretary – General and their staffs are crucial to their function.

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. The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter that, in his or her opinion, may threaten international peace and security.

The required qualities and disciplines of Secretary – General

The required qualities of Secretary – General is be organized and detail oriented. There are a lot of role of the Secretary-General that must be played. He should know how to manage their schedule so that they can be someone organized. They should know the detail of United Nations, the problems, chances and opportunity so they know what to do and not to do.

The Secretary-General must present a professional appearance and attitudes at all times. The appearance is the mirror that reflect and can be a lot of judgement to the public. If the Secretary-General wears clumsy dress up, the people will give negative judgement to them. Secretary-General always have conference and consultations all over the world and bring the name of their country with them, so should take a good care of it.

Other than that, practical intelligence. Secretary-General should involve with sophisticated and intelligent debate about the difference between functionalism and constructivism. They able to see the pattern and shape of the data flow and the opportunities as they arise. Secretary-General doesn’t necessary to generate the best idea, it is enough to know them well. And someone should know about the people that compatible as the choices of right personnel.

Millions of Afghan women and men cast their ballots in Presidential and Provincial Council elections on 5 April, in an important step forward in their country’s first democratic transition of power. The Secretary-General welcomed “their momentous achievement”.

It is no use being able to process information if you don’t have it. Next qualities that should have in Secretary general is about the information. They are bombarded daily with loads of information such as press reports, advisers’ reports and brief and panel reports. It is not all the information in reports that they all need. They should wisely compare what they needs and don’t need and only reach out the kind of the information that he or she needs. They must be really detailed for strategies for each circumstance that are the crucial element in effective preventing conflicts and resolution. Secretary-General they know how to hear their people voices among others on the ground and informed the realities of ambiguous about the problem of situations and the United Nations performances.

Secretary-General must also thinking about time. Having information, and the practical intelligence to process it, are not much help if a Secretary-General never have time to properly think the issues through. These is the critical problem to all people in higher. The will realize that they should not easily wasting their time easily. No doubt, time can be deal wisely and be saved if not be wasted to just listening to sets of speeches in meetings, Security Council and elsewhere. It can be read through if they really absorb it. Gossips and schmoozing and also wasting time on formal public session and events, makes political worlds messy. So the problem of thinking time will continue. More time at home in bath were the only answer.

Secretary-General must have moral courage. The one that can be trusted, and understandable is only himself. Personal support become most important when they knew what the right, and doing and saying the right but they knew it will be firestorm in order to accomplish it. Secretary-General should be ready for all the consequences that maybe they will confront and put them on the first line of their reputation. For instance, Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, gave speech about challenging not only the whole international community, also challenge of genocide, atrocity crime, and humanitarian intervention.

In any type of working, there might be something that always be bounce of wrong. I always follow the quotes of, “If you are feeling good, don’t worry: You’ll get over it.” From all the characteristics that must have in someone that enable ones to survive, the crucial one is resilience
. Ability to stand from the hard situations – not mindlessly and empty-headedly by learning nothing from the experience and has the prospect to keep repeating it, but with the way that you can still move on constructively. The real point if you want to be an affective secretary-General in all the high-risk activity which is they obviously had been through all the pain in public life, and knew how to stand back without give up and turning back.

The successive achievement and practices of Secretary-General.

1. Sustainable development.

• Accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals.Keep on the track to achieve the goals to poverty reduction by focusing on inequalities, and countries that should have the special necessities and for the peaple who not yet acheive the development of themselve.

  Complete the final drive by 2015 to eliminate the main killers: malaria, pollio, HIV infections, maternal and neonatal tetanus and measles.

  Fully implement the global strategies to woman and children health to save thousands of lifes, include provision of reproductive health services to meet unmet global needs.

  Unlocked potential of current and future generations by putting an end of hidden tragedy which is almost 200 millions of childrens by mobilizing the financial and human resources, politics with the challenges.

  Stimulate generational process by catalysing the global movement to achieves the quality, relevant and universal education for twenty-first century.

• Forge consensus around a post-2015 sustainable development framework and implement it:Define a new generation of sustainable development to bild MDG and outline a road map for consideration by member states.

  Mobilize the United Nations systems to support global, regional and national strategies to prevent the obtacles of sustainable development.

  – Energy: Mobilize variety of vast multi-stakeholder under the Sustainable Energy for All iniciative to achieve the access to modern energy, double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency and also share of global energy by 2030.

  – Food and nutrition: Adopt globally agreed  for food and nutrition security, mobilize all main stakeholders to give support to farmer and small food processor and bolster the resilience of communities and nations in experiencing periodic food crisis.

  – Water: Launchment and implementing United Nations inicative to provide save drinking water and adequate sanitation globally.

  – Oceans: Agree to a compact that will address excessive fishing and pollution by improving governance of oceans and coastal habitats by developing one intitutional framework and rules to protect ocean biodiversity.

  – Transportation: To develop and take actions of recommendations for providing more sustainable transportations, goverment and also investors will convene  aviation, marine, ferry, rail, road and urban public transport. It can address the increasing of congestion and pollution in worlwide especially in the city.

• Address climate change.Encourage climate financing by operationalizing Green Cilimate Fund and private funds to trajectory to reach the agreed amount of 100 billion dollars by 2020.

  Ensure the effective delivery of all fas-start financing.

  Deepen the knowledge of economical cost of climate change, and the same on needs of financial include mapping regional and subregional vulnerability hotspots.

  Easier the implementation of agreement to reduce deforestation to protect forest and sustain the livelihood of the pepole that depends on them.

  2. Prevention

• Support the development and implementation of national disaster risk reduction plans.Address the growing challenges of climate changes, environmental pollution, urbanization and population growth.

  Special emphasis need to take on undevelopment countries including provode platforms for South-South facilitating the uses of inovative methods and technologies.

• Prioritize early warning and early action on preventing violent conflict- Mapping, linking and integrating informations of informations from all international systems.

  – Supports countries capacities for facilitation and dialogue.

  – Ensure United Nations good office, mediation and crisis response and development of peacebuilding services easier and rapidly.

• Advance a preventive approach to human rights.Developing a policy of framework that defines the fundamental elements that need to prevent violations of human rights.

  Establishing preventive arrangement that will figure out the progress and gaps in uses of human rights instruments.

  Advancing the responsibilities of agenda protection.

• Build resilience to external economic and financial shocksHelping countries identifying their vulnerability faster and use net policies that promote job-led growth.

  3. Building a safer and more secure world.

• Construct an enhanced partnership for peacekeepingShare the burden and corporate with regional organizations.

  Ensure that peacekeepers have their capabilities and supports to meet up the increasing speeds and complexity of business demands.

  Enhance the ability of United Nations to provide public protections.

• Build a more global, accountable and robust humanitarian system.Enhancing the collaboration between humanity organizations especially from global South, at the local, international and regional to strengthen community resilience and response to emergency and establish monitoring system to evaluate the progress of implementation on preparedness of the steps.

  Build sharing international commitment to strengthen aid transparency and commitment, including encouraging global announce and agendas to aid transparent humanity aids and effectiveness.

  Expanding the supports for pooled financing mechanism, including Central Emergency Response Fund and ensures with stakeholders the methods of innovative financing to prepare additional preparedness of emergency.

  Convene a world humanitarian summit to help the sharing of knowledge and establish the common practices among a wide spectrum organization that involve in humanitarian actions.

  Revitalizing the global disarmament and non-proliferation agenda in the field of nuclear and the vast destruction and conventional weapons, and strengthen the roles of United Nations in dealing with the emerging issues regarding to nuclear protection, and outstanding regional issues.

  Enhance coherence and scale up counter-terrorism efforts to support much more member states in the implementation of Counter-Terrorism Strategy of United Nations and their own national Counter-Terrorism itself. This include of consideration by government bodies that want to establish a single United Nations Counter-Terrorism coordinator.

  View of the ICJ Judges in the Great Hall of Justice at the Peace Palace in The Hague, at the time of the delivery of the judgment.

  Address the planned crimes, piracy and drug trafficking by mobilizing collective actions and developing new tools and regional and global strategies comprehensively. This will need integration of integrating rule of law, public health and human right responses.

   

4. Supporting Nations in transitions.

– Developing the best practices and scale of capacities of United Nations in main areas, include peace building, human rights, the rule of law, aid in elections, international reconciliation, solving violence, steps of anti-corruption and constitution-making.

– Supports transitions compacts with strategic objectives that had been agreed and together accountability in fragile and conflict environment.

– Advocate for and establishing an age accountability by combating merely for international serious crimes through strengthen of international justice system, supported and enhance by the
steps of capacity development to strengthen countries judiciaries.

– Deepen the strategic and operational collaboration with international and regional organization including international financing institution and regional development bank and the other stakeholders.

5. Working with and for women and young people.

Deepen the campaign of United Nations to end violence towards women and enhance the supports countries that using the law of preventing the violence towards women. Also providing compensations and medicines to the victims, access to justice and prosecute perpetrators towards women.

Encourage participants of women in worldwide political for promoting the truth steps that can ensure women equal access through political leadership, managing effective election to encourage engagement and building of ability of women to be an effective leader. Place a special focus on the Secretary-General’s seven-point action plan on women’s participation in peace building.

Develop an action agenda to ensure the full participation of women in social and economic recovery through sharing varies of stakeholders with government, private sector and civil community. This include the recommendation regarding inheritance laws, wages, children, job sharing and taxes.

Address the needs of largest generation youngest people the world has ever known by enhancing the youth focus of existing programme of employment, entrepreneurship, political inclusion, citizenship and protection of human rights, education also include reproductive health. To aid the advance of this agenda, United Nations system will develop and implement the actions plan, doing the volunteer programme for youth under the umbrella of the UN Volunteers and appoint a new Special Adviser for Youth.

Conclusion

Although there are multiple and pressing challenges of United Nations has been confronted, the Secretary-General always did their role in solving all the problems. There are qualities and discipline must have in every Secretary-General to be capable for this kind of works for the future of the world. United Nations is not such a small organization. It must be fully emphasize by all of their side to bolster the achievement of this United Nations.