There are a lot of challenges that the United Nations faces today. One of the challenges that the United Nation faces is increasing demand in humanitarian assistance. In the recent years, the number of people who need humanitarian assistance such as refugees in the world is increasing significantly from time to time. In 2005, the United Nations’ refugee agency is attempting to help around 57 million people forced from their homes and displaced inside or outside their country. This figure is the highest figure since in the early 1950s when the United Nations started collecting the data on number of refugees in the world. This causes quite a lot of peacekeepers are needed in helping these refugees. That is reason why the United Nations always ask the member states to involve in peacekeeping missions. The number of peacekeepers has increased to 130,000 as compared to merely 11,000 at the end of Cold War. However, the system today is under severe strain because dozens of peacekeepers have been taken captive and more than hundreds of them have dead.
The United Nations’ Humanitarian Agency currently is facing the crisis of bankruptcy and difficulty in meeting the basic needs of million peoples. This is because the size of refugee crisis has expanded in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres said that if we look at those displaced by conflict per day, in 2010 it was 11,000 but last year there were 42,000. This means there is a dramatic rise in need from shelter to water and sanitation, food, medical assistance and education. He also said that the budgets cannot be compared with the growth in need. United Nations’ income in 2015 will be around 10% less than in 2014. The global humanitarian community is actually not broken but they are more effective than ever before. However, they are financially broke in helping these needy people.
In order to ensure the humanitarian assistance can be provided to all the needy people, the Secretary-General plays an important role in managing human resources by appointing under-secretaries to handle the operation of humanitarian assistance. Secretary-General’s office shoulders actually have the responsibility for overseeing and monitoring the operation of the whole humanitarian aid for the refugees and appoint the under-secretaries. There are quite a number of under-secretaries that usually appointed by General Assembly on the recommendation of Secretary-General for four years. Secretary-General involves in the whole process of hiring these members including lobbying from members to fill posts with their nationals and focusing on the role of Secretary-General of negotiating with the Security Council and General Assembly to make sure broad regional representation.
Besides, another challenge that is faced by United Nations is unequal human rights especially among women and children in the countries where war or conflict occurs. Human rights means the rights that inherent to all human beings in this world no matter what is our nationality, colour of skin, religion, language, ethnic origin, sex and so on. We are actually supposed equally entitled to our human rights without any discrimination. However, in the country that happen conflict or war, they will recruit and use the innocent children as the soldiers. Due to this, children loss their rights to go to school and loss opportunity to have a peaceful life. Other than children, women are also the victims of the war or conflict. Many of the unfortunate women and girls are sexually abused and violated by the peacekeepers that are sent to protect them. Peacekeepers should be someone who protect them and ensure that they can live in a peaceful situation but not the one who physically and mentally abuse these innocent women.
Thus, Secretary-General plays an important role in peacekeeping. This is because Secretary-General will take over the responsibility of overseeing and monitoring the peacekeeping missions. There are a lot of United Nation reports on a variety of issues that concern about peacekeeping. All these reports are produced by the Secretary-General or by his specially-designated panels for the consideration of the General Assembly and the Security Council. For instance, there is a special report on the review of the mandate of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan that prepared by Secretary-General on 23 November of 2015. The report is submitted pursuant to paragraph 13 of Security Council resolution (2015). This report is prepared in the light of the political and security situation in South Sudan. The Secretary-General is asked to provide recommendation including resource required for United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to fulfil its mandate.
Other than that, Secretary-General appoints Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict on the behalf of Secretary General’s office to launch a campaign ‘Children, Not Soldiers’ to stop and prevent the recruitment and use of children by national security forces in conflict in March 2014. This campaign focuses on the 8 national security forces listed for recruitment and use of children in the Annexes of the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict. The countries that are concerned by this campaign include Afghanistan, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. Seven of these countries agree and have signed Action Plans with the United Nations to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children. However, for Sudan, the negotiations are still ongoing to finalize the development of an Action Plan. Chad then completed the requirements of the Action Plan and was delisted from the Annexes of the Secretary-General’s annual report in July 2014.
Furthermore, the United Nations also faces challenges where the war or conflict that happen. For instance, Syria war that happen from 11 March 2011 until today and has already gone for five years. This war actually starts from anti-government protests for calling for the release of the children, democracy and greater freedom for people in Syria. On 18 March 2011, the government forces opened fire on peaceful demonstrations. This caused the people to ask the President, Bashar al-Assad to resign but he refused to do so. People were shocked and angry at what had happened and then dissatisfaction among the people spread to other parts of the country. It then escalated into full–scale civil war. The United Nations estimates that more than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in five years of armed conflict which began with before changing into a full-scale civil war and more than 11 million people have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. For those opposed to his rule, they battle each other as well as jihadist militants from Islamic State.
Thus, Secretary-General play a vital role in mediation. For this function, Secretary-General acts as a middle man or mediator to solve conflict that occurred between two parties. He or she will make use of his or her independence and impartiality as the head of a global organisation to prevent and stop the spread of conflict to a more serious level. For instance, Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations announced that he had appointed Staffan de Mistura as the new special envoy that is given task to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Syria. He wanted negotiations that are carried out to focus on "substantive issues" including a new constitution and UN-monitored elections. However, the government and opposition were far apart on the future of President Bashar al-Assad. He has been very keen to be positive and keep the momentum growing. This is because he knows there are different crunch issues and the talks would collapse if he was to dive into these issues straight away. He will deal with the hub of all issues which is political transition but he is going to do it very carefully.