Note :-We are running little late as far as the date is concerned , but the time lag will be over soon.We can end it in a single day , but that may compromise our quality, thus we have taken up this approach to fill the gap one step at a time without any impact on quality.Don’t miss this article or the article that are about to come, they will be of vital importance as far as exam is concerned.Ignorance is unafforadable. A single error can cost a year, kindly don’t procrastinate.
Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS)
The Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) Programme was launched in 1982 with the objectives of developing and demonstrating scientific methods and techniques for local level planning. It envisions enabling people, communities and institutions of Local Self-Governance with requisite databases and Science & Technology tools for informed participation in local level governance.
The objective of the Programme is to set up integrated geo-spatial databases at lower area units like Districts and Sub-Districts, demonstrating their utility in various application sectors like Rural Development by developing Village Information Systems and Urban Development by Municipal GIS systems. The other areas of application include Water Resources Management, Conservation of Environment & Forests, Mining & Mineral Explorations, Natural Disaster Management with special reference to Landslides, Infrastructure Development, Capacity Building and Human Resource Development, promoting and providing R&D support in emerging areas of Geospatial Technologies, forging linkage with stakeholders, and documenting and disseminating the Programme outputs amongst the end user agencies.
National Medical and Wellness Tourism Board
In order to provide dedicated institutional framework to take forward the cause of promotion of Medical Tourism, Wellness Tourism and Yoga, Ayurveda Tourism and any other format of Indian system of medicine covered by Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), a National Medical and Wellness Tourism Board has been constituted. The Board shall work as an umbrella organization that governs and promotes this segment of tourism in an organized manner. The Ministry would drive the promotion of Medical & Wellness Tourism and will act as a facilitator and support the medical/wellness segment in promoting tourism and promoting India as a medical and wellness destination. The Board held its first meeting on 13th January 2016 and will look into the issues relating to visa issues, accreditation of hospitals and allied services as well as marketing and promotion of Medical and Wellness Tourism.
Buddhist Circuit under Swadesh Darshan Scheme
The Ministry of Tourism has launched the Swadesh Darshan scheme in the year 2014-15 with a vision to develop theme based tourist circuits on the principles of high tourist value, competitiveness and sustainability in an integrated manner by synergizing efforts to focus on needs and concerns of all stakeholders to enrich tourist experience and enhance employment opportunities. The Ministry has identified Buddhist Circuit as one of the thirteen thematic circuits for development under the Swadesh Darshan scheme.
*Check editorials for details
Prevalence of Sickle Cell Anaemia Among Tribals
The prevalence of Sickle Cell Anemia is higher in the tribal belt of Central, Western and Southern India; not so much in the tribes of North-East India. It is chiefly confined to dravidians and pre-dravidians tribes inhabiting malaria endemic regions. There is a little worthwhile treatment for the disease as of now but with management of disease, severity and complications can be curtailed to improve the quality of life and life span. The sickle cell gene is passed from generation to generation in a pattern of inheritance.
Government has decided to screen three crore tribal children across the country to find the incidences of Sickle Cell Anemia among them. The children with Sickle Cell trait or disease are counselled through their parents not to marry the other carrying trait or disease in order to control spread of the disease to next generation. The Ministry organised regional training workshops in collaboration with Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to facilitate State/ UTs to train adequate manpower to undertake the screening exercise using a simple and cost effective screening test developed by ICMR. In addition, Department of Biotechnology is involved in research to find cure of the disease.
What Is Sickle Cell Disease?
The term sickle cell disease (SCD) describes a group of inherited red blood cell disorders. People with SCD have abnormal hemoglobin, called hemoglobin S or sickle hemoglobin, in their red blood cells.
Hemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.
“Inherited” means that the disease is passed by genes from parents to their children. SCD is not contagious. A person cannot catch it, like a cold or infection, from someone else.
People who have SCD inherit two abnormal hemoglobin genes, one from each parent. In all forms of SCD, at least one of the two abnormal genes causes a person’s body to make hemoglobin S. When a person has two hemoglobin S genes, Hemoglobin SS, the disease is called sickle cell anemia. This is the most common and often most severe kind of SCD.
Hemoglobin SC disease and hemoglobin Sβ thalassemia (thal-uh-SEE-me-uh) are two other common forms of SCD.
Some Forms of Sickle Cell Disease
- Hemoglobin SS
- Hemoglobin SC
- Hemoglobin Sβ0 thalassemia
- Hemoglobin Sβ+ thalassemia
- Hemoglobin SD
- Hemoglobin SE
Overview
Cells in tissues need a steady supply of oxygen to work well. Normally, hemoglobin in red blood cells takes up oxygen in the lungs and carries it to all the tissues of the body.
Red blood cells that contain normal hemoglobin are disc shaped (like a doughnut without a hole). This shape allows the cells to be flexible so that they can move through large and small blood vessels to deliver oxygen.
Sickle hemoglobin is not like normal hemoglobin. It can form stiff rods within the red cell, changing it into a crescent, or sickle shape.
Sickle-shaped cells are not flexible and can stick to vessel walls, causing a blockage that slows or stops the flow of blood. When this happens, oxygen can’t reach nearby tissues.
Normal Red Cells and Sickle Red Cells
The lack of tissue oxygen can cause attacks of sudden, severe pain, called pain crises. These pain attacks can occur without warning, and a person often needs to go to the hospital for effective treatment.
Most children with SCD are pain free between painful crises, but adolescents and adults may also suffer with chronic ongoing pain.
The red cell sickling and poor oxygen delivery can also cause organ damage. Over a lifetime, SCD can harm a person’s spleen, brain, eyes, lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, penis, joints, bones, or skin.
Sickle cells can’t change shape easily, so they tend to burst apart or hemolyze. Normal red blood cells live about 90 to 120 days, but sickle cells last only 10 to 20 days.
The body is always making new red blood cells to replace the old cells; however, in SCD the body may have trouble keeping up with how fast the cells are being destroyed. Because of this, the number of red blood cells is usually lower than normal. This condition, called anemia, can make a person have less energy.
Outlook
Sickle cell disease is a life-long illness. The severity of the disease varies widely from person to person.
In high-income countries like the United States, the life expectancy of a person with SCD is now about 40–60 years. In 1973, the average lifespan of a person with SCD in the United States was only 14 years. Advances in the diagnosis and care of SCD have made this improvement possible.
At the present time, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is the only cure for SCD. Unfortunately, most people with SCD are either too old for a transplant or don’t have a relative who is a good enough genetic match for them to act as a donor. A well-matched donor is needed to have the best chance for a successful transplant.
There are effective treatments that can reduce symptoms and prolong life. Early diagnosis and regular medical care to prevent complications also contribute to improved well-being.
Snapshot:-
Symptoms:-
Inclusion of Communities of Puducherry in ST List
Importance of this news:- The tribe names can be asked for mapping questions in prelims
UT Administration of Puducherry has submitted the proposal for declaration of communities namely (i) Irular (including Villi and Vettaikaran); (ii) Kattunayakan; (iii) Malalikuravan; (iv) Yerukkula; and (v) Kuruman as Scheduled Tribe.
Target for generation of nuclear power
The Integrated Energy Policy formulated in the year 2006 had envisaged reaching a nuclear power capacity of 63,000 MW by 2032. Further, the government in its recent submission of Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) has also stated that efforts are being made to achieve 63 GW installed capacity by the year 2032, if supply of fuel is ensured.
Rahuri in Ahmednagar Becomes First to have Digi-Locker
Rahuri Municipal Council of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra today became the first Municipal Council to attain the status of integrated with digital locker for the issuance of all essential Documents.
CORPAT:-
The Indonesian Navy and the Indian Navy have been participating in coordinated patrol (CORPAT) twice a year since 2002 to keep this vital part of the Indian Ocean Region safe and secure for commercial shipping and international trade.
Vidyanjali:-
The Central Government is working on a pilot programme ‘Vidyanjali’ to involve retired teachers, retired government officials including retired defense personnel, retired professionals, people from Indian diaspora and women who are home makers to volunteer for co-scholastic activities in schools. These volunteers will not be replacement for regular teachers and will not be involved in formal teaching. In a meeting of State Education Ministers held on February 08th, 2016 by the Ministry of HRD, nineteen States/UTs had expressed willingness to participate in this programme on pilot basis.
Setting up of New Courts
In accordance with the recommendations made by the Jaswant Singh commission and judgment pronounced by the Apex Court,High Court are established after due consideration of a complete proposal from the State Government, which is to provide infrastructure and meet the expenditure, along with the consent of the Chief Justice of the concerned High Court, which is required to look after the day to day administration of the High Court and its Bench. The proposal should also have the consent of the Governor of the concerned State.
Requests for establishment of High Court Benches in different parts of the country have been received from various sources, including some State Governments. However, at present there is no proposal complete in all aspects pending for consideration by the Central Government.
The Chief Minister of Kerala had sent a request in the year 2005 for setting up a bench of Kerala High Court at Thiruvananthapuram. The Chief Justice of High Court of Kerala has not approved the establishment of the High Court Bench at Thiruvananthapuram.
The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, provides for setting up of a separate High Court for the State of Andhra Pradesh. The Act also provides that once separate High Court for the State of Andhra Pradesh is established, the existing High Court will go to the State of Telangana. However, separate High Court for the State of Andhra Pradesh could not be established yet as the State government has not yet completed all the necessary infrastructure for setting up of a separate High Court.
Gauhati High Court is common High Court for State of Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram & Arunachal Pradesh. Separate High Courts have been established w.e.f. 23.03.2013 in the States of Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura. Separate High Courts for the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram have not been established because the State Governments has not completed creation of necessary infrastructure. A statement showing the detail of the High Courts functioning in North-Eastern States alongwith the sanctioned/working strength of Judges in enclosed as Annexure.
Article 130 of the Constitution states that the Supreme Court shall sit in Delhi or in such other place or places as the Chief Justice of India may, with the approval of the President, from time to time, appoint, the Law Commission, in its 229th Report had also suggested that a Constitutional Bench be set up at Delhi to deal with Constitutional and other allied issues of national importance and four Cassation Benches be set up in the Northern region at Delhi, the Southern region at Chennai/Hyderabad, the Eastern region at Kolkata and Western region at Mumbai to deal with all appellate work arising court of the orders/judgments of the High Courts of the particular region.
However, the Supreme Court has not agreed to such a proposal. There is also a Public Interest Litigation being heard by the Supreme Court on the need to set up a National Court of Appeal. The matter is sub-judice.
| High Court | Principal Seat | Jurisdiction |
| Gauhati | Guwahati | Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram,Arunachla Pradesh |
| Sikkim | Gangtok | Sikkim |
| Manipur | Imphal | Manipur |
| Meghalaya | Shillong | Meghalaya |
| Tripura | Agartala | Tripura |
Use of Hindi Language in Courts
Article 348 (1) of the Constitution of India provides that all proceedings in the Supreme Court and in every High court shall be in English Language until Parliament by law otherwise provides. Under Article 348 (2), the Governor of the State may, with the previous consent of the President, authorize the use of the Hindi language or any other language used for any official purpose of the State, in the proceedings of the High Court having its principal seat in that State provided that decrees, judgments or orders passed by such High Courts shall be in English.
Section 7 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, provides that the use of Hindi or official language of a State in addition to the English language may be authorized, with the consent of the President of India, by the Governor of the State for purpose of judgments etc. made by the High Court for that State.
Government had taken up with the Supreme Court of India the proposals of the Governments of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka seeking consent of the President of India for allowing regional languages in the proceedings of their High Courts. However, the Full Court of the Supreme Court disapproved these proposals.
The provision of optional use of Hindi in proceedings has already been made in the High Courts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
Encouraging Growth in Power Sector
For monitoring ongoing/delayed power projects for their timely completion:
• Central Electricity Authority (CEA) monitors the progress of under construction power projects through frequent site visits and interaction with the developers, equipment suppliers and other stakeholders to identify issues critical for commissioning of projects and help in resolving them.
• Regular reviews are also undertaken by Ministry of Power, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Cabinet Secretariat to identify the areas of constraint and facilitate faster resolution of inter- ministerial and other outstanding issues.
• A Power Project Monitoring Panel (PPMP) has been set up by the Ministry of Power for monitoring of on-going Thermal and Hydro Generation projects targeted for commissioning during the 12th Plan and beyond along with the associated transmission system.
• Issues are also raised in PRAGATI, for proactive governance and timely implementation, as and when required.
For development of Power Sector, the following schemes have been launched:
Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna (DDUGJY) for :-
(i) Separation of agriculture and non-agriculture feeders facilitating judicious restoring of supply to agricultural & non-agriculture consumers in the rural areas; and
(ii) Strengthening and augmentation of sub-transmission & distribution infrastructure in rural areas, including metering of distribution transformers / feeders / consumers
(iii)Strengthening of sub-transmission and distribution networks in the urban areas;
(iv) National Smart Grid Mission (NSGM) for planning, monitoring and implementation of policies & programs related to development of smart grid in India
Water Crisis
The average annual per capita water availability in the country, as per 2011 census, was 1545 cubic meters; it is estimated to go down to 1340 cubic meters by the year 2025. State wise details of per capita water availability in the country are not maintained by the Central Government.
The availability of water resources is limited, but demand for water in the country is increasing due to increasing population, industrialization, urbanization and changing lifestyle. As a result water has become a relatively scarce resource in some areas of the country.
A per-capita water availability of less than 1700 cubic meters is considered as water stressed condition, whereas per-capita water availability below 1000 cubic meters is considered as a water scarcity condition.
Several measures for meeting water crisis through augmenting, conserving and using water resources more efficiently are undertaken by the State Governments. The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation provides technical and financial assistance to the State Governments in this regard through various schemes and programmes viz. Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme, Scheme for Repair, Renovation & Restoration of Water-bodies etc.
Central Ground Water Board, under this Ministry has prepared a conceptual document entitled “Master Plan for Artificial Recharge to Ground Water in India” during the year 2013 envisaging construction of 1.11 crore Rainwater Harvesting and Artificial Recharge structures in the country to harness 85 BCM (Billion Cubic Meters) of water. The augmented ground water resources will enhance the availability of water for drinking, domestic, industrial and irrigation purposes. The Master Plan has been circulated to all State Governments for implementation.
Water conservation and water harvesting structures to augment ground water constitute a special focus area for MGNREGA works and about 2/3rd of the expenditure is directly related to construction of such structures.
Central Government has launched the National Water Mission with the objective of conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring its more equitable distribution both across and within States through integrated water resources development and management.
The National Water Policy, 2012 has been formulated which has made several recommendations for conservation, development and improved management of water resources in the country. Jal Kranti Abhiyan (2015-16 to 2017-18) has been launched in order to consolidate water conservation and management in the country through a holistic and integrated approach involving all stakeholders, making it a mass movement.
Recycle and reuse of water, after treatment to specified standards as well as rainwater harvesting and artificial recharge are being incentivized through various initiatives, programmes/ schemes of the Government. Improved water use efficiency in different sectors such as in irrigation (through micro-irrigation, e.g., drip, sprinkler etc.), industry and households is being encouraged through various initiatives, programmes/ schemes of the Government.
This Ministry has also formulated a National Perspective Plan (NPP) envisaging inter-basin transfer of water. The implementation of NPP would give benefits of approximately 35 million hectare of additional irrigation potential and 34000 mega watts (MW) hydro power generation apart from the incidental benefits of flood moderation, navigation, drinking and industrial water supply, fisheries, salinity and pollution control etc.
Cleaning of Hindon River:-
The assessment of the water quality of river Hindon by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) indicates that the river is not meeting the criteria with respect to Dissolved Oxygen, Conductivity, BOD, Total Coliform and Faecal Coliform. The Dissolved Oxygen as low as 0.4 mg/l has been observed downstream Saharanpur. The high level of BOD can be attributed to discharge of industrial effluents from number of electroplating and tannery units. River Hindon receives the municipal as well as industrial effluents from the township of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Meerut, Baghpat and Gautam Buddhnagar.
Important take away form this news from exam perspective:-
- Hindon is a tributary of Yamuna
- Dissolved Oxygen, Conductivity, BOD, Total Coliform and Faecal Coliform are the parameters used to determine pollution level of a river
Recent Posts
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.