United Nations (UN), international organization established immediately after World War II. It replaced the League of Nations.
The Charter of the United Nations comprises a preamble and 19 chapters divided into 111 articles. The charter sets forth the purposes of the UN as: the maintenance of international peace and security; the development of friendly relations among states; and the achievement of cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems. It expresses a strong hope for the equality of all people and the expansion of basic freedoms.
The earliest concrete plan for the formation of a new world organization was begun under the aegis of the U.S. State Department late in 1939. The name United Nations was coined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 to describe the countries fighting against the Axis. It was first used officially on Jan. 1, 1942, when 26 states joined in the Declaration by the United Nations, pledging themselves to continue their joint war effort and not to make peace separately. The need for an international organization to replace the League of Nations was first stated officially on Oct. 30, 1943, in the Moscow Declaration, issued by China, Great Britain, the United States, and the USSR.
Since its foundation in 1945, the United Nations was conceived as an instrument to face the most relevant global challenges emerging in the international system. Its structure and functioning was designed to curtail the negative effects of globalization, such as the spread of transnational threats, and to grant peace and security. Although for many time the UN system had proved to be successful in addressing a number of global issues, during the last years, it has revealed some important deficiencies and weaknesses. This has made the Member States call for a reform of the UN in terms of structure and powers.
The maintenance of peace and security has always been a priority to the UN Member States. To achieve this objective, the organization was provided with an executive organism, which would have held the exclusive power to deal with those issues: the Security Council. Its action to promote peace and security helped the international community to solve the worst crisis of the past century and to avert the horrors of another World War. This was the case during the ‘60s and ‘70s when the political commitment of the Security Council helped to prevent the escalation of the US-USSR conflict.
Those were also the years which saw a relevant enlargement of the membership in the UN, as the new born states, resulting from the decolonization process, submitted their admission request to join the international security system created in 1945. This showed that, although their interests and objectives might have been different in terms of economic goals or social policies, they shared with the UN’s founders a primary concern: the maintenance of peace and security. Indeed, this was an essential condition for the new born states, as international stability would have allowed them to concentrate on internal processes of state-building and nation-building.
Not only did the UN develop as a successful universal International Organization but it also became a forum to discuss and address other important issues such as equitable and sustainable development, economic and monetary stability, etc. The General Assembly was conceived to meet this goal and, during its activity, it has proved to be essential to elaborate a joint action to face global issues.
Despite the fact that the UN’s commitment to deal with international questions has been outstanding, nowadays its system reveals some important weaknesses.
Firstly, the new contemporary global challenges are jeopardizing its solidity and effectiveness. An example comes from the spread of security threats, such as transnational terrorism and illicit arms trade. These phenomena have highlighted the limits of the Security Council’s action, and, in general, of the UN’s security system to assure peace and international stability.
When threats come from non-state actors (which are not linked to any specific territory and do not represent any political entity), it is tough for the UN to elaborate an effective plan to hinder them. To many observers, the main deficiency of the UN’s security system consists in the lack of an international army.
Initially, the founders planned to build a military structure under the direct control of the Security Council in order to successfully implement the common military actions to restore peace (art. 43 and 45 UN Chart).
However, the project failed due to the reluctance of its Member States to create a common army. Not only the UN military structure would have had an outstanding destructive capacity compared to the national armies but it would have also required a relevant financial commitment of its Member States.
A second weakness concerning the UN’s functioning is related to the lack of democratic mechanisms and accountability, which affects its structure. The composition of the Security Council still reflects the power distribution of 1945 as the five permanent members (United States, France, United Kingdom, China and Russia) hold more powers and prerogatives (e.g. the veto power) than the non-permanent ones. Since the power distribution has strongly changed during the last decades and values of equality between sovereign states have spread in the international community, the composition of the Security Council appears to be anachronistic.
The third main deficiency of the UN system consists in the absence of a mechanism to empower the judgements of the International Court of Justice. When the ICJ was created, it was agreed that states would have had to accept the Court’s jurisdiction in order to allow it to judge their controversies. This was the consequence of two circumstances. Firstly, there was no world government that could force states to respect and enforce the judgements of the ICJ. Secondly, being states jealous of their independence and powers, they prevented any attempt to limit their sovereignty. In this way, no mechanism to assure the respect of the Court’s decisions was provided and, nowadays, the implementation of its judgements still rests on the will of the Member States.
Highlighting these deficiencies has brought the international community to urge a structural and substantial reform of the UN system. It is undeniable that, since its foundation, UNO has undergone a number of considerable transformations. However, some important progress still has to be attained in order to improve its efficiency and to grant the effectiveness of its action up against the new global challenges, contemporary security issues and international threats.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.