United Nations (UN)

What is United Nation (UN)?
Preamble of UN Charter.
Main Purpose/Objective of UN.
Principle of UN.
Main Organs of UN?
Legal Personality of UN.
Reparation Case.

UN

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, and experiences extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, promoting human rights, fostering social and economic development, protecting the environment, and providing humanitarian aid in cases of famine, natural disaster, and armed conflict.

History of United Nations

On January 1, 1942, representatives of 26 nations at war with the Axis powers met in Washington to sign the Declaration of the United Nations endorsing the Atlantic Charter, pledging to use their full resources against the Axis and agreeing not to make a separate peace.

The Founding of the UN in San Francisco

At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden agreed to draft a declaration that included a call for “a general international organization, based on the principle sovereign equality of all nations.” An agreed declaration was issued after a Foreign Ministers Conference in Moscow in October 1943. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943, he proposed an international organization comprising an assembly of all member states and a 10-member executive committee to discuss social and economic issues. The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and China would enforce peace as “the four policemen.” Meanwhile Allied representatives founded a set of task-oriented organizations: the Food and Agricultural Organization (May 1943), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (November 1943), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (April 1944), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (July 1944), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (November 1944).

U.S., British, Soviet, and Chinese representatives met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in August and September 1944 to draft the charter of a postwar international organization based on the principle of collective security. They recommended a General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council consisting of the Big Four plus six members chosen by the Assembly. Voting procedures and the veto power of permanent members of the Security Council were finalized at the Yalta Conference in 1945 when Roosevelt and Stalin agreed that the veto would not prevent discussions by the Security Council. Roosevelt agreed to General Assembly membership for Ukraine and Byelorussia while reserving the right, which was never exercised, to seek two more votes for the United States.

Representatives of 50 nations met in San Francisco April-June 1945 to complete the Charter of the United Nations. In addition to the General Assembly of all member states and a Security Council of 5 permanent and 6 non-permanent members, the Charter provided for an 18-member Economic and Social Council, an International Court of Justice, a Trusteeship Council to oversee certain colonial territories, and a Secretariat under a Secretary General. The Roosevelt administration strove to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s mistakes in selling the League of Nations to the Senate. It sought bipartisan support and in September 1943 the Republican Party endorsed U.S. participation in a postwar international organization, after which both houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed participation. Roosevelt also sought to convince the public that an international organization was the best means to prevent future wars. The Senate approved the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. The United Nations came into existence on October 24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter.

Preamble of UN Charter

 

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

  

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

  

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and

to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Main Purpose/ Objectives of UN

According to Article 1 of Charter of UN the Purposes of the United Nations are:

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;

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. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Principles of UN

According to Article 2 of UN Charter

The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
 

2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
 

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
 

5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
 

6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
 

7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.
 

Main Organs of UN

1 General Assembly

2 Security Council

3 Secretariat

4 International Court of Justice

5 Economic and Social Council

6 Trusteeship Council

Legal Personality of UN

Reparation Case

The story of the ICJ’s Reparation for Injuries Advisory Opinion is made up of three parts, although the Court’s opinion concentrates on only one. This is the story of a Swedish diplomat and his death in 1948; a lost opportunity for Israeli-Arab relations; and the rise of the United Nations as a pivotal international organization. Count Folke Bernadotte’s murder was a tragedy because of his previous heroics. But the case before the ICJ as a consequence of that murder provided a critical link for the further development of international law.

Reparations for Injuries: Count Bernadotte

Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisburg, a relative of King Gustaf of Sweden, had rescued more than 30000 prisoners from German concentration camps in World War II through mediation. As vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, he freed many Jews, but Bernadotte’s status of a hero among the Jewish people was short-lived. The newly formed United Nations had appointed Bernadotte as the mediator in the first Israeli-Arab conflict, with Israel fighting for independence. With his first partition plan, Bernadotte angered many extremist forces within Israel. He came to be seen as an enemy of Israel, and was assassinated in Jeruzalem at point blank range by the Jewish group LEHI. This group included Yitzhak Shamir, who would become Prime Minister of Israel in the 1980s. Count Bernadotte is now an icon in Swedish and diplomatic history.

Capacity to make a claim

Because Bernadotte was in the service of the United Nations, the new organization sought to improve security for its agents like Bernadotte. One avenue is the ability to hold someone or something responsible for injuries suffered by the organization or its agents, and extract reparations. Bu whether the UN was able to do so, like states, was unclear. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the issue. Did the UN have the capacity to make an international claim to demand reparations when a state is responsible for injuries to one of its agens in the performance of its duties? The question was asked in the abstract, but in essence, the UNGA asked whether the UN could make an international claim against Israel as the responsible government for the death of Count Bernadotte.

The requirements of international life

In order to answer the question, the Court had to basically determine the status of the UN in he international legal system in 1948? Is it on the same level as sovereign states? Does the UN have the international legal personality? Only if it does, can the UN make a claim. The court first determined that the subjects of law ’are not necessarily identical in nature or in the extent of their rights (…).’  That was the first opening. Besides states, other entities can be subjects of international law. The extent of their rights depends on the nature of those other entities, and ’their nature depends on the international community’. Legal pragmatism at its finest. And it gets better:

”Throughout its history, the development of international law has been influenced by the requirements of international life, and the progressive increase in the collective activities of States has already given rise to instances of action upon the international plane  by certain entities which are not States.”

Effectiveness

But that still didn’t answer the question. The next step was an examination of the nature of the UN. First, the Court determined that the UN is a general organization with broad tasks and powers. What it concluded on that basis is worth quoting in full:

”In the opinion of the Court, the Organization was intended to exercise and enjoy, and is in fact exercising and enjoying, functions and rights which can only be explained on the basis of the possession of a large measure of international personality and the capacity to operate upon an international plane. (…) It must be acknowledged that its Members, by entrusting certain functions to it, with the attendant duties and responsibilities, have clothed it with the competence required to enable those functions to be effectively discharged.”

So, in order for the UN to be effective, the UN’s founders must have ’clothed it’ with legal personality, and so it such legal personality. You can question whether the Court means to say that legal personality must be assumed in order to be effective, or that it must be assumed because the founder’s must have found it necessary to be effective. In any case, the Court was being pragmatic and idealistic at the same time.This principle of effectiveness has been with the law of international organizations ever since.

Aftermath

Count Bernadotte is not mentioned once in the Reparation for Injuries Opinion. But ultimately, Israel agreed to pay the United Nation 19.500 pounds, and did so in 1950. The family of Count Bernadotte did not file a claim against Israel, the assassins were never caught, and the Israeli-Arab conflict continues to this day. And the United Nations and international organizations in general became a permanent fixture in the international legal and political arenas.