United Nations Case Study

The United Nations (UN) is an international organization that was formed after the Second World War. The main purpose of UN is to provide security and peace at the international level, resolve conflicts and protect human rights. The UN also promotes international co-operation by maintaining global social, political and economic conditions. However, it is difficult for many countries in the UN to partake in the decision-making because the UN is made up of different countries that have distinct political systems and ideologies. In the past, the UN has helped strengthen international law by developing treaties on human rights, global crime, and other topics of concern.

The UN’s peacekeeping missions are the most visible and recognizable aspects.

The UN consists of six main bodies; Security Counsel, General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, the Secretariat, and the Trusteeship Counsel. The Security Counsel is the “main decision-making body” of the UN; its primary responsibility is to maintain international peace and security (Atac, 2014). The General Assembly is responsible for the budget of the entire organization, along with being the “peacekeeping and representative” branch of UN (United Nations, n.d.). The General Assembly also appoints the secretary-general—the head of Secretariat—on the recommendation of Security Counsel and consists of 193 members. The Economic and Social Counsel (ECOSOC) is responsible for the international economic and social issues and promotes “developmental goals” (United Nations, n.d.). The International Court of Justice is responsible for settling disputes globally and gives advice to the UN bodies. It consists of 15 judges. The Secretariat is the administrative body of the UN and consists of 43,000 members that deal with programs and policies in the UN. Lastly, the Trusteeship Counsel, which is made up of five permanent members of the Security Counsel, is responsible for the “supervising the Trust Territories”—the member countries of the UN—and promoting their development (United Nations, n.d.). In

They address the size of the Security Council and veto power (Mahmood, 2013). According to Mahmood (2013) the reform proposes the expansion of the Security from fifteen to twenty-five members with eleven permanent members and fourteen non-permanent members. On the matter of veto power, the G-4 favors the veto power and wants the new six permanent members to have all the privileges enjoyed by the P-5. Moreover, Japan and Germany wanted better representation in the United Nations because they were the second and third largest financial contributors to the United Nations budget. On the global scale they are emerging as powerful states that can intervene in crises and thus warrant permanent seats in the Security Council. One example of the UN Charter being outdated is that Japan and Germany are still referred to as “enemy states” (Mahmood, 2013) in it because of the part they played in the WWII. India and Brazil based their argument on them having “large populations” and “growing economics” (Mahmood, 2013). The G-4 wants permanent seats in the Security Council because their influence—economically and politically—has increased quite a lot since the formation of