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Taking Measure of the UN's Legacy at Seventy-Five

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2020

David M. Malone  and
Adam Day
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Abstract

Over the past seventy-five years, the UN has evolved significantly, often in response to geopolitical dynamics and new waves of thinking. In some respects, the UN has registered remarkable achievements, stimulating a wide range of multilateral treaties, promoting significant growth of human rights, and at times playing a central role in containing and preventing large-scale armed conflict. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay argues that the organization has been the most impactful in three areas: producing, shaping, and driving key ideas, particularly on development and rights; generating such effective operational agencies as UNICEF and the World Food Program; and, especially in the immediate post–Cold War period, addressing major conflict risks through the Security Council. Since then, however, the UN has struggled to meet emerging challenges on many fronts and been increasingly hampered by internal ossification and institutional sprawl as well as internecine dysfunction. The twenty-first century has confronted the UN with further challenges relating most notably to climate change; to risks arising from new technologies; and to the increasingly fraught relationships between China, Russia, and the United States. If the past seventy-five years can offer one lesson, it is that new thinking and new ideas will need to drive the organization to evolve still further and faster, or else risk irrelevance.

Keywords

United NationsmultilateralismSecurity Councilgeopoliticsdevelopmentconflict preventionCOVID-19
Type
The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Special Issue 3: The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward , Fall 2020 , pp. 285 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 See Malone, David M., ed., The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), p. 4Google Scholar.

2 Einsiedel, Sebastian von, Malone, David M., and Ugarte, Bruno Stagno, eds., The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2015), p. 4Google Scholar; and Malone, David M., “Security Council,” in Weiss, Thomas G. and Daws, Sam, eds. The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 117–35Google Scholar.)

3 See Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 von Einsiedel et al., Security Council in the 21st Century.

5 Richard Gowan, Minimum Order: The Role of the Security Council in an Era of Major Power Competition (New York: United Nations University, Centre for Policy Research, March 2019), i.unu.edu/media/cpr.unu.edu/post/3333/UNU-Minimum-Order-FINAL.pdf.

6 Bruce Jones, Charles T. Call, and Daniel Touboulets, with Jason Fritz, Managing the New Threat Landscape: Adapting the Tools of International Peace and Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, September 2018), www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FP_20180919_prevention_agenda1.pdf.

7 Ian Martin, “In Hindsight: What's Wrong with the Security Council?,” Security Council Report, March 29, 2018, www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2018-04/in_hindsight_whats_wrong_with_the_security_council.php; see also Binder, Martin and Heupel, Monika, “The Legitimacy of the UN Security Council: Evidence from Recent General Assembly Debates,” International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 2 (June 2015), pp. 238–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Mats Berdal, “The Security Council and Peacekeeping,” in Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer M. Welsh, and Dominik Zaum, eds., The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 179. This chapter notes that a key aspect of the Council's conflict management role has been to keep great powers from direct confrontation.

9 Sebastian von Einsiedel, “Assessing the UN's Efforts to Counter Terrorism,” in 2016 Global Terrorism Index: Measuring and Understanding the Impact of Terrorism (Sydney: Institute for Economics & Peace, December 2016), pp. 88–91, economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2016.2.pdf.

10 We point here to two important outputs: the volumes of the UN Intellectual History Project, overseen by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss; and Currie-Alder, Bruce, Kanbur, Ravi, Malone, David M., and Medhora, Rohinton, eds., International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See “Rule of Law Index 2017–2018,” World Justice Project, n.d., worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/WJP-ROLI-2018-June-Online-Edition_0.pdf.

12 Kenneth Roth, “Why the UN Chief's Silence on Human Rights Is Deeply Troubling,” New York Times, April 24, 2019.

13 “70 Ways the UN Makes a Difference,” United Nations, n.d., www.un.org/un70/en/content/70ways/index.html#humanitarian.

14 Julia Zorthian, “5 United Nations Achievements Worth Celebrating on U.N. Day,” TIME, October 23, 2015, time.com/4085757/united-nations-achievements/.

15 United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund, cerf.un.org/sites/default/files/resources/CERF_Results_2019_edition_4.pdf.

16 Global Humanitarian Assistance, Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2019 (Bristol, U.K.: Development Initiatives, October 2019), reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/GHA%20report%202019_0.pdf.

17 United Nations, Policy Brief: COVID-19 and People on the Move (United Nations, June 2020), www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sg_policy_brief_on_people_on_the_move.pdf?utm_source=IOM+External+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=0129b3aed0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_12_10_10_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9968056566-0129b3aed0-.