Study guide: GLOBAL POLITICS

📋 Course Outline

1. UN Purpose and Charter
2. UN Organizational Structure
3. UN Roles and Decision-Making
4. Major UN Achievements
5. Veto Power and Operational Failures
6. Structural and Administrative Limitations

📖 1. UN Purpose and Charter

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• United Nations: an intergovernmental organisation of 193 member states serving as the world’s primary platform for international cooperation, diplomacy, and collective problem solving

★ Must-know

• The UN Charter was signed on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco and entered into force on October 24, 1945.

📌 Under Article 103, obligations under the UN Charter override obligations under any other international agreement.

Further detail

• The UN Charter identifies four key purposes:

  • developing friendly relations
  • maintaining international peace and security
  • achieving international cooperation
  • harmonizing actions

• The UN Charter’s key principles are:

  • prohibition of the use of force
  • non-intervention
  • peaceful settlement of disputes
  • good faith
  • sovereign equality

💡 Memory Hook

Prevent war → maintain security → promote cooperation

📖 2. UN Organizational Structure

★ Must-know

• The General Assembly contains all 193 member states, with each state possessing one vote to embody sovereign equality.

• The Security Council consists of 15 members: five permanent members with veto power and 10 non-permanent members elected for two-year terms.

📌 General Assembly resolutions express global consensus and are non-binding recommendations, whereas Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII are legally binding on all UN member states.

Further detail

• The five permanent members are:
  • the United States
  • the United Kingdom
  • France
  • Russia
  • China

💡 Memory Hook

General Assembly debates; Security Council enforces

📖 3. UN Roles and Decision-Making

★ Must-know

• UN peacekeeping deploys Blue Helmets to enforce ceasefires and protect civilians.

• The UN drives poverty reduction and climate action through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

• The International Court of Justice settles disputes between states as part of the UN’s international-law role.

📌 The Security Council can use Chapter VII powers to impose sanctions or authorize military force.

Further detail

• The UN monitors human rights violations and promotes global standards such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

💡 Memory Hook

PHSL: Peacekeeping, Human rights, Sustainable development, Law

📖 4. Major UN Achievements

★ Must-know

• In 2016, the UN Verification Mission in Colombia helped end a 53-year civil conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas, after the guerrillas surrendered.

• Through the OPCW, the UN completed the removal and destruction of 1.3k tons of illegal Syrian chemical weapons between 2013 and 2014.

• During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the UN, through WHO and UNICEF, led the COVAX facility, which supplied more than 2 billion vaccine doses, with about 90% provided free to people in low-income countries.

Further detail

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN provided around 5 billion dollars to help keep economic activities running.

💡 Memory Hook

International action → peacebuilding, disarmament, and humanitarian relief

📖 5. Veto Power and Operational Failures

📝 Essential Points

📌 If any one of the five permanent Security Council members vetoes a resolution, the Security Council is legally blocked from taking binding action or imposing sanctions regardless of majority support.

• In the Syrian Civil War from 2011 to the present, Russia, joined by China, repeatedly used vetoes to block collective intervention and binding sanctions.

• More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were systematically murdered in roughly 100 days during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

• During the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Bosnian Serb forces overran a UN-protected safe area and executed over 8,000 Muslim men and boys after Dutch peacekeepers lacked sufficient numbers, weapons, and air support.

💡 Memory Hook

P5 veto blocks decisions, while weak mandates block protection

📖 6. Structural and Administrative Limitations

★ Must-know

📌 Article 2(7) restricts the UN from intervening in domestic affairs, while the UN has no standing army and relies on member states to provide troops, funding, and hardware.

• Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine demonstrated UN enforcement weakness because Russia’s P5 veto prevented the Security Council from adopting a binding resolution to stop the invasion or mandate a ceasefire.

• After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, poor sanitation management at a MINUSTAH camp introduced cholera, causing an epidemic that killed over 10,000 Haitians and led to criticism of the UN’s delayed accountability.

Further detail

• UN decision-making can be slow and expensive because the organisation is a vast bureaucracy susceptible to administrative corruption and misconduct.

💡 Memory Hook

Sovereignty, scarce resources, and bureaucracy → weak enforcement and misconduct

📊 Synthesis Tables

General Assembly and Security Council