World Peace: the United Nations

The United Nations was founded at the end of the second World War in 1945. The United Nations is designed to help resolve problems between nations, solve world's economic problems, and to bring about lasting world peace. The UN consi sts of 193 countries which is all but two countries in the world today. The UN consi sts of five branches: the General Assembly, Security Council, Secretariat, International Court of Justice, and the E conomic Social Council. All of these are trying to work together to further world peace. The strengths of the United Nations have allowed them to reach many of their goals, but their weaknesses have prevented them from maximizing their successes.

The United Nations is a kind of replacement for the League of Nations, which was founded after the first World War. The League of Nations was not organized well and was not taken seriously after failing to help a country that was in need. The way the UN is set up with five main branches, it helps in keeping the organization on track and in getting things done. The United Nations is, for the most part, organized well and has a good, but seemingly impossible, goal to bring lasting world peace. The United Nations has many strengths. They help in many ways to make the world a more peaceable place. They help in the advancement of human rights and in health crises around the world. The United Nations helps with trying to contain large out breaks of diseases and other sicknesses which is very important. The United Nations also opens a way of communication between countries. They additionally encourage countries to engage in free trade with one another. (Trueman) The United Nations, for many years, has been fighting terrorism in the middle East to help liberate the people being oppressed there.

Although the United Nations has many strengths, it also has some weaknesses. First off, in the set up of the organization they have it where the five permanent members of the security council (USA, Russia, Great Britain, China, and France) have the ability to veto anything that the rest of the nations agree on. This can be used for that counties personal gain; we saw this a lot during the Cold War with the United Sates and Russia. The UN also can not back up their decisions with force which can be a weakness. The United Nations in 1945 to 1970 started off strong, but after the Cold War conflicts started to rise up between the poorer nations and the wealth ier nations. (Trueman) The poorer nations think that the wealth ier nations are not letting them help as much with the d ecision making and wanted to change the way it is run without making as much of a financial co mmitment as the bigger nations. (Trueman) However, the wealth ier nations say that the poorer nations are not poor because of the debts that they owe the bigger nations, but are poor from internal corruption in their nations. (Trueman)

There are possible ways to overcome the problems in the United Nations with some work. The first one is the veto power of the permanent five members. Instead of having any one of the five able to veto anything, having it where three of the five have to agree on the decision to be vetoed. This will make it more fair to the rest of the nations. Secondly, the issue of not being able to back up their decisions with force can be solved by having all the nations with an army, and are a part of the UN, have 1% of their army available for the UN's use. Lastly, the issue of the poor and the rich nations can be solved by having every nations that part of the United Nations pay a percentage, lets say 5%, of that nation's total wealth to participate in the United Nations.

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