Successes and Failures of the United Nations

A large share of UN expenditures addresses the core UN mission of peace and security. The peacekeeping budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year is approximately $5 billion (compared to approximately $1.5 billion for the UN core budget over the same period), with some 70,000 troops deployed in 17 missions around the world. The Human Security Report 2005, produced by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia with support from several governments and foundations, documented a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses over the past decade. Such statistics cite:
•a 40% drop in violent conflict
•an 80% drop in the most deadly conflicts
•an 80% drop in genocide and politicide

The Report, published by Oxford University Press, argued that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the UN, which took place in the wake of the Cold War.

A six-fold increase in the number of UN missions mounted to prevent wars, from 1990 to 2002
A four-fold increase in efforts to stop existing conflicts, from 1990 to 2002
A seven-fold increase in the number of ‘Friends of the Secretary-General’, ‘Contact Groups’ and other government-initiated mechanisms to support peacemaking and peacebuilding missions, from 1990 to 2003
An eleven-fold increase in the number of economic sanctions against regimes around the world, from 1989 to 2001
A four-fold increase in the number of UN peacekeeping operations, from 1987, to 1999

These efforts were both more numerous and, on average, substantially larger and more complex than those of the Cold War era.

In the area of Peacekeeping, successes include:
•The US Government Accountability Office concluded that UN Peacekeeping is eight times less expensive than funding a U.S. force

•A 2005 RAND Corp study found the U.N. to be successful in two out of three peackeeping efforts. It also compared U.N. nation-building efforts to those of the U.S., and found that of eight U.N. cases, seven are at peace, wherease of eight U.S. cases, four are at peace, and four are not or not-yet-at peace.

However, in many cases UN members have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions. Iraq is said to have broken 17 Security Council resolutions dating back to June 28, 1991 as well as trying to bypass the UN economic sanctions. For nearly a decade, Israel defied resolutions calling for the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Such failures stem from UN's intergovernmental nature — in many respects it is an association of 192 member states who must reach consensus, not an independent organization. Even when actions are mandated by the 15-member Security Council, the Secretariat is rarely given the full resources needed to carry out the mandates.

• Failure to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the killings of nearly a million people, due to the refusal of the security council members to approve any necessary military action.
• Failure by MONUC (UNSC Resolution 1291) to effectively intervene during the Second Congo War, which claimed nearly five million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 1998-2002 (with fighting reportedly continuing), and in carrying out and distributing humanitarian aid.
• Failure to intervene in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, despite the fact that the UN designated Srebrenica a "safe haven" for refugees and assigned 600 Dutch peacekeepers to protect it.
• Failure to successfully deliver food to starving people in Somalia; the food was instead usually seized by local warlords. A U.S./UN attempt to apprehend the warlords seizing these shipments resulted in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.
• Sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers. Numerous peacekeepers from several nations have been repatriated from UN peacekeeping operations for sexually abusing and exploiting girls as young as 8 in a number of different peacekeeping missions. This abuse has become widespread and ongoing despite many revelations and probes by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. A 2005 internal UN investigation found that sexual exploitation and abuse has been reported in at least five countries where UN peacekeepers have been deployed, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, and Liberia; in particular, "Liberian girls as young as 8 are being sexually exploited by United Nations peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers in return for food, small favours and even rides in trucks, according to a report from Save the Children UK" The BBC carried a similar report, and also cited a member of the World Food Programme as an offender.

The information is taken from Wikipedia.org under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Successes and failures in security issues