Page 139 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1916 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

War does not determine who is right—
only who is left. • Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

Further Reading nomic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Interna-
Busse, H. (1984). Omar b. al-Khattab in Jerusalem. Jerusalem Studies in tional Court of Justice, and Secretariat.These organs over-
Arabic and Islam, 5, 73–119.
Crone, P., & Hinds, M. (1986). God’s caliph: Religious authority in the see fifteen agencies and programs. Nothing puts the
first centuries of Islam. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. magnitude of the U.N.’s work in perspective better than
Donner, F. M. (1981). The early Islamic conquests. Princeton, NJ: Prince- the numbers: It has twenty thousand employees from all
ton University Press.
Madelung,W. (1997). The succession to Muhammad:A study of the early member countries and a budget of $2.54 billion.
caliphate. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tabari (1989–1993). The history of al-Tabari (Vols. 11–14).Albany: State Center of Politics
University of New York Press.
Tritton, A. S. (1970). The caliphs and their non-Muslim subjects: A criti- To accommodate the voices of all member countries but
cal study of the covenant of ‘Umar. London: F. Cass. maintain a small body that acts in times of crises, the
General Assembly and the Security Council were created
in 1945 and remain at the center of U.N. politics. As of
August 2004, 191 nations—all member countries—are
United Nations represented in the General Assembly, which acts primar-

ily as a deliberative body funneling research and recom-
he United Nations (U.N.) is a transnational associa- mendations to other organs of the U.N. The five
Ttion of countries with a mission to maintain world permanent Security Council members—China, France,
peace and security.The U.N. was formed by fifty nations the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the
on 26 June 1945 in San Francisco in response to the United States (those nations responsible for the defeat of
catastrophes of the two world wars. The U.N. was Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II)—and ten
founded on many of the conclusions reached at the 1944 rotating members decide on plans of collective action
Dumbarton Oaks conference inWashington, DC, which involving all member countries, with the use of force if
was attended by representatives of China, the Soviet necessary. These members have the controversial power
Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. to block any proposal brought before the council by cast-
The U.N. was created after four years of intense debate ing a negative vote.
tainted by the failure of the League of Nations during the While the United States and the Soviet Union battled
interwar period. The U.N. promised to end the domi- for political ground in the Security Council during the
nance of feuding empires and imperialism—the results of Cold War, the General Assembly underwent a rapid
which were the social and economic devastation of the transformation because of the influx of new decolonized
two world wars—and to order the world based on state- members during the 1960s and 1970s. Previously mar-
hood, national sovereignty, and the stability believed to ginalized issues were given unparalleled legitimacy on the
be associated with such a model. The U.N. Charter did world stage. Concrete results of this paradigm shift
not define the concept of the state as the Treaty of West- include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
phalia (1648) and the Congress of Vienna (1815) had, 1948, the establishment of the U.N. High Commis-
but it granted general recognition of the concept to those sioner for Refugees in 1951, the Freedom from Hunger
outside western Europe, an action unprecedented in campaign begun in 1960, the decrease of child mortality
world politics. rates around the world by 50 percent during the last forty
We would be wrong to call the U.N. simply an inter- years, and the legal recognition of commercial sea bound-
national organization because it is a conglomeration of aries for all countries in 1994. The promotion of the
institutions, nations’ domestic priorities, and individual needs of developing countries during the last half-century
personalities. The U.N. operates under six principal —the institutionalized effect of the U.N.’s global design
organs: the General Assembly, Security Council, Eco- —is no accident.