Homework Block D (April 27) - The United Nations and Reform
URL to Homework: http://ssmeetsit.edublogs.org/2007/04/27/homework-block-d-april-27/
Question: Overall do you feel the U.N is a successful organization? Why or why not. Cite examples to support your view.
According the the Student Handout, “A Call for Reform” this article is nothing but criticisms of the united nations, therefore the only opinion that I can get from this article is negative answers. Nowhere in this article does it show any progress that the united nations has been wanting to make. Therefore from this article, I think that the UN has failed in reaching their goals in bringing nations together and peace throughout the world. Why this roams my head? Well, evidence from this packet shows me a few examples to bring here. One of them brings us back to 1994 where director, Kofi Annan of the U.N peace keeping forces has not been able to respond to the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda. And as a result of this, 800,000 Hutus and Tutsis were slaughtered by Rwandan military and militia groups. From my point of view, being a peace keeping organization, there should have been some repsonse there. The other example also puts a mark near the early 1990’s, actually 1993. Here a mission to prevent local warlords from taking food for starving citizens of Somilia also failed. But besides these life, death situations, there also have been other situations like complaints about the UN acting outside its charter, meaning not following the charter rules etc. Basically, here I am saying that at first the U.N organization had a wonderful idea in running and creating a peace organization. But the fact just remains, that they unfortunetly didn’t really fullfill their goals. But as secretary General Kofi Anann stated,” the U.N exists not as a static memorial to the aspirations of an earlier age, but as a work in progress…” Hence, there will be changes and hopefully it would be for the better.
Picture From: http://www.un.int/iom/UN.jpg
