Quoting the second secretary-general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld

“the UN is an organization not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell"
Introduction:
league of nations (10 January 1920): The League of Nations was an international diplomatic group
developed after World War I as a way to solve disputes between countries before they erupted into open
warfare.
UNO(October 24, 1945):
The UN has 4 main purposes

 To keep peace throughout the world;

 To develop friendly relations among nations;
 To help nations work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease and
illiteracy, and to encourage respect for each other’s rights and freedoms;
 To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations to achieve these goals

What is UNO charter:

Purpose of UNO:
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures
for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression
or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the
principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or
situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and
self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal
peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social,
cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and
for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the
following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership,
shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that
international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations.
 5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with
the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United
Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in
accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international
peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters
which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to
submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice
the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Security council:
Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of
aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with
Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 40
In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the
recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to
comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be
without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take
account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

Article 41
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to
give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic,
radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations .

Article 42
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have
proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or
restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other
operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

Article 43

1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace
and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with
a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of
passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

International court of justice:

Article 94
 1. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International
Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party.
2. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered
by the Court, the other party may have recourse to the Security Council, which may, if it deems
necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the
judgment.

How did UNO failed to comply with its goal/principals

1. Conflicts:
The United Nations has failed to prevent war and fulfill peacekeeping duties many times throughout its
history. Millions of people around the world have been killed and displaced since the UN was founded in
1945.

Since the second half of the 20th century, there have been countless wars, some of them still ongoing,
all under the watch of the United Nations.

The United Nations (UN) was set up in 1945 as an international umbrella organisation with several
objectives primarily including the prevention of war and maintaining peace in disputed areas.

However, the UN has failed several times across the world mostly because of the right to veto at the
disposal of five countries.

Here are some of the most damning indictments of the UN’s ineffectiveness:

Israeli occupation (1948-Now)

Ever since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, Palestinians have been fighting against what a UN
investigator once described as Israel’s ethnic cleansing.

At least 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 out of a total population of 1.9 million were
forced to take refuge far from their homelands between 1947 and 1949.  More than 7,000 Palestinians
and 1,100 Israelis have died in the conflict between 2000 and 2014.

Today Israel controls 85 percent of historic Palestine. It also imposes a crippling blockade on Gaza and
continues its construction of illegal settlements on occupied lands in defiance of several UN resolutions
calling for an end to those activities. 

The United States has also used its veto power several times to counter UN Security Council resolutions
that have condemned Israel’s use of force against Palestinian civilians.

Kashmir dispute (1948-Now)

The ongoing confrontation in the disputed Kashmir region has become one of the greatest human rights
crises in history, marked by wanton killings, rape, incarceration of leaders and activists, torture and
disappearances of Kashmiris, despite several unimplemented UN resolutions over the issue.
The mountainous region is divided between India and Pakistan, who have both claimed it in full since
gaining independence from British colonists in 1947. 

The rebellion by several Muslims groups in India-administered Kashmir, who seek either a merger with
Pakistan or independence, has gained momentum after 1989. At least 68,000 people have been killed by
Indian security forces since then.

Cambodia violence (1975-1979)

After the end of the US-Vietnam War and the Cambodian civil war in 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime
took control of Cambodia turning it into a socialist country, by using the policy of ultra-Maoism.

The regime carried out genocide between 1975-1979, killing some two million people, nearly 25
percent of the country.

The Vietnamese intervention ended genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime. The United Nations
recognised the Khmer Rouge regime, while ignoring concerns of human rights violations.

Somali civil war (1991-Now)

Since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre by the Somali Rebellion in 1991, the decades-long
civil war has raged between rival clans in the country.

The UN peacekeeping mission, UNOSOM, which was set up in December 1992 to facilitate
humanitarian aid to people trapped by civil war and famine, has since failed because of the lack of
government to communicate with and repeated attacks against UN officers. 

The failure of the UN peacekeeping mission caused about 500,000 civilian deaths in the country.

Rwandan civil war (1994):

One of the worst ethnic genocides since World War II, the civil war between the Rwandan Armed
Forces and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) began in 1990 and lasted until 1994. 

In 1994, the then Hutu-dominated regime killed 10 UN peacekeeping officers to prevent international
intervention. 

In only three months, Hutus brutally murdered about 800,000 Tutsis and raped nearly 250,000 women
in Rwanda while UN troops abandoned the victims or just stayed there as spectators while the horrific
and brutal violence raged on.

Srebrenica Massacre (1995)

In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence after a referendum. Following the
declaration of independence, Bosnian Serbs mobilised their forces into the country with the help of the
Serbian government, which led to the start of the war.

Around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of former
General Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst mass killing on European soil since World
War II.   

Many of the Muslim victims had fled to the UN-declared safe zone in Srebrenica only to find the
outnumbered and lightly armed Dutch troops there unable to defend them.

Darfur conflict in Sudan (2003-Now)

Rebels in Sudan’s western region of Darfur rose up against the government in February 2003, saying
Khartoum discriminated against non-Arab farmers there.

Some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then, while 4.4 million people need aid and
over 2.5 million have been displaced.

However, four years later, the UN decided to send 26,000 troops for a resolution in Darfur. 

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al Bashir
in 2009 and 2010 on charges of war crimes and genocide in his drive to crush the Darfur revolt.

Iraq invasion (2003-2011)

More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the US-led
invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.

The intervention and regime change sought by the US left Iraq with civil and economic instability, and
vulnerable to terrorism by Daesh in the coming years. 

UN Resolution 1483 attempted to legitimise the invasion that was carried out under the false assertion
by the US and the UK that the Saddam regime was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Syrian civil war (2011-Now):

The Syrian regime launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters who took to the streets in March
2011, with its leader Bashar al Assad saying he would “relentlessly fight terrorist groups”— referring to
the pro-democracy protesters.

The regime released imprisoned Al Qaeda members, right after the protests turned into an uprising, who
later formed the backbone of leadership in Daesh, which spread to Syria in 2014 from Iraq.

Several foreign countries are involved in several conflict areas across Syria.
In the year that followed, the UN Security Council tried to pass several resolutions to address the
conflict, but Russia utilised its veto power at least a dozen times to protect its ally, Assad. 

Syria's conflict alone had, by the end of last year, pushed more than 6.3 million people out of the
country, accounting for nearly one-third of the global refugee population. Another 6.2 million Syrians
are internally displaced.

South Sudan (2013-Now)

South Sudan became an independent country in July 2011, separating from Sudan. 

The country has been experiencing a civil war between President Salva Kiir, from the Dinka ethnic
group, and former vice president Riek Machar, frin the Nuer ethnic group.

In the civil war, at least 382,000 people have been killed, according to a State Department-funded study.

More than 14,500 UN peacekeeping officers deployed in the country have failed to prevent the
humanitarian crisis in South Sudan. The conflict has forced 2.5 million people to flee the country and
left another 1.8 million people displaced within South Sudan. Nearly five million people are also facing
severe food insecurity.

Yemen civil war (2014-Now)

The war in Yemen, which began in 2014, between forces loyal to the internationally-accepted
government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi backed by Saudi Arabia and Iranian-backed Houthis
has turned more violent after a Saudi-led international coalition started operations against Houthis in
March 2015.

The Saudi-led coalition began its intervention in Yemen in 2015, escalating the war, which left the
poorest country in the Arab world in a state of disaster.

The UN has failed to send humanitarian aid, food and drugs to civilians amid a blockade imposed on the
war-torn country. 

Rohingya Crisis, Myanmar (2017-Now)

On August 25, 2017, Myanmar launched a major military crackdown on the Muslim ethnic minority,
killing almost 24,000 civilians and forcing 750,000 others, including women and children, to flee to
Bangladesh, according to the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).

China stood behind Myanmar on the Rohingya crisis by blocking efforts for the Rohingya in the UN
Security Council. 
The UN documented mass gang rapes, killings — including of infants and young children — brutal
beatings and disappearances committed by Myanmar state forces. The UN has described the Rohingya
as the “world's most persecuted people.

 Main purpose of UN, to prevent war, has clearly not been achieved.

 Main purpose of UN, to prevent war, has clearly not been achieved.
POINT 

The UN was set up with the express purpose of preventing global wars, yet it has done absolutely nothing to prevent

them. Indeed, the UN has often served merely as a forum for countries to abuse and criticise each other, rather than

resolve disputes peacefully.

In some cases, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, UN resolutions have arguably been used as a justification for wars,

rather than to prevent them. Research shows that the number of armed conflicts in the world rose steadily in the years

after 1945 and has only begun to plateau or fall since the end of the Cold War.[1]
COUNTERPOINT 

It is unfair to say that the United Nations has failed just because conflict has not been eradicated from the world. The

causes that drive nations to war with one another often cannot be resolved by diplomatic means; to set global peace

as the test for the UN’s efficiency is clearly unfair. Nonetheless the UN has served as an effective forum for behind the

scenes diplomacy in many international crises. It has come to the aid of countries when attacked, as in the examples

of [South] Korea and Kuwait in 1950 and 1990 respectively; it has also kept the peace in, for example, the former

Yugoslavia, Cyprus and East Timor. The fact that armed conflicts around the world have become less common since

1990 is, arguably, at least partly down to the good offices of the United Nations.

2. Human rights violations:

UN ignores or enables human rights abuses.

UN ignores or enables human rights abuses.

POINT 

Despite the development of the concept of human rights in the post-war world, the UN has totally failed to protect the

rights of citizens, ethnic minorities, women and children. It has stood by during episodes of genocide in Cambodia,

Rwanda, Congo and Yugoslavia among many others [1], tolerates some of the world’s worst dictatorships as

members, and does nothing to improve the situation of women in developing nations. Indeed, where UN

peacekeepers have been sent into war-torn countries, they have sometimes been guilty of the most horrendous

human rights abuses themselves.[2]

As of 2011, the UN’s Human Rights Council itself is comprised of members such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China.[3]
COUNTERPOINT 

As argued below (Opposition argument 2), the UN has in fact been instrumental in developing the modern concept of

human rights, which prior to its foundation essentially did not exist as an idea, and certainly not as a body of coherent

international law. And the UN has acted to prevent and condemn human rights abuses all over the world.
Where the UN has failed to prevent genocide or human rights violations, it has generally been due to the failure of the

international community rather than the UN itself. For example, the bloodshed in Rwanda went unstopped not

because the UN was unconcerned, but because those nations that might have intervened, such as the US, France or

neighbouring African countries, were unable or unwilling to do so - not a failure that can fairly be laid at the door of the

UN.

UN decision-making procedures are very inefficient.

UN decision-making procedures are very inefficient.

POINT 

The UN displays all the worst traits of bureaucracies the world over. The General Assembly is little more than a forum

for world leaders and ambassadors to lambast each other. The Security Council is systemically unable to take

decisive action in many of the world’s trouble-spots due to its outdated permanent membership structure, which gives

five nations a totally disproportionate power to prevent the world body from acting against their interests. In the UN’s

65 years, the veto has been used nearly 300 times. [1]

COUNTERPOINT 

Stories of bureaucracy and delay in the General Assembly obscure the vital work that goes on, often unnoticed,

through United Nations agencies every day. It is true that the UN’s decision-making processes are not terribly efficient

but in a body comprising nearly 200 members this is probably inevitable. If there are problems with the structure of the

UN, such as the Security Council veto, the answer is to reform those institutions to fit the challenges of the

21st Century. As an analogy, national governments have often been accused of being slow to change and reform, but

we do not conclude from this that “government has failed” and seek to abolish them!

Many UN bodies are corrupt or compromised.

Many UN bodies are corrupt or compromised.

POINT 

As mentioned above, the Human Rights Council consists of some the worst human rights abusers in the world. The

NGO UN Watch has accused the HRC focusing almost exclusively on alleged human rights abuses by Israel to the

exclusion of almost every other country. [1]

There have been widespread allegations of corruption in UN bodies. [2] It is for these reasons that the US long

refused to pay its full dues to the United Nations and threatens to do so again in future, as well as withholding funding

from UNESCO in 2011 after it voted to recognise Palestine as an independent state.[3]

COUNTERPOINT 

The United Nations is no more corrupt than any large organisation, much less national governments, and far more

transparent than many comparable institutions.

It is true that the Human Rights Council contains some nations with bad records on civil liberties but it is surely better

to engage with such regimes and shame them into slowly improving their human rights standards, than simply

excluding them from UN organs and losing any influence over how they treat their citizens.
Most international co-operation can takes place outside UN framework.

Most international co-operation can takes place outside UN framework.

POINT 

The major economic, political and trade issues around the world are almost all dealt with either through bilateral

agreements between nations or by specialised bodies set up for that purpose – the World Bank, IMF, EU, ASEAN,

NATO, WTO and so on. In all of these fields the UN is little more than an irrelevance. Even where the UN does get

involved in international affairs – such as in the Libyan crisis of 2011 – it is other bodies, in that case NATO, which

serve as the vehicle for international cooperation. [1]

COUNTERPOINT 

Despite the proliferation of supranational organisations, the United Nations remains the indispensable global forum for

meeting to discuss world affairs. Indeed, in a way this expansion in the number and range of international

organisations is a testament to the success of the UN model. Furthermore, many international organisations work very

closely with the United Nations, or even partially within its system. For example, when the International Atomic Energy

Authority assesses the compliance of nations such as Iraq or Iran with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is to the UN

Security Council that it reports.[1]

In any case, this debate is about whether or not the United Nations has failed. Even if many decisions are now taken

outside the UN framework that does not reflect badly on that body.