United Nations General Assembly

Introduction

The General Assembly is the main purposeful, policymaking and representative organ of the UN.
Through regular meetings, the General Assembly provides a forum for Member States to express
their views to the entire membership and find consensus on difficult issues. It makes
recommendations in the form of General Assembly Resolutions. Decisions on important
questions, such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters,
require a two-thirds majority, but other questions are decided by simple majority.
Since its beginning, the UN General Assembly has been a forum for superior declarations,
sometimes bold speechmaking, and rigorous debate over the world’s most vexing issues, from
poverty and development to peace and security. As the most representative organ of the United
Nations, the assembly holds general debate in the organization’s New York headquarters from
September to December and arranges special sessions at other times to address a range of issues.
This year’s meeting will be the 76 th General Assembly meeting which will be held from 14 th
September onwards. Abdulla Shahid, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Maldives, was elected
to serve as President of the 76th session of the General Assembly. The election took place at
United Nations Headquarters, in New York on 7 June 2021.

Some major achievements of the UNGA in the field of arms control, nonproliferation, a nd
disarmament include the endorsements of the NPT (1968), Convention on the Prohibition of
Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC, 1972) and Convention on the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (CWC, 1992)

The Functions of UN General Assembly

The UN General Assembly is the only universally representative body of the United Nations. The
function of the General Assembly is to discuss, debate, and make recommendations on subjects
pertaining to international peace and security, including development, disarmament, human
rights, international law, and the peaceful arbitration of disputes between nations.

It elects the nonpermanent members of the Security Council and other UN bodies, such as the
Human Rights Council, and appoints the secretary-general based on the Security Council’s
recommendation. It considers reports from the other four organs of the United Nations, assesses
the financial situations of member states, and approves the UN budget, its most concrete role. The
assembly works with the Security Council to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.
General Assembly Membership

There are 193 UN member states, each with a vote in the General Assembly. The assembly’s
president changes with each annual session and is elected by the body itself. Abdulla Shahid,
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Maldives, was elected to serve as President of the 76th session
of the General Assembly. The election took place at United Nations Headquarters, in New York
on 7 June 2021. In accordance with the established regional rotation, the President of the 76th
session was elected from the Group of Asia-Pacific States. The president is empowered to enforce
rules of procedure, such as opening debate, setting the agenda, limiting speaking times for
representatives, and suspending or adjourning debate. Presidents, however, are not confined to
presiding over procedure; in recent years, they have invited UN officials to brief the assembly
despite opposition from some member states. In 2011, for example, Assembly President Nassir
Abdulaziz al-Nasser invited the high commissioner for human rights to brief member states on
the Syrian civil war despite opposition from Syria’s backers.

Resolutions need a two-thirds majority to pass, and voting blocs often form around groups of like-
minded states, such as the G77, a loose coalition of developing economies. The UN’s nonmember
observer states—Vatican City and Palestine—have the right to speak at assembly meetings but
cannot vote on resolutions.

Membership can be argumentative. Taiwan has been denied UN membership for more than two
decades due to objections from China, which holds a permanent seat on the Security Council and
considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory. Palestine’s status at the United Nations has also
been controversial. The 2011 General Assembly session was dominated by discord surrounding
Palestine’s bid to become a member state, which stalled in the Security Council after the United
States vowed to veto such a measure. At the 2012 General Assembly, member states passed a
resolution, 138–9 (with 41 abstentions), to upgrade Palestine from a nonmember observer entity
to nonmember observer state.

Division of the General Assembly by membership in the five United Nations Regional Groups:
• The Group of African States (55)
• The Group of Asia-Pacific States (54)
• The Group of Eastern European States (23)
• The Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (33)
• The Group of Western European and Other States (28)

Criticisms of the United Nations General Assembly

According to many scholars and policymakers, there are questions about the effectiveness of the
UNGA. One of the over aching criticisms of the international organization is that the United
Nations General Assembly is not functioning at an finest point, and thus, changes should occur.
Organizations such as the Center for UN Reform (2014) have a number of articles on how the
United Nations can be reformed, and in the case of the GA, “revitalizing” the U nited Nations
General Assembly.

For example, on October 1st, 2014, Chris Doyle wrote an opinion article entitled does the U.N.
General Assembly Actually Achieve Anything? In the opinion piece he argued that the GA
meeting is a place for leaders to speak against one another, often using the podium for messages
that are sure to receive local support, or to make a political statement. Or, as he mentioned, leaders
make statements about human rights and international law, when in reality many are quite
hypocritical with regards to their own actions (Doyle, 2014). However, despite these issues, and
the criticisms of the need to reform the United Nations during this year’s General Assembly
speeches, he argues that the General Assembly does allow for the ability fo r states to work on
issues through diplomacy. However, he doesn’t emphasize the public meetings between leaders,
but rather the private meetings, saying that “All the private bilateral sessions hopefully make it
worthwhile as the behind the scenes talks are where the serious business gets done.” Yet having
said this, he ends his piece by pointing out a negative point with regard to the United Nations
General Assembly, saying that “The worst thing the U.N. General Assembly does is occasionally
grant leaders a global platform and mass media attention, the irresistible temptation of a television
camera. Brilliant statesmen might use the occasion to shape world politics for a better horizon but
instead it is a festival of hypocrisy, blame games and self-justification that shines darkness on the
world’s problems and betrays the very charter of the body that hosts them.”

Some others, such as Michael Doyle, have also argued that the United Nations General Assembly
does not have a clear objective in terms of what it exactly should do, particularly with regards to
more efficiently deliberating and debating international relations topics. UNGA has recognized
the need for a more clarified approach to its work (UN, 2005, in CFR, 2014).

Moreover, there have also been concerns about how the United Nations General Assembly decides
on the international organizations’ budget for the year. For example, some countries who
contribute greater amounts of money to the UN budget have called for more openness in the
budgetary process. Furthermore, they have also spoken out about what they feel is the need for
better use of the resources. A specific criticism of some EU voices has been that while the United
Nations’ primary emphasis is on matters of international peace, “UN Member States’ level of
engagement in peace support operations has been rather uneven: the nations of the ‘global south’
have provided most peacekeeping operations’ personnel, while the ‘global north’ countries have
reduced their personnel contributions, while continuing to provide generous financial support.

Some noteworthy General Assembly actions

“The General Assembly is not an action body. It is just an assembly,” says Ambassador Donald
McHenry, a former U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. General Assembly
resolutions are still significant, however, as indicators of member states’ positions on a given
issue. They can also prove useful by outlining organizing principles and proposing initiatives for
 member states, says McHenry. Some assembly actions have had more influence or incited more
controversy than others:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, two years after the assembly convened its
inaugural session, it promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contained
thirty articles outlining global standards for human rights. A historic act, it proclaimed the
“inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” As the
chair of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
helped to draft and pass the declaration, saying it “may well become the international Magna
Carta for all men everywhere.” Human rights issues remain contentious, however, and the UN
Human Rights Council continues to face criticism for, among other things, including among its
members countries with poor human rights standards, though recent efforts have improved the
body’s performance.

• ‘Uniting for Peace’ Resolution. In 1950, the United States initiated the landmark “Uniting for
Peace” resolution. It states that if the UN Security Council “fails to exercise its primary
responsibility” for maintaining international peace and security, the General Assembly should
take up the matter itself and urge collective action. This would happen in the case where there
appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression. The General Assembly
can consider the matter with a view to making recommendations to Members for collective
measures to maintain or restore international peace and security. This resolution was invoked
only once in UN peacekeeping history, when in 1956 the General Assembly established the UN
Emergency Force (UNEF I & II) in the Middle East including the Suez Crisis where the UN
intervention in the crisis ultimately resulted in a cease-fire, troop withdrawal, and the
establishment of the first UN Emergency Force (UNEF), a peacekeeping force. The 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq provoked calls from many organizations, including the Center for Constitutional
Rights, a legal advocacy group, for the General Assembly take up the issue and override the
impasse of the Security Council, but the assembly did not do so.

• Millennium Declaration. The General Assembly proclaimed designated its fifty-fifth session, in
2000, the Millennium Assembly. At a summit that year, Annan unveiled the UN’s Millennium
Declaration. It set forth the Millennium Development Goals, a collection of “time-bound and
measurable” targets for, among other things, reducing poverty, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS,
and improving access to primary education. Other proposals included a security agenda relating
to international law, peace operations, and small-arms trafficking, as well as an environmental
agenda that urged “a new ethic of conservation and stewardship.” The development goals continue
to be invoked by many governments and nongovernmental organizations to spur aid to developing
countries. Significant inroads have been made on education, infant mortality, and poverty. In
2015, the General Assembly set new goals for sustainable development- Transforming our world:
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.