Essay on United Nations Diplomacy

The main course of forming the United Nations abbreviated as UN was to prevent the effects of war on future generations and aid countries where there is an armed militia in war. Ultimately those who formed the organization lived long enough to witness battles that involved the worlds' superpowers adopting the name world war. The UN, since its inception, has been summoned to settle disputes that when otherwise left unresolved could escalate to atrocities that could be devastating to the citizens of the countries involved. Under the United Nations Charter, there are bodies that were formed with the responsibility of maintaining peace and harmony. Also, UN is also responsible for upholding human rights across all the member countries in the world regardless of sex, race, religion, or language. This paper will outline all the activities that the United Nations organization has been able to accomplish and the ones that it has failed to.

As such, the UN carter has outlined the organizations commitment to deal with international issues based on the principles; achieving higher living standards by addressing economic, social and health-related issues, universal observance of respect and upholding of human rights. The UN charter consists of a treaty, and all the member countries are tied by its articles. Almost every country in the world has ratified the Charter. Most chapters of the Charter are directed to issues relating power, peace, and security. Chapter VII of the charter details the Security Council's mandate to authorize the use of military forces as well as diplomatic economic and military sanctions to resolve international disputes.

Furthermore, the UN security council is composed of 15 countries. Some of these nations are permanent and some non-permanent members. The non-permanent states are elected by the General Assembly for a two-year term, and the current list of these countries include Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Sweden, Ukraine, and Uruguay. These countries have a privilege of voting for international decisions. The permanent members are the big five countries that were involved in the making of the organization. They include China, Russian Federation, United States, France and the United Kingdom. All the members are supposed to agree with the decisions made by the Security Council be they permanent, non-permanent or even not members at all. The council takes the initiative in determining the cause and existence of a threat or any act of aggression. After it determines the point of origin, it calls upon the members in dispute to settle their differences in a peaceful manner. Additionally, the Council goes ahead and recommends ways of settlement. If the methods do not work out, the council uses force or forced to impose sanctions to maintain or restore peace and security.

The Security Council has established more 26 sanctions since its inception. The sanctions, as detailed under article 41, do not necessarily involve the use of armed forces. However, the sanctions take different forms owing to the goals being sought after. The Council has used trade and economic measures like travel bans, arms embargoes, financial or commodity restrictions. The sanctions have been applied to enable peaceful transitions, constrain terrorism, promote non-proliferation, deter non-constitutional changes and protect human rights. One of the countries where the Council has been forced to impose its powers is Somalia, Kenya, Eritrea, Republic of Congo, Haiti and many more. Most of these countries have a political instability that poses a threat to international security and peace. Given that the sole mandate of the Council is to ensure peaceful co-existence of countries, UN Security Council has imposed give sanctions to these countries some which have failed and others are still work in progress.

A very famous group of terrorists in the east of Africa has been threatening the peaceful atmosphere of Somalia and Kenyan citizens. One named Abubaker Shariff Ahmed was found by the UN Security Council to be the cause of all the turmoil. The named Somali terrorist is said to be the leader and recruiter of young Kenyan Muslims for a big violent militant activity. Ahmed, who is a close associate of Aboud Rogo has been able to help him cause terror attacks in Kenya. He makes frequent trips to Somalia, which is dubbed to be Al-Shabab strong-hold to supply them with military materials like AK 47, grenades and bombs. One of the memorable terror attacks in Kenya was the killing of University students in the northern region of Kenya. The group was able to sneak into the country and plan all its activities without the local government's knowledge. Many armless students in Garissa University lost their lives from the attack. In this case, the Kenyan government has waged war against the terror group and has sent its military operatives to take down the group. Now that the security of Somali people is threatened, UN Security Council was forced to intervene and offer better ways of dealing with the issue. After laying down the recommended methods of dealing with the situation, the Council has been keeping a close eye on the progress of Kenyan government regarding the issues. In June 2012, the Council deemed the jurisdiction to have failed, and it was not making any progress whatsoever. Therefore, other ways were sought. On the same breath, UN military forces were sent to take control of an attack in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. The specially trained operatives were able to capture one of the attackers but were not evenly successful because the suspect was dead. In this case, many lives were lost, and the forces had failed.

Similarly, the UN is responsible for ensuring peaceful political transitions in member-countries. As we all know, the quest for power can cause lots of unwanted and preventable chaos especially in those countries that have adopted a dictatorial rule. In situations where the citizens push for a change in power and leadership, UN is always there to see it through peacefully. Mid this year, Zimbabwe has had a particular change of heart. The citizens did not want to be ruled by a dictator, so they pushed for a change in power. Robert Mugabe who has been the country's president since its independence till mid-July had assumed all the control and did not want to let go. When the nation decided to do away with him, there was some resistance that threatened the existence of peace in the country and the neighbors too. Therefore, the UN has been intervening for the sake of peace and harmony in the country during this significant transition of power. The organization has underlined the importance of dealing with political differences in the country and recommended a peaceful way which entails the use of dialogue and adherence to the country's constitution. Moreover, the efforts that have been initiated by Southern African Community Development (SADC) have been agreed upon by United Nations General Assembly. Also, the Secretary-General has been keeping close communications with AU and other related organizations to ensure the peaceful efforts bare fruits. So far, Zimbabwe has been able to remove Robert Mugabe and plan for a peaceful election. The United Nations has made commitments to support the countrys efforts to put in place a democratic government.

For over five months, Saudi Arabian government has been threatened by forces stationed in Yemen. In this case, the country has been positioned several naval forces in the Red Sea to block the ships that are deemed to bring aid to the Yemeni citizens. Even though the actions of the Saudis are pure and understandable, the Yemeni are dying of starvation since the blockade started. Millions of people are not able to access medical attention in the war-torn country of Yemen. A ship that is said to be carrying medicine, weapons, and food from the port of Djibouti has seen its docking prevented by the Saudi-led coalition's vessels. These actions have led to the intervening of the United Nations. Houthi fighters, which are causing chaos in Yemen have led to this blockade, and in return, Yemeni people are not able to receive food or medicine. The blockade has been in place since 2015, and the UN has not been able to bring unity in the two countries. UN took upon itself to investigate the reason behind the starvation and blockade and found out that Saudi Arabia had been blocking all the ships regardless of the contents they have. Given that the Saudis are afraid of the Houthi fighters overthrowing their government that is internationally recognized, they should be blocking the importing of weapons that could benefit the group and not food. The UN set a system that was supposed to ease delivery of commercial goods that would help the starving Yemeni people. However, the efforts have seen failures since inception. It is good to note that Yemen imports about 85% of its food and only 21 containers of food supplies were able to reach Yemen this year. This amount of goods is not enough to feed the 28 million population of Yemen.

Nevertheless, the situation between Yemen and Saudi is made worse by the reluctant efforts of the involved parties to cooperate. The Yemen government has not made any comments regarding the blockade, and the Saudi government is making the stand that there are no shipments that are being blocked. These are challenges that the UN organization was formed to curb, but the organization faces some difficulties when there is no one ready to move forward. Early this year there was a ship that was carrying thousands worth of anti-biotics to Yemen. The ship was blocked for three months which led to the expiration of the drugs and death of many children in Yemen. This is a clear violation of human rights that the UN has had difficulties in managing. The Security Council received a confidential report detailing many of the ships that had been prevented from reaching Yemen. One of the cases was a ships company vessel that had been delayed for over a year from entering port Hodeida. This ship is said to have been carrying commercial goods that incurred 5 million dollars in refrigeration and fuel costs.

The UN Secretary-General has been having peaceful and resourceful talks with the Saudi Coalition to settle the matter. In this regard, the Coalition agreed to open Aden port, but yet the port is not able to meet the needs of 28 million Yemen citizens. In efforts of resolving the prolonged problems between the two countries, UN has offered to provide proper and credible mechanisms to inspect the goods being docked at the Hodeida and Aden ports. This way, the UN will be able to cut off weapons supply to the Houthi fighters while allowing food and drugs to reach Yemen. The UN is not being given enough space and access to offer humanitarian services to Yemen. Even though the coalition is ready to uplift the blockade partially, reports presented to the Security Council shows that 3.2 million people will be forced to live in hunger. Moreover, a big number of people are doomed to die in the coming few months. This is one of the greatest failures of UN in ensuring human rights are upheld. Even though this situation has failed many methods recommended by the UN, the organization is still working its best to bring peace and harmony to the two countries.

However, has not had its better days in all its efforts to resolve international problems. Some countries have dropped away from being members of UN, and this poses a significant challenge when the organization is called upon to aid such countries. A nation not being a member of UN means that it has no UN Ambassadors and thus peaceful negotiations can be a problem. While Un has had a significant share of success, it has failed terribly in...