What is the UN General Assembly? The UN General Assembly and international security

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

After the Second World War, the main organization on whose activities depends, no matter how pompous it may sound, world peace, is the UN. At the United Nations, all the major problems of our time are being discussed, and the parties to conflicts are trying to reach a consensus, assuming the use of diplomatic rather than forceful methods. What is the most important body in the entire UN? The General Assembly is the heart of this notorious organization.

What is this organ?

This is the name of the main meeting forum. Its peculiarity is that only here all the countries of the world, having their representatives in the UN, can discuss the most acute international problems in a multilateral format. What is this component of the UN responsible for? The General Assembly plays a crucial role in the formation and development of international law.

How does it work?

Questions are discussed onsessions. After each of them, a resolution is adopted on the basis of the topics discussed. For this draft resolution to be approved, it is necessary that at least 50% of all delegates vote in favor of its adoption. Several points should be taken into account. First, what can this UN body do? The General Assembly makes resolutions, but they do not have binding or even recommendatory power. Secondly, despite this, no delegation can veto decisions.

The Assembly was approved in 1945, when the whole world shuddered, finally realizing all the grief and horror experienced by many nations during the Second World War. Historically, the most intensive work is carried out during the period from September to December. In principle, if necessary, members of the Assembly may meet at other times, if the situation in the world really requires it.

So, according to the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in early December 1948, the basic norms of universal norms of ethics, morality and humanism, which every state undertakes to observe, were finally fixed. In particular, this document contains a sharp rejection of any torture and humiliation of human dignity against captured military personnel.

What is this UN body for?

So, the United Nations (UN), whose resolution can put an end to many negative processes in the world, in its internal Charter clearly ascribes thosefunctions and powers that the Assembly we are describing has:

• Its most important function is to collectively consider the basic principles of maintaining peace and prosperity. Its recommendations can relate to absolutely any issue, and the sphere of armaments is no exception. Based on the results of the discussion, a resolution is adopted, which in some cases may still be of a recommendatory nature.
• Also, members of this body can openly discuss any issues that in one way or another relate to the stability of the global geopolitical situation. In addition, the Assembly may make recommendations, except when the matter in question is in the field of view of the UN Security Council.
• Assembly specialists can prepare research methods and directly implement them in order to subsequently give more accurate and useful recommendations. This is especially true of the development of international law, as well as guarantees of observance of universal norms in all spheres of activity of world governments.
• Also, this body can give detailed recommendations for all situations, the uncontrolled development of which is fraught with serious shocks and disruption of relations between different nations.
• The UN Security Council regularly shares reports with its chapter. The Assembly can discuss them, as well as make various comments, which are accepted by higher authorities.
• A very important task of the Assembly is to adopt the budget of the UN, as well as to determine the levels of contributions for each country, memberwhich are part of this organization.
• Appoint the Secretary General, and elect temporary members to the Security Council (by popular vote).

What is the order of the sessions?

Any session opens with the fact that representatives of various countries are debating on the most acute and important issues that have accumulated since the last meeting. It is important to note that at the same time everyone can openly express their opinion and receive capacious and detailed answers. All meetings are carefully recorded for their subsequent analysis, on the basis of which recommendations will be made.

Why are all these projects considered by the United Nations (UN)? The resolution of this body, devoted to all the most important global problems, is never adopted from scratch. All decisions of the UN can be implemented only on the basis of the results of a joint debate, in which all the most important issues are fully discussed.

Only after each country exercises its right to vote in the general debate, consideration of the issues on the agenda begins on the merits. It should be noted that there can be a lot of them. So, at a relatively recent meeting, it turned out that there were almost 170 items on the agenda! How is the discussion proceeding in this case?

The fact is that the Assembly itself consists of six committees. Among the members of the latter are distributed the main issues that go through all the stages of discussion. On one ofsubsequent plenary meetings, the President of the Assembly shall be presented with a preliminary draft resolution.

She's undergoing further discussion. If approved, at least 50% of the sittings are accepted finally. After that, the resolution of the UN General Assembly may, in some cases, even be referred to the Security Council. This happens if it touched upon especially important and topical issues that directly threaten global stability.

Which divisions represent the six additional committees?

Since we have already touched on this issue, it should be further deciphered. So, the six committees include the following divisions:

• Department dealing with global disarmament and security issues. It contains all the questions that in one way or another affect the scope of the immoderate use of weapons.
• Committee of economic and financial problems. On it, in particular, lie the problems of hunger and poverty in the countries of Central Africa.
• Department of Humanities and Social Policy. Perhaps one of the most important units, as it deals with human rights issues. In addition, the recommendations of this committee are more often accepted for consideration by the Security Council. This means that as a result, a resolution of the UN General Assembly, which has a binding interpretation, can be agreed upon.
• Fourth section - politics and issues, one way or another related to decolonization. His competenceextremely wide. In addition to settling the usual general political problems, the members of this committee are engaged in financial and social assistance to those states that used to be colonies of some European powers.
• Administrative Affairs and Budget Committee. Here, they mainly deal with the office, which includes funding issues, so the rights of the UN General Assembly in this regard are extremely high.
• Sixth Committee, aka Law Department. As it is easy to understand, he is busy developing and adopting the norms of international law. Also, this department can oversee the implementation of its recommendations.

What decisions can be made here?

Each member of the Assembly has exactly one vote. Decisions on particularly important issues directly related to stability and peace can only be made if there are at least 2/3 of the votes "for" or "against". In other cases, resolutions may be approved based on a simple number of votes (but not less than 50%).

General Committee - composition and main functions

The most important committee consists of a chair and 21 deputies who are responsible for both the work of the six additional committees and general organizational and administrative matters. Previously, this body performed much more functions, but the reform of the UN General Assembly significantly reduced their list. From now on, it includes the following tasks:

• Adoption of the agenda and distribution of topicson additional committees in case there are too many questions.
• General organization of work and responsibility for holding all plenary meetings of the Assembly.

What is the role of this structure in global security?

70 The UN General Assembly was marked by the speech of the President of the Russian Federation VV Putin. In his long speech, he touched on many extremely important, but very sensitive issues. In particular, the President of Russia has repeatedly hinted that the center of “dominance” existing in the world, whose main representative spoke about “exclusivity”, in recent years has ceased to respond to UN decisions at all.

Why was it said? Anyone who is interested in the politics of recent decades, it was clear that the Russian leader was hinting at the United States. The invasion of Vietnam, Libya, the bombing of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s - all this was done either without obtaining the approval of the Security Council, or such was issued “backdating”. Not surprisingly, in recent years, opinions have been heard more and more often that the format of the Assembly is completely outdated, and the whole organization needs to be completely “dismantled”. But is it really?

Yes, the organization has certain problems, but they have not disappeared since the days of the League of Nations. Most countries still listen to the opinion of the UN and implement its peacekeeping initiatives. This helps to maintain world order and prevent small conflicts from turning into really big wars. Since the UN General Assembly and the internationalsecurity?

Conclusions and review of some problems

So, for the entire time of its existence (from 1944 to 2016), this organization can be called the most influential in the world. Thus, the declaration of the UN General Assembly has more than once been able to prevent those conflicts in which the states that initially unleashed them are completely bogged down. Of course, things didn't always go so well. For example, following the results of another Arab-Israeli conflict, the following conclusions were drawn:

• Firstly, sadly, but in the coming decades, the complete eradication of the causes of this war is impossible, since they include deep internal contradictions between all the peoples inhabiting this region.
• Secondly, it is this conflict that constantly reveals contradictions both in the Assembly and in the UN Security Council: on the one hand, the nation has the right to self-determination, on the other hand, the people are free to resolve territorial claims.

Based on this information, we can conclude that the implementation of the so-called road maps, that is, a plan for resolving a particular conflict, should take into account all the features of the region in which it unfolded. Unfortunately, not all sessions of the UN General Assembly touched upon this painful problem.

The circumstance that the parties to the conflict generally do not trust the decisions of the UN is very hindering the solution of this problem. At times, only the influence of intermediaries in the person of the United States or the Russian Federation helps to preventserious consequences, while Arabs and Israelis practically do not listen to the opinion of the UN itself. How can a way out of this impasse be found?

Here the organization must show a certain degree of flexibility. The proposed resolutions on the Israeli question are a set of compromises adopted by countries that are generally indifferent to the problems in this region. In such a delicate situation, as some UN experts believe, one should listen not to the faceless opinion of the majority, but to the decisions of the countries directly involved in this conflict.

Disaster in Rwanda

Also, the documents of the UN General Assembly testify that at one time the members of the organization did not attach due importance to the events that resulted in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last millennium, as a result of which thousands of people died. The conflict in Rwanda was extremely complex for the reason that it was based not only on religious, but also on deep ethnic contradictions.

Moreover, the main factor was just the ethnic issue. The difficulty was also in the fact that from the very beginning the members of the Assembly could not firmly decide which nationality to side with. Such throwing was erroneous in its essence: it was necessary to immediately stop the unleashing of the conflict. When two ethnic groups oppose within one country, this is an ordinary civil war, fraught with huge casu alties and forever separating many generations of people who lived there.

In addition, for some unknown reason,completely forgotten economic factors. In particular, it has long been proven that with a more or less stable growth of the economy, such conflicts are possible, but they rarely reach their peak (without external support). But in Rwanda, throughout the 80s, the economy rapidly degraded, constantly going into the red. Again, in those conditions, it was necessary to act urgently, but for some reason initially no action was taken.

So we learned why the UN General Assembly is needed.