Sunday, October 9, 2011

How Does This UN Thing Even Work?

(Warning: this post is mostly filled with information that you will probably think is boring. Absolutely no fun stories or embarrassing escapades are present. Read at your own risk.)

So I'm sure that you have all been keeping up with the Palestinian bid to the UN... right? Right.

When talking about it with people who are unfamiliar with the process, the most common question I get is: "why does the US have the power to veto the whole bid?" Good question, and relatively simple answer. So if you are interested in the answer to this question, or even if you would just like a little unofficial United Nations history from someone who is nowhere near an expert, keep reading!

The United Nations was initially founded after WWII in an attempt to give nations a place to talk about their problems and work them out collectively, and therefore hopefully avoid war. It has five primary "organs" (creepy, right?): General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice.

So Abbas (the "President" of Palestine) gave his speech a few weeks ago in front of the General Assembly (a group made up of one representative from each recognized country) that meets periodically in NYC.

NOW. There are currently 193 recognized countries (the newest, South Sudan, was officially recognized in July). In order for a country to be formally recognized, they need to go through an application process. Part of that process is being approved by the Security Council, which consists of a representative from 15 countries. Ten of these countries are elected, and each have 2 year terms. The other five of these countries are "permanent members" of the security council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

Side Note: these five are the only countries technically allowed to have nuclear weapons according to the Non-Proliferation Treaty from 1970 (although we know that a few other countries have them too, including Israel).

Anyways, in order for anything to be approved by the Security Council, it needs to be approved by 9 of the 15 countries, BUT, each of these five permanent members have the power to singlehandedly Veto any resolution, including a request for recognized statehood. Another way to say it is that in order to pass a resolution, you need to have a "yes" vote from each of the permanent members, and from 4 of the 10 non-permanent members.

Another side note: since 1982, the U.S. has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel. The US has vetoed 43 resolutions total, meaning that 75% of our vetos were to protect Israel. Comparatively, in the same time period, China has used their veto power a total of 6 times.

Currently, about 140 of the 193 countries support Palestine's bid to the UN (accounting for about 80% of the world population). It's generally the super developed nations (the Global North) versus the not as developed nations (the Global South).

Overall, its quite fascinating to see just how the UN works and what kinds of safeguards have been put in place to protect the powerful countries (some I agree with, and some I don't). Regardless of which side of the Palestine bid you are on, I would encourage each of you to do a little bit of research about the United Nations and find out a bit more about how this whole world governance process works. Who knows... you might be surprised with what you learn.

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