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Tag(s): China; France; Funding; International; International Policy; NGOs; Organizations; People; Power; Russia; (more...) Security; UN United Nations; USA United States Of America; Un Security Council; United Kingdom England; United Nations; Wars; World (less...)
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January 7, 2008 at 12:01:50

UN vs. NGOs: One against Many

by Ivan Simic Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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By some definition; the United Nations (UN) is an International Organization established in October 1945, by the five permanent members of the Security Council: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States and by a majority of the other 46 countries. The declared aims of the UN are to prevent war, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to provide an instrument for international law, to promote social and economic development, to improve living standards and fight diseases, and to offer freedom for all Nations.

On the other side; a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) is a private institution which is not directly part of the structure of government, but relies significantly on funding from governments, individual donors, foundations, corporations. NGOs are not legal entities under International Law, as States are (except the International Committee of the Red Cross)

Every day, dozens of NGOs are being founded; currently, there are more than five million (5.000.000) NGOs around the world with most of them based in the US, India, Russia, Europe, among others, and only one UN. Looking at the lists of NGOs it is observed that since the mid nineties, the number of NGOs has been rapidly increasing. Why millions of NGOs now? The rapid increase could be explained with the numerous wars that were fought prior to this period, that aided in creating poverty, refugees, neglect of human rights, abuse of women's and children's rights, health and environmental problems, economical and political depression, among others.

There are many speculations concerning NGOs being tools of; a domestic or foreign governments, private donors, corporations, organized crime, all of which to protect their interest in some interest zone. Also, that NGOs are used for money laundry, as spy centers, drug smuggling, trafficking, and even tools for destabilizing countries, among others. It is unclear if all these are true or not, but one question arises from it. "How many individuals would give somebody or someone millions of dollars without asking anything in return?

Unfortunately, there are numerous NGOs that are confirming these speculations and even ones whose founders found good ways of making money and drying up Governmental budgets. However, there are a great number of good and uncorrupted NGOs, which were willing to make a change and really help someone.

Subsequently, what can we expect in the future from the UN and NGOs?

Regrettably, it looks like the budget of the UN is decreasing. Member States are late with payments, some members have big debts, and this generally affects the UN body.

Meanwhile, the budgets of NGOs are growing, with no debts and delaying in donor payments, with more media attention committed to NGOs, increasingly now, Governments are counting on NGOs more than on the UN, and if this trend continue, then NGOs will eventually replace the UN on the international stage, and, maybe, eventually come to power in some countries. Currently, we are evidencing a silent war among NGOs for leading positions in the international system, the end result of which cannot be predicted immediately, but it is obvious; there are too many hungry sharks in the sea. If we look through calculations: five million NGOs multiplied by ten people in every organization, we come up to the number of fifty million people working in NGOs worldwide, and the number is likely to grow.

It would be out of place to say that the UN is a perfect organization; we all know about manipulations of the UN system by some countries to get their will throughout, and because of that and many other things, the UN lost its respect on the international scene. Still, the UN is an International Organization, it has been helping and still helps people around the world; it was established for noble reasons; to represent all Nations equally and fairly, and it is expected that it will live up to its responsibilities and continue to do so.

Ivan Simic was born in Belgrade, Serbia and an Economics graduate. For the past decade, he has worked in various fields: business, diplomacy, and government. He has written many articles and critiqued or supported theories concerning global issues and international relations.

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1 comments

Brett Paatsch is an Australian born secular humanist with degrees in management and science and an interest in politics. He is a former pro-American that wishes to be pro-American again and thinks the impeachment and repudiation of President George W Bush for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 is necessary to reestablish trust in American signatures on international treaties and confidence in the global rule of law.
Brett PaatschBrett Paatsch is an Australian born secular humanist with degrees in management and science and an interest in politics. He is a former pro-American that wishes to be pro-American again and thinks the impeachment and repudiation of President George W Bush for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 is necessary to reestablish trust in American signatures on international treaties and confidence in the global rule of law.

You write on an important topic but sadly I think in a poor

way.

You set up the UN and NGOs as if they are opposed. They aren't necessarily. And a political party (like the Democrats or the Republicans in the United States) could fall within your definition of an NGO (non government organisation) and so become a government.

I'm not an expert on the UN though I'm enthusiastic enough about the design ideals in it to have a copy of the charter sitting in front of me as I type. The thing the UN did, after ww2, was to couple force where it could be found (in the national armies of the China, Russia, France, the UK and the USA) together behind a hub, a mutual peace contract if you like, of international law. And it gave each of those 5 the power of veto.

Without having a capacity for military force sufficient to concern nations - where nations were the largest political organisations at the time, the UN wouldn't have even have had a chance of working because nations wouldn't have feared the force of it.

As it happens it seems that the United States the worlds most powerful nation has apparently come to a point where it does not fear either the force of the rest of the nations in the UN or the approbium that comes with breaking the UN Charter. What remains to be seen is how the rest of the world will deal with the United States now. In effect the UN Charter has been voided by the United States illegal invasion of Iraq. The confidence that held the peace together has been undermined. No NGOs can put that confidence back together. The only thing that could restore confidence would be a repudiation of the Presidential adminstration that undermined it. And that can only come peacefully by impeachment. All the alternatives involve violence - exactly the sort of violence that the UN Charter was put together to try to avoid.

In the world of 2008, nation states are still the largest political organisations that are recognized. Some NGO's may have more power than some nation states but it is the legal systems of the powerful nation states like the United States that ultimately make nations not NGOs the relevant political organisations with respect to peace. And those legal systems will either work or not based on the people in them. The United States legal system will work or not based on what US citizens do.

NGO's are not a relevant alternative to the United Nations. If the United Nations falls over like the League of Nations did and there is effectively no international law for a time because there is no means to enforce it, it will be nations (with their sovereignty and their armies to enforce their sovereignty) that will put together another version 3 contract (1 = league of nations, 2= UN) not NGO's.

Having no (enforcable) international law because the United States won't keep its solemn word on contracts is effectively where we are right now. So if nations are not paying their "dues" to the UN, or are paying even less than they used to, I for one would not be surprised. The UN is now a farce because its spirit and logic is broken. The UN is broken because it was a contract attempting to couple international might with international right and the United States under President George W Bush dishonorably broke it with the invasion of Iraq.

In theory a new UN Charter could be drafted as easily as another US Constitution, but in practice of course the difficulty is to get the force of law, the consensus of humans, into those new documents, those logical constructs again. Where your article misses the mark is that it doesn't recognize that NGO's can't be the agents of force and power in a world that falls back to being nations pursing international interest. The power of nations is still real. Body politics still hold elections (however farcical they may be) and new Presidents and new Congressional representatives (individual people) really are elected as consequence and they really do make laws and NGOs don't make laws or raise armies despite that they may influence those that do.

by Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 1041 comments) on Monday, January 7, 2008 at 7:51:42 PM