The History of the United Nations and Where it Stands Today

Today the term United Nations gets thrown around quite a bit. But there are many who do not know what the UN does or what they stand for, other than the vague embodiment of peace. But the term United Nations was first used in the Declaration by United Nations on January 1, 1942 when 26 nations (including the United States) signed on to fight against the ‘Axis of Evil’, the phrase actually being coined by FDR himself. Of course the UN was/is just an updated working model of Woodrow Wilson’s baby: the League of Nations, which was put into effect under the Treaty of Versailles although the United States never joined. Its general mission statement was "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security”. And the United Nations is much the same. It officially came about in 1945 once it had been ratified by a majority of the participating countries. Now there are a total of 192 countries in the United Nations. Its mission statement is about the same: to save countries from war, to reaffirm fundamental human rights, to establish justice and to promote social progress and better standards of life and freedom throughout the world. One such case they are currently involved in that deals with these issues is that of a joint peace operation in the Congo with the Congolese military.
According to the New York Times, “United Nations peacekeeping officials were explicitly warned months ago by their legal advisers not to participate in combat operations with the Congolese Army if there were a risk that Congolese soldiers might abuse human rights, internal documents show. But the mission went forward — and the abuses took place as feared”. In fact “‘Human Rights Watch documented the deliberate killing by Congolese soldiers of at least 270 civilians’ the organization said in a November report. It also said many of the victims were women and children, and some had been chopped to death by machete”. This leaves the UN in a tight situation. If they end their joint venture, the vicious rebels who attack the villages will only continue to do so. But in adhering to their mission statement, they cannot in good conscience continue to associate with human rights violators.
This situation (and only one of many like it) almost makes you wish for the good old days when the bad guys were bad and the good guys were good- there were no grey areas. When the UN was created, there was such a bad guy: Hitler, and we and our allies were the good guys. But those days are gone and today we live in a world of grey areas. But the United Nations lives on, showing that even though things have changed, the fight for peace and justice lives on (even though it may not be as cut and dried as before). And so the spirit of Wilson’s League of Nations lives on in the UN, shedding light on the atrocities of today (as complicated as they may be) so that we can stop them from happening tomorrow.




http://www.un.org/aboutun/unhistory/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/world/africa/10congo.html?ref=todayspaper