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The UN’s influence in promoting world peace has varied over the years. During the Cold War conflict between the United States and Soviet Union the organization exerted little influence over world affairs. Tensions between the United States and Soviet Union prevented the UN’s members from reaching consensus on important issues.

With its effectiveness in international security affairs limited during the Cold War, the UN turned its attention to other efforts. It focused on the economic and social problems of developing countries, and on supporting colonial territories as they moved toward independence, as well as helping nations that had recently achieved independence.

In the early 1990s, with the Cold War over, the UN began to have influence over international security issues. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and Russia took over its permanent seat on the Security Council. With the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union over, the major powers could agree more often on how to handle international security matters.

Peacekeeping is the nonaggressive use of military force to help nations in conflict reach a settlement. The UN’s peacekeeping forces play a neutral role, working to calm regional conflicts in several ways. They can go into an area of conflict as observers, making sure agreements reached between opposing sides are being followed. They can provide a buffer between warring parties by physically interposing themselves in the middle. They can negotiate with military officers on both sides, providing a channel of communication. They can also monitor ceasefires, supervise elections, and provide humanitarian aid.

Peacekeepers are lightly armed. They travel in armored vehicles with automatic rifles, but lack artillery, tanks, or other heavy weapons. Their work can be hazardous, especially if one of the warring sides doubts their neutrality. They are often caught in the middle when ceasefires collapse and they sometimes have been deliberately attacked. More than 1,600 peacekeepers have been killed over the years.

The Security Council grants authority for peacekeeping missions, usually for several months, although the Council can reauthorize missions for many years. The UN does not have its own army, so the Security Council borrows forces for each mission from the armies of member countries. The Security Council also chooses a single commander, and the forces operate under UN command. The forces operate only if the parties in conflict agree to their presence. Thus, the success of a peacekeeping mission depends upon the cooperation of the opposing parties.

Peacekeeping forces are funded by special fees paid by UN members. The General Assembly must approve the funds. Today, lack of funds is the single greatest constraint in the use of peacekeeping forces. As peacekeeping operations have expanded, they have required more and more money. See United Nations Peacekeeping Forces.

The UN charter does not mention peacekeeping forces, although it does establish guidelines for peaceful resolution of international conflicts and, failing that, authorizes the use of force to stop an aggressor. The idea for peacekeeping forces arose during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, when England, France, and Israel attacked Egypt. During the crisis, Canadian diplomat Lester Pearson suggested the need for an international force large enough to keep peace in the area until a settlement could be worked out between the parties. The General Assembly took his advice, and the UN’s first peacekeeping mission was born. The UN sent peacekeepers into the area to oversee the withdrawal of French, British, and Israeli troops and to act as a buffer between the warring parties. The idea of peacekeeping evolved from there.

In the 1980’s and early 1990s, UN peacekeeping forces have helped resolve several violent regional conflicts. The UN negotiated ceasefires in Central America and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and dispatched peacekeeping forces to monitor the situations. In Africa a UN force went to Namibia from November 1989 to March 1990 to oversee the independence of that country from South Africa and to supervise the nation’s first free elections. UN peacekeepers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 in recognition of their successes. By 2001 the UN had about 39,000 troops from 90 countries in 15 separate peacekeeping missions, spanning South Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

The new missions were not without problems. The UN efforts were undermined by inadequate funding. The UN also misjudged what was needed for some of its missions. For example, in 1991 the UN sent only about 500 military and police observers into Angola, where a fragile truce had been declared in civil war between government supporters and rebels. The UN mission was to oversee a peace accord and to supervise elections. After the government won the elections, the rebel organization took up arms and the civil war resumed. The UN learned from this failure, and sent a force many times larger to a similar mission in Mozambique in 1992, with greater success. In 1991 the UN sent a peacekeeping mission to Cambodia to run the government under a fragile pact that ended a long civil war. The mission ended in 1993, when a new government was formed.

UN peacekeepers ran into even greater problems when they went to Somalia in 1992 and 1993. The UN authorized a peacekeeping effort led by the United States to deliver humanitarian aid to the country, which was embroiled in a civil war that had brought the population to the brink of starvation. The mission evolved into an attempt to end the conflict between several clans fighting for control of the country. After one of the clans attacked UN forces, Secretary General Boutros-Ghali urged U.S. forces to pursue the clan’s powerful leader, Mohamed Farah Aidid. The operation ended with an October 1993 battle in which 18 U.S. soldiers were killed and one of the bodies was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in view of television cameras. The United States abruptly pulled out of Somalia, and the civil war reignited.

The UN undertook its largest peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia in 1992. The effort involved about 40,000 foreign troops and cost about $1 billion annually. The mission focused on Bosnia and Herzegovina, a war-torn nation that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia. The mission was flawed from the beginning. The troops were not prepared for the conditions they faced. The UN sent lightly armed forces equipped for humanitarian operations into a war where one side had been identified as the main aggressor. The UN monitored numerous ceasefires, which were continually broken. The peacekeepers could deliver aid to besieged cities only if they followed the terms dictated by the aggressors, and they were taken hostage on several occasions. In 1995 Serb forces overran the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, which the Security Council had declared a “safe area,” without providing adequate troops to protect it. About 7,000 men and boys were massacred. Within months, the peacekeeping effort was disbanded and replaced by a more heavily armed force assembled by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a regional defense alliance of countries including France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The UN’s experiences in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia made its most powerful members reluctant to undertake any new peacekeeping missions. The Security Council turned down the pleas of the secretary general to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, when militant Hutu tribesmen slaughtered roughly half a million members of the Tutsi tribe within weeks. When similar events threatened to unfold in the neighboring country of Burundi in 1995, the Security Council again refused to authorize a response. In the late 1990s the Security Council authorized peacekeeping operations to set up a transitional administration in Kosovo (part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), to restore peace in East Timor and administer the territory during its transition to independence, and to help implement a peace treaty in Sierra Leone.

The UN operates under the principle that promoting economic and social development will help bring about lasting world peace. The charter calls on the UN to promote full employment for all, higher standards of living, and economic and social progress. As a result, the UN devotes a major proportion of its staff and budget to economic development programs worldwide. The General Assembly has recognized the need to restructure international economic relations to help developing countries and has recommended a series of steps aimed at reducing the gap between wealthy and poor countries.

The UN operates many programs and special agencies to promote economic development and provide assistance and technical expertise to developing countries. One of those programs is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Many developing nations rely on income from trade to support their economic development efforts at home and are especially vulnerable to price fluctuations on international markets and other trade problems. UNCTAD was founded in the 1960s to help negotiate international trade agreements that stabilize prices and promote trade with developing countries. During the 1970s the General Assembly included those goals in its call for a New International Economic Order to promote growth in developing countries. But developing countries have little power in the international economy, and as a result UNCTAD has been largely ineffective in advancing their interests in international trade.

Other efforts include the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which coordinates all UN efforts in developing nations. It is funded through voluntary contributions and has thousands of projects operating around the world. UNDP is the world’s largest international agency providing development assistance on technical issues. Two related agencies are the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.

UN programs offer several advantages in promoting economic development. Governments of developing nations see the UN as a friend of the developing world, not as an outsider threatening their authority or as a reminder of colonial rule. Many UN experts and volunteers are themselves from other developing countries. UN workers who come from the developing world may be more sensitive to local conditions and to the pitfalls of development assistance than their counterparts from more wealthy countries. The UN can also organize its assistance on an international scale, avoiding duplication of efforts. Some issues, such as prevention and treatment of major diseases and environmental protection, particularly benefit from the UN’s international approach.

A major disadvantage of the UN development programs is that their funding largely depends on voluntary contributions from wealthy nations. Each program has to solicit contributions to carry on its activities, and contributions can be abruptly cut off if the program displeases a donor government. In addition, programs sometimes lack the efficiency and resources that governments and businesses in wealthy countries take for granted. This has given the programs a reputation for being inefficient and bureaucratic.

The UN also helps finance development through the World Bank. The World Bank was created in 1944 to help developing nations get funding for projects. The bank grants loans to member countries to finance specific projects and this in turn encourages foreign investing. A related agency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was created at the same time to promote international cooperation on monetary issues. It encourages a stable, orderly pattern of monetary exchange rates between nations.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) encourages and coordinates sound environmental practices throughout the world. It grapples with ways to approach environmental problems on an international level, provides expertise to member countries, monitors environmental conditions worldwide, develops environmental standards, and recommends alternative energy sources.

UNEP’s work is guided by principles adopted at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit. The summit, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the largest such conference ever held, attracting with more than 100 national leaders. It was the third international environmental conference hosted by the UN.

The first UN environment conference took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. It adopted general environmental principles, such as the idea that one country’s actions should not cause environmental damage to another. It also raised awareness about the international aspects of environmental damage. A second conference was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1982. Nairobi is the headquarters of the UN Environment Program.

The 1992 Earth Summit was larger and more ambitious than its predecessors. Its major theme was sustainable economic development, meaning development that does not use up or destroy so many of the world’s natural resources that it cannot be sustained over time. The meeting produced an overall plan, called Agenda 21, in which large developing countries promised to develop their industries with an eye toward protecting the environment. Industrialized countries pledged to help them do that. A special commission was created to make sure countries followed through on the promises they made, but the commission has no power to enforce those promises. Supporters hoped that the commission’s ability to monitor and publicize how well countries were meeting their commitments would encourage those countries to keep their word. But at its first meeting in 1994, the commission found that the industrialized countries were providing only half the funding they promised for the effort.

The Earth Summit also adopted a treaty on global warming, the environmental phenomenon in which the earth’s temperature is increasing due to the burning of fossil fuels and other industrial practices. But the treaty did not commit countries that signed it to meet any targets by any particular date. The UN Environment Program works with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on this issue. The two organizations measure changes in global climate from year to year. The UN also sponsors the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since 1989 that panel has served as an international forum for negotiations on global warming.

Another treaty adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit deals with the issue of biodiversity—that is, the variety of different living organisms in a particular habitat or geographic location. Under the treaty, nations agreed to preserve important habitats for animals and plants. Wealthier countries also agreed to pay for the right to extract commercially profitable substances from rare species in protected areas of developing countries. The United States delayed signing the treaty because of fears that it could limit patent rights in biotechnology.

The UN is the focal point for international cooperation on each of these environmental issues. But the UN’s lack of authority over the actions of its members is a major barrier to success.

One of the UN’s major goals under its charter is to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all people, regardless of race, sex, language, or religion. But once again, the UN’s effectiveness in promoting its agenda is limited by its lack of authority over member nations.

After the atrocities committed by the Germans in the Holocaust, the slaughter of Jews that occurred during World War II, the UN adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration was adopted on December 10, 1948, which is now celebrated annually as Human Rights Day. It proclaims that “all human beings are born free and equal” and establishes basic rights for all people and norms for the behavior of governments in many areas. For example, it says that all people have the right to liberty, religious and political freedom, education, and economic well-being. It bans torture and states that all people have the right to participate in their governments. The declaration does not have the force of law, however, and seems to have had little visible effect on the UN’s member countries. Governments with poor human rights records, such as China, criticize the UN’s attempts to promote human rights, saying that such actions interfere with their internal affairs.

The UN operates a Commission on Human Rights, which monitors human rights abuses in countries, holds international meetings on human rights concerns, and handles complaints about human rights violations. In 1993 the General Assembly also created the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights. The commissioner oversees all the UN’s human rights programs, works to prevent human rights violations, and investigates human rights abuses. The commissioner also has the power to publicize abuses taking place in any country, but does not have the authority to stop them. However, most publicity about human rights abuses does not come from the UN but from rival countries or from nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International.

The UN has also drawn up four international conventions (treaties) on human rights, which are legally binding but hard to enforce. The conventions address the problems of genocide, racial discrimination, civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. The treaties have been ratified by only about half of the world’s nations. The United States has only ratified the convention on genocide and has declined to ratify the others. Other countries have also refused to sign the conventions, citing concerns about the specific terms of the conventions and the loss of authority that such treaties imply.

During the Cold War, Western countries continually criticized nations under Soviet rule for their lack of respect for human rights, such as freedom of expression and fair elections. But the UN played a small role in these arguments because of the Soviet Union’s veto power, and because many other national governments did not guarantee human rights in their own domestic politics. The most important Cold War pact regarding human rights, the 1975 Helsinki Accords, a diplomatic agreement between 35 countries that encouraged human rights, was negotiated outside the UN framework.

Among the UN’s most visible recent activities regarding human rights are the two International Criminal Tribunals held to bring to justice those responsible for the horrible acts of violence committed during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The tribunal for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia was established by the Security Council in 1993. The council initiated the Rwanda tribunal in 1994. They are the first such international war crimes trials since the Nürnberg Trials that followed World War II. Although the tribunals were established by the Security Council, they operate independently. The trials depend on contributions from countries to keep operating and are seriously hampered by financial shortages. A more serious problem is the inability to arrest suspects in countries or regions that do not support the tribunal’s efforts. See War Crimes Trials.

The UN Charter authorizes the Security Council to plan for worldwide disarmament and arms control. To help achieve those goals, the UN has sponsored arms control negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, for decades. The General Assembly also held a special session on disarmament in June 1982. None of these UN activities have had much direct effect on actual arsenals.

Instead, during the Cold War, the most important arms control agreements were reached by countries negotiating directly with each other, particularly by the United States and Soviet Union. At that time, arms control was dominated by the nuclear arms race between the superpowers. The United States and Soviet Union reached several important agreements, and then other countries signed on. Examples include the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty, and the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In some instances the General Assembly ratified these agreements. But in none of these cases did the UN play a major role.

One UN agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), does serve an important function in arms control. The agency, which has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, operates independently from the UN. The agency inspects the nuclear power industries and research facilities of the countries that have signed the Nonproliferation Treaty, to discourage them from diverting nuclear materials to military uses. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, IAEA inspectors uncovered and dismantled Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program. IAEA also played a major role in persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in the early 1990s.