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UN Chronicle - Volume 52, Issue 2, 2015
Volume 52, Issue 2, 2015
A must-read for every concerned world citizen, the United Nations Chronicle is a quarterly, easy-to-read report on the work of the United Nations and its agencies. Produced by the United Nations Department of Public Information, every issue covers a wide range of United Nations related activities: from fighting the drug war to fighting racial discrimination, from relief and development to nuclear disarmament, terrorism, and the worldwide environmental crisis.
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Message on the 70th anniversary of the United Nations
Author: Ban Ki-moonLong before I became Secretary-General, the United Nations occupied a special place in my life.
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Reflections on the UN at 70
Author: Kofi AnnanSeventy years ago, world leaders gathered in San Francisco to sign a unique and historic document—the Charter of the United Nations. In the name of “We the peoples”, they charted a path to a world where faith in the dignity and worth of the human person would be reaffirmed.
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Seventy years of the United Nations
Author: Boutros Boutros-GhaliTo highlight the achievements of the United Nations in the past 70 years would fill many volumes, and I’m afraid that writing about my wishes for the United Nations in the next seven decades would fill even more books.
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Independence and impartiality as the heart and soul of the Secretary-General
Author: Javier Pérez de CuéllarMy United Nations memories reach very far back; as a young diplomat, I attended the first session of the General Assembly, in London, in 1946. It was a time of immense hope which was soon dashed. Before the end of the decade the permanent members of the Security Council were in open competition both ideologically and geopolitically. The collegiality between them, on which rested the collective security system, disappeared. A new world war with major powers in direct confrontation was averted, but otherwise, for decades, the ability of the United Nations to carry out its primary purpose, the maintenance of international peace and security, was severely constrained.
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The role of the United Nations in ensuring a secure, prosperous and equitable world
Author: Sam Kahamba KutesaSeventy years ago the world witnessed the conclusion of two months of intense multilateral diplomacy, with the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. In one of the defining acts of the twentieth century, representatives of 50 countries endorsed the formation of an international organization created in the hopes of preserving peace and building a better world for all.
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Towards a more secure, just and humane future
Author: Mikhail GorbachevThe editors of the UN Chronicle asked me to contribute an article for this issue commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. I agreed, since this is an institution unlike any other in terms of its mission, its universality and the hopes vested in it when it was created. Throughout my political career, the United Nations played an important and significant role.
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A time for bold reforms
Author: Gro Harlem BrundtlandWhen the United Nations was born in 1945, I was six years old. The world was emerging from the horrors of the Second World War and Norway was reasserting and re-establishing its democracy after five long years of Nazi occupation. By the time I was ten, my family was living in New York and I was proud and keenly aware that a fellow Norwegian, Trygve Lie, had become the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. Little did I know then that I would also have a long involvement with the Organization.
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Strong UN. Better world: A veteran’s view
Author: Margaret Joan AnsteeThe United Nations, founded in 1945 with high hopes for international peace and security after the horrors of two world wars, has reached the venerable age of three score years and ten and it is time to take stock.
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From rhetoric to reality: United Nations personnel are driving change
Author: Navi PillayThe United Nations has come a long way since it was established, 70 years ago, by sovereign States to resolve inter-State disputes. Its massive efforts in peacekeeping, humanitarian aid and setting global standards compel me to wonder what we would have done without it. Like everyone, I recognize the magnitude of the crisis that the United Nations—and indeed, the world—faces today. First, though, I want to focus on a few of the many achievements that I consider to be impressive.
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Striving for human security
Author: Sadako OgataWhen I started my work as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in February 1991—as the first woman, the first Japanese, and the first academic in that post—the world had just moved away from the rigidly controlled cold war structure. Within weeks of my arrival in Geneva, almost 2 million Iraqi Kurds had fled to Iran and Turkey in the aftermath of the Gulf War. That was the beginning of my turbulent decade as High Commissioner until I left the position in 2000.
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A new agenda: The role of multilateralism in a complex and changing world
Author: Rima KhalafThe 70th anniversary of the United Nations presents an opportunity to take stock, recognizing our successes and acknowledging our shortcomings.
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Looking back, moving forward
Author: Amina J. MohammedSeventy years ago, during the closing days of the Second World War, representatives of 50 nations attended the United Nations Conference on International Organizations in San Francisco, leading to the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, that came into force on 24 October 1945. The Charter is as relevant today as it was seven decades ago. The United Nations was forged through a unified resolve to uphold peace and security, development, and human rights for all and these remain the three pillars that frame the work and mission of the Organization.
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The United Nations at 70 and the ongoing quest for gender equality
Author: Phumzile Mlambo-NgcukaAs we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, let us look back and acknowledge what has been achieved. During those seven decades the world has changed enormously. This anniversary is therefore also an opportunity to assess what more the international community needs to do to meet the new challenges.
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From independence to long-term stability United Nations efforts in Africa
Author: Aïchatou MindaoudouOver the past 70 years, the scope of the work of the United Nations has expanded greatly, to include issues such as climate change, sport for development and peace, and road safety. When I look back however, I feel that the United Nations has played the most significant role in those areas that are at the core of the Charter of the United Nations: the maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of human rights for all and selfdetermination of peoples, and other economic, social and cultural issues including governance and development-related concerns. It has also proven itself relevant in providing hubs aimed at mobilizing and harmonizing efforts of Member States towards achieving its thematic goals.
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The United Nations at 70 Working as one to deliver a healthy future for all
Author: Fatoumata Nafo-TraoréIn December 1948, following years of war and violence of previously unimaginable proportions, the world came together in Paris, where the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under the driving force of the formidable Eleanor Roosevelt—widow of former President of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt—this Declaration complemented the relatively new Charter of the United Nations and guaranteed the rights of all individuals everywhere.
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A key United Nations moment and its lessons
Author: Álvaro de SotoThe recollection of United Nations moments that tends to crowd out all others in my mind took place at midnight on the last day in office of then Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, 31 December 1991, at the initialing of the agreement to end the 12- year war in El Salvador—the first United Nations mediation of an internal conflict. I may be accused of blowing my own trumpet because of my own role in it, but so be it. Beyond the specifics of the El Salvador accords and how they were achieved, it was not just a moment of substance and transcendence, pregnant with hope and promise for the people of that beleaguered country and for the United Nations writ large; it was also the culmination of the astonishing series of peace achievements, unparalleled before or since, that marked the final three and a half years of the fifth Secretary- General’s decade in office.
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Preventing the use of child soldiers, preventing genocide
Authors: Roméo A. Dallaire and Shelly WhitmanWe are living in an era in which the level of human suffering as a result of intra-State conflict seems to be escalating exponentially. The essential challenge remains how to create the political impetus for timely, non-selective responses to human suffering (MacFarlane and Weiss, 2000). At the very heart of the human suffering we are witnessing the plight of vulnerable populations, and most notably children. Of all the threats that define contemporary conflict, the use of child soldiers presents one of the farthest-reaching and most disturbing trends today. If in the past children were made to fight in spite of their youth, they are now being made to fight because of their youth.
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For we, the peoples... Revisiting Dag Hammarskjöld’s legacy in applying and adapting the Charter for a stronger and more effective United Nations
Author: Henrik HammargrenIn October 2015, the United Nations commemorates its 70th anniversary, and on this occasion it is appropriate to consider the relevance of the founding document, the Charter of the United Nations. The Organization has evolved with a changing world and it is up to Member States to keep strengthening its capabilities and recommit to the purposes and principles of the Charter. The visions and values articulated by the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, are still relevant for this purpose.
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Young at 70: The promise of the United Nations work with and for youth
Author: Ahmad AlhendawiSeventy years ago, a revolutionary idea to change the landscape of a fragile multilateral scene was introduced. Establishing the United Nations was the necessary response for a world recovering from the devastation of two world wars. The idea was simple, yet very bold; a global body to promote the principles of “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and to promote social progress and better standards of life”. Looking at the world today, we see that the United Nations has done justice to most of its responsibilities in upholding these principles. However, much work remains, particularly in regard to the inclusion of the world’s youth in development and decision-making processes.
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The United Nations and its discontents an academic view
Author: David M. MaloneFor most people, reaching 70 allows them to look back on accomplishments and hopefully provides some reprieve from worrying about the future. For the United Nations, there is no such luxury.
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Three simple fixes for the next 70 years
Author: Ian RichardsIn 2014 I celebrated the 69th birthday of the United Nations in a temple in Bhutan. Speaking to an audience of monks, ministers and staff, the United Nations Country Representative to this mountain kingdom in the Himalayas described how the global Organization had helped set up the country’s first airline and had at one time fed a large part of its population.
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The first 70 years of the United Nations achievements and challenges
Author: Edward MortimerPerhaps inevitably, the United Nations started on a steep downward trajectory from the high expectations that surrounded it at its birth. The global security organization envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations, based on a perpetuation of the victorious alliance against Nazi Germany, was stillborn because of the rapidly developing rift between the Soviet Union and its Western allies. The Security Council of the United Nations, entrusted with the maintenance of international peace and security, was soon paralysed by the inability of its permanent members to take decisions on any issue where they perceived their interests to be in conflict. The fact that this “cold war” did not develop into a hot one is generally attributed not to the United Nations, but to the “balance of terror” between nuclear-armed super-Powers, both of which were likely to be destroyed by any direct conflict. The role of Secretary-General U Thant in helping to prevent such a conflict during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis has been too widely overlooked, even though at the time both super-Powers acknowledged it in writing.
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From world health to world heritage
Author: Heidi J. TworekIn a pedestrianized area in the midst of San Francisco, a United Nations flag flutters alongside an American one. Granite columns flank the plaza bearing the names of United Nations Member States and the year in which they joined the Organization. There is a sunken fountain designed by Lawrence Halprin to symbolize the seven continents of the world tied together by oceans. Designed in the mid-1970s to commemorate 30 years since the creation of the United Nations, the plaza raised controversy among architects and San Francisco residents, including for the plaza’s addition into the non-profit group Project for Public Spaces’ Hall of Shame. Though the group criticized the placement of the fountain, it simultaneously praised the plaza’s potential to foster thriving and dynamic community interaction on market days and to provide an entrance to the Civic Center. The Project for Public Spaces called for the United Nations Plaza to “stay true to its name and do all it can to showcase the assets of the multiple cultures that are part of the market”.
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Living together
Author: Yann Arthus-BertrandThe Charter of the United Nations, signed in 1945, did not address concerns for the natural environment. Neither the word itself, nor a doctrine of environmentalism appears in the founding document. Yet the protection of the environment affects the preservation of the entire planet. It is also a subject closely related to provisions of the Charter, since a sustainable environment decidedly contributes to the assurance of the wellbeing of its inhabitants. United Nations initiatives are thus critical to finding solutions to most environmental challenges. Over the years, this question has become increasingly important in General Assembly deliberations and has been featured in its resolutions—a development I very much welcome.
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