The Importance of the UN

 

World War II taught the west a difficult lesson. The atrocities committed in Europe, Russia and China forced governments to accept a new type of thinking. Isolationism was determined to be dangerous. The League of Nations was reformed. The United Nations was born from the result of previous failures and the horrors that followed.  The creation of a stable international community was vital in preventing war and oppression of human rights throughout the world.

The atrocities committed across the globe during the Second World War are still shocking today. In Europe alone over “six million Jews and nearly equal number of others ranging from children to the aged, homosexuals, Slavic slave laborers, prisoners of war, Communists, members of the German resistance, handicapped, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses” were killed (Lauren 143). Similar ethnic cleansing occurred in China where Japanese soldiers devastated both the landscape and population wherever they traveled. Horrific violations of rights on the part of the Japanese consisted of “brutality . . . against captured soldiers and civilians alike in the form of punishment, forced labor, brutal experiments with germ warfare, sex slave ‘comfort women,’ mutilations, and murder” (143). As the smoke of the war cleared the world reached for some message of hope. Humanity needed reassurance that nothing as terrible as terrible would happen again.

Europe was not new to the violence and devastation witnessed in the thirties and forties. Millions of lives were lost during the Great War. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proposed the League of Nations promote peace. The League was designed to ensure all nations respected the rights of individuals as well as the rights of sovereign nations. This was an effective strategy because members could sanction violating nations either by a physical or economic means to ensure international law was obeyed. Threatening nations could be pressured on a global scale. The League was an effective step in the direction of preserving rights but it ultimately failed.

There were several devastating blows to the success of the League. The first was the lack of U.S. involvement. American’s were fed up with foreign wars. “America’s refusal to join the League, fitted in with her desire to have an isolationist policy throughout the world” (historylearningsite.com). In addition to American isolationism was the lack of a credible superpower. Great Britain and France were both members of the League, but were terribly weakened both militarily and economically during WWI. Neither nation was able to contribute a standing army or significant funding to enforce international law. The only other possible super power was Russia, which was denied entrance due to its communist regime. The lack of influence on an international scale ended the League’s effectiveness. Its failure allowed threats in Europe to grow over the course of a decade. Isolationism died with the rise of genocide and war, and a new order of international representation was needed.

The solution to the world’s problems came with the establishment of the United Nations. The first clause of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, “Whereas recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Human rights and peaceful resolutions to international issues are centered at the core of UN policy. The preamble of the UN charter reads “we the people of the United Nations determined. . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” The founders witnessed two horrific wars in less than thirty years. The goals specified in the charter can be accomplished if nations are willing to communicate. 

The UN remains the stage for international diplomacy. Countless international conflicts are resolved in the UN conferences. This is an important step in preserving peace and rights throughout the world. As President Eisenhower put it, “every gun, every warship, every tank and every military aircraft built is, in the final analysis, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, from those who are naked and are not clothed.”