This idea expressed in a politically powerful document in 1805 served as the point of departure for the creation of the Holy Alliance and all subsequent multilateral arrangements designed to serve the “general Tranquility” and to provide the basis of what was later coined “collective security”.
Looking back at that document, one is struck by two concepts which remain central even today. The first is “a general and comprehensive system of Public Law” and the second, the need to repress the attempt to disturb the general Tranquility “as far as possible”. These two concepts represented the central challenge of the League of Nations and later of the United Nations and continue to be the main challenge.
Modern international law developed by or with the assistance of the United Nations has become a solid framework for international cooperation but is still not ←19 | 20→a “comprehensive system of public law” today. Public law remains, strictly speaking, the domain of sovereign states. Norms and institutions of international law must be strengthened further and there is much work to be done.2
The practice of maintaining peace in the framework of the United Nations can be described as going “as far as possible”. However, what is possible is usually less than what is desirable or even necessary. The possible and the necessary seldom match and this gap gives rise to disappointments. The challenge is how to expand the scope of the possible.
The UN is not a world government, nor can it be one. Nevertheless, it is a vital ingredient of contemporary global governance, defined as the system of existing norms, values and institutions which were created to help address the problems of our world. This system of norms defines the space of governance, its scope and limitations.
The UN Organization is based on the principle of “sovereign equality” of its member states. This is a necessary principle, a sine qua non condition for the organization’s inclusiveness and universality. On the other hand, in an increasingly globalized world, sovereignty can be an obstacle in finding solutions to the growing number of “problems without passports” such as global warming, global pandemics, transnational organized crime and others. Coordination of the national interests of sovereign states in these matters has proven very difficult. In addition, the provisions of the UN Charter provide for the necessary institutional stability, but not for the desired adaptability of the UN structure. The challenge today is how to use UN institutions effectively.
The UN represents a valuable distillation of historically accumulated wisdom which can, when taken seriously, help in solving a variety of problems. Time and again, states and individuals have turned to the UN. Today no serious commentator advocates its abolition. To the contrary, the ongoing discussion on UN reform, which started in the early days of the organization, reaffirms the organization’s indispensability.
The discussion points towards a different problem: the problem of UN relevance. While the indispensability of the organization cannot be questioned, its relevance is continuously subject to doubt. And relevance is a matter of degree. Therefore, it is appropriate to focus a discussion like the one today on the relevance of the UN in the three key areas of its activities: security, development and human rights.
The UN is an organization of collective security and as such, indispensable. The aspiration formulated two centuries ago by William Pitt continues to be valid. Pitt’s careful wording regarding the task to provide peace “as far as possible” was wise and still resonates today. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General ←20 | 21→of the United Nations, gave it a modern expression in his famous remark that the UN is not here to take the world to heaven but to prevent it from descending into hell.3
The UN has been instrumental in this preventative role. It has contributed its own share in the prevention of a World War III and in addressing a wide variety of threats to peace. This must never be ignored or underestimated.
Moreover, the UN has demonstrated its ability to innovate. Peacekeeping, a function not envisaged in the UN Charter, has become the “flagship activity of the UN”, to borrow a phrase used by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the eighth UN Secretary-General. UN peacekeepers have made a major contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security and have deservedly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.4
Over time and especially in the past two decades, UN peacekeeping has grown in size, diversity and complexity. Since 1948, there have been 71 peacekeeping operations. In early 2019, there are more than 100,000 peacekeeping personnel deployed in 14 operations. Peacekeeping, as an instrument for maintaining peace and security has proven to be effective, both politically and financially. Deployment of peacekeepers costs considerably less than any other military deployment. The total expenditure of UN peacekeeping operations represents a mere one-half of one percent (0.5%) of global military spending.
The rapid growth in peacekeeping since the early 1990s made managing large numbers of peacekeepers and their different mandates excruciatingly difficult. This led to a real crisis in the second half of that decade when serious problems had to be addressed. Unclear mandates, some of which were resulting from political divergences in the Security Council, the “mandate-giver”; ambiguities with respect to the use of force by the peacekeepers; inadequate numbers and operational capabilities of several peacekeeping operations and violations of human rights, including sexual abuses by the peacekeepers were some of the difficulties. All this led to a serious re-examination of peace operations and a series of new policy guidelines have been adopted on several occasions since 2000.
The situation has improved gradually since then and today peacekeepers are better prepared for a variety of tasks which include difficult mandates such as protecting humanitarian assistance and building a safe environment for economic recovery and political transitions. However, new challenges continue to arise. Increasingly, peacekeepers are deployed in situations where there is no peace to keep, where it is not easy to identify the parties to the conflict and where there is no viable political process.
The UN and its member states must keep up with the changing realities, both in the military and political sense. In the past few years, important innovations ←21 | 22→were introduced. Examples include the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and an international intervention brigade in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) within the UN Organization Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO). The intervention brigade was mandated to conduct targeted offensive operations with the aim of disarming and neutralizing armed groups. The important premise for the Congo intervention brigade was the understanding – and possibly a future principle of peacekeeping – that impartiality of peacekeeping does not mean neutrality in the face of atrocities and that maintaining consent with the parties to a conflict does not mean that spoilers can prevent UN missions from accomplishing their mandates.
These innovations are important not only for the success of future peacekeeping missions but also for effective “post-conflict peacebuilding”. Peacekeeping and peacebuilding are increasingly merged in a broad variety of specific, sensitive and time-consuming tasks. Over time, the UN has, along with other international organizations and donor states, developed considerable experience and expertise in this domain.
However, the practical performance still offers a mixed picture. One has to appreciate the depth of endemic problems in some post-conflict situations, the adverse effects of the regional actors in others and the perennial problems of organizing international assistance in all situations. This was the reason for the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission which aimed to take UN action in post-conflict peacebuilding to new levels. More time is needed to achieve the desired levels of success