<p>what do you think about the UN and its effectiveness? how could it be improved?</p>
<p>UN is crap. it’s non-existent. i can go on with arguments but they are not necessarry lol…</p>
<p>only thing good about the UN: their non-political organizations like WHO, UNESCO or UNICEF.</p>
<p>i agree with mercury. its an overhyped, overexpensive, corrupt debate society. the only redeeming quality are the relief organizations mentioned, and they could run perfectly well without the rest of the UN.</p>
<p>UN is worthless and the US pays for practically the whole thing</p>
<p>I think that someone tried to come up with a good concept, but the fact that it has no way to enforce its decisions whatsoever makes it basically useless.</p>
<p>bumppppppp</p>
<p>also where do u think it has been effective and where its been ineffective? what do you think about the world bank?</p>
<p>bumpppppppp</p>
<p>UN has not been effective anywhere.</p>
<p>I just typed out a really long post, and it didn’t work. So here’s a summary:</p>
<p>“UN is worthless and the US pays for practically the whole thing”
While you are correct that the US is supposed to be the largest financier of the UN because of its dues, the US actually passed legislation back in the 90s, I believe, that caps the amount we are paying (which is supposed to be 25% of the UN budget), so we don’t pay nearly as much as we should based upon calculations the UN made of our economy or something.</p>
<p>The UN is good in some instances - peacekeeping, for one. The UN is able to coordinate resources between nations and establish a single line of command to work in areas that are experiencing conflict, so that the Bangladeshi, American, and Chinese peacekeepers all work and aren’t individually trying to solve the problems. Also, it has been able to work to demine areas and establish treaties between nations to work against the danger posed by landmines.</p>
<p>A lot of the problems stem from countries refusing to give up any little vestige of power to the UN and their dislike of it. For instance, the nomination of Bolton shows the issues that the US government has with the UN (he said that the UN would be better off w/o the top ten floors, and has said soo many things against the UN that I’m not even going to try to list them). Also, various countries exercise hidden vetoes on things such as peacekeeping missions so that many issues are never even debated/brought to a vote because they will block them because they are afraid that they are too close to their interests. If countries were willing to allow the UN to act in places like Uganda and the Sudan where the situation is dire, the UN would be able to do more. Further, the establishment of a rapid reaction force to quickly enter countries in need of a peacekeeping operation before the situation fully breaks down would be very beneficial as it would be able to enter much quicker than the current aprox. 6 months that it takes the UN due to the bureacracy w/n the Security Council.</p>
<p>I will admit, however, that the UN can be corrupt. For instance, peacekeepers have been involved in many instances of forced prostitution and sex-trafficking, and the UN often hushed up the reports and didn’t want to hear about it (“boys will be boys”).</p>
<p>My comments are indicative of UN peacekeeping, don’t take them to talk about the UN in general. My expertise lies in peacekeeping due to the policy debate resolution this year, so I know little about the UN in general.</p>
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<p>My mom could possibly give you a certain insight into the way UNICEF works in India atleast…your opinions might undergo a slight change after that. I don’t know about the other organizations though.</p>
<p>BROME…ahh yes policy debate this yr…its really interesting to hear what ppl think about the UN…
“boys will be boys”…thats the arg that a lot of the aff likes to make…interestin…the whole time i thought u were in debate until i read the end…and well yeah u r…sometimes i think UN is good and sometimes i think they totally sucks because so much crap is going on around the world and they arent doing anything about it…or they just take too god dam long…for instance the genocide in sudan…and america owes UN so much money…</p>
<p>Politically, UN is just League of Nations Part II</p>