There is an international organization call the Unrecognized Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) that has many unrecognized nations among its members, and I believe they have Observer status at the United Nations. Has anyone else heard of UNPO?
I don’t believe that I argued that at all. You’re the one drawing what I think is a very misguided equivalence between that list of countries and North Korea. I’m just pointing out that they’re not remotely the same. None of those countries were kicked out of the UN for bad behavior.
Should the UN admit Kosovo? Yeah, probably. But it’s not my call.
Should the UN kick out North Korea. I don’t think so. But, also not my call.
I guess that means North Korea can do whatever it wants to its neighbors without consequences or repercussions from the UN, but that’s better than them being a rogue nation out on its own somehow.
Not really. Not at all, actually. Just because they are members doesn’t mean that they don’t face sanctions for poor behavior.
All it means is that a North Korean diplomat has an office in a particular NY office building, and that they get one vote out of a couple hundred.
But if they ignore the sanctions there are no consequences, so the sanctions are pointless, and they know that.
What do you mean, “ignore sanctions”? Sanctions aren’t something that a sanctioned country does, it’s something that other countries do.
I want to take a step back, because I would like the OP (@dolphinboy) to perhaps better express their understanding of what the United Nations -is-.
Because it is not, nor was it designed to be, a functional world government. Your comments to date seem to imply that you feel it is, or at least should be, which is worthy of it’s own Great Debates thread, but this isn’t one (yet). Similarly your concerns about sanctions - just because some members of the UN agree to apply them, ones that don’t (and ones that do but evade them with under-the-table trades) doesn’t mean that it’s the UN enforcing said sanctions.
Sanction - The number one definition is “a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule.” The UN sanctions North Korea, but there is no penalty for disobeying their rules, so they ignore it.
The UN is a body of nations with an agreed to charter. The UN Charter is an instrument of international law, and UN Member States are bound by it. The UN Charter codifies the major principles of international relations, from sovereign equality of States to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations.
If a member nation violates the UN Charter, I think there should be consequences besides meaningless sanctions. Otherwise, why have a charter at all? If nobody can ever be kicked out, then the UN is powerless to do anything to a nation that refuses to follow the charter.
The sanction is the penalty. Not sure what you mean here.
Why do you say sanctions are meaningless? They are cut off from world trade, from world credit, from the world economy. The country would be far better off if sanctions were lifted.
Why do you think that kicking out a nation would be an effective punishment?
What consequences would you recommend? If they are ignoring sanctions do you think kicking them out of the UN will have more impact somehow?
If you agree to follow the rules, we want you to be a member of the group. If you violate our rules, we will warn/sanction you so you can correct your actions. If you continue to ignore our sanctions, you obviously no longer want to be a member of our group. Since we have no way to force you to follow the rules you agreed to follow, the only option is to kick you out of the group. If you want to rejoin the group, you can as long as you follow the rules.
Presumably, North Korea sees some value in being part of the UN and being recognized as a country by the rest of the world. If they were kicked out, maybe they would try harder to follow the rules instead of doing things that intentionally endanger all of their neighbors (except for China which doesn’t seem to be too bothered by what they do).
It really is the other way around. North Korea gains almost nothing from being in the UN, and the rest of the world gains the ability to at least sit down and talk with a representative of North Korea to get some sort of idea of what’s going on there.
And there’s the practical matter of kicking them out even if we wanted to. China and Russia can veto such a vote, just as they veto the vote on letting Kosovo join, and the US vetoes the vote to let Palestine join.
If there is no practical way to kick out a member state then I withdraw the question. I assumed there was.
While I agree with the idea that one has to follow the rules or there will be consequences, the problem here is that kicking a country out of the UN does not make problems they are causing go away. They are still part of this world and could/would make more problems as an outsider as opposed to keeping a seat for them at the table. As others are saying, even with dire conflicts with the UN there is always a pathway for communications - dialogue, even between enemies, will still be better than mutual destruction.
Can you provide an example of this with regard to the UN, or is this just a supposition?
Since no country has been kicked out of the UN, I don’t think there is an example. Sure, it’s a supposition.
So if you theoretically kicked out a country, they might realize they screwed up and try to behave better. Isn’t that also a possibility? Again, it doesn’t matter since it’s impossible to do.
Okay, first, theoretically and practically, sure some random nation kicked out, might realize they screwed up. But (and I can’t help but wonder why you don’t acknowledge this) North Korea has, as been stated upthread, already excluded from almost all international interaction other than that of it’s own sponsors.
If, as a NOT random example, the Ukraine was suddenly kicked from the UN because, ummmm, they pre-emptively nuked Moscow (making something up), then realized that no one would trade with them, share banking systems for money transfer, or allow their citizens across their borders (sample sanctions), then yeah, they’d probably work hard to be re-admitted.
Let me stress this again, NK is NOT a good example of a UN member. 
Back to your last point, it isn’t impossible to kick someone out - NK has allies on the Security council who find it useful to keep them in, and their Veto power prevents the rest of the world from attempting it, if it were found to be worthwhile.
If the situation changed (NK starts threatening to nuke Russia and China because their most recent b-day presents to the God-king were insufficient), they could withdraw said protection. Removing them from the UN however, would be a far lesser consequence than China refusing to trade with them however.
Are you sure about that? A number of those listed ‘countries’ aren’t recognized as such for a very good reason; they consist of territory internationally recognized by everyone but those that sponsored their aggressive creation as being the sovereign territory of another nation. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are recognized as being part of Georgia by everyone but Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria. North Cyprus is considered by everyone but Turkey to be part of the Republic of Cyprus. UN recognition of them would both legitimize their violent creation and require either UN recognition that the territories no longer belong to their currently recognized sovereign state, or create the paradox of the UN considering the same territory to belong to two different countries.