# What has the UN accomplished? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 25, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974 "2015-03-25T21:09:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/1 "2015-03-25T21:09:45Z")
I’m active on another messageboard where there’s a fellow who, whenever it comes up, declares that the UN is useless and has never accomplished anything. I’m not cynical enough to agree with him, but the first Google response I got was the UN’s own website. Is there an objective way to find a list of accomplishments? Or is wikipedia enough? ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/2 "2015-03-25T21:35:08Z")
The World Health Organization (an agency of the UN) is credited with basically eradicating smallpox. I would say that counts as a pretty significant accomplishment. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/3 "2015-03-25T21:40:20Z")
The successful defense of South Korea was no small thing. ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/4 "2015-03-25T22:08:46Z")
The various UN refugee agencies have saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives over the past 85 odd years. And UN peacekeeping missions continue to be effective in many areas, the Golan Hights for example. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/5 "2015-03-25T22:15:50Z")
Hell, just having a forum in which small nations can bitch at large ones must be therapeutic at the very least. ---
**Author:** ![canned\_mayhem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/53a042/32.png) [@canned\_mayhem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/canned_mayhem)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/6 "2015-03-25T22:16:27Z")
Well, the UN sure did a great job in Darfur, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria etc… With bastions of historical communist utopias like China and Russia holding absolute veto power on the counsel, I’m sure the UN will continue to provide the world with more of the same. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/7 "2015-03-25T22:21:22Z")
It has many flaws (Security council is corrupt, humans rights groups are full of abusers, anti-Israel bias). Some of the groups in the UN have done a lot of good. UNESCO, WHO, UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR > **[PolitiFact - Van Jones says U.N. has conducted “172 successful peacekeeping...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2013/sep/12/van-jones/van-jones-says-un-has-conducted-172-successful-pea/)** > > With the U.S. and Russia locked in discussions over whether, and how, to exert control over Syria’s chemical weapons sto [http://theflame.unishanoi.org/opinion/2013/10/30/top-9-greatest-achievements-of-the-united-nations/](http://theflame.unishanoi.org/opinion/2013/10/30/top-9-greatest-achievements-of-the-united-nations/) ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/8 "2015-03-25T22:27:13Z")
And, for the more cynically minded, don’t forget that over the past decades the UN has provided the US and our allies with a nice “international” skirt to hide behind if possible, Nor should we forget that the UN is incapable of doing anything a majority of it’s members (or security council members) do not allow it to do, and cannot operate in any country without that country’s approval. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/9 "2015-03-25T22:29:54Z")
As much deserved criticism as the United Nations receives from many quarters, to suggest that a seventy-year-old intergovernmental organization “has never accomplished anything” is an absurd claim on the face. Aside from giving a forum for nations to face off administratively as an alternative to immediately going to war, one can point to coordination and cooperation foster by the Economic and Social Council (coordinating economic support from the World Bank and IMF as well as various NGOs to address social, educational, resource, and medical problems in the developing world), the International Court of Justice (settling extragovernmental disputes, fostering cooperative agreements and frameworks between nations, sponsoring the International Criminal Court and through it the various International Criminal Tribunals), the International Atomic Energy Agency (oversees international agreements on nuclear fuels and materials, works against proliferation of nuclear weapons, promotes peaceable and safe development of nuclear energy), International Civil Aviation Organization (cooperative agreements on international air travel, regulation of air safety and communications standards, helps investigate extraterritorial aviation accidents), the International Telecommunications Union (homologates telecom standards, fosters cooperative regulation of bandwidth allocation and GEO satellite slots), the International Maritime Organization, the Universal Postal Union, World Meteorological Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, and most perhaps importantly, the World Health Organization which, as **engineer\_comp\_geek** already mentioned, was responsible for coordinating and supporting efforts to eradicate smallpox and is working on tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, SARS, and various other communicable diseases and harmful human and animal parasites. That the UN and its various agencies have been less than optimally effective in various efforts is less a reflection of the innate capability of the organizations to come to consensus or draft effective plans of action than the unwillingness of various member states to cooperate or cede authority to those agencies in matters of health, social welfare, military and security affairs, et cetera. To some extent this is often understandable as the UN is seen by many nations as being dominated by the United States and Europe, and participation in the General Assembly has often been made moot by the decisions of the dominant five permanent members of the Security Council (The US, UK, France, ROC/PRC, and CCCP/Russia). The UN has essentially no real legal authority to impose decisions on any member states, and so all of its decisions are regulatory or in the form of resolutions, and in that sense may be seen as ineffectual in, say, imposing educational standards, preventing voting fraud, or preventing internal or regional conflicts, but to claim that it has not accomplished anything in the seven decades of its existence is obtuse. Even setting aside the failures to stop various conflicts and bring peace and prosperity to developing nations, arranging concordances on various international regulations and agreements to foster international cooperation and trade is value enough. One might as well argue that a kindergarten teacher has “not accomplished anything” because her students aren’t reading Chaucer. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![canned\_mayhem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/53a042/32.png) [@canned\_mayhem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/canned_mayhem)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/10 "2015-03-25T22:40:08Z")
Google ‘UN victories’ and then Google ‘UN failures’… Those blue helmets are a force to be reckoned with I tell ya… lmao ---
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/11 "2015-03-25T22:45:48Z")
> [@canned\_mayhem](#): > > Well, the UN sure did a great job in Darfur, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Syria etc… > > With bastions of historical communist utopias like China and Russia holding absolute veto power on the counsel, I’m sure the UN will continue to provide the world with more of the same. You can point to failures, but you can also point to peacekeeping missions where they have done a good job in at least keeping people from killing each other too much: Ivory Coast, Golan Heights, Kosovo, Mali, Haiti, Western Sahara, Cyprus, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/12 "2015-03-25T22:57:43Z")
“Those blue helmets are a force to be reckoned with I tell ya…” canned mayhem, as has been far better explained than I did, the UN can’t do what its members don’t want it to do. For instance, no member state would allow a peacekeeping force to operate on what it claims to be it’s territory if that force were to in any way challenge their own military superiority, though they may allow it to challenge the strength of what they view as uncontrolled militias. In cases like the Golan Hights, where there hasn’t been an active conflict in 45 years, the peacekeeping force is more a deterrent and tripwire. It serves a political purpose more than a military one, and it’s worked so far. ---
**Author:** ![canned\_mayhem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/53a042/32.png) [@canned\_mayhem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/canned_mayhem)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/13 "2015-03-25T23:02:20Z")
> [@buddy431](#): > > You can point to failures, but you can also point to peacekeeping missions where they have done a good job in at least keeping people from killing each other too much: Ivory Coast, Golan Heights, Kosovo, Mali, Haiti, Western Sahara, Cyprus, etc. Huh? Ivory Coast? Haiti? Western Sahara? Mali? Well, I guess keeping people from killing each other “too much” is a start eh? ---
**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/14 "2015-03-25T23:09:55Z")
> [@canned\_mayhem](#): > > Huh? > > Ivory Coast? Haiti? Western Sahara? Mali? > > Well, I guess keeping people from killing each other “too much” is a start eh? Yes, the UN has been largely beneficial in those regions. Do you disagree? Do you think that those areas would have been better if the UN missions weren’t there? ---
**Author:** ![canned\_mayhem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/53a042/32.png) [@canned\_mayhem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/canned_mayhem)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/15 "2015-03-25T23:11:11Z")
[QUOTE=Notassmartasithought] In cases like the Golan Hights, where there hasn’t been an active conflict in 45 years, the peacekeeping force is more a deterrent and tripwire. It serves a political purpose more than a military one, and it’s worked so far. [/QUOTE] As far as the Golan “Hights” is concerned, the UN has less to do with that peace than the people there who are smart enough not to throw stones at an Israel power house. If Israel decides to start smacking around uppity Arabs there, what is the UN gonna do? Write a strongly worded letter??? ---
**Author:** ![Notassmartasithought](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c0e974/32.png) [@Notassmartasithought](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Notassmartasithought)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/16 "2015-03-25T23:47:23Z")
Maybe not that much if the US keeps defending them unconditionally. Remember “only what members allow them to do.” ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/17 "2015-03-26T00:07:33Z")
> [@buddy431](#): > > You can point to failures, but you can also point to peacekeeping missions where they have done a good job in at least keeping people from killing each other too much: Ivory Coast, Golan Heights, Kosovo, Mali, Haiti, Western Sahara, Cyprus, etc. …right now, as we speak, successfully defusing a genocide-in-the makings in CAR… ---
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/18 "2015-03-26T00:14:36Z")
The UN is only as powerful as its most powerful members want it to be, which isn’t all that powerful. I’d say a body of international human rights law is pretty impressive, as is UN mediation in a number of peace negotiations such as those in Guatemala. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/19 "2015-03-26T00:54:44Z")
> [@Malden\_Capell](#): > > Hell, just having a forum in which small nations can bitch at large ones must be therapeutic at the very least. Well, they could just join the Dope and start a Pit thread for that! ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974/20 "2015-03-26T03:14:33Z")
This is probably best suited to Great Debates. Colibri General Questions Moderator [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-the-un-accomplished/715974.md?page=2)