Name: Raisa Musharrat Hossain

ID: 1931471030

United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization comprising of 193 members or

countries. The main function of the UN is to maintain international peace via cooperation and collective
security. Other functions include: developing friendly relationships among countries, working together to
solve international issues, promoting human rights, and being the headquarters for coordinating the
actions of nations. The Security Council of the UN lays out non-violent settlements of any disputes
between nations. The General Assembly of the UN, which includes both member and nonmember states,
discuss any situation that might threaten international peace and propose recommendations.
Currently, these primary functions are facing many challenges. The core purpose of the UN,
maintaining peace and security globally, is being threatened. One big challenge UN peace efforts have
always faced is geopolitical hostility and obstinacy. Disputes are drawn out by extreme rivalry between
global powers that support agendas for overseas war. Cold War is an example of the past and wars in
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Yemen are examples of the present. The second challenge is when members
from within the UN Security Council fail at their jobs of humanitarianism. The scrutiny of UN members
has posed a great challenge for UN and its image. The UN cannot settle international disputes without the
unanimous vote of the five permanent members. The challenge comes when none of the big powers agree
on the issues. This faces a dead end and UN cannot enforce any peace. All these challenges have been
consistently present over time.
One constraint the UN face are that the peacekeeping operations cannot be enforced without the
consent of the parties involved in a conflict. If parties involved reject UN negotiations, UN cannot do
anything. The UN must follow constraints given in the UN Charter when creating policies regarding
military operations. A constraint is that the Security Council can deploy military when negotiations do not
work only when countries voluntarily lend their respective armies. Members can also stop funding the
UN and the UN cannot give penalties to the nations who refuse to fund it. Lastly, UN cannot interfere
with the internal events of a country. So, their functions do not work when there are human rights
violations or abuse of government in a country.

G20

The G20 is a group of twenty leaders of the world’s largest economies who meet yearly to
examine global policy on trade, seek global financial stability and come up with solutions to economic
crisis. The G20 also deals with issues outside of financial and economic issues such as climate change,
women empowerment and many more. It was the G20 that responded collectively to the financial crisis in
2008.
One major challenge the G20 faces is that not all reformations passed at a meeting are completely
applied. This is because only 20 countries in the world are in the G20 and the other 180 countries are not
a part of the process which weakens the authority of the forum. The G20 and UN have rivalry regarding
economic policies which is more of challenge to the G20. Recently, the US approach toward trade (under
Trump administration) has put pressure to the G20’s belief of executing international trade with low
tariffs. This is a challenge for the forum because the US is a major part of it and the country’s attitude
directly conflicts with the forum’s beliefs and so the G20 has to respond accordingly. One more challenge
the G20 faces is the oncoming criticisms of the forum’s ability to tackle the many issues they address
outside of financial problems like climate change. The public backlash it constantly has to deal with is
also a huge challenge for the G20.
The biggest constraint the G20 has had so far is the underrepresentation of which directly puts an
effect on the passing of G20’s policies. There is nothing to do about this because the conception of the
forum started with 20 most powerful countries and the only way to overcome this problem is that more
countries need to be members of it.