Brief History of International Organizations

WUKARI
By Useni Audu

Brief History of International Organizations

By
Useni Audu Wukari
TSU/PG/POL/18/0026
Department of Political Science and International Relations
Taraba State University, Jalingo.

INTRODUCTION

International organizations (IOs) and institutions (IIs) have become an increasingly

common phenomenon of international life. The proliferation of IOs, the growth in
treaty arrangements among states, and the deepening of regional integration efforts in
Europe and in other parts of the world all represent formal expressions of the extent to
which international politics has become more institutionalized over time (MacKenzie
2010; Reinalda 2009; Green 2008). However, this paper is set to briefly trace the
history of international organizations.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
International organization is the process by which states establish and develop
formal, continuing institutional structures for the conduct of certain aspects of their
relationships with each other. It represents a reaction to the extreme decentralization of
the traditional system of international relations and an effort by statesmen to adapt the
mechanics of that system to the requirements posed by the constantly increasing
complexity of the interdependence of states. Particular international organizations may
be regarded as manifestations of the organizing process on the international level.

International organizations are legally constituted entities that operate across

several nations. Such organizations do not operate for profit. According to U. Audu
(2019) International organizations is an organized constituted body that functions or
operate across nation state with certain objectives. However, some major international
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organizations are WTO (World Trade Organization), Global Futures Foundation, IMF
(International Monetary Fund), World Health Organization (WHO) etc.

HISTORY OF LEAGUE OF NATIONS

A predecessor of the League of Nations in many respects were the international

Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907). The "Hague Confederation of States" as the Neo-
Kantian pacifist Walther Schücking called it, formed a universal alliance aiming at
disarmament and the peaceful settlement of disputes through arbitration. The concept
of a peaceful community of nations had previously been described in Immanuel Kant’s
Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795). Following the failure of the Hague
Peace Conferences - a third conference had been planned for 1915 - the idea of the
actual League of Nations appears to have originated with British Foreign Secretary
Edward Grey, and it was enthusiastically adopted by the Democratic United States
President Woodrow Wilson and his advisor Colonel Edward M. House as a means of
avoiding bloodshed like that of World War I. The creation of the League was a
centerpiece of Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace, specifically the final point: "A
general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose
of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to
great and small states alike."

The Paris Peace Conference accepted the proposal to create the League of
Nations (French: Société des Nations, German: Völkerbund ) on January 25, 1919. The
Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the
League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on June
28, 1919. Initially, the Charter was signed by 44 states, including 31 states which had
taken part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict.
Despite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919, the United States neither ratified the Charter
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nor joined the League due to opposition in the U.S. Senate, especially influential
Republicans Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and William E. Borah of Idaho,
together with Wilson's refusal to compromise.

The League held its first meeting in London on January 10, 1920. Its first action
was to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I. The headquarters
of the League moved to Geneva on November 1, 1920, where the first general
assembly of the League was held on November 15, 1920 with representatives from 41
nations in attendance. David Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School, examined
the League through the scholarly texts surrounding it, the establishing treaties, and
voting sessions of the plenary. Kennedy suggests the League is a unique moment when
international affairs was "institutionalized", as opposed to the pre-World War I
methods of law and politics.

SYMBOLS OF LEAGUE OF NATION

The League of Nations had neither an official flag nor logo. Proposals for
adopting an official symbol were made during the League's beginning in 1921, but the
member states never reached agreement. However, League of Nations organizations
used varying logos and flags (or none at all) in their own operations. An international
contest was held in 1929 to find a design, which again failed to produce a symbol. One
of the reasons for this failure may have been the fear by the member states that the
power of the supranational organization might supersede them. Finally, in 1939, a
semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. The
pentagon and the five-pointed stars were supposed to symbolize the five continents and
the five races of mankind. In a bow on top and at the bottom, the flag had the names in
English (League of Nations) and French (Société des Nations). This flag was used on
the building of the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
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LANGUAGES OF LEAGUE OF NATION

The official languages of the League of Nations were French, English and
Spanish (from 1920). In 1921, there was a proposal by the Under-Secretary General of
the League of Nations, Dr. Nitobe Inazō, for the League to accept Esperanto as their
working language. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against,
the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like it that the French
language was losing its position as the international language of diplomacy and saw
Esperanto as a threat. Two years later the League recommended that its member states
include Esperanto in their educational curricula.

STRUCTURE OF LEAGUE OF NATION

The League had three principal organs: a secretariat (headed by the General
Secretary and based in Geneva), a Council, and an Assembly. The League also had
numerous Agencies and Commissions. Authorization for any action required both a
unanimous vote by the Council and a majority vote in the Assembly.

Secretariat and Assembly

The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for
the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine
matters, effectively acting as the civil service for the League.

Secretaries-general of League of Nations (1920 – 1946)

i. United Kingdom Sir James Eric Drummond, 7th Earl of Perth (1920–1933)
ii. France Joseph Avenol (1933–1940)
iii. Ireland Seán Lester (1940–1946)
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Each member was represented and had one vote in the League Assembly.
Individual member states did not always have representatives in Geneva. The
Assembly held its sessions once a year in September.

Presidents of General Assembly of League (1920–1946)

Belgium Paul Hymans (1st time) 1920–1921, Netherlands Herman Adriaan van
Karnebeek 1921–1922, Chile Agustin Edwards 1922–1923, Cuba Cosme de la
Torriente y Peraza 1923–1924, Switzerland Giuseppe Motta 1924–1925, Canada Raoul
Dandurand 1925–1926, Portugal Afonso Augusto da Costa 1926–1926, Yugoslavia
Momčilo Ninčić ) 1926–1927, Uruguay Alberto Guani 1927–1928, Denmark Herluf
Zahle 1928–1929, El Salvador Jose Gustavo Guerrero 1929–1930 Kingdom of
Romania Nicolae Titulescu 1930–1932, Belgium Paul Hymans (2nd time) 1932–1933
Union of South Africa Charles Theodore Te Water 1933–1934, Sweden Richard
Johannes Sandler 1934, Mexico Francisco Castillo Najera 1934–1935, Czechoslovakia
Edvard Beneš 1935–1936, Argentina Carlos Saavedra Lamas 1936–1937, Turkey
Tevfik Rustu Aras 1937–1937, British Raj Sir Muhammad Shah Aga Khan 1937–
1938, Ireland Eamon de Valera 1938–1939, Norway Carl Joachim Hambro 1939–1946

COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATION

The league Council had the authority to deal with any matter affecting world
peace. The Council began with four permanent members (the United Kingdom, France,
Italy, Japan ) and four non-permanent members, which were elected by the Assembly
for a three-year period. The first four non-permanent members were Belgiu, Brazil,
Greece and Spain. The United States was meant to be the fifth permanent member, but
the United States Senate was dominated by the Republican Party after the 1918
election and voted on March 19, 1920 against the ratification of the Treaty of
Versailles, thus preventing American participation in the League. The rejection of the
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treaty was part of a shift in policy away from engagement toward a return to the
policies of isolationism that had characterized the pre-war period.

The initial composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of

times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on September
22, 1922, and then to nine on September 8, 1926. Germany also joined the League and
became a fifth permanent member of the Council on the latter date, taking the Council
to a total of 15 members. When Germany and Japan later both left the League, the
number of non-permanent seats was eventually increased from nine to eleven. The
Council met on average five times a year, and in extraordinary sessions when required.
In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.

MEMBERS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATION

The League of Nations had 42 founding members excluding United States of

America, 16 of them left or withdrew from the international organization. The
Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the only (founding) member to leave the league and
return to it later and remained so a member until the end. In the founding year six other
states joined, only two of them would have a membership that lasted until the end. In
later years 15 more countries joined, three memberships would not last until the end.
Egypt was the last state to join in 1937. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was
expelled from the league on December 14, 1939 five years after it joined on September
18, 1934. Iraq was the only member of the league that at one time was a League of
Nations Mandate. Iraq became a member in 1932.

ACHIEVMENT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATION

The League is generally considered to have failed in its mission to achieve

disarmament, prevent war, settle disputes through diplomacy, and improve global
welfare. However, it achieved significant successes in a number of areas.
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Åland Islands

Åland is a collection of around 6,500 islands mid-way between Sweden and

Finland. The islands are exclusively Swedish-speaking, but Finland had sovereignty in
the early 1900s. During the period from 1917 onwards, most residents wished the
islands to become part of Sweden; Finland, however, did not wish to cede the islands.
The Swedish government raised the issue with the League in 1921. After close
consideration, the League determined that the islands should remain a part of Finland,
but be governed autonomously, averting a potential war between the two countries.

Albania

The border between Albania and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia remained in

dispute after the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and Yugoslavian forces occupied
some Albanian territory. After clashes with Albanian tribesmen, the Yugoslav forces
invaded farther. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers
to the region. The commission found in favor of Albania, and the Yugoslav forces
withdrew in 1921, albeit under protest. War was again prevented.

Austria and Hungary

Following the First World War , Austria and Hungary were facing bankruptcy due to
high war reparation payments. The League arranged loans for the two nations and sent
commissioners to oversee the spending of this money. These actions started Austria
and Hungary on the road to economic recovery.

Greece and Bulgaria

After an incident between sentries on the border between Greece and Bulgaria in
1925, Greek troops invaded their neighbor. Bulgaria ordered its troops to provide only
token resistance, trusting the League to settle the dispute. The League did indeed
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condemn the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation
to Bulgaria. Greece complied, but complained about the disparity between their
treatment and that of Italy (see Corfu, below).

Saar

Saar was a province formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate that
was established and placed under League control after the Treaty of Versailles. A
plebiscite was to be held after 15 years of League rule, to determine whether the region
should belong to Germany or France. 90.3 percent of votes cast were in favor of
becoming part of Germany in that 1935 referendum and it became part of Germany
again.

Mosul

The League resolved a dispute between Iraq and Turkey over the control of the
former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the UK, which was awarded
a League of Nations A-mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its
foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic
claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A three person League of Nations
committee was sent to the region in 1924 to study the case and in 1925 recommended
the region to be connected to Iraq, under the condition that the UK would hold the
mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to assure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish
population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and it decided on 16
December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted the League of
Nations arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, it rejected the League's decision.
Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey made a treaty on June 25, 1926, that largely
mirrored the decision of the League Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq.

Liberia
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Following rumors of forced labor in the independent African country of Liberia ,

the League launched an investigation into the matter, particularly the alleged use of
forced labor on the massive Firestone rubber plantation in that country. In 1930, a
report by the League implicated many government officials in the selling of contract
labor, leading to the resignation of President Charles D.B. King, his vice-president and
numerous other government officials. The League followed with a threat to establish a
trusteeship over Liberia unless reforms were carried out, which became the central
focus of President Edwin Barclay.

FAILURE OF THE LEAGUE OF NATION

The League did not succeed in the long term. The outbreak of World War II was
the immediate cause of the League's demise, but there outbreak of the war exposed a
variety of other, more fundamental, flaws.

The League, like the modern United Nations, lacked an armed force of its own
and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very
reluctant to do. Economic sanctions, which were the most severe measure the League
could implement short of military action, were difficult to enforce and had no great
impact on the target country, because they could simply trade with those outside the
League.

The League's two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant
to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the
League. So soon after World War I, the populations and governments of the two
countries were pacifist. The British Conservatives were especially tepid on the League
and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of the
organization. Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective
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security in favor of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under

Adolf Hitler.

Representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to

encompass all nations, many never joined, or their time as part of the League was
short. In January 1920 when the League began, Germany was not permitted to join,
due to its role in World War I. Soviet Russia was also banned from the League, as their
communist views were not welcomed by the Western powers after World War I. The
greatest weakness of the League, however, was that the United States never joined.
Their absence took away much of the League's potential power. Even though US
President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation,
the United States Senate voted on November 19, 1919 not to join the League.

The League also further weakened when some of the main powers left in the
1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1933 after
the League voiced opposition to its invasion of the Chinese territory of Manchuria.
Italy also began as a permanent member of the Council but withdrew in 1937. The
League did accepted Germany as a member in 1926, deeming it a "peace-loving
country," but Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out when he came to power in 1933.

Another major power, the Bolshevik Soviet Union , became a member only in
1934, when it joined to antagonize Nazi Germany (which had left the year before), but
left December 14, 1939, when it was expelled for aggression against Finland. In
expelling the Soviet Union, the League broke its own norms. Only 7 out of 15
members of the Council voted for the expelling (Great Britain, France, Belgium,
Bolivia, Egypt, South African Union and the Dominican Republic), which was not a
majority of votes as was required by the Charter. Three of these members were chosen
as members of the Council the day before the voting (South African Union, Bolivia
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and Egypt). The League of Nations practically ceased functioning after that and was
formally dismissed in 1946.

The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. The League

required a unanimous vote of its nine-(later 15-)member-Council to enact a resolution,
so conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in
coming to its decisions. Some decisions also required unanimous consent of the
Assembly; that is, agreement by every member of the League.

Another important weakness of the League was that while it sought to represent
all nations, most members protected their own national interests and were not
committed to the League or its goals. The reluctance of all League members to use the
option of military action showed this to the full. If the League had shown more resolve
initially, countries, governments and dictators may have been more wary of risking its
wrath in later years. These failings were, in part, among the reasons for the outbreak of
World War II.

Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain and France (and
other members) while at the same time advocating collective security meant that the
League was unwittingly depriving itself of the only forceful means by which its
authority would be upheld. This was because if the League was to force countries to
abide by international law it would primarily be the Royal Navy and the French Army
which would do the fighting. Furthermore, Britain and France were not powerful
enough to enforce international law across the globe, even if they wished to do so. For
its members, League obligations meant there was a danger that states would get drawn
into international disputes which did not directly affect their respective national
interests.
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On June 23, 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's
war of conquest against Abyssinia, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the
House of Commons that collective security "failed ultimately because of the reluctance
of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed to what I might call military sanctions….
The real reason, or the main reason, was that we discovered in the process of weeks
that there was no country except the aggressor country which was ready for war…. If
collective action is to be a reality and not merely a thing to be talked about, it means
not only that every country is to be ready for war; but must be ready to go to war at
once. That is a terrible thing, but it is an essential part of collective security." It was an
accurate assessment and a lesson which clearly was applied in the formation of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization , which stood as the League's successor insofar as
its role as guarantor of the security of Western Europe was concerned.

Specific Failures

The general weaknesses of the League are illustrated by its specific failures.

Cieszyn, 1919

Cieszyn (German Teschen, Czech Těšín) is a region between Poland and today's
Czech Republic , important for its coal mines. Czechoslovakian troops moved to
Cieszyn in 1919 to take over control of the region while Poland was defending itself
from invasion of Bolshevik Russia. The League intervened, deciding that Poland
should take control of most of the town, but that Czechoslovakia should take one of the
town's suburbs, which contained the most valuable coal mines and the only railroad
connecting Czech lands and Slovakia. The city was divided into Polish Cieszyn and
Czech Český Těšín. Poland refused to accept this decision; although there was no
further violence, the diplomatic dispute continued for another 20 years.

Vilna, 1920
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After World War I, Poland and Lithuania both regained the independence that
they had lost during the partitions of Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth in 1795.
Though both countries shared centuries of common history in the Polish-Lithuanian
Union and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, rising Lithuanian nationalism prevented
the recreation of the former federated state. The city of Vilna (Lithuanian Vilnius,
Polish Wilno ) was made the capital of Lithuania. Although Vilnius had been the
cultural and political center of Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1323, it happened so
that the majority of the population in twentieth century was Polish.

Invasion of the Ruhr Valley, 1923

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay war reparations. They could
pay in money or in goods at a set value; however, in 1922 Germany was not able to
make its payment. The next year, France and Belgium chose to take action, invading
the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr, despite the fact that action was a direct
violation of the League's rules. Since France was a major League member, and Britain
was hesitant to oppose its close ally, no sanctions were forthcoming. This set a
significant precedent–the League rarely acted against major powers, and occasionally
broke its own rules.

Corfu, 1923

One major boundary settlement that remained to be made after World War I was
that between Greece and Albania. The Conference of Ambassadors, a de facto body of
the League, was asked to settle the issue. The Council appointed Italian general Enrico
Tellini to oversee this. On August 27, 1923, while examining the Greek side of the
border, Tellini and his staff were murdered. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was
incensed, and demanded the Greeks pay reparations and execute the murderers. The
Greeks, however, did not actually know who the murderers were.
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On August 31, Italian forces occupied the island of Corfu, part of Greece, and 15
people were killed. Initially, the League condemned Mussolini's invasion, but also
recommended Greece pay compensation, to be held by the League until Tellini's killers
were found. Mussolini, though he initially agreed to the League's terms, set about
trying to change them. By working with the Council of Ambassadors, he managed to
make the League change its decision. Greece was forced to apologize and
compensation was to be paid directly and immediately. Mussolini was able to leave
Corfu in triumph. By bowing to the pressure of a large country, the League again set a
dangerous and damaging example. This was one of the League's major failures.

Italian invasion of Abyssinia, 1935–1936

Perhaps most famously, in October 1935, Benito Mussolini sent General Pietro
Badoglio and 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). The modern Italian Army
easily defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians, and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936,
forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee. The Italians used chemical weapons (mustard
gas) and flame throwers against the Abyssinians.

The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic

sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective. As Stanley
Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one
had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack. On October 9, 1935, the
United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a non-League member)
refused to cooperate with any League action. It had embargoed exports of arms and
war material to either combatant (in accordance with its new Neutrality Act) on
October 5 and later (February 29, 1936) endeavored (with uncertain success) to limit
exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels. The League sanctions
were lifted on July 4, 1936, but by that point they were a dead letter in any event.
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In December 1935, the Hoare-Laval Pact was an attempt by the British Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs Hoare and the French Prime Minister Laval to end the
conflict in Abyssinia by drawing up a plan to partition Abyssinia into two parts–an
Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the Pact
however news of the Pact was leaked and both the British and French public
venomously protested against the Pact describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare
and Laval were forced to resign their positions and both the British and French
government disassociated with them respectively.

Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

On July 17, 1936, armed conflict broke out between Spanish Republicans (the
left-wing government of Spain) and Nationalists (the right-wing rebels, including most
officers of the Spanish Army). Alvarez del Vayo, the Spanish minister of foreign
affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend its territorial
integrity and political independence. However, the League could not itself intervene in
the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Hitler and
Mussolini continued to aid General Franco ’s Nationalist insurrectionists, and the
Soviet Union aided the Spanish loyalists. The League did attempt to ban the
intervention of foreign national volunteers.

UNITED NATION (UN)

The Structure of the UN to speak simply of the UN can be misleading, because

the term can refer to a number of different things. It can refer to a set of countries, to a
specific set of institutional structures located in New York City, or to the entire set of
institutional structures that come under the administrative purview of the UN
headquarters. More broadly, it can refer to what is known as the “UN system,” which
encompasses a large group of IOs, many of which are not in any way within the
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administrative hierarchy of the UN headquarters. A good place to start any discussion

of the UN, therefore, is with an explanation of how the various institutions that are a
part of the UN system relate to one another. At its most basic, the UN refers to a set of
member countries (currently 191), a constitutional document (the Charter of the UN),
and six basic organs: the General Assembly (GA), the Security Council, the
Secretariat, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), and the Trusteeship Council. These organs are directly mandated by the
Charter. Many of the organs have in turn created subsidiary agencies (see the
organizational chart of the UN, fig. 5.1). There are a number of autonomous agencies
that are part of the UN system but these are not administratively subsidiary to the
central organs of the UN.

The General Assembly

Thus, the UN as a system has a significant amount of power, but a passive sort
of power, a power without agency. To find agency in the UN, one must look at its
specific institutions. The remainder of this chapter examines the central organs of the
UN both as institutions and as regimes. This discussion will illustrate some of the
theoretical debates discussed in earlier chapters and provide some background to the
examination of the role of IOs in particular issue-areas to be undertaken in later
chapters. The first of these organs is the GA, which is, in a way, the core organ of the
UN in that it is the only organ in which all member countries are represented all of the
time. Its primary activities are to pass resolutions and to create subsidiary agencies to
deal with particular issues.

The resolutions are not binding; they are indicative of the majority opinion of
the community of nations, but they are not considered to be international law, nor are
they enforceable. The GA works on a one-country one vote basis. Resolutions on most
issues can be passed by majority vote, although “important questions,” including,
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among other things, those relating to membership in the UN and to budgetary issues,
require a two-thirds majority. The GA includes both the plenary body (the GA proper)
and several permanent committees, each of which, like the plenary GA, includes all
countries that are members of the UN. It is in these committees that much of the actual
negotiating and crafting of resolutions is done. The GA elects a new president and
seventeen vice presidents each year from among the members of the national
delegations. It thus has no senior bureaucrats of its own; its senior management is
drawn from within the ranks of the national delegations.

The GA is therefore best seen as a forum, as a regime, rather than as an

institutional actor. It is a place for the community of states to discuss issues of common
concern, and is a creature of those states rather than an independent actor on the
international stage. It does not have an executive function, although many of its
subsidiary organizations do. It does, however, have significant budgetary powers
(although in practice, it is the staff of the Secretariat that proposes budgets, subject to
the approval of the GA).

The structure of the GA, with its emphasis on equal representation and majority
voting, yields a voting majority for developing countries, particularly the Group of 77
(G-77), a caucus of third-world countries. This gives the G-77 effective control over
the distribution of much of the UN’s budget. This control, however, only matters
insofar as the countries with the biggest assessments of UN dues pay up. In practice,
the largest donor countries, particularly the United States, have been able to restrain the
growth of UN budgets, and force a decline in the size of the UN’s bureaucracy, by
threatening to (and, for much of the 1990s, actually proceeding to) withhold the
payment of assessed dues. The GA, therefore, is in practice more democratic as a
forum than as manager of the UN’s budget.

The Security Council

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The UN Security Council is both more specialized in its focus and more unusual
in its design than the GA. The Security Council is designed to focus specifically on
issues of international security, and is the body charged by the UN charter to authorize
the use of force to maintain collective security. The question of collective security as
such is discussed in the next chapter, but the design of the Security Council as an
institution is discussed here. The design of the Security Council is, at its core, a
response to the failures of the collective security mechanisms of the League of Nations.
From a regime perspective, the League’s inefficiency at promoting transparency made
it ineffective at contributing to collective security.

The Security Council was designed specifically both to decrease the transaction
costs inherent in the League model and to specify property rights much more clearly to
promote more efficient cooperation.9 The League failed, among other reasons, because
its rules and decision-making procedures neither allowed for fast and detailed
responses to threats to international security, nor clearly identified those responsible
for enforcing the responses that had been agreed upon. The Security Council was
designed to overcome these shortcomings through the mechanisms of a limited
membership and a clear connection between those states that made decisions about
collective security and those charged with enforcing them. Membership in the Council
is restricted to fifteen states. The Council is permanently in session (unlike the GA),
and the size of each national delegation is strictly limited. The effect of these
organizational features is to limit transaction costs—the Council can debate an issue on
very short notice, and the debate can proceed relatively efficiently because of the small
number of states and people participating. The Security Council then has clear
authority both to decide what issues constitute threats to international security and to
mandate action—diplomatic, economic, and military—to combat those threats.

The Secretariat
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The UN Secretariat, much more than any of the other five organs of the UN, can
reasonably be seen as an independent actor in international politics. The Secretariat is
the UN’s central bureaucracy, and as such deals with the everyday details of managing
a large organization. In this sense it provides the institutional support for the
transparency and legitimating functions of the other UN organs. But it is also the only
one of the organs that can speak with a strong and (somewhat) independent voice about
international politics. It can do so largely through the office of the Secretary-General.
The Secretary-General is charged in the UN Charter to “be the chief administrative
officer of the Organization,”14 but is not empowered to play an active role in
international politics beyond bringing “to the attention of the Security Council any
matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and
security.”15 The Secretary-General is also instructed by the Charter to remain
politically neutral, to maintain an “international character.”16 Over the years, this
combination of political neutrality and authority to raise issues on the international
stage has increasingly given Secretaries-General a significant independent voice in
international politics.

ECOSOC, the ICJ, and the Trusteeship Council

The other three organs of the UN are dealt with here only briefly. The ICJ is a
body designed to adjudicate disputes between countries and to interpret international
law. Although those who view IOs as instruments of globalization might see the ICJ as
such an instrument because its existence suggests an international law to which all
states are subject, an equally strong, or perhaps stronger, argument can be made that
the ICJ serves to reify the sovereign state and the international state system. This is the
case both because only states have standing before the ICJ, and because acceptance of
arbitration by the ICJ is voluntary. Only states have standing before the court because
in international law, only states have legal personality; people do not. In effect this
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means that the ICJ is reifying the idea that states are the core actors in international
relations. And states need only appear before the court when they agree to do so.

In other words, the ICJ does not even infringe on national sovereignty to the
point of requiring states to submit to international arbitration. Many state have
committed themselves in advance to appearing before the ICJ when called upon to do
so, a process called compulsory jurisdiction. But many of these commitments are
qualified: they do not apply in all circumstances, and states still retain the right to
rescind their commitments. Discussion of the role of the ICJ beyond this observation is
best done in a book on international law rather than a book on international institutions.

The Trusteeship Council was created to oversee “the administration of territories

whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government,” the actual
administration of which was to be undertaken by specific (usually colonial) states. The
last territory that fell within the Council’s mandate to become independent, Palau, did
so in 1994, at which point it voted to suspend its activities indefinitely. In other words,
even though the Trusteeship Council is officially still one of the UN’s six central
organs, it is for all practical purposes defunct. There has recently been discussion
within the UN of eliminating the Council altogether.

The final organ is the Economic and Social Council, commonly known as
ECOSOC. The responsibilities of this body include information gathering, the drafting
of treaties, and coordination of UN functions within economic and social issue-areas,
broadly defined. ECOSOC consists of fifty-four members, elected by the GA for three-
year terms. Despite this limited membership, it functions in many ways like a
committee of the GA. It is the focal point for liaison with a wide array of subsidiary
IOs and is the main point of contact and coordination with the affiliated specialized
agencies (see the UN organizational chart, fig. 5.1). It has also created a number of
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commissions, both functional and regional, designed both as coordinative and as

information-gathering bodies.

Many treaties and conventions, including those leading to the creation of new
IOs in economic and social issue-areas, are first discussed and drafted here. In terms
both of the forum/actor distinction and the regime/institution distinction, it is
reasonable to think of ECOSOC as a more constrained version of the GA. It has little
agency, and is better understood as a forum, yet the organizations and commissions
subsidiary to it often do have agency and are capable of putting issues on the
international agenda independently of the actions of states. Its power lies mainly in the
ability to set agendas and bestow legitimacy, a power both less broad and less deep
than that of the GA, but significant nonetheless.

From a rationalist regime perspective, it has some success in improving

information flows and decreasing transaction costs. From both a regime and an
institutional perspective, it is subject to the same criticisms as the GA. The
cumbersomeness of its procedures and the size and complexity of its organizational
structure limit the effectiveness with which it can increase the efficiency of
cooperation with respect to economic and social issues and legitimize new ways of
thinking about and dealing with them.

History of International Organizations since World War II

Economic and Trade: Post WWII, the US and its winning allies came to the conclusion
that a stable liberal international economic order is the necessary basis of lasting peace,
apart from stable international political order. The ITO (International Trade
Organizations) came to an end due to political disagreements. In 1947, GATT (General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) was formed as a free standing trade agreement,
which was less formal in nature. The GATT agreements were formalized as the WTO.
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The 1970s saw a substantial reduction in tariffs on many goods. During the 1980s and
1990s, the GATT member countries took the initiatives to make the agreement more
formal.

Financial: World Bank made a lot of amendments in its loan practices by implementing
recommendations of the French government and the Marshall Plan. The bank started
shifting its focus towards non-European nations. During 1968-1980, it worked towards
poverty alleviation by that ensuring people in developing nations get their basic needs.
From 1989 till late 2000s, the focus has been shifted to going green. After WWII, the
IMF also focused on offering monetary help to non-European countries.

THE LIST OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The following is an alphabetical listing of the international organizations of which the

United States is a member and which have been designated by Executive Order
pursuant to various treaties or under the International Organizations Immunities Act of
December 29, 1945.which are:

African Development Bank

African Development Fund

Asian Development Bank

Border Environmental Cooperation Commission

Caribbean Organization

Commission for Environmental Cooperation

Commission for Labor Cooperation

Commission for the Study of Alternatives to the Panama Canal

Customs Cooperation Council

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European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

European Space Agency

Food and Agriculture Organization

Great Lak Commission

Inter-American Development Bank

International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) (Limited Privileges)

International Development Association

International Development Law Institute

International Labor Organization

International Maritime Organization

International Monetary Fund

International Organization for Migration

International Telecommunication Union

Multinational Force and Observers

North American Development Bank

Organization for African Unity (OAU)

Organization for American States (including Pan American Union)

Organization for Eastern Caribbean States

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical WeaponsWeapons

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United Nations

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

United Nations Industrial Development Organization

World Health Organization

World Intellectual Property Organization

World Tourism Organization

World Trade Organization etc.

IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The main objective of all the international organizations has been welfare
improvement of member countries. The importance of international organizations lies
in the following:

i. International organizations, such as International Trade Centre (ITC) and World

Trade Organization (WTO), assist member countries in promoting fair trade with
each other.
ii. The aim of the international organizations, such as Natural Capitalism and
International Development Research Centre (NCIDRC), is to enhance
sustainable economic development in the world.
iii. The World Bank and Institute of International Finance are international
organizations that provide monetary help to member countries.
iv. The purpose of the incorporation of international organizations, such as Food
and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme, is to provide
food security to member nations.
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v. The endeavor of international organizations, such as Global Environment

Facility and United Nations Environment Programme, is to ensure
environmental protection.
vi. The protection of human rights is ensured by international organizations, such as
the International Court of Justice and Amnesty International.
vii. Emergency/disaster relief is taken care of by several international organizations,
such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Relief.
viii. The World Health Organization helps member countries promote health care and
facilities.

Current Challenges Confronting International Organizations

The following are the challenges facing international organizations:

i. One of the major challenges being faced by international organizations is

integrating developing countries on various measures. These are also facing
health related challenges, such as infant mortality in developing countries. Some
other challenges that international organizations are facing are in the field of
intellectual property rights, trade in services and investment measures in relation
to trade.
ii. Member countries fear that international organizations might dictate their terms.
So, they implement protectionism in regulatory practices at the domestic level,
which poses new strains.
iii. Multilateral liberalization might face difficulties due to growing regionalism.
iv. International organizations are likely to face the challenge of enhance
international reforms in the world trade.
v. Many organizations are struggling to justify investments in an enterprise social
network (ESN), to identify where to start and determine which business lines are
concerned. In the same time, the trend shows that ESN are becoming crucial in
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supporting and strengthening the business in companies. Enterprise has to

prevent the rejection of them, because they could be considered as a temporal
fashion or a threat to overall productivity. Demand from employees is increasing
and organizations must develop a strategy for ESN, with a realistic
understanding of the challenges, risks and benefits to exploit at best this growing
interest.

To answer to this challenge, there are four major challenges that organizations will
have to face:

1. Finding business value: Many organizations are willing to use ESN in their
businesses, but are confused by the hype surrounding collaboration/social.
However, all organizations should at least learn about social software, even if it
leads to a « small steps strategy ». This small steps strategy should not be a
strategy to « wait it out » and should include the monitoring of changes that will
trigger the next step to transform the organization on a collaborative one. Cause
conversation is not an end, just a mean to better reach business goals, so align
conversation on them. ESN and collaborative work should not be out of your
business process but merge with them and understand what business metrics you
want to impact.
2. Overcoming cultural barriers: Almost all organizations will face cultural
barriers regarding the use of ESN (with more challenges when it’s an
international corporate). They must motivate a large enough proportion of
community members to get involved more (means finding how to apply social
principles to the employee’s work). Companies must invest the time and
resources needed to understand, design, the development and implementation of
social software, rather than simply install a traditional software company, and
hope that communities will form by themselves and flourish. Now, most of the
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time enterprises are aware of the needed of change management, but they
underestimate the investment and resources needed. In this specific case, the
middle management is a corner stone of your challenge
3. Legal constrain: Data security, privacy policies and working time are topics
many companies have often considered that this was a problem in using ESN.
What’s happened if my employees are connected during the Week End, what
about the data of an employee when he/she leaves the firm… A lot of question
without a real jurisprudence so without real answer for the moment. But those
questions aren’t new and are /were the same for email or intranet. You won’t cut
the email inside your enterprise or switch off your intranet. So don’t use this
plea not to deploy an ESN
4. Managing behavior: Ways of working are changing very rapidly. Many
organizations are not yet really prepared to use a digital working environment
and practices associated with it, but instead focus on the management of
productivity, but in a work environment less structured. Organizations must
constantly challenge the way they evaluate employee productivity and take into
consideration the time/way of work, especially because of the penetration of
increasingly strong social software in the enterprise. Infrastructure and market
access is now being commoditized through new business models and social
software. Explicit structured tasks are increasingly being done by machines. We
now need people to use what is unique to humans, creativity.
5. The speed of technological change poses a severe challenge for organizations
whose procedures and processes are built upon the slow accumulation of
historical experience. One can see technological change in a long-term or a
short-term perspective. In the long term, we see that the gap between radical
technological changes that produce fundamental transformations of human
societies is narrowing. It took humanity five million years to progress from the
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point where it began walking on two feet, thus freeing its hands for purposes
other than locomotion, to the development of the first stone tools, then 1.8
million years to the mastery of fire, 700,000 years to the agrarian revolution,
only 12,000 years to the industrial revolution and a mere 140 years to the
information revolution.
6. In either the long-term or the short-term perspective, we can observe that history
is accelerating. In contrast, universal multilateral processes are inherently slow.
They require lengthy process in order to enable all nations, with varying degrees
of development and major information and knowledge asymmetries, to be
comfortable with the perception and analysis of problems and the democratic
development of responses. The contrast between the speed of technological
change and the consequent social transformations, on the one hand, and the pace
of multilateral responses is stark. It constitutes a major incentive for those States
that are “ready” to tackle a perceived problem to proceed to do so without
waiting for the multilateral ritual to unfold.
7. Geopolitical change, and the speed with which it is occurring, presents a
challenge of adaptation for the international organizations. There is a growing
disjunction between economic reality and political architecture. The political
architecture of the multilateral system, whether in terms of the institutionalized
distribution of power, definitions of political groupings, or location on the scale
of development, is based on the economic reality of the world at the end of
Second World War and the decades that followed it until the 1990s. Change is
working its way through the system, but it has not yet found its full institutional
expression. A lack of correspondence between economic reality and political
architecture is a fertile breeding ground for lack of trust, that fragile commodity
upon which the possibility of a shared view of a problem and its solution and,
thus, agreement rests.
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8. A final factor that may be mentioned is the new digital environment. This
environment has a multiplicity of implications and consequences for
international organizations.

AFRICAN UNION (AU)

As the successor to the Organization of African Unity (OUA), which was

created in 1963 to eliminate the last vestiges of colonialism in Africa, the African
Union (AU) came into existence in July 2002 at the Durban heads of state summit with
the more focused goal of propelling African states towards peace and prosperity as the
basis for achieving the ultimate goal of political and economic integration of its
member states. The AU was modelled on the European Union with structures that
included an Assembly of heads of state/government, an Executive in which countries
were represented by their foreign ministers and the AU Commission which is the
administrative branch made up of 10 commissioners and headed by a President. The
transition from OAU to AU was clearly intended to transform the institutional
framework for realizing the pan-African vision and mission from what some critics
regarded as a mere ‘talking shop’ to an action-oriented forum. It is therefore useful to
take stock of the achievements of the AU in its first decade and, this can best be done
from two broad perspectives which represent the main goals of the AU mentioned
above - peace and prosperity.

The AU has clearly had reasonable successes through its direct contribution and
collaboration with the international community to settling and minimizing conflicts in
some of the region’s hotbeds, such as trouble spots in the Sudan, resolving post-
election violent conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya, and forcing military coup-makers
to hand back power to civilian regimes. Unlike the OUA which followed a doctrine of
‘non-interference’ in the internal affairs of member states, the AU has the authority
through decisions of its Peace and Security Council to interfere in member states to
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promote peace and protect democracy, including deploying military force in situations
in which genocide and crimes against humanity are being committed. The AU’s unique
voluntary ‘Peer Review Mechanism’ by which individual member states agree to be
assessed by a team of experts drawn from other states is designed to encourage
democracy and good governance.

AU observer missions are now sent as a matter of routine to cover elections in

all member states, in accordance with the African Charter on Democracy, Elections
and Governance (2007). There have also been some hiccups or setbacks, such as the
decision by the AU to move its July 2012 bi-annual summit from Lilongwe, Malawi, to
Addis Ababa in response to Malawi’s refusal to invite the Sudan’s head of state, Omar
al-Bashir, from participating on the ground that he is charged and under a warrant of
arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes: this, in a way, reflects
a potential conflict between African regionalism and international mechanisms to
promote and protect the rule of law, justice and respect for human rights. Judging from
the drastic fall in conflicts and coups, and the increasing number of successful
elections in the region in the past decade, it can be inferred that on balance actions by
the AU has added value to Africa’s ‘political performance’ .

In pursuit of prosperity in the region, the AU has in place declarations and

institutions to promote and support economic integration among its 54 member states
as the pathway to sustainable development. Progress has been made by the AU
commission, in collaboration with international partners and the UN, towards better
coordinating and harmonizing development policies and programmes with the 5
Regional Economic Communities (RECs) representing the various geographical
regions of the continent. Some of these RECs, such as the Economic Community of
West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC) and the
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), have been quite active in
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exploring possibilities to harmonize budgetary and fiscal policies and for a monetary
union on the basis of a common currency.

Proposals for an African central bank and an African monetary union at the
continental level are still on the drawing board, as vested interest and concerns about
sovereignty hold back the necessary political will to drive the process. The present
experience of monetary union within the EU could also be a source of disincentive.
Despite numerous protocols and signing of technical consensus documents to facilitate
the free movement of goods and people across borders, the AU’s record in stimulating
the removal of trade barriers between countries in the union is less than impressive and
the value of intra-African trade is still abysmally low as a percentage of total trade.

A myriad of non-tariff barriers to cross-border trade, characterized chiefly by

long delays at border crossings and legal and illegal payments which increase
transaction costs, is a major obstacle to expansion of intra-African trade. The last AU
summit failed to agree on the adoption of a continent-wide trade proposal, but
awareness of the importance of trade barriers for economic growth is not lost as a
development priority – seeing that theme of the 19 summit, 9-16 July 2012, is
“Boosting intra-Africa trade”.

CHALLENGES OF AFRICAN UNION (AU)

A major challenge confronting the AU and its leaders is how to respond to the
job and livelihood aspirations of Africa’s youth who account for as much as three-
quarters of the labour force in most countries; many have gone to school and attended
universities to become productive members of society, but end up being jobless. High
and still rising levels of unemployment among young people in Africa prompted heads
of state at the AU summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last June to adopt a
‘Declaration on Creating Employment for Accelerating Youth Development and
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Empowerment’. The AU rightly recognizes the demographic dividend to be reaped

from the region’s youthful population structure, as numerous countries in Asia have
benefited from over the past two decades, and, hence, member states are encouraged to
link their growth performance and development pattern to the creation of employment
and socio-economic opportunities especially for young people.

The AU now pays more attention to international development cooperation and

relationship with international partners than has hitherto been the case. This is most
obvious in the case of China’s ever growing presence in Africa, which the AU appears
to regard as a positive factor. The headquarters of the AU is now housed in a
magnificent multi-million dollar complex in Addis Ababa that has been provided by
the China as a “gift to Africa”. Africa’s traditional partners in the West tend to view its
relationship with China with some concern and skepticism regarding motive and
outcome. Citizens of some AU member states are apprehensive about the
consequences on their personal well- being and livelihoods of growing Chinese
presence in their national economies.

The AU would have to adopt an appropriate strategy to manage international

cooperation in an era of globalization and in a changing world order; it would need to
come up with a relevant and practical conceptualization of ‘innovative and
transformative partnership’ which its member states would certainly need to
complement national development efforts.

ECONOMY COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATE (ECOWAS)

Challenges The above achievements notwithstanding, there are some challenges

that need to be highlighted. For example, the transition from ECOWAS of States to
ECOWAS of people has not taken full effect. Much of the achievements of ECOWAS
are not yet known to the majority of citizens of the Community and to a greater extent,
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to the operational security and law enforcement agencies of the member states. These
challenges often translate into intimidation and exploitation of the very Community
citizens by the officials who are supposed to use these tools to serve them. In other
words, there are gaps between what gets adopted by the Heads of State and
Governments and what is implemented. Places or occasions where one finds such
distorted experiences are at the ports of entry and also, border-crossing points.

Secondly, the application of the tools guiding free movement can sometimes be
counterproductive. For example, a country like Niger is located on the pre-colonial
caravan route which is now used as illegal migration channels from the sub-region into
Europe. People arrive from all over West Africa into Niamey on the back of the free
movement protocols. Sometimes they stay on and work in order to mobilize resources
for their onward journeys. Some of these migrants also carry prohibited drugs and are
human peddlers of narcotics.