UNIT 3: THE UNITED NATIONS

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The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces 1

The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces are employed by the World
Organization to maintain or re-establish (thiết lập lại) peace in an area of armed
conflict. The UN may engage in conflicts between states as well as in struggles within
states. The UN acts as an impartial third party in order to prepare the ground for a
settlement of the issues that have provoked armed conflict. If it proves impossible to
achieve a peaceful settlement, the presence of UN forces may contribute to reducing
the level of conflict.
The UN Peacekeeping Forces may only be employed when both parties to a
conflict accept their presence. Accordingly, they may also be used by the warring
parties to avoid having a conflict escalate and, in the event, also to have a struggle
called off.
The Peacekeeping Forces are subordinate to the leadership of the United Nations.
They are normally deployed as a consequence of a Security Council decision.
However, on occasion, the initiative has been taken by the General Assembly.
Operational control belongs to the Secretary-General and his secretariat.
We distinguish between two kinds of peacekeeping operations - unarmed
observer groups and lightly-armed military forces. The latter are only allowed to
employ their weapons for self-defence. Altogether, 14 UN operations have been
carried out. They are evenly divided between observer groups and military forces. The
observer groups are concerned with gathering information for the UN about actual
conditions prevailing in an area, e.g., as to whether both parties adhere to an armistice
agreement. The military forces are entrusted with more extended tasks, such as
keeping the parties to a conflict apart and maintaining order in an area.

1
The arrticle was from Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1988, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation],
Stockholm, 1989
 UN interventions have been in particular demand in the Middle East, both as
regards observer groups and military forces. The UN first took on the task of sending
observers to monitor the armistice between Israel and the Arab states in 1948. Observer
group activity was resumed after the wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973. After the 1956 war,
the first armed UN force was established to create a buffer between Israeli and
Egyptian forces in the Sinai. Ten nations contributed soldiers. Another force was
established after the war between Egypt and Israel in 1967 to monitor the armistice
agreement between the parties. This took place during a period of extremely high
tension both locally and between the great powers. In 1974, a smaller UN force was set
up on the Golan Heights to maintain the boundary line between Syrian and Israeli
forces. The most extensive UN operation in the Middle East is represented by the
formation of UNIFIL, subsequent upon the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978. Its
tasks included watching over the Israeli withdrawal, maintaining conditions of peace
and security, and helping the Lebanese government re-establish its authority. Such
tasks have taxed the capabilities of UNIFIL to the utmost, but the UN forces have
made an important contribution by reducing the level of conflict in the area. However,
this achievement has not come without significant cost. UN casualities now amount to
more than 200.
The UN played an important role during the struggles that erupted when the
Belgian colony of the Congo achieved independence in 1960. As anarchy and chaos
reigned in the area, a UN force numbering almost 20,000 was set up to help the
Congolese government maintain peace and order. It ended up being, above all, engaged
in bringing a raging civil war to an end and preventing the province of Katanga from
seceding. It was while carrying out the UN mission in the Congo that Secretary-
General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in an air crash.
Among other important tasks may be mentioned monitoring the border between
India and Pakistan, and maintaining the peacekeeping force that was established on
Cyprus on account of the civil war that broke out between the Greek and Turkish
populations of the island. The UN force has succeeded in creating a buffer zone
between the two ethnic groups.
The UN has, in these and other areas, played a significant role in reducing the
level of conflict even though the fundamental causes of the struggles frequently
remain.

Guide to Study

A. Pre-reading exercises:
Work in groups and choose one of the following topics to discuss:
1. Main organs of the UN and their functions
2. Specialized agencies of the United Nations and their functions
3. The UN’s role in international system
B. Reading for the gist:
Read the article and then write down what it is about in one complete sentence. You do
not need to understand all the words to do this exercise.
C. True – False – No Information:
Read the passage and tick (ɤ) whether these sentences are true (T), false (F) or no
information (NI):
T F NI
1. The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces are employed by the UN   
2. If a conflict proves impossible to achieve a peaceful settlement, the   
UN will take actions as an impartial third party to reduce tensions.
3. The Peace Keeping Forces’ Actions would be taken by the General   
Assembly.
4. There are more than two main kinds of peacekeeping operations   
5. The UN PKO was first taken place in 1948   
6. The UN played an important role in the independence achievement of   
Congo.
7. The civil war in the Congo does not end.   
8. A Secretary-General of the UN was died while carrying out the   
mission in the Congo.
D. Words and expressions:
1. Vocabulary building with prefixes:
Try to guess the meaning of the following words and learn about their prefixes by
giving some other examples:
a. re-establish: …………………………………  re-:………………………………...
b. subordinate: ………………………………… sub-: ……………………………....
c. subsequent: …………………………………. sub-:……………………………….
d. self-defense: ………………………………..  self-:……………………………….
e. unarmed: ……………………………………  un-:………………………………..
f. entrust: ……………………………………… en-:…………………………………

2. Collocations (verb + noun):

a. to be in demand
b. to make an important contribution
c. to play an important role

E. Translation:
Part I: English to Vietnamese Translation
1. Analyzing sentence structures in the article
2. Translate the article into Vietnamese

Part II. Vietnamese to English Translation

Ngày 11/02/1945, tại hội nghị Yalta (Liên xô cũ) giữa các nhà lãnh đạo các nước
đồng minh, tổng thống Mỹ Franklin Roosevelt, thủ tướng Anh Winston Churchill và
nguyên soái Liên xô Stalin ra tuyên bố khẳng định quyết tâm thành lập “một tổ chức
quốc tế chung nhằm duy trì hòa bình và an ninh thế giới”. Ngày 25/04/1945, tại San
Fransisco, đại biểu của 50 nước đã tham dự cuộc họp quan trọng có tên là Hội nghị các
quốc gia liên hiệp về các tổ chức quốc tế. Các nước đã soạn thảo một văn bản Hiến
chương gồm 111 điều khoản và được ký ngày 26/6/1945. Hiến chương bắt đầu có hiệu
lực từ ngày 24/10/1945 và từ đó cả thế giới lấy ngày này kỷ niệm ngày thành lập Liên
hợp quốc.
 Liên hợp quốc được thành lập nhằm mục đích:
- Duy trì hòa bình và an ninh thế giới và để đạt được mục đích đó, thi hành các biện
pháp tập thể có hiệu quả để phòng ngừa và loại trừ mối đe dọa hòa bình, cấm mọi hành
vi xâm lược hoặc phá hoại hòa bình khác, điều chỉnh hoặc giải quyết bằng phương
pháp hòa bình các tranh chấp quốc tế theo đúng các nguyên tắc của công lý và pháp
luật quốc tế.
- Phát triển những quan hệ hữu nghị giữa các nước trên cơ sở tôn trọng nguyên tắc bình
đẳng, các dân tộc tự quyết và dùng tất cả những biện pháp thích hợp khác để củng cố
hòa bình thế giới.
- Thực hiện sự hợp tác quốc tế trong việc giải quyết các vấn đề quốc tế về kinh tế,
chính trị, xã hội, văn hóa và nhân đạo trong việc khuyến khích phát triển và sự tôn
trọng nhân quyền và những quyền tự do cơ bản cho tất cả mọi người, không phân biệt
chủng tộc, nam nữ, ngôn ngữ hoặc tôn giáo.
- Trở thành trung tâm phối hợp mọi hành động của các dân tộc nhằm đạt được những
mục đích nêu trên.

1. Analyzing the structures of all sentences in the article

2. Give a written translation of the piece of news.