UN Day and Problems with the UN.

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Translation of a Finnish blog post. Original one available here.



UN day was was observed on the 24th of October. Through out the day I saw multiple posts made on the topic which got me thinking about my own, somewhat contradictory views on the UN. 

The stated goal of the UN is to uphold international peace, security, justice and human rights. These are all goals that I fully support. We're talking about an ambitious project and all of us should be on board with it. That being said, has the UN actually delivered?

Let's answer the question with an example: my home country of Finland was recently elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council. In short, the Council's job is to promote human rights via, what's effectively a form of peer review, meaning countries monitor each other and give recommendations of how to improve their human rights situation. On its own a fantastic idea, until you remember that the council also includes China and Russia as members.

At this moment it's worth to remember that the Human Rights Council started operating in 2006, replacing the Human Rights Commission that preceded it. One major reason why the Commission was shut down was that countries with questionable human rights records were allowed as members. And now the body that was meant to fix this problems has China and Russia as members. 

While I support the UN and its goals on paper, I think we need to accept reality: the UN's methods to enforce it's rules are limited and even when those methods are available, they tend to fall flat due to disputes between different power blocks. Something clearly needs to change but I'm really not sure how to actually achieve that.

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