United Nations & Its Agencies

History Project ICSE 2020-2021

Vidhan Sharma

Class 10 D Roll No. 37

 INDEX

SL CONTENTS PG
NO. NO.

1 INTRODUCTION 2-5

2 CASE STUDY 6-11

3 CONSCLUSION 12

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 13

WEBLOGRAPHY/BIBLIOGRAPHY 14
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 INTRODUCTION
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to
maintain international peace and security develop friendly relations among
nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the
actions of nations. It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally
represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the
world. The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City,
with its other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.

The Flag of United Nations

The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future
wars, succeeding the ineffective League of Nations.
On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and
started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 and took
effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. Pursuant to the
Charter, the organization's objectives include maintaining international peace
and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid,
promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.[5] At its

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founding, the UN had 51 member states; with the addition of South Sudan in
2011, membership is now 193, representing almost all of the world's sovereign
states.[6]
The organization's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early
decades by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their
respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military
observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and
confidence-building roles.[7] UN membership grew significantly following
widespread decolonization beginning in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former
colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been
monitored by the Trusteeship Council.[8] By the 1970s, the UN's budget for
economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending
on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded
its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.[9]

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Organs OF The United Nations
The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security Council;
the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship Council;
the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. The UN
System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, such as the World Bank
Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO,
and UNICEF. Additionally, non-governmental organizations may be granted
consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN's
work.

The UN's chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General, currently

Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres, who began his five year-

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term on 1 January 2017. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary
contributions from its member states.
The UN, its officers, and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes,
though other evaluations of its effectiveness have been mixed. Some
commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and
human development, while others have called it ineffective, biased, or corrupt.
In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international treaty
organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross were
formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and
strife.[10] In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events
that led to the outbreak of World War I. As more and more young men were
sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain
began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to
maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a
vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918 he included a sketch of the
international body in his 14-point proposal to end the war. In November 1918,
the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I.
Two months later, the Allies met with Germany and Austria-Hungary at
Versailles to hammer out formal peace terms. President Wilson wanted peace,
but the United Kingdom and France disagreed, forcing harsh war reparations on
their former enemies. The League of Nations was approved, and in the summer
of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the
League of Nations to the US Senate for ratification. On 10 January 1920,
the League of Nations formally came into being when the Covenant of the
League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect.[11] However, at
some point the League became ineffective when it failed to act against
the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as in February 1933, 40 nations voted for
Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of
the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria.[12] It also failed against
the Second Italo-Ethiopian War despite trying to talk to Benito Mussolini as he
used the time to send an army to Africa, so the League had a plan for Mussolini
to just take a part of Ethiopia, but he ignored the League and invaded Ethiopia,
the League tried putting sanctions on Italy, but Italy had already conquered
Ethiopia and the League had failed.[13] After Italy conquered Ethiopia, Italy and
other nations left the league. But all of them realized that it had failed and they
began to re-arm as fast as possible. During 1938, Britain and France tried
negotiating directly with Hitler but this failed in 1939 when Hitler invaded
Czechoslovakia. When war broke out in 1939, the League closed down and its
headquarters in Geneva remained empty throughout the war.[14] Although the
United States never joined the League, the country did support its economic and
social missions through the work of private philanthropies and by sending
representatives to committees.

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 CASE STUDY

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization (UNESCO)
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1946 with its
headquarters in Paris, France. Its stated purpose is to contribute to peace and
security by promoting international collaboration through education, science,
and culture in order to propagate further universal respect for justice, the rule
of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN
Charter.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations'

International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.[8] Its constitution
establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating
framework.[9] UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the Second
World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by
facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations.[9] It pursues this
objective through five major program areas: education, natural sciences,

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social/human sciences, culture and communication/information. UNESCO
sponsors projects that improve literacy, provide technical training and
education, advance science, protect independent media and press freedom,
preserve regional and cultural history, and promote cultural diversity.

UNESCO LOGO
As a focal point for world culture and science, UNESCO's activities have
broadened over the years to include assisting in the translating and
disseminating of world literature, establishing international cooperation
agreements to secure World Heritage Sites of cultural and natural importance,
defending human rights, bridging the worldwide digital divide, and creating
inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.[10]
UNESCO has launched several initiatives and global movements, such as
Education For All, to further advance its core objectives.

UNESCO is governed by the General Conference, composed of member states

and associate members, which meets biannually to set the agency's
programmes and the budget. It also elects members of the Executive Board,
which manages UNESCO's work, and appoints every four years the Director-
General, who serves as UNESCO's chief administrator. UNESCO is a member of
the United Nations Development Group,[11] a coalition of UN agencies and
organisations aimed at fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goal.

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 Abbreviation UNESCO

Formation 4 November 1945; 74 years ago

Type United Nations specialised agency

Legal status Active

Headquarters Paris, France

Head Director-General

Audrey Azoulay

Parent organization United Nations Economic and Social

Council

Website www.unesco.org

Activities

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 UNESCO offices in Brasília
UNESCO implements its activities through the five program areas: education,
natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and
information.
• Education: UNESCO supports research in comparative education; and
provide expertise and fosters partnerships to strengthen national
educational leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality
education for all. This includes the

o UNESCO Chairs, an international network of 644 UNESCO Chairs,

involving over 770 institutions in 126 countries

o Environmental Conservation Organisation

o Convention against Discrimination in Education adopted in 1960

o Organization of the International Conference on Adult Education

(CONFINTEA) in an interval of 12 years

o Publication of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

o Publication of the Four Pillars of Learning seminal document

o UNESCO ASPNet, an international network of 8,000 schools in 170

countries

UNESCO does not accredit institutions of higher learning.[62]

• UNESCO also issues public statements to educate the public:

o Seville Statement on Violence: A statement adopted by UNESCO in

1989 to refute the notion that humans are biologically predisposed
to organised violence.

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• Designating projects and places of cultural and scientific significance,
such as:

o Global Geoparks Network

o Biosphere reserves, through the Programme on Man and the

Biosphere (MAB), since 1971

o City of Literature; in 2007, the first city to be given this title

was Edinburgh, the site of Scotland's first circulating library.[63] In
2008, Iowa City, Iowa became the City of Literature.

o Endangered languages and linguistic diversity projects

o Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity

o Memory of the World International Register, since 1997

o Water resources management, through the International

Hydrological Programme (IHP), since 1965

o World Heritage Sites

o World Digital Library

• Encouraging the "free flow of ideas by images and words" by:

o Promoting freedom of expression, including freedom of the

press and freedom of information legislation, through the Division
of Freedom of Expression and Media Development,[64] including
the International Programme for the Development of
Communication[65]

o Promoting the safety of journalists and combatting impunity for

those who attack them,[66] through coordination of the UN Plan of
Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity[67]

o Promoting universal access to and preservation of information and

open solutions for sustainable development through the
Knowledge Societies Division,[68] including the Memory of the
World Programme[69] and Information for All Programme[70]

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o Promoting pluralism, gender equality and cultural diversity in the
media

o Promoting Internet Universality and its principles, that the Internet

should be (I) human Rights-based, (ii) Open, (iii) Accessible to all,
and (iv) nurtured by Multi-stakeholder participation (summarized
as the acronym R.O.A.M.)[71]

o Generating knowledge through publications such as World Trends

in Freedom of Expression and Media Development,[72] the UNESCO
Series on Internet Freedom,[73] and the Media Development
Indicators,[74] as well as other indicator-based studies.

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 CONCLUSION
The UN is the most prestigious international organization. Its work for keeping
Peace all over the world is going very well. The present report provides a
snapshot of the work of the Organization in a world steeped in contradictory
and complex challenges. Millions have been lifted out of poverty yet millions of
others face the threat of famine.

Globalization has brought prosperity to many yet others have been cruelly left
behind, excluded and caught in a system of inequality and rising xenophobia.
The world has witnessed the massive migration of people fleeing violent
conflict on a scale not seen since the Second World War and the undeniable
megatrend of climate change and its multiplier effects demand global action,
yet multilateralism is being questioned at a time when we most need coherent
global responses to these interconnected events. No nation acting alone can
resolve these crises. The United Nations is the gravitational centre for dialogue
and cooperation to find common solutions, and with its concentrated support
Member States have reached two landmark agreements: the 2030 Agenda and
the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Taken together, they
demonstrate that nations have the will to work multilaterally when they see a
driving need. They represent a clear road map to a mutual destination: taking
care of our shared global home.
The United Nations must be up to the challenge. I have laid out a number of
reform proposals to make the Organization more effective, flexible and nimble,
with a renewed culture of prevention permeating all our work. Ultimately,
future generations will judge the United Nations by our ability to make our
norms and aspirations a reality, particularly.

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 Acknowledgement
From the start, Mrs. Ishita has been a constant support. Whether it be teaching
us with such ease or giving us such informative and educative projects. A very
big thank you to you ma’am for making sure that each and every query of ours,
whether related to studies or this project in particular, gets solved.

This, rather than being a “School” project was more of an Illuminating one.

Thank You Ma’am!

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WEBLOGRAPHY/BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) History Text Book ICSE 2020-2021

2) Wikipedia.com
3) Sparknotes.com

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