Giving peace a chance: recognizing the achievements.

• Position: 50th anniversary of the United Nations - Special 50th Anniversary Edition - Cover Story

Recognizing the Achievements

The United Nations was established during the fiery, final hours of the world's most devastating conflict to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war", and give peace a more solid foundation on which to flourish. Over the next five decades, the world Organization pursued its noble Charter goals in many areas - disarmament, decolonization, protection of human rights, respect for international law, and promotion of social progress and better standards of living for all the world's citizens.

KEEPING THE PEACE

Over the past 47 years, UN peace-keeping operations by their presence alone have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths and casualties. Normally, these operations - in the form of observer missions or peace-keeping forces - fulfil the role of an impartial, objective third party to help create and maintain a ceasefire and form a buffer zone between conflicting States. UN peace-keeping efforts have proven to be an important element in preventing local or regional conflicts from widening, and in providing a barrier to the introduction of outside forces. In recent years, UN peacekeeping forces have also been called on to fulfil a humanitarian role - ensuring the delivery of food and life-sustaining supplies to starving, suffering, often embattled citizens of strife-torn countries.

"An Agenda for Peace", the Secretary-General's groundbreaking report, called for at the historic 31 January 1992 Security Council Summit, sets out proposals dealing with the new role of UN peace-keeping in the post-cold-war era.

[] The first - and still-existing - UN peace-keeping operation is the observer mission headquartered in Jerusalem - the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), established in May 1948.

[] Since 1948, the United Nations has mounted nearly 40 peace-keeping operations on four continents. Among the larger efforts have been in the Congo (now Zaire), Cambodia, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. Currently, there are 16 operations at work involving nearly 70,000 personnel.

[] In the last decade, the UN has assisted some 45 countries - including Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador. Eritrea, Haiti, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa - in holding free and fair elections, through education campaigns, providing polling observers and verifying results. In helping nations to promote democratic foundations, the UN continues to be a major force for global stability.

DISARMAMENT

In signing the UN Charter, the 51 founding Members of the United Nations committed themselves to maintain international peace and security, and to promote that purpose "with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources". Specific responsibilities for disarmament rest primarily with the Security Council and the General Assembly.

The first resolution adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly - resolution I (I) of 24 January 1946 - dealt with disarmament. By it, the Assembly established a body to "deal with the problems raised by discovery of atomic energy and other related matters." The Atomic Energy Commission was joined by the Commission for Conventional Armaments in 1947 as the first UN bodies to deal solely with disarmament.

Closely linked to the work of the UN is the 40-member Conference on Disarmament - the world's only multilateral negotiating forum for arms control - and its predecessor bodies, which have negotiated controls on a wide spectrum of dangerous weaponry worldwide, including: the partial nuclear test ban treaty (1963), the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (1970, the ban on nuclear weapons on the sea-bed (1971), and biological (1972), and chemical weapons bans (1992).

[] The General Assembly has convened three special sessions on disarmament (1978, 1982 and 1988. The Disarmament Commission, composed of all Member States, was reconstituted after the 1978 session to provide guidelines for disarmament measures.

[] UN peace-keeping mandates have recently included disarmament tasks, as in El Salvador and Angola, where warring factions have been required, in order to fulfil peace agreements, to lay down their arms under UN supervision. The Special Commission on disarmament in Iraq has overseen the complicated requirements of the UN-secured cease-fire which ended the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

[] To lessen the threat of nuclear war, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducts regular inspections of nuclear reactors in 90 countries so that nuclear materials are not diverted for military purposes.

[] The UN is leading an international campaign to dear land mines from former battlefields, where these unexploded, hidden weapons continue to kill and maim thousands of innocent persons.

REFUGEES . . .

HUMANITARIAN OPERATIONS

Humanitarian operations, in particular aid to the millions of refugees who have suffered from the ravages of war over the past five decades. have been a major UN undertaking since the Organization's initial efforts to help victims of the Second World War. The International Children's Emergency Fund was created in 1946 to meet emergency needs of children in post-war Europe and China; it became the UN Chilren's Fund (UNICEF) in 1953.

[] The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in 1950 to protect refugees and promote durable solutions to their problems. It has won the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and 1981. The UN in 1981 and 1984 sponsored two international conferences (ICARA I and II) for the benefit of millions of refugees of Africa, which continues to have the largest number of refugees in the world. Other conferences have been held, for example, for those in Central America.

[] A new UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs was created in 1992 to coordinate emergency assistance for natural and man-made disasters. In 1994, the UN provided such aid to more than 40 million people in some 20 countries.

[] The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has, since 1949, provided education and training, health and relief services, and continues to do so during the transition to selfgovernment currently under way. There are nearly 3 million refugees in the Middle East served by UNRWA.

HUMAN RIGHTS

One of the first major achievements of the UN was the unanimous adoption by the General...