Home | Site Index | FAQs | Contact | RSS  | Podcast

• Related Materials

  • Feinstein: Major Issues Confront 61st UN General Assembly Session
    Interview
    September 18, 2006

  • President Bush Addresses United Nations General Assembly, 2006
    Essential Documents
    September 19, 2006

  • The Effort to Reform the UN’s Human Rights Commission
    By Robert McMahon, Deputy Editor
    Backgrounder
    March 1, 2006

  • The Role of the UN Secretary-General
    By Carin Zissis
    Backgrounder
    January 5, 2007

  • The UN's Opening of Discontent
    Daily Analysis
    Updated: September 25, 2006

  The Role of the UN General Assembly

  Author:	Rebecca Bloom

  May 31, 2007

  • Introduction
  • What is the UN General Assembly?
  • What is the General Assembly’s membership?
  • Is the General Assembly in need of reform?
  • What have been the main features of the sixty-first session?
  • Have members ever been punished by the Assembly?
  • What are some noteworthy Assembly actions?

  ---

  Introduction

  Since its inception more than sixty years ago, the UN General Assembly has been a forum for lofty declarations, sometimes audacious rhetoric, and debate over the world’s most vexing issues, from poverty to peace and security. The Assembly’s current sixty-first session faces a particularly crowded agenda of controversial issues, and finds itself at the center of a debate over reforming the United Nations.

  What is the UN General Assembly?

  The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the only universally representative body of the five principal organs of the United Nations. The other major bodies are the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice. As delineated in the Charter of the United Nations, the function of the General Assembly is to discuss, debate, and make recommendations on a range of subjects pertaining to international peace and security—including disarmament, human rights, international law, and peaceful arbitration between disputing nations. It considers reports from the other four organs of the United Nations, assesses the financial situations of member states, and approves the UN budget, its most concrete role. It elects the nonpermanent members of the Security Council and other bodies such as the new Human Rights Council, and appoints the secretary-general based on the Security Council’s recommendation. UNGA also works with the Security Council to elect the judges of the International Court of Justice.

  What is the General Assembly’s membership?

  The General Assembly is the only part of the United Nations that represents all 192 member states, each of which has one vote. In addition, the UN’s nonmember observer states, which include the Vatican and the Palestinian Authority, have the right to speak at Assembly meetings but cannot vote on resolutions. The Assembly’s president changes with each annual session; its current president is Sheikha Haya Rashed al-Khalifa, who had previously served as the legal adviser to the Royal Court in the Kingdom of Bahrain. As president she has the authority to set the topics of the Assembly’s agendas, which run the gamut from the Convention on the Law of the Sea to the elimination of racism. Recently, she convened the fifty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women and declared its theme to be violence against women. She called for a comprehensive study and debate on the issues of gender inequality and female empowerment.

  Is the General Assembly in need of reform?

  Yes, in the view of many UN experts and leading donor nations. In 2005, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented a report that criticized the Assembly for focusing excessively on consensus and passing resolutions that reflected “the lowest common denominator” of opinions. Michael W. Doyle, an international affairs expert who teaches at Columbia University, says the Assembly is “an important institution that has never quite sorted out its role” in terms of being a truly deliberative, functional body, and has “insufficient deliberation and not enough genuine discussion.” Doyle, who was an aide to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, says that, unlike the U.S. Congress or the British Parliament, the Assembly lacks “genuine, critical self-examination on a variety of issues; it doesn’t bring to itself new and relevant information,” such as holding hearings with expert testimony. The Assembly has made an effort in the past few years to make its work more substantive and relevant. Resolution 59/313, adopted in 2005, proposed a more influential role for the Assembly’s president to help achieve this goal.

  In April 2007, the General Assembly, for the first time in sixty years, mandated a significant overhaul of the UN system of internal justice, declaring it “slow, cumbersome, ineffective and lacking in professionalism.” President Khalifa suggested the new system—which, among other things, would formally establish a mediation division within the United Nations—could be functional by January 2009. But the Assembly has continued to resist deep-seated reforms, a reflection of the rift between its many members from the developing world, who want to retain a strong say in its deliberations, and wealthy nations that serve as its main donors.

  What have been the main features of the sixty-first session?

  In addition to the reform measures noted above, the General Assembly faces “a number of huge issues, any one of which in a different year would be seen as a dominant one,” says CFR Senior Fellow Lee Feinstein. Iran’s nuclear ambitions form a “looming crisis,” the humanitarian situation in Darfur continues to worsen, and the UN’s role in Iraq colors nearly every debate. The session began with the high theater that has become typical for General Assembly opening meetings. U.S. President George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad both spoke at the Assembly’s opening session in September 2006, with Bush urging Iran to halt its nuclear program and Ahmadinejad retorting that the program was meant for peaceful purposes and would continue to develop. A day later, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez famously called Bush “the devil,” and labeled the General Assembly “worthless” and “merely a deliberative organ” that has no real power.

  Have members ever been punished by the Assembly?

  The General Assembly has the power of censuring states for violating UN Charter principles. In the 1960s the Assembly refused to seat the South African delegations because the country was practicing apartheid, in violation of both Security Council resolutions and principles of international law. In 1992, the Assembly refused to give Serbia the former Yugoslavian seat in the Assembly. Belgrade later was given representation under the name of Yugoslavia.

  Separately, Israel for many years was effectively barred from serving on UN commissions and panels because Arab states blocked it from meeting with the Mideast regional group at the United Nations. This changed in 2000 when Israel was permitted into another regional group.

  What are some noteworthy Assembly actions?

  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, two years after the Assembly convened its inaugural session, it promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contained thirty articles articulating the UN’s view on human rights. A historic act, it proclaimed the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” The Assembly called for the act to be “disseminated, displayed, read, and expounded” in the schools and educational institutions of all member countries. As the Chair of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights, former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped to draft and pass the declaration, saying it “may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere.” But human rights issues have become increasingly contentious at the United Nations in recent years.
  • “Uniting for Peace” Resolution. In 1950 the United States initiated another landmark resolution of the General Assembly, Resolution 377 (PDF), known as the “Uniting for Peace” Resolution. It states that if the UN Security Council “fails to exercise its primary responsibility” of maintaining international peace and security, the General Assembly can and should take up the matter itself and urge member states to consider collective action. The Assembly has enacted this resolution in a handful of instances, including the Suez crisis of 1956, and as a result of its intervention there, a cease-fire was called, a withdrawal occurred, and the first United States Emergency Force (USEF), a peacekeeping force, was established. The U.S.-initiated war with Iraq provoked calls from a number of organizations, including the legal advocacy organization the Center for Constitutional Rights, to have the General Assembly take up the issue and override the impasse of the Security Council, but the Assembly did not do so.
  • Millennium Declaration. The General Assembly proclaimed that its fifty-fifth session in 2000 would be designated the Millennium Assembly. At a summit that year, Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the UN’s Millennium Declaration. It set forth what are known as the Millennium Development Goals (PDF), a collection of “time-bound and measurable” targets for combating everything from poverty to HIV/AIDS. Other key proposals included a security agenda relating to international law, peace operations, and small arms trafficking; and an environmental agenda which urged “a new ethic of conservation and stewardship.” The development goals continue to be invoked frequently by many governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other groups as a spur toward more effective aid to the developing world.
  • ‘Zionism is Racism’ Resolution of 1975. Also known as Resolution 3379, this is the Assembly’s most controversial resolution, in which it “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Yet the UN Partition Plan for Palestine approved of and helped create the state of Israel in 1947. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on the day the resolution was passed, Israeli ambassador Chaim Herzog stated that “For us, the Jewish people, this resolution based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance, is devoid of any moral or legal value." He then proceeded to tear it in half. Resolution 3379 was eventually repealed, in 1991.

   

  Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

  

  New Council Special Reports

  Global FDI Policy

  After two decades of liberalization, many countries around the world are adopting new restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) that could retard continued progress. The authors make recommendations for correcting this protectionist drift by proposing guidelines for how countries can better regulate FDI yet still reap its economic benefits.

  Dealing with Damascus

  In this Council Special Report, the authors make a strong case that the Bush administration’s policy of diplomatic isolation of Syria is not serving U.S. interests, and offer informed history and thoughtful analysis of the country and its external behavior.

  Complete list of Council Special Reports.

  

  

  Robert Mugabe's 1987 Article

  • “Struggle for Southern Africa:” In a 1987 Foreign Affairs article, then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe urged international intervention to protect southern Africa.

  

  

  

  Publications Information

  To order Task Force reports, Council Special Reports, and Critical Policy Choices, please call, fax, or order online from our distributor, the Brookings Institution Press: phone +1-800-537-5487, fax +1-410-516-6998.

  For information on other reports that are not for sale, or for general publications information, please call +1-212-434-9516 or email publications@cfr.org.

  

  

  Permissions Requests

  To request permission to reuse Council materials, please email publications@cfr.org or fax +1-212-434-9859.

  Please include the complete information of the requested work—author, title, sections/pages to be copied or reprinted, and number of copies to be made—along with a brief description of where and how you would like to reuse the work.

  You may also request permission for Council material through Copyright Clearance Center. For more information, please click on the logo below.

  

  

•  

By Region  |  By Issue  |  By Publication Type  |  The Think Tank  |  For The Media  |  For Educators  |  About CFR

Home  |  Site Index  |  FAQ  |  Contact  |  RSS  |  Podcast

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.