United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is the plenary and main deliberative organ of the UN. In the UNGA and its six main committees, all member states of the UN (i.e., today this means practically all states of the world) are represented. While the size of national delegations is variable, each state commands only one vote. In addition, some nonmember states, liberation movements, and international organizations participate in the work of the UNGA without the right to vote. The UNGA combines a quasi-parliamentary operation mode and a quasi-legislative output with the substance of an intergovernmental agency in which representatives bound by imperative mandate carry out the will of their governments (“parliamentary diplomacy”). Sessions of the UNGA usually start in mid-September, and the main workload is done by mid-December. From the period 1946 to 2007, the General Assembly conducted sixty-two regular (annual) sessions, twenty-eight special sessions, and ten emergency special sessions.

The UNGA controls the budget of the UN, reviews annual reports from other UN organs, including the Security Council, and elects the Security Council’s members (apart from its permanent members).The UNGA has the right to discuss any matters within the scope of the UN Charter or relating to UN organs, and—except for matters under consideration by the Security Council—it may make recommendations to the member states of the UN and to the Security Council. Therefore, the UNGA is primarily a general discussion forum used by the governments of the world, with foreign ministers and heads of government frequently participating in the general debate.

UNGA resolutions with an outreach beyond the UN sphere are nonbinding. Nonetheless, they entail a measure of moral obligation and normative standard, at least for the assenting states, in particular when a consensual decision has been made by all governments of the world. Decisions made by the General Assembly on important questions are reached by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These questions include recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, the election of members to UN organs, the admission of new members to the UN, and budgetary questions. Decisions on other questions, including the determination of additional categories of questions to be decided by a two-thirds majority, are made by a majority of the members. A frequently used instrument in the UN ballots is abstention. The practice of consensual decision making has gained ground in the UNGA since the 1960s due to its affinity with the principle of sovereign statehood and a widening gap between power in world politics and voting power in the UNGA.

In 1944, the initial great power proposals for the UN provided for a rather limited role of the General Assembly. As a result of the combined effort of other powers, the authority and scope of activity of the UNGA was strengthened at the UN Charter conference in 1945. Later, the stalemate of the potentially more powerful UN Security Council in the cold war made the UNGA the most important UN organ. In 1950, with the enactment of the so-called Uniting for Peace resolution, the UNGA even managed to change the constitutional order of the UN and enabled itself to bypass the Security Council if that council failed to act because of the veto of a permanent member. However, when the process of decolonization changed the membership structure of the UN, the automatic UNGA majority of the United States faded to the benefit of a majority of developing countries (the “Group of 77”). This shift in voting power in the UNGA implied a detachment from economic and military power, limiting the influence and actual impact of the General Assembly. Since the 1990s, the revitalization of the UNGA has been a standing political catchword in the UN. This idea is related to the political economy of new public management, but it is not clear to what kind of vitality it refers.

In the UNGA, the tension between the principle of sovereign statehood and the representation of people has formally been solved to the benefit of the former: The vote of the government of Micronesia has the same weight as that of the government of China. Nonetheless, the UNGA is frequently referred to as the “parliament of man.” Suggestions to apply the principle of weighted voting are legion and as old as the UN. They imply, apart from improved proportional representation, a better congruence of voting power in the UNGA and other types of power. Moreover, some proposals suggest the representation of various shades of political opinion within the single member states or that representatives be elected directly by the people. Similar suggestions concern the establishment of a “second assembly” or “UN parliamentary assembly” alongside the UNGA. While all such proposals are utopian, they give evidence of humanity’s century-old dreams about a world polity and the central role of the UNGA for the imaginary surplus of the UN, pointing beyond the mere intergovernmental cooperation of now.

Bibliography:

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