The United Nations Secretariat—Some Constitutional and Administrative Developments

1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Cohen

The personnel difficulties of the United Nations Secretariat, so much dramatized since 1952, have served to focus exceptional attention on the Secretary General and his employment policies, as well as on the constitutional position of the Secretariat, its staff and their relations to the General Assembly and to the Administrative Tribunal. Indeed a substantial literature examining these issues —issues arising, in part, out of the United States’ allegations of “subversive” personnel in the Secretariat—now must be added to the already imposing structure of scholarship dealing with international organizations and officials since their beginnings in the League system and into the United Nations period.

1967 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-510 ◽  

The General Assembly held its 21st session, comprising the 1409th–1501st plenary meetings, at UN Headquarters from September 20 to December 20, 1966, during which time it took action on 98 agenda items and adopted 115 resolutions. During the session the Assembly unanimously admitted four new states to UN membership: Guyana on September 20, Botswana and Lesotho on October 17, and Barbados on December 9, 1966. In accordance with a telegram of September 19 from the Ambassador of Indonesia to the United States addressed to the Secretary-General in which he stated that his government had decided to resume full cooperation with the United Nations and to resume participation in its activities starting with the 21st session of the Assembly and upon the Assembly's expression of its agreement to that effect Indonesia resumed full participation in the work of the UN on September 28. The Organization's total membership thereby reached 122 during the session.


1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. LeBlanc

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) in December 1948. A representative of the United States signed the Convention, and President Truman later transmitted it to the Senate with a request that it give its advice and consent to ratification. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the Convention in 1950. It has since held hearings on four occasions (1970, 1971, 1977 and 1981), and favorably reported the Convention to the Senate four times (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1976). However, the Senate has failed to act; a resolution of ratification was debated on the floor in 1973-1974, but it fell victim to a filibuster and the Convention remains in committee.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Terlingen

When on October 13, 2016, the General Assembly appointed by acclamation António Guterres of Portugal as the United Nations’ ninth secretary-general, there was a sense of excitement among the organization's 193 members. For once, so it seemed, they felt they had played an important role not only in choosing the secretary-general but also in appointing a man generally considered to be an outstanding candidate for a position memorably described as “the most impossible job on this earth.” The five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council (Perm Five) still exercised the greatest power in the selection process, as they always had in the past. Yet the candidate chosen appears, surprisingly, not to have been the first choice of either the United States or Russia, two of the Perm Five that until then had effectively chosen the secretary-general between them in an opaque and outdated process. It is doubtful that António Guterres would have been appointed if the General Assembly had not embarked on a novel process to select him.


1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 720-721
Author(s):  
T. M. F.

The United Nations Administrative Tribunal (UNAT) has elected Herbert Reis of the United States, a former Counselor at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, as its Second Vice-President for the coming year. Mr. Reis has served on the tribunal for 5 years. Samar Sen of India and Arnold Kean of the United Kingdom were elected President and First Vice-President of the tribunal, respectively.


1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 470-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Gross

The United States and some other members of the United Nations have been concerned in recent years about the substance of some resolutions of the General Assembly and the procedures by which they were adopted. Their concern was intensified by certain actions at the twenty-ninth session, when the Assembly sustained a ruling of its President with respect to the representation and participation of South Africa in that and future sessions, when it curbed the right of Israel to participate in the debate on the question of Palestine, when it accorded to the representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) a treatment usually reserved to the head of a member state, and when it declared by Resolution 3210 (XXIX) of October 14, 1974, “that the Palestinian people is the principal party to the question of Palestine” and invited the PLO “to participate in the deliberations of the General Assembly on the question of Palestine in plenary meetings.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-281
Author(s):  
Stefano Recchia

Abstract Research suggests that military interveners often seek endorsements from regional international organizations (IOs), in addition to approval from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to reassure international and domestic audiences. Toward that end, interveners should seek the endorsement of continent-wide regional IOs with the broadest and most diverse membership, which are most likely to be independent. In practice, however, interveners often seek endorsements from subregional IOs with narrow membership and aggregate preferences similar to their own. This should weaken the reassurance/legitimation effect significantly. I argue that such narrower regional endorsements are sought not so much to reassure skeptical audiences, as to pressure reluctant UNSC members to approve the intervention by putting those members’ relations with regional partners at stake. To illustrate this argument and probe its plausibility, I reconstruct France's successful efforts to obtain UNSC approval for its interventions in Côte d'Ivoire (2002–2003) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2003) at a time when the United States was hesitant to support France because of the two countries’ falling-out over the Iraq War. For evidence I rely on original interviews with senior French and US officials.


1948 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-172

Desiring to conclude an agreement for the purpose of carrying out the resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 14 December 1946 to establish the seat of the United Nations in the City of New York and to regulate questions arising as a result thereof;


1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 973-983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Nelson

On March 12, 1986, Ambassador Vernon A. Walters, the United States representative at the United Nations, said: [T]he prospect is for the withholding by the United States of a very sizable amount. … This inevitably would raise the question of whether the non-payment of a substantial amount could constitute a material breach of the United States obligation under Article 17 of the U.N. Charter to pay our duly assessed share of the U.N. budget. This is an issue of which we must be aware.


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