The United Nations Voting Result of December 21, 2017: How the United Nations is not Toothless

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue X, October 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

The United Nations Voting Result of December 21, 2017: How the United Nations is not Toothless

Charles Chidi Eleonu, Phd¹, Sharon Ebikebina²

¹Port Harcourt Polytechnic, Rumuola, Rivers State, Nigeria
²Dept. of History and International Studies, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt Nigeria

Abstract: – This paper intends to analyze the historical voting of December 21, 2017 as it relates to the role and powers of the United Nations. The UN has been successful in resolving several world conflicts peacefully but in the face of these efforts the critics of the UN see her to be toothless. The Czech after the resolution of 2017 stated it abstained from the historic voting because, Czech Republic did not believe the United Nations draft resolution would contribute to the peace process. The formation of the United Nations was necessitated by the inability of the League of Nations to prevent the Second World War of 1939-1945. Thus the United Nations was primarily established in 1945 to promote world peace and to encourage cooperation among nations in the world. This paper in a historical perspective found that the United Nations has proved critics wrong through the resolution of December 21, 2017. This paper found that the declaration of December 21, 2017 is upheld with compliance despite the United States threat of withdrawal of funds to the United Nations and the threat of not any more giving aid to perceived enemies to the United States of America. The paper established that the UN in an emergency meeting of the General Assembly pronounced President Trump’s December 6, 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as capital of Israel null and void. And that about 130 nations voted in support of the resolution of the United Nations. The theoretical framework used in this work is the system theory. This paper concludes that the assertion that the UN is a toothless cannot be factual especially because the result of the UN voting stands and many sovereign nations all over the world complied.

Keywords: Cooperation, Decisions, Compliance, Declaration, Peace.

I. BACKGROUND

The formation of the United Nations was prompted by the failure of the League of Nations to prevent the Second World War of 1939-1945. Thus the United Nations was established in 1945 to promote world peace and to encourage cooperation among nations in the world (Jacques and Mingst, 2018). The first war prevented by the United Nations was when armed troop were sent to help Israel due to her neighbors including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt attacked the new nation after it was created in 1948. In 1956 also the United Nations sent armed troops to resolve the conflict in Egypt when France, Britain and Israel attacked Egypt over control of the Suez Canal.

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