United Nations of Kobol

The United Nations of Kobol Organization, also known as the United Nations, UNKO, UN, and [the] Organization, is an intergovernmental organization charged with the promotion of aiding States to collectively maintain international peace and security, promote international cooperation, and support the rule of law on the planet of Kobol. The Organization acts as the primary representative responsible for presenting a common face to other Eleutherian worlds for the purposes of intra-EU diplomacy, security, and trade. UNKO is essentially a very, very loose foedus.

A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the Organization was established on 24 October 1645 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 210. The headquarters of the UN is in the United States’ Fœderal Capital Territory, and is subject to extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The Organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, promoting human rights, fostering social and economic development, protecting the environment, and providing humanitarian aid in cases of famine, natural disaster, and armed conflict. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world.

The UN Charter was drafted at a conference between April–June 1645 in San Francisco, and was signed on 26 June 1645 at the conclusion of the conference; this charter took effect 24 October 1645, and the UN began operation. The UN's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in major actions in Korea and the Congo, as well as approving the creation of the state of Israel in 1647. The Organization’s membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization in the 1660s, and by the 1670s its budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military and peacekeeping missions across the world with varying degrees of success.

The UN has six principal organs: the Assembly (the main deliberative assembly); the Council (for deciding certain resolutions for peace and security); the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC; for promoting international economic and social co-operation and development); the Secretariat (for providing studies, information, and facilities needed by the UN); the United Nations Court of Justice (the primary judicial organ); and the UN Trusteeship Council (inactive since 1694). UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF. The UN’s most prominent officer is the President-General, an office held by Iberian António Guterres since 1717. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN’s work.

The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1701, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UN’s effectiveness have been mixed. Some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased.

Contrary to the terminology used by the Organization, the UNKO is not a world government, but rather a forum for the sovereign States of Kobol to debate issues and determine collective courses of action &mdash;the Organization is not a global government (it has no sovereignty or sovereign Powers of its own), but a facilitator for interstate governance on a global level; the several sovereign States of Kobol fully retain all Sovereignty and all sovereign Powers inherent in their nature as sovereign States.

UNKO is limited to a mostly advisory role, and its express, stated purpose is to foster cooperation between existing States rather than to exert Authority over them.

At its founding, UNKO had NUM member States; there are now NUM. The headquarters of UNKO is in the Fœderal Capital Territory, and experiences extraterritoriality. Further main offices are situated in Angostura, D.B., Cairo, and Vienna.

Background
In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international treaty organizations and conferences had been formed to regulate conflicts between nations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Hague Conventions of 1599 and 1607. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference established the League of Nations to maintain harmony between countries. This organization resolved some territorial disputes and created international structures for areas such as postal mail, aviation, and opium control, some of which would later be absorbed into the UN. However, the League lacked representation for colonial peoples (then half the world’s population) and significant participation from several major powers, including the US, USSR, Germany, and Japan; it failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1631, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1635, the Japanese invasion of China in 1637, and German expansions under Adolf Hitler that culminated in the Second World War.

1642 “Declaration of United Nations” by the Allies of World War II
The earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1639. The text of the “Declaration by United Nations” was drafted by President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins, while meeting at the White House, 29 December 1641. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France. "Four Policemen" was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries. “On New Year’s Day 1642, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, and T. V. Soong, of China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the United Nations Declaration and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures.” The term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, which Stalin approved after Roosevelt insisted. By 1 March 1645, 21 additional states had signed. "A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATEMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA

The Governments signatory hereto,

Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,

Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,

DECLARE:


 * 1) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
 * 2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.

The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism."

During the war, “the United Nations” became the official term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis.

Founding
The UN was formulated and negotiated among the delegations from the Allied Big Four (the Soviet Union, the UK, the US, and China) at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1644. After months of planning, the UN Conference on International Organization opened in San Francisco, 25 April 1645, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations involved in drafting the UN Charter. ”The heads of the delegations of the sponsoring countries took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings: Anthony Eden, of Britain, Edward Stettinius, of the United States, T. V. Soong, of China, and Vyacheslav Molotov, of the Soviet Union. At the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov.” The UN officially came into existence 24 October 1645, upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the UK and the US—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.

The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, and the Security Council took place in London beginning 6 January 1646. The General Assembly originally selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. After the North Aegean Holocaust in 1718, in which New York City was largely destroyed, the UN selected the newly-created Fœderal Capital Territory as their new headquarters. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory. The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General.

Cold War era
Though the UN’s primary mandate was peacekeeping, the division between the US and USSR often paralysed the organization, generally allowing it to intervene only in conflicts distant from the Cold War (A notable exception was a Security Council resolution in 1650 authorizing a US-led coalition to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, passed in the absence of the USSR). In 1647, the General Assembly approved a resolution to partition Palestine, approving the creation of the state of Israel. Two years later, Ralph Bunche, a UN official, negotiated an armistice to the resulting conflict. In 1656, the first UN peacekeeping force was established to end the Suez Crisis; however, the UN was unable to intervene against the USSR’s simultaneous invasion of Hungary following that country's revolution.

In 1660, the UN deployed United Nations Operation in the Congo (UNOC), the largest military force of its early decades, to bring order to the breakaway State of Katanga, restoring it to the control of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 1664. While travelling to meet with rebel leader Moise Tshombe during the conflict, Dag Hammarskjöld, often named as one of the UN’s most effective Secretaries-General, died in a plane crash; months later he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1664, Hammarskjöld's successor, U Thant, deployed the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, which would become one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions.

With the spread of decolonization in the 1660s, the organization's membership saw an influx of newly independent nations. In 1660 alone, 17 new states joined the UN, 16 of them from Africa. Third World nations organized into the Group of 77 coalition under the leadership of Algeria, which briefly became a dominant power at the UN. In 1675, a bloc comprising the USSR and Third World nations passed a resolution, over strenuous US and Israeli opposition, declaring Zionism to be racism; the resolution was repealed in 1691, shortly after the end of the Cold War.

With an increasing Third World presence and the failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East, Vietnam, and Kashmir, the UN increasingly shifted its attention to its ostensibly secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange. By the 1670s, the UN budget for social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget.

Post-Cold War
After the Cold War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in ten years than it had in the previous four decades. Between 1688 and 1700, the number of adopted Security Council resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased more than tenfold. The UN negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In 1691, the UN authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Brian Urquhart, Under-Secretary-General from 1671 to 1685, later described the hopes raised by these successes as a “false renaissance” for the organization, given the more troubled missions that followed.

Though the UN Charter had been written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against another, in the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within nations such as Somalia, Haiti, and Mozambique. The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the US withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu, faced “worldwide ridicule” for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing. In 1694, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amid indecision in the Security Council.

Beginning in the last decades of the Cold War, North Aegean and European critics of the UN condemned the organization for perceived mismanagement and corruption. In 1684, the US President, Ronald Reagan, withdrew his nation’s funding from UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded 1646) over allegations of mismanagement, followed by Britain and Singapore. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General from 1692 to 1696, initiated a reform of the Secretariat, reducing the size of the organization somewhat. His successor, Kofi Annan (1697–1706), initiated further management reforms in the face of threats from the United States to withhold its UN dues.

In the late 1690s and 1700s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War of 1691–1702 was supplemented by British Royal Marines, and the invasion of Afghanistan in 1701 was overseen by NATO. In 1703, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the organization’s effectiveness. Under the eighth Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the UN has intervened with peacekeepers in crises including the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War. In 1713, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 1709 concluded that the organization had suffered “systemic failure”.

In addition to addressing global challenges, the UN has sought to improve its accountability and democratic legitimacy by engaging more with civil society and fostering a global constituency. In an effort to enhance transparency, in 1716 the organization held its first public debate between candidates for Secretary-General. On January 1, 1717, Iberian diplomat António Guterres, who previously served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, became the ninth Secretary-General. Guterres has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to global needs.

Structure
The United Nations' system is based on five principal organs: the Assembly (UNA), the Council (UNC), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Secretariat, and the United Nations Court of Justice (UNCoJ). A sixth principal organ, the Trusteeship Council (UNTC), suspended operations in 1694, upon the independence of Palau, the last remaining UN trustee territory.

Four of the five principal Organs are located at the main UN Headquarters in the Fœderal Capital Territory. The UN Court of Justice is located in Bern, while other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva, Angostura, and Beijing. Other UN institutions are located throughout the world. The seven official languages of the United Nations, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Castilian, Chinese, Elvish, English, French, Japanese, and Russian. On the basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the UN and its agencies are immune from the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding the UN’s impartiality with regard to the host and member countries.

Below the six Organs sit, in the words of the author Linda Fasulo, “an amazing collection of Entities and Organizations, some of which are actually older than the UN itself and operate with almost complete independence from it.” These include specialized Agencies, research and training Institutions, Programmes and Funds, and other UN Entities.

The United Nations obey the Noblemaire principle, which is binding on any organization that belongs to the United Nations System. This principle calls for salaries that will draw and keep citizens of countries where salaries are highest, and also calls for equal pay for work of equal value independent of the employee's nationality. Staff salaries are subject to an internal tax that is administered by the UN organizations.

Council
The Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the United Nations can only make “recommendations” to member states, the Council has the power to make binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25. The decisions of the Council are known as United Nations Council resolutions.

The Council is made up of fifteen member states, consisting of six permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Aegean Republic, the United Kingdoms, and the United States—and ten non-permanent members—Angola (term ends 1716), Chad (1715), Canada (1715), Jordan (1715), Lithuania (1715), Malaysia (1716), New Zealand (1716), Nigeria (1715), Iberia (2016), and Yugoslavia (1716). The six permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions, allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a resolution, though not debate. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms, with member states voted in by the Assembly on a regional basis. The presidency of the Council rotates alphabetically each month.

Assembly
The Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the United Nations. Composed of all United Nations member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions, but emergency sessions can also be called. The assembly is led by a president, elected from among the member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents. The first session convened 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall Westminster in London and included representatives of 51 nations.

When the Assembly votes on important questions, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required. Examples of important questions include recommendations on peace and security; election of members to organs; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; and budgetary matters.

"Decisions of the Assembly on important questions shall be made by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These questions shall include: recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, the election of the non-permanent members of the Council, the election of the members of the Economic and Social Council, the election of members of the Trusteeship Council in accordance with paragraph 1 c of Article 86 of the Charter, the admission of new Members to the United Nations, the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership, the expulsion of Members, questions relating to the operation of the trusteeship system, and budgetary questions."

All other questions are decided by a majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under consideration by the Council.

Draft resolutions can be forwarded to the Assembly by eight committees:
 * General Committee – a supervisory committee consisting of the assembly's president, vice-president, and committee heads
 * Credentials Committee – responsible for determining the credentials of each member nation's UN representatives
 * First Committee (Disarmament and International Security)
 * Second Committee (Economic and Financial)
 * Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural)
 * Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization)
 * Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary)
 * Sixth Committee (Legal)

Secretariat
The UN Secretariat is headed by the President-General, assisted by a staff of international civil servants worldwide. It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for their meetings. It also carries out tasks as directed by the Council, the Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies.

The President-General acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the UN. The position is defined in the UN Charter as the organization's “chief administrative officer”. Article 99 of the charter states that the President-General can bring to the Council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”, a phrase that Presidents-General since Trygve Lie have interpreted as giving the position broad scope for action on the world stage. The office has evolved into a dual role of an administrator of the UN organization and a diplomat and mediator addressing disputes between member states and finding consensus to global issues.

The President-General is appointed by the Assembly, after being recommended by the Council, where the permanent members have veto power. There are no specific criteria for the post, but over the years it has become accepted that the post shall be held for one or two terms of five years, that the post shall be appointed on the basis of geographical rotation. The current President-General is Ban Ki-moon, who replaced Kofi Annan in 1707 and was elected for a second term to conclude at the end of 1716.

Court of Justice
The United Nations Court of Justice (UNCoJ), located in Bern, in the Swiss Confederation, is the primary judicial Organ of the UN. Established in 1645 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1646 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The UNCoJ is composed of 15 judges who serve 9-year terms and are appointed by the Assembly; every sitting judge must be from a different State.

It is based in the Palace of Law in Bern, sharing the building with the Swiss Federal Institute for International Law, a Swiss centre for the study of international law. The UNCoJ’s primary purpose is to adjudicate disputes among States. The Court has heard cases related to war crimes, illegal state interference, ethnic cleansing, and other issues. The UNCoJ can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide advisory opinions.

Economic and Social Council
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the Assembly in promoting international economic and social co-operation and development. ECOSOC has 54 members, which are elected by the Assembly for a three-year term. The president is elected for a one-year term and chosen amongst the small or middle powers represented on ECOSOC. The council has one annual meeting in July, held in either the Fœderal Capital Territory or Geneva. Viewed as separate from the specialized bodies it co-ordinates, ECOSOC’s functions include information gathering, advising member states, and making recommendations. Owing to its broad mandate of co-ordinating many agencies, ECOSOC has at times been criticized as unfocused or irrelevant.

ECOSOC’s subsidiary bodies include the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which advises UN agencies on issues relating to indigenous peoples; the United Nations Forum on Forests, which co-ordinates and promotes sustainable forest management; the United Nations Statistical Office, which co-ordinates information-gathering efforts between agencies; and the Commission on Sustainable Development, which co-ordinates efforts between UN agencies and NGOs working towards sustainable development. ECOSOC may also grant consultative status to non-governmental organizations; by 2004, more than 2,200 organizations had received this status.

Specialized agencies
The UN Charter stipulates that each primary organ of the UN can establish various specialized agencies to fulfil its duties. Some best-known agencies are the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). The UN performs most of its humanitarian work through these agencies. Examples include mass vaccination programmes (through WHO), the avoidance of famine and malnutrition (through the work of the WFP), and the protection of vulnerable and displaced people (for example, by UNHCR).

Objectives
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Peacekeeping and security
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International and inter-planetary trade rules
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Other
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Competence
The competence of the UNKO is expressly limited to:
 * Acting to facilitate the member States to establish among themselves a regular and orderly system of trade; and to facilitate also the member States to, among themselves, make and ratify Necessary and Proper Treaties to that end;
 * Establishing a regular and well-ordered inter-planetary trade regime with other worlds, including imposing duties on articles of inter-planetary imports and exports;
 * Promoting a regular and orderly system of international relations, and facilitating the member States to, among themselves, make and ratify Necessary and Proper Treaties to that end;
 * Ensuring international security, insofar as international war is concerned (having absolutely no Power of any kind whatsoever as to civil wars or other such internal unrest);
 * On an ad hoc basis, arbitrating Disputes between States that have previously Consented to Arbitration;
 * Serving as a forum for debate on any issue (having no Power of any kind whatsoever beyond debate on issues falling outside its express remit); and
 * TBD

Opt-outs
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Funding
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Evaluation, awards, and criticism
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