Primer: The UN a Failure?

Hello Political Union!

I hope everyone had a lovely, relaxing break! Maybe you did something fun! Maybe not! But alas, we are back on campus which means we are once again going to be debating!! Yay! Just in case you forgot:

• The When: Tomorrow, Monday, January 9 at 7pm

• The Where: Scott Hall Room 212

• The What: Resolved: The UN should be considered a failure.

• The Why: We (exec) believe this is a topical resolution considering a wide variety of recent (and maybe not recent) UN successes and failures.

With that being said, here is your weekly primer to help you become educated on the topic and develop some knowledge to be able to engage with our debate! I strongly recommend looking at either bullet 2 or 3 to familiarize yourself with some work/actions done by the UN. I also suggest reading both bullets 4 and 5 to get a sneak peak into possible arguments of both sides. See you all there!!

• You might be asking yourself, “What is the United Nations?” In which case, here is their website to tell you all about themselves! (1 minutes)

• Here is a good resource to find some successes and limitations of the UN. This piece is fairly unbiased and a good read for some quick facts. (8 minutes)

• Here are 5 successes and failures of the UN, which is great to catch up on some facts you might be hearing in the debate. (3 minutes)

• This is an article describing why the UN is successful. It comes from the World Bank Blog, so it is biased toward the UN. It mainly focuses on why the UN is beneficial from a peacekeeping perspective. (5 minutes)

• This article argues the UN is a failure. It is published through the Heritage Foundation, which is a right-leaning think tank in the United States. It provides a quick overview of why the UN is a failure with evidence. (3 minutes)

"United Nations" by Jürgen Kornstaedt is licensed under CC BY 2.0.