The United Nations: the Gravitational Center for Dialogue and Cooperation to Find Common Solution
Introduction
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the second world war by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, and promoting social progress, better living standards, and human rights. Due to its unique international character and the powers vested in its founding charter, the organization can take action on a wider range of issues, and provide a forum for its 193 members states to express their views, through the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and other bodies and committees.
The work of the United Nations reaches every corner of the globe, although best known for peacekeeping, peacebuilding, conflict, prevention, and humanitarian assistance, there are many other ways the United Nations and its system(special agencies funds, and programs) affect our lives and make the world a better place. The organization works on a broad range of fundamental issues, from sustainable development, environment, and refugees protection, disaster relief, counter-terrorism, disbarment, and non-proliferation, to promoting democracy, human rights, gender equality and advancement of women, governance, economic and social development, and international health, clearing landmines, expanding food production, and more in order to achieve its goals and coordinate effort for a safer world for this and future generations.
The United Nations has four main purposes and they are; To keep peace throughout the world, To develop friendly relations among nations, To help nations to work together to improve the lives of poor people, to conquer hunger, disease, and illiteracy, and to encourage respect to each other’s rights and freedoms and lastly to be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations to achieve these goals.
Over the last decade, the international community has increasingly focused on issues of performance, effectiveness, and results when assessing progress towards poverty reduction in the developing world. This focus has been accompanied by efforts amongst bilateral and multilateral agencies to measure, monitor, and report on results. Major factors in promoting this agenda have been; The espousal during the 1990s of results-based management by western governments as part of the modernizing government agenda and the incorporation of these techniques into bilateral aid agencies. The international adoption of an agreed framework for measuring progress towards development results, based on the Millennium Development goals. Also increasing domestic pressure on the bilateral governments to account for an increase in their overseas development assistance and support to the multilateral.
As finances of the multilateral, bilateral government has increasingly pressured the multilateral to improve their performance and to demonstrate this through better monitoring evaluation and reporting. In response, the Multilateral Development Banks have developed results frameworks for concessional lending, and many United Nations agencies have developed results-oriented planning and reporting. At the same time, the bilateral agencies have increasingly sought their own independent assessment of multilateral effectiveness. Initially, most of these were done internally and consisted of surveys of their own staff perception of multilateral performance. With time, they became systematic and rigorous and expanded in scope to include a review of the multilateral RBM system. As these studies proliferated, the need for cooperation amongst bilateral arose in order to pool finding and reduce transactions cost. The MOPAN was formed in 2002 and now has 11 bilateral donor members. It has conducted joint annual surveys of multilateral partnership behavior since 2003.
Other cooperative ventures also emerged among the multilateral and more generally. In 2003 the MDB formed a working group on managing for the development system(COMPAS) IN 2005, which produces an annual report on the performance of the five MDBs. In the following the adoption of international commitments towards harmonization and alignment in alignment in Monterrey 2002, Rome 2003, and Paris 2005, the organization for Economic Co-operation and development developed Assistance Committee has spearheaded a number of the country surveys to monitor the rollout of the harmonization and alignment agenda. A few non-government organizations (NGO), such as debt relief international have also developed their own surveys of multilateral performance.
The purpose and scope of the paper
This has been commissioned as a contribution to the reflection of bilateral donors about the value of the various approaches to assessing multilateral effectiveness. We begin to section 2 by defining some of the key terms and then propose a scheme for categorizing the different assessment approaches. Section 3 categorization. In section 2, we explore some key methodological issues. We then consider the strengths and weaknesses of the different types of approaches before identifying a number of gaps that are not covered by any of the existing approaches. In section 5 we discuss ways forward for the future assessment of multilateral effectiveness this includes the relative merits of reliance on an assessment by multilateral as opposed to bilateral agencies, the best way of fulfilling the multiple purposes that bilateral have for effectiveness assessment, how the needs for partner countries can be met by effectiveness assessment and the need for effective assessment to inform discussion about reform of the aid system as a whole.
Identifying Approaches for assessing multilateral effectiveness
Development agencies have developed a number of different ways of thinking about the term effectiveness as they try to assess their contribution to development goals. We focus on the main ways that the term effectiveness is used. All of the different use the term as their ultimate goal how well any intended results are archived.
Effectiveness
Is the likelihood of achieving the intended objectives of an activity, policy, or other intervention. The DAC defines effectiveness as the extent to which a development intervention has attained or is expected to attain its relevant objectives. The discussion of organization effectiveness also includes results that are internal to the organization, but which can have an effect on country levels results such as project design quality, and speed of disbursement.
Development effectiveness
This is the likelihood of achieving country-level development objectives. Since the UN millennium Summit in 2000, the broad international consensus is that these objectives should be expressed in terms of the eight MDGs. These MDGs refer to mid-to-long-term development results which arise from the activities of a wide range of actors including the partner government, NGOs businesses, and donor agencies. The discussion of Multilateral development effectiveness therefore normally refers to the outputs and intermediate outcomes that can be more closely linked to the activities of the organization concerned.
Aid effectiveness
This one is usually defined as financial flows contributing to development. The term raises questions such as what country-level results can be associated with a particular aid volume and different aid delivery modalities and how allocation across countries or sectors for example affects these results. There is a long literature primarily using econometric techniques that attempts to link aid to long-term development impact
Organizational effectiveness
Term organizational effectiveness is usually deployed to contract with development effectiveness. It focuses on the direct results of agency interventions for which it can be held accountable in contrast with the development outcomes which are the effect of many agencies' interventions.. This term usually focuses on the internal system that is geared towards producing development output and outcomes.
Maintain international Peace and Security
The United Nations came into in 1945 following the devastation of the second world war, with one central mission. The maintenance of international peace and security, The UN does this by working to prevent conflict helping parties in conflict make peace, peacekeeping, and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should reinforce one another, to be effective. The United Nations Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security. The General Assembly and the Secretary-General play major important and complementary roles, along with other United Nations bodies.
Deliver Humanitarian Aid
One of the purposes of the United Nations, as stated in its Charter, is to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character. The UN first did this in the aftermath of the Second World War on the devastated continent of Europe, which it helped to rebuild. The Organisation is now relied upon by the international community to coordinate humanitarian relief operations due to natural and man-made disasters in areas beyond the relief capacity of national authorities alone
Promote Sustainable Development
From the start in 1945, one of the main priorities of the United Nations was to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. Improving people’s well-being continues to be one of the main focuses of the United Nations. The global understanding of development has changed over the years and countries now have agreed that sustainable development-development that promotes prosperity and economic opportunity, greater social well-being, and protection of the environment-offers the best path forward for improving the lives of the people everywhere.
Protect Human Rights
The term ‘’human rights’’ was mentioned about seven times in the United Nations founding Charter, making the promotion and protection of human rights as a key purpose and guiding principle of the Organisation. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought human rights into the realm of international law. Since then, the organizations have diligently protected human rights through legal instruments and on-the-ground activities.
Uphold International law
The UN Charter in its Preamble, set an objective to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained. Ever since the development of and respect for international law has been a key part of the work of the Organisation. This work is carried out in many ways by courts, tribunals, multilateral treaties, and by the Security Council, which can approve peacekeeping missions, impose sanctions or authorize the use of force when there is a threat to international peace and security if it deems this necessary, which is considered an international treaty. As such it is an instrument of international law and the UN Member States are bound by it. United Nations Charter codifies the major principles of international relations, from sovereign equality of States to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations
South Africa in these focal areas
Human rights in South Africa are protected under the constitution. The 1998 Human Rights by Myles Naidoo noted that the government generally respected the rights of the citizens, however, there were concerns over the use of mandated by law legal and discrimination. The human rights commission is mandated by the South African constitution and the human rights Commission Act of 1994, to monitor both pro-actively and by way of complaints brought before it, violations of human rights, and seeking redress for such violations. It also has an educational role
Educational rights
The South African government has legislated for equal education throughout the country. This legislation includes the White paper on education and Training 1995 and the South African Act 84 of 1996. Nevertheless, there have been issues in the implementation of these laws. The South African government tends to focus primarily on the quality of higher education. However, only 10% of South African students make it to grade 12 in a reasonable number of years. Additionally, there is not much racial integration in state schools. Though laws allow for integration, many schools remain predominantly one race.
In rural areas, most of the schools in South Africa are coming from rural. In fact approximately 79% of black South Africans live in rural communities. However, the government has neglected the quality of education in these rural areas. The issue with rural schooling includes; poor facilities, lack of clean water, lack of resources, and unmotivated teachers. Considering poor facilities, some schools are not structurally stable and are at risk of collapse with some schools even lacking the electricity. Most schools with more that 500 children lack proper sanitation for toilets while some schools do not have toilets at all
In June 2010 the government Gazette recognized that this unfavorable learning environment increases rates of absenteeism of teachers and dropout rates of students. Some students do not have enough food to eat and are hungry during school. This hunger causes a lack of concentration and makes the learning environment less favorable.
Conclusion
No Nation acting alone can resolve these crises. The United Nations is the gravitational center for dialogue and cooperation to find common solutions and with its concentrated support members states have reached two landmark agreements, the 2030 Agenda and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Taken together they demonstrate that nations have the will to work multilaterally when they see driving needs. They represent a clear road map to a mutual destination; taking care of our shared globe.
