24 October marks United Nations Day. This article, published within the framework of this international observance, aims to underline the importance of higher education in the global mission of the United Nations.
As the United Nations faces almost unprecedented global challenges, it is a relevant moment to ask how higher education can play a role in helping to strengthen the Organization. The climate crisis, for instance, has emphasized the agency of young people as future leaders who will have to deal with the consequences of today’s policies. In what ways can institutions of higher education adopt inclusive approaches to learning and teach critical analytical skills to help prepare the youth of today to tackle the problems of tomorrow? To what extent will this involve preserving the principles of the United Nations or thinking expansively about how to prepare the Organization better to face future challenges?
The relationship between the Organization and academia has been multifaceted. Apart from the United Nations University, the University for Peace, and a few select programs, teaching and research about the United Nations system, its history, and its laws remain disaggregated. This is due to the various disciplinary approaches to studying the Organization, from history to political science, to economics, law, and sociology, which use different methods and theories to understand the rules, politics, procedures, actors, and institutions that make up the system. Other programs, such as global affairs, diplomacy, and civic education, focus on the workings and policies, examining their performance and significance in shaping the world.
The United Nations appears in the syllabi of ‘hard sciences’ where topics such as the 2030 Agenda and the methods used to achieve them in various areas are addressed, often producing innovative tools and models for their fulfillment. Given the vast nature of the Organization and the myriad issues it deals with, spanning the problems of global governance to those of economic and social development, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to study the United Nations and its dimensions. The challenge is how to ‘teach’ about it without repeating tired tropes about its functions, preserving intact its principles while developing a critical approach to its operations, which will inspire innovative thinking about the Organization.
Historically, the United Nations has relied on education as one of the ways to promote its values, from the programs across all levels run by some of the agencies, funds, and programs to the regional institutions and offices designed to promote the Organization, to more recent developments. But its influence has also been more subtle. The ideas behind the Sustainable Development Goals, such as sustainable living in harmony with the planet, fellowship between peoples, and celebration of diversity, have been part of educational programs in one form or another for decades. Many of these ideas are rooted in the United Nations’ most basic principles about peace, security, and respect for human rights.
Initiatives that directly promote these principles, such as the prevalent Model United Nations conferences and clubs, and United Nations Associations, further embed these ideas in the educational milieu of colleges and universities. This has also led to the development of outreach programs, such as the?, a course specifically for young people from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds to learn about the relevance of the United Nations for their futures. Such initiatives educate young people about the Organization and introduce them to its workings, problems, and politics. They also help develop socially conscious, civically minded scholars who understand today’s promises and problems.?
However, the problem with some of these approaches is that they lack a critical view. Often, study programs involving the United Nations fall into the trap of taking a normative approach to the Organization or reiterating criticism about the system’s failures and relevance. This teleological view tells a tale of the United Nations from a time of great hope and optimism right after its birth to a period of ‘paralysis’ during the Cold War, before it was rejuvenated at the beginning of the 1990s only to fail catastrophically when confronted with genocides in Eastern Europe and Africa. After a brief renewal period in the early 2000s with the promotion of the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, the Organization has generally taken a back seat.
This has been partially because of what can be considered repeated violations of some of the United Nations' most basic principles of respect for sovereignty and international law, in addition to recent humanitarian disasters. While many of these criticisms are valid, we need to change our thinking about what the United Nations was and is, to inform new visions of what it could be. Firstly, the United Nations system is far more than an effort to impose Western principles and values on the rest of the world. That is evident in the presence and??in the Bretton Woods institutions in 1944, the Charter in 1945, and the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights in 1948.
After 1960, these actors dominated the United Nations in terms of numbers and, up to the present day, have proved to be dynamic, innovative actors who have produced some of the most lasting institutions and changes within the entire system. To the detriment of the Organization though, we have obscured these actors’ contributions, strengthening the criticisms that it is merely a ‘Western organization.’ Furthermore, the overwhelming focus on peacekeeping and related issues has tended to prioritize the Security Council, masking the politics and work of the General Assembly and the other programs, agencies, funds, and institutions of the United Nations system.
We need to be more expansive in our definition of what the United Nations is to include these aspects, which, we might argue, have proven life-changing for many more people than the work of the peace and security apparatus. Actually, some of the most essential progress worldwide in terms of social and economic development and the progression of human rights has its roots, if not its operation, in the work of the General Assembly and its associated bodies. We need to include more of these aspects of the Organization in our approaches. And finally, we also need to be more analytical to understand why the United Nations has failed at times.
It is indispensable to comprehend why the Organization has failed to address some of humanity’s most significant challenges effectively and why it is in its current state of apparent impotence. There are no simple answers to this question. Still, a critical approach based on a truly global understanding of the United Nations and its history, including the hidden actors, politics, policies, and programs, is a fundamental starting point to understand how the Organization can be adapted to address current circumstances. With a broader scope and deeper analysis, we can develop different views to depart from the trite cliches and shallow analogies that have for too long provided a false starting point to open the way forward.
It is not the purpose of academia to unquestioningly promote the United Nations’ principles and policies but rather to provide a balanced view that takes a complete account of its storied past to undercut pessimism about its present. Any potential for an informed debate about reform requires the enfranchisement of people with a full knowledge and image of what the United Nations was and is. Scholars must generate these approaches among the future-oriented minds of young people. The Organization has labored under a misconception of irrelevance and futility for too long. What is required is a new approach to undo these false images, reassert its core principles, and demonstrate its relevance at the current moment of global crisis.
This article was contributed by Dr. Alanna O’Malley (a.m.omalley@hum.leidenuniv.nl) who is an Associate Professor of International History at Leiden University, a member institution of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) in The Netherlands. She is a historian of the United Nations, Congo, Decolonization and the Cold War.?She is Principal Investigator of the project??(INVISIHIST), funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. From 2018-2021 she held the inaugural Special Chair in United Nations Studies in Peace and Justice at Leiden University.
