What happened to the size of the British Empire in the ...



Is the United Nations

Helping to make the world a safer place?

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Post 1945 Glossary

Conflict resolution: When countries or groups of people go to war we call this conflict, and trying to stop the fighting is called conflict resolution.

United Nations: The United Nations is made up of 191 countries from around the world. It is often called the UN. It was set up in 1945 - after the Second World War - as a way of bringing people together and to avoid war. The United Nations logo shows the world held in the 'olive branches of peace'.

Genocide: The mass killing of a specific group of people. An example of this was the holocaust under Nazis rule.

Activity One: Conflict or peace? The World Post 1945: Mystery Source. Below is a photograph. Study this carefully and complete your thoughts on each of the questions. What is happening in the source will be revealed later in this unit.

Activity Two: So, what is The United Nations (UN) and do they all wear blue helmets?

Towards the end of WWII, Britain, Russia and The USA realised that something must be done to prevent such a catastrophe ever happening again. After a number of meetings President Roosevelt of America, Josef Stalin of Russia and Winton Churchill of Britain decided to form a great club of the nations. All leaders agreed that science had made war too terrible to contemplate again. So the UN was born, and a huge skyscraper was built in New York for its head quarters.

The diagram below shows that the UN isn’t just made up of people wearing blue helmets- keeping the peace around the globe. The UN is made up of many organisations each having a different role in trying to make our world a safer place. Your task is to match the statements about each of the organisations on the following page, with the correct part of the diagram. The first one has been completed for you.

Activity Two: So, what is The United Nations (UN) and do they all wear blue helmets?

Sort it out ! The role and organisation of the UN

|This advises countries on which crops to grow and how to manage|This advises countries how to run hospitals and fight diseases.|

|farming. |They run clinics and give inoculations. |

|This lends money to countries which are short of money for |This organisation tries to get countries to share each others’ |

|important developments e.g. building a new dam. |books, films, music, sport and scientific discoveries so that |

| |people will understand each other and be less likely to fight. |

|This specialises in helping underfed, ill-treated or neglected |This part agrees to carry and organises each others’ letters, |

|children all over the world. |telegrams and telephone calls. |

|The part of the UN search and rescue operations for the |This is the parliament of the UN. It consists of all members. |

|different peace-keeping operations. organises |Each country has one vote regardless of its size. It’s |

| |decisions are recommendations only. |

|This person heads the organisation and is currently called Ban | |

|Ki Moon | |

|Scientists and send records of winds and temperatures and other| |

|information to each other so that better forecasts can be made | |

|and climate change can be monitored.meteorologists of all | |

|countries belonging to this organisation | |

Activity Four : Case Study Rwanda

Facts about Rwanda: Rwanda is a poor country in East Africa. It was controlled by Germany in the 19th Century and Belgium from 1914-62. Over 90% of the Rwandan population now earns money from agriculture.

Ethnic Groups in Rwanda: There are two main ethnic groups- the HUTUS and the TUTSIS. There are fewer Tutsis but they were always favoured by the Belgians who gave them the best jobs in government. This created hatred and resentment against them from the Hutus. In 1966 the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi government. They fled abroad and formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF invaded Rwanda from abroad in 1990. ***Check wording

The Massacres Begin: In June 1994 the Hutu President’s plane was shot down immediately Hutus blamed the Tutsis and began a widespread and horrific killing spree, slaughtering Tutsis of all ages throughout Rwanda. One of the first victims was the Prime Minister. There was an organisation dedicated to the killing called INTERAHAMWE which had existed for some time. It was clear that the massacres were planned and well-organised in advance.

The Rwandan army actually helped Interhamwe to massacre Tutsis. They lent vehicles and petrol so that people could get to very remote villages to kill the Tutsis. The government radio station also encouraged killing - telling people to “fill all the empty cemeteries”.

Thousands of Tutsis took refuge in churches but were either burned or shot. Much of the killing was done with machetes to save bullets. Piles of mutilated bodies were heaped up in the streets. About a million people were murdered in Spring 1994. It was clear that the Hutu Government was attempting genocide. So what was the UN and the rest of the world doing to stop his horror?

Watch the clip from “Hotel Rwanda”. Your teacher will give you a note-making sheet with key questions to think about.

Who is helping and why is this so remarkable?

What are the difficulties faced by the UN?

Why do you think this is such a difficult conflict to resolve?

What would you have done if you had been Secretary General at this time?

Activity Five: What did the UN do to stop the Rwandan massacres?

The statements below refer to The UN’s role in Rwanda. Your mission is to sort the statements into the following categories the successes of the UN, the failures of the UN, limits on the UN (what factors made its job of keeping the peace more difficult). Divide a double page into four putting each of these headings in each of the corners.

|They had no instructions to fight the killing squads or stop |The UN sent a peacekeeping force to Rwanda under very severe |

|them from killing. |and dangerous conditions. The UN was instructed to keep the |

| |peace. |

|Many UN soldiers had to sit and watch Hutu killers dragging |Many UN soldiers tried their best to help the Tutsis by going |

|their victims into the street and murdering them and not being |out at night and “smuggling” Tutsis to safer areas. |

|able to do anything about it. | |

|Romeo Dallaire, the UN troop leader, asked for more troops as | |

|he saw the scale of the massacre unfolding. | |

|The UN force had not been trained together. |The UN soldiers came from 20 different countries and were a |

| |neutral force. |

|Romeo Dallaire was given no additional troops |The UN and the international community had known for some time |

| |that the massacres were going to happen. |

|No countries in the UN wanted to send their soldiers to Rwanda |At the time of the first reports of genocide in May 1994, there|

|so very few actually went to help the Tutsis. Many people feel |was already a small UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. But it was|

|that this was because it was a poor country and of no strategic|ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the bloodshed, and most |

|interest. |countries immediately withdrew their contingents. |

|The USA was very reluctant to help. They had helped in the | |

|Somalian civil war and did not want to get dragged into another| |

|African war. | |

Activity Six: The UN through time since ‘45.

Draw a copy of the following timeline across a double page spread of your books. Below are a range of statements about the UN. Your job as the new Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon is to analyse whether your organisation has been making a difference since 1945. You need to place the statements in the correct part of your chronology. You then have to shade them according to the following key areas of work. Remember some many involve more than one area of work.

➢ Peacekeeping

➢ Environmental Protection

➢ Economic development

➢ Health

➢ Education

|1994 UN food convoys saved thousands of starving Somalis |

|In 1999 , when NATO attacked Serbia, it simply ignored the UN because |

|Russia opposed the action. |

|In 1983 both the US and Britain withdrew from the UN’s education |

|Programme. |

|The 1985 UN report revealed that since 1950, life expectancy had |

|advanced by almost twenty years and child mortality had fallen by |

|two thirds. |

|In 1967, President Nasser of Egypt ordered the Un troops to withdraw |

|They had no choice but to leave and within days war broke out again and |

|when Israel attacked on the 5th June 14 remaining UN soldiers were killed. |

|The UN’s involvement in Sierra Leone ( is it’s largest peacekeeping effort to |

|date. However many of the peacekeepers were ill-equipped and poorly |

|trained. The rebels managed to steal UN weapons, tanks, uniforms and |

|kidnap hundreds of UN peacekeepers. |

|Annan in his leaving speech (2006) said that many Africans find the United Nations confusing and frustrating to deal with, |

|because it is present in so many different forms, with mandates that either overlap or leave major gaps. |

|The UN Peace-Keeping Forces (called the Blue Helmets) received the 1988 Nobel Prize for Peace. |

|The human security report (1995) singles out several specific investments that have paid off, e.g. A sixfold increase in the |

|number of UN missions mounted to prevent wars, from 1990 to 2002. |

|The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though not legally binding, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948 as a common|

|standard of achievement for all. The Assembly regularly takes up human rights issues. |

|Failure to prevent the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the killings of nearly a million people, due to the refusal of|

|security council members to approve any military action. |

|Sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers. In December 2004, during the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, at least 68 cases of alleged |

|rape, prostitution and pedophilia and more than 150 other allegations have been uncovered by UN investigators, all perpetrated|

|by UN peacekeepers |

Activity seven: Obviously this is not an exhaustive list of all that the UN has done and is doing, as we speak, to make the world a safer place. Your final task as the new secretary general is to write a five point wish list to help turn more of your activities around the globe into successes in order to make the world a safer place.

Secretary General wish list- reforming the UN:

▪

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It’s main task is to try to keep peace in the world. It consists of five permanent members- Britain, France, the USA, Russia and China.

So..how have the blue helmets faired?

Successes of the UN.

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1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Failures of the UN.

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What guesses can I make? What can I infer?

What do I know already?

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What doesn’t this source tell me? What questions do I need to ask?

What does this source tell me?

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