Does the U.N. have laws governing supposed foreign wins?

Question

Does the U.N. have laws governing supposed foreign wins?

Answer 1

Not sure what you mean by supposed foreign wins, but the U.N. does not have laws in the sense of anything that is enforceable.

The U.N. has two types of actions -- Treaties and Resolutions.

Treaties are binding only upon the nations that have signed the treaty.  Some treaties contain enforcement mechanism (e.g. the World Trade Organization establishes a tribunal to resolve trade disputes) while others do not (and rely basically on each nation deciding that it is in their best interest to comply with the treaty).

Resolutions are decisions of one of the various parts of the U.N.  Resolutions of the Security Council are binding on member states (but there is no real enforcement mechanism for nations that ignore them).  Resolutions of other parts of the U.N. merely reflect the "sense of the world" on an issue and are non-binding.

Answer 2

In September, 2000, 189 nations, including the United States, affirmed a set of international development goals in the United Nations Millennium Declaration. These have come to be known as the Millennium Development Goals. They reflect an understanding of the devastation caused by poverty and global hunger, and aim for a world that is free of such misery. They are achievable. Most of them are very specific, and the UN has indicators by which progress can be monitored.

Many countries have made significant strides in fighting poverty despite major obstacles, such as scant resources. Few additional resources, however, have been contributed since the goals were adopted. If additional new funding is not put forth, at the current rate, none of the Millennium Development Goals will be met by their target dates.

By 2015, all UN member states pledged to:

   1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

          * Reduce by half the proportion of people who live on less than one dollar a day.

          * Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

   2. Achieve universal primary education

          * Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.

   3. Promote gender equality and empower women

          * Eliminate the gender discrepancy in primary and secondary education by increasing opportunities for girls to attend school preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

   4. Reduce child mortality

          * Reduce by two-thirds the percentage of children who die before age five.

   5. Improve maternal health

          * Reduce by three-quarters the percentage of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth.

   6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

          * Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

          * Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

   7. Ensure environmental sustainability

          * Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources. Sustainable development means reducing hunger and poverty in environmentally sound ways, by: meeting basic human needs, expanding economic opportunities, protecting and enhancing the environment, and promoting democratic participation.

          * Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

          * Achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.

   8. Develop a global partnership for development

          * Reform the trading system (i.e., the World Trade Organization) and the financial system (e.g., private capital flows and international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund) so that poor countries can more easily sell their products to developed countries at fair prices and obtain the financial resources needed to create stable, growing economies that lift people out of poverty.

          * Focus special attention on how to help the poorest countries mobilize the resources needed to reduce hunger and poverty and become self-reliant.

          * Focus special attention on how landlocked and small island developing countries can promote economic development.

          * Make an all-out effort to resolve the problem of unpayable debt for the world’s poorest countries.

          * Develop decent and productive work for youth.

          * Provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries.

          * Make available the benefits of new technologies. ***