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[martinuzz]

I had wanted to post this in the calm and cool progressive thread, but apparently that has been locked.
I guess it can't hurt to have a thread for UN-related stuff 

The United Nations has decided that 22 NGOs that are speaking on behalf of LGBT rights, and rights for drug addicts, are not welcome at the 2-day UN summit on AIDS that will be held in June.

Egypt had petitioned on behalf of 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to deny access to 11 LGBT rights organistations. Other members of the General Assembly vetoed acess right for addict right organisations.
Originally, the General Assembly (of which every member state has a right to veto access rights for any ngo that does not have official UN accreditation) had wanted to deny 39 NGOs access to the summit meeting, but lobbying by the Assembly's Danish president Mogens Lykketoft reduced this number to 22.

Various western UN ambassadors have filed complaints with the UN already, about this decision.

US ambassador Samantha Power says the exclusion of organisations that make a stand for transgeder rights is not beneficial for the global efforts to control the AIDS epidemic. According to her, transgenders are 49 times more likely than normal people to get infected with hiv.

The British vice embassador Peter Wilson, in abscence of the embassador, says that "if we want to reduce the number of AIDS cases to zero, we need to include all communities"

EU ambassador Joao Vale de Almeide demands the UN makes public which countries exactly vetoed the organistations. According to a source at the New York Times, next to the islamic pact countries, Russia, Cameron, Jamaica and Tanzania have also vetoed organistations.

Pangea, an organisation that stands up for the rights of homosexuals and transgenders, has written a letter to the UN on behalf of 230 NOGs, calling the decision "unacceptable", and accusing the UN of allowing discrimination and prejudice to influence the battle against AIDS.

At the conference, which will be held in New York at the 8th and 9th of june, policiy makers and NGOs come together to discuss the global approach on combating AIDS. 16 of the 22 excluded NGOs have already stated that they will come anyways, and join up with delegates of other NGOs.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/lgbt-groepen-geweigerd-op-grote-aids-top-van-de-vn~a4303753/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/world/aids-un-gay-transgender.html?_r=2

Why do I have a feeling that 8 and 9 june will become the largest Gay Pride parade New York has ever seen 

[Powder Miner]

I'm not really seeing how the letters are going to change anything -- when the UN sends its angry letters, countries don't exactly backflip to appease them, and certainly the UN isn't about to kick those Islamic states out, and I highly doubt the Islamic states honestly care what either the EU or Pangaea thinks about it. They probably don't even care about the US' opinion on the matter.

[martinuzz]

Just shows how unworkable and obsolete the UN really is

[mainiac]

Just shows how unworkable and obsolete the UN really is

A lot of things are unworkable and obsolete.  My toothbrush doesn't cure cancer.

[TempAcc]

Well, your toothbrush wasn't meant to cure cancer, but the UN was formed to keep nations in check, except all it does is send angry letters to people and get its nose in issues it isn't really meant to intrude in :v

[Loud Whispers]

UN Lmaooo

[mainiac]

Well, your toothbrush wasn't meant to cure cancer, but the UN was formed to keep nations in check, except all it does is send angry letters to people and get its nose in issues it isn't really meant to intrude in :v

What on earth makes you think the UN was tasked with telling nations what to do?  The complete lack of an army?  The extremely large number of veto points?  The proposenity towards voluntary agreements with escape clauses?  These things scream "keep them in check" to you?

[Zangi]

Is changing social issues within individual countries a UN thing?  Doesn't seem like it...

[Shadowlord]

Everyone knows the UN was really founded to take away your guns and your freedom (meaning guns) with black helicopters and stormtroopers. #notmyactualopinion

[Vilanat]

UN 

[TempAcc]

Well, your toothbrush wasn't meant to cure cancer, but the UN was formed to keep nations in check, except all it does is send angry letters to people and get its nose in issues it isn't really meant to intrude in :v

What on earth makes you think the UN was tasked with telling nations what to do?  The complete lack of an army?  The extremely large number of veto points?  The proposenity towards voluntary agreements with escape clauses?  These things scream "keep them in check" to you?

~In check~ generally means "try to convince people that world war 3 is generally a bad idea by having the world's most powerful nations as your permanent voting members which are able to veto and actualy do stuff about things". Never did I say this is what actualy happens (or even the actual intentions behind its creation), its just what is advertised as the general idea behind the formation of the UN.

What I mean is that, since it doesnt actualy do that, then it should be done away with.

I'm a huge UN skeptic myself :v

[mainiac]

try to convince people that world war 3 is generally a bad idea

[...]

What I mean is that, since it doesnt actualy do that, then it should be done away with.

Oh shit, WWIII started?  Nobody told me!  Damn it, I was walking around outside a lot today.  I must have tons of radiation by now.  Nice talking to you guys, I'm gonna go see if I can scrounge up some potassium iodide.  Do bananas work?

[Shadowlord]

No, you have to use a blender to make banana iodineshakes, obviously.

[TheBiggerFish]

PTW.

[Reelya]

I think the UN clearly can't do a lot of things. But that's a silly way to look at it.

Look at the amount of money GW Bush spent trying to get the UN to go along with his war plans. Clearly, if the UN was useless and did literally nothing, nobody would bother in the first place trying to affect how countries vote in the UN. But we know for a fact that this isn't the case, since Bush's War on Terror had to sidestep around the UN quite a lot.

If the UN never existed in the first place we'd see much more solidified regional blocs during the Cold War, who never talk to each other at all, and use military threats to solve many more debates.

Russia and China sometimes use their UN Veto. If they couldn't well then they'd have gunboat diplomacy as the fallback option. There might be some merit in that the Russian bad guys have a Veto card that doesn't involve threatening to invade your country. e.g. I think Russia might have vetoed UN sanctions against Angola or similar during the Cold War. If there was no UN, then instead of a vote/veto situation, you'd have had unilateral action on both sides, with blockades and counter-attacks on the blockades.

America uses their UN Veto quite a lot. What tactic would they use if they had no veto to prevent other countries acting in ways that are counter to US interests? Without the UN existing, it would be straight down to threats, sanctions and bombing.

If those UN mechanisms for diplomacy didn't exist, the fallback would be regional alliances and brinksmanship. e.g. there have been about 40 American vetoes of UN sanctions against Israel since the 1970s. Without a UN mechanism, well those countries would have just sanction Israel directly through an anti-Israel alliance, then America would have had to threaten and divide-and-conquer the countries sanctioning Israel. A much more dangerous situation.

So in other words, we can look at the actual mechanisms commonly used in the UN, rather than say "well they don't prevent war!" or some other abstract thing. How do we know they haven't prevented war? When was the last all-out war between major powers? It was before the UN existed. It's very hard to prove a negative.