法律英语词汇“United Nations”的翻译、意思、用法、释义-法律词典

United Nations
(UN) An international organization, based in New York and Geneva, set up by the United Nations Charter in 1945 to replace the League of Nations. The main aims of the UN are:

• to maintain international peace and security and to bring about settlement of international disputes by peaceful means;

• to develop friendly relations among nations;

• to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic or cultural nature and in promoting respect for human rights.

The Charter sets out certain fundamental principles, which include the undertaking to refrain from using or threatening force against the territory or political independence of any state.

The Charter established six principal organs, of which the most important are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and the International Court of Justice. The General Assembly is the debating forum of the UN, consisting of all the member states; it can pass resolutions, but these are not legally binding upon member states. The Security Council has five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA), and ten temporary members elected for two-year periods. Its resolutions are binding on member states, but each permanent member has the right to veto a resolution. It is empowered, under certain conditions, to make recommendations and take measures to maintain the peace, including the establishment of peacekeeping military forces in sensitive areas.

The Secretariat serves as the permanent liaison between the main organs of the United Nations and between these organs and such specialized agencies as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It prepares every session of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council and is headed by the UN Secretary General, the chief administrative officer of the UN.

The United Nations has lost credibility as an international legal organization because it has often been divided upon issues on the basis of political (rather than legal) factors or has passed resolutions of a political nature. Nevertheless it remains important as the only world organization (almost all independent states are members of the UN) and as a forum for discussion and development of international law.

The promotion of human rights is a core purpose of the United Nations and, in 1948, the UN drafted the first truly modern human-rights treaty—the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, the UN has drafted several more specific treaties that have been signed and ratified by hundreds of countries around the world, requiring those states to comply with the rights that they contain. Those treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (similar to but slightly wider in scope than the European Convention on Human Rights); treaties on social, economic, and cultural rights; treaties to outlaw discrimination against women, ethnic minorities, and disabled people; the Children’s Rights Convention; and the Convention Against Torture.

These treaties use two main methods to promote compliance. The first requires the state to report in writing to the UN on its compliance with the treaty every few years. The relevant UN committee then holds a public hearing at which it questions the government’s representatives and makes recommendations to the state suggesting how its compliance could be improved. Campaign bodies submit alternative reports to these committees, which can often be influential. The UK is subject to these periodic reviews in relation to all of the above treaties. Secondly, the committees set up by these treaties also deal with individual complaints and make decisions about whether the individual’s rights under the treaty have been violated (a little like the procedure in the European Court of Human Rights). The UK has ratified this optional procedure in relation to discrimination based on gender and on disability.

The rights in these treaties and the decisions from these committees, together with their concluding observations and their published “General Comments”, are used by UK national courts and the European Court of Human Rights as guidance on how the specific human-rights concepts should be interpreted; see, for instance, R (on the application of SG) and Others v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] UKSC 16, which took significant account of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

The Convention Against Torture also has a special optional provision requiring states that sign up to it to establish independent bodies to inspect and monitor all places of detention. The UK is a signatory, and its National Preventive Mechanism coordinates the work of the 21 monitors and inspectors.

A relatively new UN process, the Universal Periodic Review, requires states to submit to a wider review of their compliance with all human-rights treaties every few years. This again requires a submission from the government, a summary by the UN of the state’s overall human-rights record, submissions by campaign groups, and a public hearing with concluding comments by representatives from other states.

The UN also has a Human Rights Council, a Human Rights Commissioner, and several ‘Special Rapporteurs’ on subjects such as torture and freedom of expression who visit states and report on their findings.