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VOL. 12, ISSUE 4 (2025)
The united nations and challenges of sustaining peace in the middle east: A perspective
Authors
Adekunle Saheed Ajisebiyawo, Albert Uyiekpen Usuanlele
Abstract
The United Nations was established in 1945 to
maintain and sustain world peace by working to avert wars and ensure security
of the sovereignties of the independent member-states. Following the collapse
of the seemingly challenged organisation before it, the League of Nations, the
United Nations has worked since establishment to settle international conflicts
and foster collaboration, especially through its peacekeeping and conflict
resolution initiatives. Due to this function, the organisation has been at the
epicentre of several conflicts, including some of the most complicated and
enduring ones in the Middle East. This paper undertook a review of the difficulties
the United Nations is faced with in maintaining world peace, with a particular
emphasis on the intricate Middle East crises and their wider ramifications. The
paper adopted realist theory as popularised by scholars like Hans Morgenthau as
its theoretical framework through which it emphasised the importance of
national interest and respective state capacities which serve to limit the
cooperative and interdependence initiatives that organizations like the United
Nations stand for. It also adopted analytical and descriptive approaches
through use of data from secondary source including scholarly articles, policy
papers, reports and period. The data sought were targeted at historical
evaluation of the Middle East crises and the sources of limitation to the United
Nations’ effort at sustaining peace in the region. In addition to UN’s
crippling peacekeeping efforts, this paper highlighted the shortcomings of the
existing peacekeeping structures in relation to various conflicts in the
Middle-East including the Israeli-Palestine Conflict, Israeli-Yemen crisis,
Israeli-Lebanon Crisis, Israeli-Iranian hostility as well as the Syrian civil
war posed potent threat to the world peace and are limiting the United
Nations’s efficacy in sustaining world order. This paper found that power
struggles, political instability, sectarian conflicts and entrenched
interference from outside of the Middle East have served as constraints to
United nations’ stance on peace building and stability in the region. The paper
therefore suggested boosting member-state cooperation, increasing funding for
the United Nations’ peace keeping infrastructure by member-states and
instituting attendant reforms towards strengthening enforcement capacity of the
United Nations, by democratising the Security Council or scrapping the veto
status of a selected few member-states.
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Pages:13-22
How to cite this article:
Adekunle Saheed Ajisebiyawo, Albert Uyiekpen Usuanlele "The united nations and challenges of sustaining peace in the middle east: A perspective". International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development, Vol 12, Issue 4, 2025, Pages 13-22
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