International Organisations Class 12 Notes: UN Reform

These are revision notes for Class 12 Political Science Chapter 4, International Organisations, from the Contemporary World Politics textbook. They follow the 2026-27 session and the rationalised NCERT book.

The page is built for night-before revision: it covers why international organisations exist, the founding and structure of the UN, the Security Council reform debate, India’s claim to a permanent seat, the UN in a unipolar world, and the other key organisations — in tables, worked reasoning and a quick recap.

It is part of our Class 12 Political Science notes collection, which you can reach from the Class 12 notes hub. If you want the full chapter text with its cartoons and exercises, the official NCERT PDF of Chapter 4 (leps104) has it.

Chapter Map: From the UN’s Founding to a Unipolar World

The chapter builds one argument: states created the UN to manage conflict and cooperation, the UN’s structure froze the world of 1945, and when that world changed after the Cold War, demands for reform followed. The Security Council is the hardest case of reform, and India’s candidature shows why.

• Why international organisations exist — cooperation without a super-state.
• Founding of the UN — the 1941-45 timeline from the Atlantic Charter to UN Day.
• UN structure — six principal organs plus agencies, funds and programmes.
• Reform after the Cold War — structures and processes vs jurisdiction.
• India and UN reform — the claim, the objections, the conclusion.
• The UN in a unipolar world — what it can and cannot do against US dominance.
• Beyond the UN — IMF, World Bank, WTO, IAEA, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch.

Why International Organisations Matter

Most conflicts resolve without war. States disagree constantly, but most conflicts and differences are in fact settled peacefully — war is the exception, not the rule. An international organisation helps states talk through those disputes. Its role, however, is limited: an international organisation is not a super-state with authority over its members.

It is created by states, responds to states, and exists only because states agreed to create it (NCERT, p. 47).

Some problems need everyone at once. Disease and global warming cannot be solved by one country alone. Some diseases can only be eradicated if populations everywhere are vaccinated, and stopping global warming requires at least the major industrial powers to cooperate. The same logic of shared climate risk drives the chapter on Environment and Natural Resources in this book.

But recognising the need to cooperate is not the same as cooperating. Cooperation fails on four practical questions, and an international organisation helps answer each:

• Information: what is the best way to cooperate? The organisation produces ideas and information.
• Costs: who pays how much?
• Benefits: how are the gains divided fairly?
• Cheating: how do members trust that nobody breaks the deal?

Rules, mechanisms and a bureaucracy give members confidence that costs will be shared properly, benefits divided fairly, and agreements honoured. That is the institutional value of the UN.

The UN is often dismissed as a talking shop. The two cartoons in the chapter mock the UN’s slow response to the 2006 Lebanon crisis — Israel attacked Lebanon in June, a UN resolution came only in August, and Israeli forces withdrew only in October. Defenders of the UN answer differently.

The UN’s second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, put it this way: “The United Nations was not created to take humanity to heaven, but to save it from hell.” The former UN official Shashi Tharoor made the same point: endless speeches at the General Assembly are still better than war.

The UN is imperfect, but it is the best mechanism the world has for peaceful dialogue.

Founding of the UN: 1941-1945 Timeline

The UN was the second attempt at a world body. The League of Nations was created after the First World War to prevent conflict, but it could not stop the Second World War (1939-45), in which far more people died and were wounded. The UN was founded as the League’s successor in 1945, immediately after the war (NCERT, p. 48).

Its objective was to prevent international conflict and facilitate cooperation among states — stopping conflicts from escalating into war and, since conflict often grew from lack of development, bringing countries together for social and economic development.

UN Structure: The Principal Organs and the Wider UN Family

Organisationally the UN is not a single body. Six principal organs are named in the Charter, and around them sits a wider family of agencies, funds, programmes and commissions (NCERT, p. 49). The organs differ sharply in who belongs, how they vote, and whether their decisions bind anyone.

The wider UN family

Around the principal organs sit dozens of bodies (NCERT, p. 49). Know the groups, not every name:

• Specialised agencies (non-subsidiary): ILO, FAO, UNESCO, WHO, World Bank Group, IMF, IMO, WMO, ITU.
• Programmes and funds: UNCTAD, UNEP, UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNHCR, WFP, UNWRA, UN-Habitat.
• Related organisations: IAEA (reports to both the Security Council and the General Assembly) and OPCW.
• Commissions: functional (Human Rights, Narcotic Drugs, Sustainable Development, Status of Women) and regional (economic commissions for Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean; economic and social commissions for Asia and the Pacific, and Western Asia).
• Other entities: OHCHR, UN University, UNAIDS; also peacekeeping operations, the Military Staff Committee and international criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Memory devices

Six principal organs: the first letters of “Great Students Enjoy Interesting Study Topics” give General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, Secretariat, Trusteeship Council. The Trust part is the easiest to forget — it was suspended in 1994.

Five permanent members: they are the victors of the Second World War, and they sit in alphabetical order — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States. Either fact saves you from naming the wrong five.

General Assembly vs Security Council at a glance

UN Secretaries General: Nine Names You Can Revise Fast

The Secretary-General is the UN’s most visible public figure and its representative head. The current holder, António Guterres, is the ninth; he took office on 1 January 2017, after serving as Portugal’s Prime Minister (1995-2002) and as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2005-2015) (NCERT, p. 50). The full list compresses into one table (NCERT, p. 51):

Why the UN Needed Reform After the Cold War

The UN’s organisation and functioning reflected the realities of world politics after the Second World War. After the Cold War, those realities changed. Seven changes matter (NCERT, p. 52):

• The Soviet Union collapsed.
• The US became the strongest power.
• Russia — the Soviet Union’s successor — developed a much more cooperative relationship with the US.
• China emerged fast as a great power and India grew rapidly.
• Asian economies grew at an unprecedented rate.
• Many new countries joined the UN as they became independent (from the Soviet Union or former communist states in eastern Europe).
• A new set of challenges appeared: genocide, civil war, ethnic conflict, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, environmental degradation and epidemics.

By 1989, the question was whether the UN was doing enough and whether it was equipped for what was required. From this pressure came the demand for two kinds of reform (NCERT, p. 50-51): reform of the organisation’s structures and processes, and a review of the jurisdiction — the issues that fall within the organisation’s mandate.

Almost everyone agrees both are necessary; nobody agrees on what is to be done, how, and when.

Security Council Reform: Membership, Criteria and the Veto

The Security Council debate is the biggest part of the structures-and-processes reform.

The three complaints of 1992

In 1992 the General Assembly adopted a resolution reflecting three complaints (NCERT, p. 52):

• The Security Council no longer represents contemporary political realities.
• Its decisions reflect only Western values and interests and are dominated by a few powers.
• It lacks equitable representation.

Six proposed criteria for new members

Since then, several criteria have been proposed for admitting new permanent and non-permanent members (NCERT, p. 53). A new member should be:

1. A major economic power.
2. A major military power.
3. A substantial contributor to the UN budget.
4. A big nation in terms of population.
5. A nation that respects democracy and human rights.
6. A country that would make the Council more representative of the world’s diversity — geographically, by economic system and by culture.

Each criterion sounds valid, and each produces a different list of candidates. Give six groups one criterion each — as the textbook’s classroom exercise does — and every group returns a different set of names: population gives one list, budget gives another, democracy a third. This is why reform stalls.

The veto

The Council proceeds by voting, and every member has one vote. But a permanent member can vote negatively, so that even if all the other fourteen members vote yes, that one negative vote stalls the decision. This negative vote is the veto (NCERT, p. 55).

Only permanent members hold it — non-permanent members serve two-year terms, cannot be re-elected immediately, are elected to represent all continents, and have no veto.

There is a move to abolish or modify the veto, but two realities block it: the permanent members are unlikely to agree, and the world may not be ready for such a radical step.

The original argument for the veto was that without it the great powers might lose interest in the UN, act outside it, and leave the body ineffective — a danger recognised back in 1945 (NCERT, p. 55).

The 1965 expansion

Membership of the Council was expanded from 11 to 15 in 1965 — but the number of permanent members never changed. Since then the size of the Council has remained stationary (NCERT, p. 57).

The 2005 World Summit decisions

In September 2005, heads of member states met to mark the UN’s sixtieth anniversary and review the situation. The leaders agreed to seven steps (NCERT, p. 55):

Each of these is itself contentious: which conflicts should the Peacebuilding Commission enter, what counts as a human rights violation, and how can a definition of terrorism be agreed — the chapter lists these as open questions (NCERT, p. 56).

India and the Security Council: The Claim and the Objections

India supports restructuring the UN, and the same chapter lists why — and why others resist it (NCERT, p. 57-58). Learn both sides.

The textbook’s conclusion is blunt (NCERT, p. 58): given these concerns, it may not be very easy for India or anyone else to become a permanent member of the UN in the near future. The Pakistan dimension of this rivalry is developed in the Contemporary South Asia chapter of this book — our notes on it give the regional background.

The UN in a Unipolar World: Can It Check the US?

One hope behind reform was that a changed UN could cope better with a unipolar world — one in which the US was the most powerful country without serious rivals. Can the UN balance US dominance? The chapter’s answer is two-sided.

Why US power is hard to check (NCERT, p. 59)

• With the Soviet Union gone, the US is the only superpower; its military and economic power let it ignore the UN or any other international organisation.
• As the single largest budget contributor, the US has unmatched financial power inside the UN.
• The UN is physically located on US territory, giving Washington extra sources of influence.
• Many US nationals serve in the UN bureaucracy.
• The US veto can stop any move it finds annoying or damaging.
• These powers give Washington a considerable say in the choice of the Secretary-General.

The US can and does use this power to “split” the rest of the world and reduce opposition to its policies. So the UN is not a great balance against the US.

Why the UN still matters in a unipolar world (NCERT, p. 59-60)

• It brings the US and the rest of the world into discussion over various issues. Even US leaders, despite frequent criticism, see the UN as serving a purpose in bringing over 190 nations together on conflict and development.
• It provides an arena in which other states can modify US attitudes and policies — a space where arguments are heard and compromises and concessions are shaped.
• Interdependence makes the UN more important, not less. With more than seven billion people and growing connections between societies, the UN’s relevance grows as technology increases planetary interdependence.

The chapter’s verdict: the UN is an imperfect body, but without it the world would be worse off.

Beyond the UN: IMF, World Bank, WTO, IAEA and the Human Rights NGOs

These six organisations appear often in revision. One line per organisation, with the fact that sticks.

Definitions You Must Be Able to Reproduce

These are the chapter’s working terms, in words you can write from memory.

Key Numbers and Voting Rules: The Chapter’s Formulas

This chapter has no algebraic formulas — the “formulas” are the exact numbers and voting rules you must memorise.

Worked Example: Testing a Six-Seat Expansion of the Security Council

Method: evaluate any Security Council reform proposal by applying the chapter’s six criteria, then stress-testing it against the objections other states raise. This is a practice scenario — the numbers are invented, not from the textbook.

1. State today’s composition. The Security Council has 15 members: five permanent (China, France, Russia, UK, US) and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms.
2. Define the proposal. Imagine a reform adding six permanent seats, taking the Council from 15 to 21 members. The ten non-permanent seats are assumed to stay, so the Council now has 11 permanent + 10 non-permanent members.
3. Apply the six criteria to India. Economic power — India’s economy is emerging, but is it at the level of the current five? Military power — India is a major military power. Budget contribution — India contributes 0.8% of the UN regular budget (2019), far below the majors. Population — about one-fifth of humanity, the strongest criterion. Democracy and human rights — the world’s largest democracy. Diversity — India would make the Council more representative by geography, economic system and culture. So India passes some criteria strongly (population, democracy) and others weakly (budget contribution).
4. Weigh the objections. Pakistan’s reluctance; concerns about India’s nuclear weapons; the risk that India-Pakistan friction paralyses India as a member; and the cascade — if India enters, Brazil, Germany, Japan and perhaps South Africa demand entry too, while Africa and South America insist on representation since they hold no permanent seat at present.
5. Conclude. The reform deadlocks because each criterion produces a different list of candidates — there is no single “obvious” sixth member that all states accept. The veto makes it worse: any one of the current five permanent members can stall the entire change.

This is exactly why the chapter ends where it does: agreement on the need for reform is universal; agreement on the details is not.

Worked Example: Matching a World Problem to the Right Organisation

Method: read the problem, identify the area of public policy it touches (health, finance, development, nuclear safety, human rights), and match it to the organisation whose mandate covers that area. Never guess by name — go by the mandate.

Common Mistakes Students Make in This Chapter

Exam Notes: How to Build a Complete Answer

Match your answer’s structure to the command word in the question. This chapter’s exercises use four main commands:

Two chapter-specific pointers for building content:

• An answer on India’s candidature should lean on five facts: population (about one-fifth of humanity), the world’s largest democracy, a long peacekeeping record, economic emergence, and regular financial contributions.
• An answer on the UN being indispensable should use peaceful resolution of conflict, cooperation on shared problems, and the UN’s dialogue role in a unipolar world.

For the statement that reforming the UN means restructuring the Security Council, note the counter-evidence: the 2005 summit’s jurisdiction reforms — the Peacebuilding Commission, Human Rights Council, MDGs and Democracy Fund — show that reform is broader than the Council alone.

Revision Recap: The Chapter in Two Minutes

Before the exam, check that you can:

• define the veto and explain that one negative vote stalls a decision;
• name the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK, US);
• state the two kinds of UN reform;
• give two grounds for India’s permanent seat and one objection;
• name one specialised agency (WHO, ILO, FAO, UNESCO, IMF or World Bank) and one NGO (Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch).

For the complete set of chapter notes across classes and subjects, start from the CBSE notes index.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between the IMF and the World Bank?

The IMF oversees the international financial system — its institutions and regulations — while the World Bank gives loans and grants to developing countries for development projects such as irrigation, roads, health and education. The IMF steps in when a country’s finances are in trouble; the World Bank funds long-term development.

Why is the veto limited to the five permanent members?

Because the five were the most powerful states immediately after the Second World War — they constituted the victors — and the Charter gave them a privileged position to maintain post-war stability (NCERT, p. 55). The argument against abolition is that without the veto the great powers might lose interest in the UN, act outside it, and leave the body ineffective.

What reforms did the 2005 UN summit agree on?

Seven steps: creation of a Peacebuilding Commission, acceptance of the international community’s responsibility when governments fail to protect citizens from atrocities, establishment of a Human Rights Council, agreement on the Millennium Development Goals, condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, creation of a Democracy Fund, and an agreement to wind up the Trusteeship Council (NCERT, p. 55).

Why does India want a permanent seat in the Security Council?

India argues the Council’s composition has stayed static while the General Assembly expanded, harming its representative character. India also claims its own qualifications: the world’s largest democracy, roughly one-fifth of humanity, a long peacekeeping record, economic emergence and regular financial contributions (NCERT, p. 57).

Is the UN a world government or a super state?

No. An international organisation is not a super-state with authority over its members — it is created by states and responds to states (NCERT, p. 47). It has no power to command member states; it helps them resolve problems peacefully and cooperate on shared challenges.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 Political Science textbook, chapter International Organisations.