Notes for World History
DIFFERENCE OF UNITED NATIONS FROM THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The UN has been more successful than the League which is evident from the following:
- UN spends much more time and resources on economic and social matters and its scope is much wider than that of the League.
- UN is committed to safeguarding individual human rights, which the League did not get involved in.
- Changes in the procedures of the Generally Assembly and the Security Council and the increased power and prestige of the Secretary-General, have enabled the UN to take more decisive action than the League.
- The UN is a much wider membership and is therefore more of a genuine world organization than the League. Both the USA and the USSR were founder-members of the UN, whereas the USA never joined the League.
However, UN has a weakness that any one of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council can use its power of veto to prevent decisive action being taken. Further, like the League, the UN has no permanent army of its own and has to use forces belonging to its member states.
