How to narrow the topic "should the United Nation be reformed?"?

Question

I pick a topic for my English speech "Should the United Nation be Reformed", yet i must narrow it to two clear side.
So far, I know there is one side that demand for reforms, but the other side?

Answer 1

There are three points of view

1. Keep it as is, a useless body that produces nothing but talks about a lot.

2. Try and get it to do something besides undermine the US

3. Throw them out of NYC and pull the US out of it.

Answer 2

There are two topics that should be easy to write about:

1) Making the UN follow strict accounting guidelines regarding dispensing aid money. We always hear that millions were send to some country, and there was no visible improvement. When someone tries to account for the money, they find the task impossible, because the accounting guidelines are so lax. No one can follow the paper trail. Contracts are awarded, but no one ever follows up to see if the goods were delivered. Sometimes, money is deposited in an account, and simply disappears.

The problem is so bad that philantropists like Bill Gates don't work with the UN to give charity. He knows most will be wasted.

2) A lot of the corruption in the UN is never exposed because the reporters assigned to cover the UN do not want to lose their plum assignments. Therefore, they normally give glowing reports about almost everything.

Therefore, we should totally rework how the press investigates and reports daily on UN activities. Perhaps correspondents should be given short assignments, so they will not be encouraged to cover up misdeeds in order to stay put at the UN. The Oil For Food Scandal is a prime example. None of the UN reporters revealed what was going on. Perhaps most did not know, but it was not a perfectly guarded secret. The UN Security Council members of France, Germany, and Russia were all being bribed to keep voting "NO" on military intervention in Iraq, even though they had passed seventeen sternly-worded resolutions against Iraq, each citing military action if the resolution is not respected. France especially was to blame, because they loved getting Billion dollar weapons contracts from Hussein's government.

You could say we were forced to honor the UN's commitment alone because these three countries were being bought off by Saddam. France and the others have never even apologized, even though this should be one of the biggest scandals in history. It shows the UN, as it is operating today, is a farce.

Answer 3

the other side could be narrowed down to leaving the way it is now. If you need something even more specific (my speech teacher would consider this way too broad a topic as you have it now) you could narrow it down to a specifit UN depratment of program (such as the security council, general assembly, oil for food, world health orginzation, UNESCO, ect...) and then take a pro/con position on this.

For example:

with the Security Council, there is a huge push for the permenent member seats to be reassigned. The permenent Members of the UN reflected the world superpowers fighting with the allies at the end of World War 2, mainly the US, UK, France, China, and Russia (USSR at the time). Since the 1940's the world has changed much and many countries such as India, Japan, Germany and others are pushing for getting their own permanent seats as opposed to only rotating through the temporary ones. Also at the time Africa, Asia, and South America were all still mainly colonies of European countries and many of them want to be represented as a result there has also been a call for seats to be assigned to regions which will rotate through that respective seat (1 for Africa, 1 for the Middle east, 1 for Asia, and 1 for South America).

On the other hand the countries who currently have perment seats would rather not change the status quo and keep their seats. Part of the reason is that for a resolution to pass, it must be approved by the UN general assembly and Uniamously by the Permenent members of the Security Council (yes, all 5 perment members hold veto power and it only takes 1 of their vetos to defeat something).

Hope this helps, PM me if you need any thing else.

Answer 4

Try talking about getting rid of it. It is a much more cut and dry debate. You could put it in terms of its accomplishments verses its shortcomings and the difficulties with reform. Other issues like why does France have a permanent seat on the security council but not India and the difficulties of reform rather than abolishing it could serve as examples. France will never give that position up but India deserves a seat at the table.

Good luck.

Answer 5

Reform? No! Abolish...YES!

Answer 6

We do evert 4 years

Answer 7

the other side demands abolishment....

or the status quo.