Difference between revisions of "UN Timeline"

Revision as of 16:14, 27 February 2006

The United Nations works from a body of International Law. The UN members vote to accept proposals into resolutions, and push for repeals of existing resolutions. Here is the current body of law as accepted by the United Nations.

UN Timeline

The official chronology of the United Nations only makes note of the passage of resolutions. There is no official UN record of failed resolutions, nor of proposals that were removed from the queue prior to reaching the UN floor. Several UN resolutions that did pass have also been purposefully deleted from the official record of adopted UN resolutions. Typically, deleted resolutions or proposals violated the Enodian UN rules or game mechanics.

The following chronology has been assembled by meticulous study of forum topics past and the recollections of UN members and observers. Since game time tends to be somewhat fluid, this list has been indexed into annual quarters. The numbers express the 'official' chronology, with other important events inserted where appropriate.

All of 2002 and much of 2003 (through early September) is no longer available in the forums, so your assistance is especially welcome in upgrading that portion of the Timeline. Additionally, note that official forum topics did not exist until 2004, so earlier resolutions often had many topics to discuss them.

Legend to Colours

2002

2002 Fourth Quarter

The United Nations was formed on Nov 13 2002 by Maxtopia. In order to test the new procedures for voting on UN resolutions, a test resolution, Fight the Axis of Evil, was proposed and voted upon by three nations prior to the official starting date of the UN. This resolution is considered the first United Nations resolution. It took over a month before the next (and only other 2002) resolution reached the UN floor. There were no formal guidelines for resolution submission nor formats at this time.

2003

2003 First Quarter

The new year opened with a torrent of new ideas to help found the basis of the new UN, which only had two resolutions so far. Much potential was put forward and approved, but many of the initiatives proposed in these early days had to be removed due to technical reasons following the move to Jolt later in the year.

2003 Second Quarter

The second quarter of 2003 saw one resolution (Required Basic Healthcare) have a replacement made for it whilst it was still in effect. With an effectively obselete resolution still being legally enforced, it would probably be safe to conclude it was around this time when people were thinking of ways to remove it; a line of thought that could have been the brainchild behind the introduction of repeals.

2003 Third Quarter

Most notably in the Third Quarter of 2003 is the first emergence of official UN Debates over resolutions. Also, the first resolution to pass in the 90-percentile occurred in this period -- Outlaw Pedophilia.

2003 Fourth Quarter

2003 closed around the controversy of two joke resolutions. Though the first Hippo resolution was deleted for being misclassified, after some moderator debate the second resolution was allowed to reach the UN floor, where it failed by one of the largest margins of any resolution. The outrage on the part of many nations resulted in a stronger moderator position forbidding joke resolutions.

2004

2004 First Quarter

The first two queued proposals of the 2004 year concentrated on the sanctity of internet surfing. As many considered these to be simply more joke proposals such as HIPPOS ARE BIG, both the Internet Advertising Pop-ups and the Freedom From SPAM Act failed to become resolutions. As another replacement-type resolution came to pass with the "Definition of 'Fair Trial'", it was no surprise that by the end of the year, a new type of resolution was to be implemented - repeals.

2004 Second Quarter

During this time period, UN discussions were characterized by double posts due to issues with the old NationStates server. Problems with the server made it difficult to conduct business on the old server, but a number of the discussions were transfered over to Jolt, thus providing records of many of the discussions from this time. A number of UN resolutions were voted down, while Female Genital Mutilation passed by a record majority of 92%.

2004 Third Quarter

The NationStates United Nations under went some significant changes in the third quarter of 2004. First, the server that was used to host the forum debates for NationStates was switched to Jolt. The transition took several weeks, during which time, several UN resolutions reached the UN floor for voting at a time when there was no centeralized debate location. Second, the UN Secretariat went through the old adopted resolutions and deleted a number of early resolutions because they violated UN rules. Proposals submitted to the UN were now subject to the high standards left in the Enodian Protocols, meaning more illegal proposals were deleted before they had the chance to reach quorum while in the proposal queue. Though some proposals still reached quorum, the decide to remove the Olympic Games proposal after it had reached the resolution queue, reinforced the idea that a proposal is only a resolution once it actually was put before the UN for a vote.

2004 Fourth Quarter

Towards the end of the third quarter of 2004, the UN Secretariat enacted changes to the UN procedures (i.e. the moderators changed the game) to allow repeals. Though many nations attempted to repeal just about every existing resolution, it wasn't until late October that a proposed repeal achieved quorum and reached the UN Floor. The official United Nations repeal was a motion to remove the Fight the Axis of Evil resolution from the books, and this motion was carried by a supermajority. Two months later the next repeal that reached the UN Floor failed. The vast majority of the 2004 repeals were justified on the opinion that the resolutions they seeked to repeal were flawed, but many UN members disagreed with this sort of reasoning thus accounting for the lack of success of many of the proposed repeals of this time.

When the NSWiki project was started during this time period, many governments and NGOs started using NSWiki to document UN resolutions, thus increasing the continuity in UN resolutions. It was also during this time that references to prior adopted resolutions started appearing in the preambles of proposed resolutions. The International Red Cross was also revisited in two Moral Decency resolutions, starting a renewed international focus on humanitarian aid and protecting populations against natural disasters and epidemics. Also, another important body was introduced by the Resolution #83: the Pretenama Panel against the genocides.

2005

2005 First Quarter

Although repeals were first established in 2004, it was in this quarter that nations began to organize into coalitions and make use of the repeal function to replace resolutions with new revised and improved versions of the resolutions. The repeal debates began to shift away from "this resolution should be removed" campaigns to a more successful "there is an effort underway to replace the text of this resolution". The Global Library and Legalize Prostitution are two examples of resolutions that were repealed and then quickly replaced by resolutions that had stronger support. The Tsunami Warning System resolution is also notable in that it was a NationStates response to the real-life Boxing Day Tsunami and is considered a good example of how to incorporate ideas from the real world in a NationStates context.

2005 Second Quarter

The 100th resolution was adopted by the NationStates UN by a supermajority. The UN Secretariat removed one proposal that had reached quorum, but after a revision that proposal managed to reach the UN floor and was adopted. It was during this quarter that the Enodian Protocols were replaced by a new set of rules drafted by the Most Glorious Hack. Some of the changes included limitations on the number of authors that could be listed in a resolution and the number of committees established by a resolution.

2005 Third Quarter

The most significant UN resolution of the 3rd quarter of 2005 was the United Nations Security Act, because as a result of its passage all future Global Disarmament resolutions now must include language stating that any weapon being restricted is not necessary to national defense. This quarter was marked by a steady decline in UN members and also in a decrease in the level of support for UN resolutions.

2005 Fourth Quarter

The first resolution passed in the Fourth Quarter of 2005 was the repeal, proposed by Jey, of the poorly written resolution "DVD Region Removal". Repeal "DVD Region Removal" was passed with the greatest margin of any repeal. Also notable, in this period a proposal - Forced Banishment Ban - failed by the record margin of 28%, surpassing the previous record of 31% by TO PROTECT (2003 First Quarter).

2006

2006 First Quarter

The first resolution passed in 2006 was the proposal Artistic Freedom, proposed by Jey, which extended the freedom of expression to artists; it was passed by a supermajority. 2006 also saw the trend, beginning at the end of 2005, of a large number of repeals reaching quorum and being passed, and was witness to the first ever proposal of the "Recreational Drug Use" category to reach quorum -- Recreational Drug Legalization, also proposed by Jey.

Additional Material

• The UN Forum
• United Nations Association UN Resolution Chronology pdf
• The Vademecum for the Perfect UN ambassador (pdf) by Freedonian UN Affairs Office

Last revision: August 2005