File talk:UN Institutions.svg

Inaccuracies[edit]

This image and the French one on which it's based are pretty inaccurate. For example:

The International Criminal Court is not a UN institution. Although it cooperates with the UN, it's entirely independent.
WTO normally refers to the World Trade Organization, which is not a part of the UN system. The World Tourism Organization is a UN agency, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to include it here and, in any case, it shouldn't be abbreviated as WTO.
The UNDP, UNHCR and UNEP are programmes, not UN organs. (The UN has six organs: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat, ECOSOC, the International Court of Justice and the (defunct) Trusteeship Council.)
The diagram doesn't really reflect the relationships between the various institutions. (For example, why is the WHO linked to the General Assembly but not to ECOSOC, to which it reports?)
It's very simplistic and misleading to say the Security Council "decides", the GA "recommends" and the Secretary-General "implements". In fact, the General Assembly makes some pretty important decisions and both the Security Council and the Secretary-General frequently make recommendations.

For more information, see United Nations System. Regards, Polemarchus (talk) 02:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, I just translated it from the French version and didn't really check for accuracy, which of course I should have. Do you know of a more accurate depiction of the UN's structure? --Joowwww (talk) 12:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. I did a quick web search last week to see if I could find a better alternative but I drew a blank. The only diagram I could find was this, which I don't really think is helpful. To be honest, I think the UN system's a bit too complicated for a simple diagram to do it justice. Polemarchus (talk) 12:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]