Middle East conflict

The conflict in the Middle East has occupied the United Nations since its early years and is an item on the agenda drawing continued attention. In response to hostilities that have broken out at various times, the United Nations has sent impartial observers or peace-keeping forces to the region and has formulated principles for solving the underlying political problems.

UN and peacekeeping operations

In 1948, the first UN peacekeeping mission was deployed to the Middle East to supervise the truce imposed by the Security Council to end the first Arab-Israeli war, and during the Suez Crisis, in 1956, the UN created its first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I). At present, there are three peacekeeping operations in the region:

1. UNTSO (Middle East)
2. UNIFIL (Lebanon)
3. UNDOF (Golan)

Security Council and Middle East

The United Nations is engaged in identifying lasting solutions to bring about a permanent peace in the Middle East. The Security Council has set the basic principles for a negotiated peaceful settlement by two resolutions: 242 (1967) och 338 (1973). The Council has addressed the situation in the Middle East and the Palestinian question on many occasions.

In order to heighten international awareness of the question of Palestine and promote international support for and assistance to the Palestinian people, the General Assembly has established the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

UN humanitarian assistance

A number of UN bodies, funds and programs are involved in humanitarian assistance in the region. A UNSCO - the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process has been established to provide a focal point within the United Nations system vis-à-vis the parties to the peace process, regional and international actors, and international and multilateral institutions.

UN Body	Full name	More information in DagDok
UNRWA	UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees	UNRWA
UNDP	United Nations Development Programme	UNDP
The World Bank	World Bank Group	World Bank Group
ESCWA	Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia	ESCWA
UN-HABITAT	UN Centre for Human Settlements	UN-HABITAT
OCHA	Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs	OCHA

• Question of Palestine.
  • UNISPAL, full text reports and UN Resolutions concerning the Question of Palestine as well as background information.
• Mideast Roadmap. Information about the so called Roadmap for Peace in the Middle East initiated by the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union.
• UN News. News about the developments in the Middle East.
• Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Middle East Peace Process serves as a web portal to UN activities in the Middle East.
• UNRIC Library Backgrounders with relevant URLs within the UN system, such as UN documents, treaties, declarations, Secretary-General reports, a selection of speeches and statements by UN officials, articles in UN journals, etc.
  • Middle East
  • Gaza
  • Syria

• UN Charter in Swedish | in English
• UN System Chart
• Yearbook of the United Nations
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
• Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
• Statue of the International Court of Justice

• United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
• UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
• ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
• Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
• UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
• Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
  • a list of all documents
  • a comprehensive subject index
  • an index to speeches
  • a voting chart of resolutions
• United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.