Talk:United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377

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Should mention relationship to Korean war... AnonMoos 03:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Move to Uniting for Peace

I strongly favour moving this article back to Uniting for Peace which is its actual title in the document and how it's always referred to. Resolution 377 is nothing more than an index code which means nothing to most people. The numbers act as a default when a good title has not been found, but they shouldn't be primary when there's a much better alternative.Goatchurch 09:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Its true that the resolution is well known as Uniting for Peace, but if we use that as the article name, there will be no chance of future standardization for UN resolution article names. Current article naming inconsistencies can be easily seen on United Nations General Assembly resolution. Will put it to the UN WikiProject that there needs to be naming standards (I am assuming that there aren't already). A separate point is that the correct number of this resolution is in fact "377 A", not "377" (this is a confusion that appears at even highest levels of UN analysis, and so is best avoided). This fact can be confirmed by opening either of the existing links pointing to a scanned image of the resolution, and reading its own Annex, where its correct number is given several times. This is also quite important as 377 A itself has sections A, B, C, D and E within it, meaning Section A cannot be referred to correctly (e.g. 377 Sec. A, Sec. A) unless the resolution is correctly named "377 A". The (V) should be discarded, as this simply represents the UNGA regular session in which the resolution was adopted; a practice that has since been discontinued. Of course, resolution numbers are sequential across all sessions, so the (V) is in no way necessary to ensure uniqueness. Likewise, this leads to problems with placement - 377 (V) A / 377 A (V) - which are very common. --ElPax (talk) 05:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I still don't buy this argument. Whenever a General Assembly resolution is passed it has an official title, which is the one people use when they are not talking to a filing system and want their audience to know what they're talking about. The Security Council tends to refer to its code numbers, but the General Assembly definitely do not. I don't think choosing a name on the basis that it's easier for a computer is a way to justify it. There are systems for declaring the numbers through an infobox that is picked up by DBpedia, or using a category reference like [[Category:Numbered General Assembly Resoultions|377]]. There are many ways to get computability without burdening the title of the article with something that's meaningless and not in common use.Goatchurch (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Korean War and subsequent adoption of 377 A in November

Although this resolution was indeed "initiated by the United States in 1950 as a means of circumventing possible Soviet vetoes", it was actually of no (practical) importance during the Korean War; something that virtually every scholarly source is mistaken on (see the ICISS 'Responsibility to Protect' for example: R2P).

The first UNGA 'emergency special session' was called (upon the basis of 377 A) in 1956, as a result of the Suez Canal crisis (see ESSs). Likewise, "North Korean ground forces crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea ... on 25 June 1950" (Korean War) - 4 months prior to the adoption of 377 A, on 3 November 1950. Although it is true that the Korean War was the catalyst for the adoption of 377 A, at the behest of the US, UK and France – at a time when they controlled the General Assembly – it was in fact Security Council resolutions 83 (27 June 1950) and 84 (7 July 1950) that established the UN mandate for a Korean force (several months before the adoption of 377 A by the Assembly). The USSR was boycotting the SC at the time (although not for long afterwards), and this was taken to mean that they had technically abstained on the voting on those resolutions, meaning no possible Soviet veto at that moment.

Is everybody happy for me to re-write history? --ElPax (talk) 09:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] UN Style Guide: resolution or Resolution? Capitalization generally? endash or emdash?

Main article: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_United_Nations#UN_Style_Guide:_resolution_or_Resolution.3F

1) resolution or Resolution?

See link above first.

WikiStyle:

  • "There are differences between the major varieties of English in the use of capitals (uppercase letters). Where this is an issue, the rules of the cultural and linguistic context apply". It seems that the UN (/UNU?) style guide (see Main link) provides the appropriate "linguistic context" in articles on the UN; especially those that quote from verbatim records, which should obviously be copied as precisely as possible (this means UK/international English), meaning consistency dictates the use of the same style throughout the article, where possible.

2) Capitalization generally?

WikiStyle:

  • "The first letter of the first word, letters in acronyms, and the first letter of proper nouns are capitalized; all other letters are in lower case... the guidance in Article titles ... applies to section headings". This is why I used "First Emergency Special Session" as the subheading (there is little doubt that these 4 words form a proper noun, referring to a specific ESS on a specific, fixed topic), even though it appears as "first emergency special session" in the text, in order to maintain consistency with the UN "linguistic context".
  • "Initial capitals are not used in the full name of an item just because capitals are used in the abbreviation". Was tempted not to capitalize ESS abbreviation, as the UN only uses 'tenth emergency special session', but this appears to conflict with WikiStyle.

3) endash or emdash?

WikiStyle:

  • "Em dashes are normally unspaced on Wikipedia"
  • "Spaced en dashes – such as here – can be used instead of em dashes in all of the ways discussed above... One style should be used consistently in an article.".

Note the UNU's guidance (see Main link) that "Both en dashes and em dashes should be presented in an unspaced (closed up) form", appears to be in general use at the UN. However, where this differs in any documents (mainly verbatim records) that are being directly quoted, I have retained the original use given that this could impact upon text searches. ElPax (talk) 03:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Extra documents and split the page

Meetings http://www.undemocracy.com/A-PV.299 http://www.undemocracy.com/A-PV.300 http://www.undemocracy.com/A-PV.301 and http://www.undemocracy.com/A-PV.302 (the one with the actual vote) are on-line.

Any thoughts about splitting off a separate article about the Emergency Special Sessions and keeping this one only about the Uniting for Peace resolution?Goatchurch (talk) 16:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Goatchurch, I have just trimmed down the content of the eight ESS as far as I felt I could, in line with your comments. Although I certainly would not like to see the sections on the first ESS or eighth ESS expand any more than is absolutely necessary (indeed the tenth ESS already has its own article, and there is the List_of_emergency_special_sessions_of_the_United_Nations_General_Assembly which is probably adequate for additional, less than article-length content on any particular ESS), these two ESSs are explicitly included in the article on UfP owing to the fact that they both set precedents, and thereby make clear that the powers of the Assembly declared by UfP are not only of theoretical consequence. Indeed, it would be very difficult to argue, given that the complete spectrum of precedents were set by those two ESSs, that the Charter interpretations made by UfP are not now fully established principles of customary international law. --ElPax (talk) 09:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)