120-554: The Inkisi River ( Swahili : Mto Inkisi , French : Rivière Inkisi ) is the last (closest to the rivermouth) of the larger tributaries of the great Congo River , being the first south bank (left side) tributary, located in Western Central Africa. The township of Zongo is situated close to the confluence with the Congo River , where there is a hydro power plant and a bridge. This article related to
240-674: A "systemic failure". In 2010, the organization suffered the worst loss of life in its history, when 101 personnel died in the Haiti earthquake . Acting under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, NATO countries intervened in the First Libyan Civil War . The Millennium Summit was held in 2000 to discuss the UN's role in the 21st century. The three-day meeting was
360-565: A 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish in English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford,
480-679: A Monkey ;" " Mwalimu Goso, " "Goso the Teacher," a cumulative tale ; and " Sungura na Simba, " "The Hare and the Lion," a story about the trickster hare . Here are some of the proverbs that Steere recorded in Swahili: Here are some of the riddles that Steere recorded in Swahili: United Nations The United Nations ( UN ) is a diplomatic and political international organization with
600-621: A UN official, negotiated an armistice to the resulting conflict , with the Security Council deciding that “an armistice shall be established in all sectors of Palestine”. On 7 November 1956, the first UN peacekeeping force was established to end the Suez Crisis ; however, the UN was unable to intervene against the Soviet Union's simultaneous invasion of Hungary , following the country's revolution . On 14 July 1960,
720-481: A conference and initialised the drafting of the UN Charter , which was adopted on 25 June 1945. The charter took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. The UN's objectives, as outlined by its charter, include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights , delivering humanitarian aid , promoting sustainable development , and upholding international law . At its founding,
840-467: A fraction of that. According to other sources, around 40% of the Swahili vocabulary comes from Arabic. What also remained unconsidered was that a good number of the borrowed terms had Bantu equivalents. The preferred use of Arabic loan words is prevalent along the coast, where local people, in a cultural show of proximity to, or descent from Arab culture, would rather use loan words, whereas the people in
960-736: A historical process in which /l/ became elided between the second last and last vowels of a word (for example, kondoo , "sheep" was originally kondolo , which survives in certain dialects ). As a consequence, long vowels are not considered phonemic . A similar process exists in Zulu . Where not shown, the orthography is the same as IPA. Some dialects of Swahili may also have the aspirated phonemes /pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ dʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ/ though they are unmarked in Swahili's orthography. Multiple studies favour classifying prenasalization as consonant clusters, not as separate phonemes. Historically, nasalization has been lost before voiceless consonants, and subsequently
1080-451: A large amount of grammar, vocabulary, and sounds inherited from the Sabaki language . In fact, while taking account of daily vocabulary, using lists of one hundred words, 72–91% were inherited from the Sabaki language (which is reported as a parent language) whereas 4–17% were loan words from other African languages. Only 2–8% were from non-African languages, and Arabic loan words constituted
1200-573: A major role in spreading both Christianity and Islam in East Africa . From their arrival in East Africa, Arabs brought Islam and set up madrasas , where they used Swahili to teach Islam to the natives. As the Arab presence grew, more and more natives converted to Islam and were taught using the Swahili language. From the arrival of Europeans in East Africa, Christianity was introduced to
1320-578: A means of national integration in Tanzania. Key activities mandated for the organisation include creating a healthy atmosphere for the development of Swahili, encouraging use of the language in government and business functions, coordinating activities of other organisations involved with Swahili, standardising the language. BAKITA vision are: "1.To efficiently manage and coordinate the development and use of Kiswahili in Tanzania 2.To participate fully and effectively in promoting Swahili in East Africa, Africa and
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#17327652676831440-1013: A myriad of autonomous, separately administered funds, programmes, research and training institutes, and other subsidiary bodies . Each of these entities have their own area of work, governance structure, and budgets such as the World Trade Organization (or the WTO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (or the IAEA), operate independently of the UN but maintain formal partnership agreements. The UN performs much of its humanitarian work through these institutions, such as preventing famine and malnutrition (the World Food Programme ), protecting vulnerable and displaced people (the UNHCR ), and combating
1560-652: A pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades ", from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura ( ki-ura ) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore is marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt
1680-547: A permanent member to block adoption of a resolution, though not debate. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms, with five members elected each year by the General Assembly on a regional basis . The presidency of the Security Council rotates alphabetically each month. The UN Secretariat carries out the day-to-day duties required to operate and maintain the UN system. It is composed of tens of thousands of international civil servants worldwide and headed by
1800-606: A plane crash . Months later he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . In 1964, Hammarskjöld's successor, U Thant , deployed the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus , which would become one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions. With the spread of decolonization in the 1960s, the UN's membership shot up due to an influx of newly independent nations. In 1960 alone, 17 new states joined
1920-433: A prenasalized consonant, they are pronounced as [e] , [ɪ] , [o] , and [ʊ] . E is also commonly pronounced as mid-position after w . Polomé claims that /ɑ/ is pronounced as such only after w and is pronounced as [a] in other situations, especially after /j/ ( y ). A can be pronounced as [ə] in word-final position. Long vowels in Swahili are written as doubled vowels (for example, kondoo , "sheep") due to
2040-693: A river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Swahili language Swahili , also known by its local name Kiswahili , is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people , who are found primarily in Tanzania , Kenya , and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent littoral islands). Estimates of
2160-468: A second language spoken by tens of millions of people in the five African Great Lakes countries ( Kenya , DRC , Rwanda , Uganda , and Tanzania ), where it is an official or national language. It is also the first language for many people in Tanzania, especially in the coastal regions of Tanga, Pwani, Dar es Salaam, Mtwara and Lindi. In the inner regions of Tanzania, Swahili is spoken with an accent influenced by other local languages and dialects. There, it
2280-626: A subject in schools or have developed plans to do so. Shikomor (or Comorian ), an official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte ( Shimaore ), is closely related to Swahili and is sometimes considered a dialect of Swahili, although other authorities consider it a distinct language. In 2022, based on Swahili's growth as a prominent international language, the United Nations declared Swahili Language Day as 7 July to commemorate
2400-462: A substitute for k in advertisements. There are also several digraphs for Arabic sounds, which many speakers outside of ethnic Swahili areas have trouble differentiating. The language used to be primarily written in the Ajami script , which is an Arabic script. Much literature was produced in this script. With the introduction of Latin, the use of Ajami script has been diminished significantly. However,
2520-516: A system of concord but, if the noun refers to a human, they accord with noun classes 1–2 regardless of their noun class. Verbs agree with the noun class of their subjects and objects; adjectives, prepositions and demonstratives agree with the noun class of their nouns. In Standard Swahili (Kiswahili sanifu) , based on the dialect spoken in Zanzibar, the system is rather complex; however, it is drastically simplified in many local variants where Swahili
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#17327652676832640-445: A two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required. All other questions are decided by a majority vote. Each member has one vote. Apart from the approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under consideration by the Security Council. Draft resolutions can be forwarded to
2760-695: A variety of gender-concord prefixes. This list is based on Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history . Modern standard Swahili, written in Latin, is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar City . Swahili literature and poetry, traditionally written in Swahili Ajami , is based on Kiamu , the dialect of Lamu on the Kenyan Coast. But there are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, such as
2880-889: A wide variety of complex tasks. The UN comprises six principal operational organizations: the General Assembly , the Security Council , the Economic and Social Council , the International Court of Justice , the UN Secretariat , and the Trusteeship Council , although the Trusteeship Council has been suspended since 1994. The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies , funds, and programmes, including
3000-1033: A wide variety of topics. These include the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues , which advises UN agencies on issues relating to indigenous peoples , the United Nations Forum on Forests , which coordinates and promotes sustainable forest management, the United Nations Statistical Commission , which co-ordinates information-gathering efforts between agencies, and the Commission on Sustainable Development , which co-ordinates efforts between UN agencies and NGOs working towards sustainable development . ECOSOC may also grant consultative status to non-governmental organizations. as of April 2021 almost 5,600 organizations have this status. The UN Charter stipulates that each primary organ of
3120-596: Is a compulsory subject in all Kenyan primary and secondary schools. Swahili is recognized as a national language in the Democratic Republic of The Congo and is widely spoken in the eastern regions. The local dialects of Swahili in Congo are known as Congo Swahili and differ considerably from Standard Swahili. In order to strengthen political ties with other East African Community nations, both Kiswahili and English have been taught in Burundian elementary schools since
3240-550: Is a first language for most of the people who are born in the cities, whilst being spoken as a second language in rural areas. Swahili and closely related languages are spoken by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi , Comoros , Malawi , Mozambique , Zambia and Rwanda . The language was still understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea in the 20th century. The East African Community created an institution called
3360-434: Is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things, as in many other languages with noun classes. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Animals exceptional in some way and so not easily fitting in
3480-467: Is defined in the UN Charter as the organization's chief administrative officer. Article 99 of the charter states that the secretary-general can bring to the Security Council's attention "any matter which in their opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security", a phrase that secretaries-general since Trygve Lie have interpreted as giving the position broad scope for action on
3600-597: Is generally only spoken by Somali nationals who have resided in Kenya and subsequently returned to Somalia. Lastly, a closely related language Mushunguli (also known as Zigula, Zigua, or Chizigua) is spoken by some of the Somali Bantu ethnic minority mostly living in the Jubba Valley . It is classified as a Northeast Coast Bantu language as Swahili is and has some intelligibility with Swahili. Swahili played
3720-575: Is not a native language, such as in Nairobi. In non-native Swahili, concord reflects only animacy: human subjects and objects trigger a-, wa- and m-, wa- in verbal concord, while non-human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger i-, zi- . Infinitives vary between standard ku- and reduced i-. ("Of" is animate wa and inanimate ya, za. ) In Standard Swahili, human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger animacy concord in a-, wa- and m-, wa-, and non-human subjects and objects trigger
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3840-430: Is one of the early developers. The applications include a spelling checker , part-of-speech tagging , a language learning software , an analysed Swahili text corpus of 25 million words, an electronic dictionary , and machine translation between Swahili and English. The development of language technology also strengthens the position of Swahili as a modern medium of communication. Furthermore, Swahili Misplaced Pages
3960-556: Is one of the few Wikipedias in an African language that features a substantial number of contributors and articles. The widespread use of Swahili as a national language in Tanzania came after Tanganyika gained independence in 1961 and the government decided that it would be used as a language to unify the new nation. This saw the use of Swahili in all levels of government, trade, art as well as schools in which primary school children are taught in Swahili, before switching to English (medium of instruction) in secondary schools (although Swahili
4080-550: Is one of three official languages (the others being English and French) of the East African Community (EAC) countries, namely Burundi , Democratic Republic of the Congo , Kenya , Rwanda , Somalia , South Sudan , Tanzania , and Uganda . It is the lingua franca of other areas in the African Great Lakes region and East and Southern Africa . Swahili is also one of the working languages of
4200-960: Is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru " rhinoceros ", kingugwa " spotted hyena ", and kiboko " hippopotamus " (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs"). Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example. However, it seems to cover vital entities neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts ( moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From
4320-567: Is spoken along the Benadir coast by the Bravanese people . Another Swahili dialect known as Kibajuni also serves as the mother tongue of the Bajuni minority ethnic group, which lives in the tiny Bajuni Islands as well as the southern Kismayo region. In Oman , there are an estimated 52,000 people who speak Swahili as of 2020. Most are descendants of those repatriated after the fall of
4440-582: Is still taught as an independent subject). After Tanganyika and Zanzibar unification in 1964, Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI, Institute of Swahili Research) was created from the Interterritorial Language Committee. In 1970 TUKI was merged with the University of Dar es Salaam , while Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (BAKITA) was formed. BAKITA is an organisation dedicated to the development and advocacy of Swahili as
4560-795: The African Union and of the Southern African Development Community . The East African Community created an institution called the East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC) which began operations in 2015. The institution currently serves as the leading body for promoting the language in the East African region , as well as for coordinating its development and usage for regional integration and sustainable development. In recent years South Africa , Botswana , Namibia , Ethiopia , and South Sudan have begun offering Swahili as
4680-655: The Battle of Mogadishu . The UN mission to Bosnia faced worldwide ridicule for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing. In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amidst indecision in the Security Council. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 authorised
4800-528: The Four Power Declaration on General Security which aimed for the creation "at the earliest possible date of a general international organization". This was the first public announcement that a new international organization was being contemplated to replace the League of Nations. The Tehran Conference followed shortly afterwards at which Roosevelt, Churchill and Joseph Stalin , the leader of
4920-540: The Group of 77 under the leadership of Algeria, which briefly became a dominant power at the UN. On 10 November 1975, a bloc comprising the Soviet Union and Third World nations passed a resolution , over strenuous American and Israeli opposition, declaring Zionism to be a form of racism . The resolution was repealed on 16 December 1991, shortly after the end of the Cold War. With an increasing Third World presence and
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5040-472: The ICJ Statute , which forms an integral part of the UN Charter, and non-members may also become parties. The ICJ's rulings are binding upon parties and, along with its advisory opinions, serve as sources of international law . The court is composed of 15 judges appointed to nine-year terms by the General Assembly. Every sitting judge must be from a different nation. The Economic and Social Council (or
5160-591: The NATO -led Kosovo Force beginning in 1999. The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War was supplemented by a British military intervention . The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by NATO. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the UN's effectiveness. Under
5280-820: The Paris Peace Conference . The League of Nations was approved and started operations, but the United States never joined. On 10 January 1920, the League of Nations formally came into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations , ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect. The League Council acted as an executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members—the United Kingdom , France , Italy , and Japan . After some limited successes and failures during
5400-532: The Sultanate of Zanzibar . There are Swahili-based slangs, pidgins and creoles: In 1870, Edward Steere published Swahili Tales as Told by Natives of Zanzibar , a collection of 23 Swahili tales with facing-text English translation, along with a selection of proverbs and riddles. Some of the tales included are: " Kisa cha Punda wa Dobi, " "The Story of the Washerman's Donkey," also known as " The Heart of
5520-526: The Tanganyika African National Union used Swahili as a language of mass organisation and political movement. This included publishing pamphlets and radio broadcasts to rally the people to fight for independence. After gaining independence, Swahili was adopted as the national language. To this day, Tanzanians carry a sense of pride when it comes to Swahili, especially when it is used to unite over 120 tribes across Tanzania. Swahili
5640-753: The White House in December 1941 for the Arcadia Conference . Roosevelt is considered a founder of the UN, and coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries . Churchill accepted it, noting its use by Lord Byron . The text of the Declaration by United Nations was drafted on 29 December 1941, by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Harry Hopkins . It incorporated Soviet suggestions but included no role for France. One major change from
5760-446: The World Bank Group , the World Health Organization , the World Food Programme , UNESCO , and UNICEF . Additionally, non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with the Economic and Social Council and other agencies. The UN's chief administrative officer is the secretary-general , currently António Guterres , who is a Portuguese politician and diplomat. He began his first five-year term on 1 January 2017 and
5880-406: The secretary-general , who is assisted by the deputy secretary-general . The Secretariat's duties include providing information and facilities needed by UN bodies for their meetings and carrying out tasks as directed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies. The secretary-general acts as the spokesperson and leader of the UN. The position
6000-568: The 1920s, the League proved ineffective in the 1930s, as it failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1933. Forty nations voted for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria. It also failed to act against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War , after the appeal for international intervention by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I at Geneva in 1936 went with no avail, including when calls for economic sanctions against Italy failed. Italy and other nations left
6120-420: The Arabic script (an unmodified version as opposed to proposals such as that of Mwalimu Sikujua) was relatively high. There were also differences in orthographic conventions between cities and authors and over the centuries, some quite precise but others different enough to cause difficulties with intelligibility. Thus despite a lack of official governmental backing, attempts at standardization and Swahilization of
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#17327652676836240-482: The Arabic script continued into the 20th century. Swahili nouns are separable into classes , which are roughly analogous to genders in other languages. In Swahili, prefixes mark groups of similar objects: ⟨m-⟩ marks single human beings ( mtoto 'child'), ⟨wa-⟩ marks multiple humans ( watoto 'children'), ⟨u-⟩ marks abstract nouns ( utoto 'childhood'), and so on. And just as adjectives and pronouns must agree with
6360-445: The Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom , which Stalin approved after Roosevelt insisted. Roosevelt's idea of the " Four Powers ", refers to the four major Allied countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China , emerged in the Declaration by the United Nations. On New Year's Day 1942, Roosevelt, Churchill, the Soviet Union's former Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov , and
6480-400: The Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council : the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union and China — and by a majority of the other 46 nations. The first meetings of the General Assembly , with 51 nations represented, and the Security Council took place in London beginning in January 1946. Debates began at once, covering topical issues such as
6600-428: The Chinese Premier T. V. Soong signed the " Declaration by United Nations ", and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures. During the war, the United Nations became the official term for the Allies. In order to join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis powers . The October 1943 Moscow Conference resulted in the Moscow Declarations , including
6720-428: The ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic and social co-operation and development. It was established to serve as the UN's primary forum for global issues and is the largest and most complex UN body. The ECOSOC's functions include gathering data, conducting studies and advising and making recommendations to member states. Its work is carried out primarily by subsidiary bodies focused on
6840-427: The East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC) which began operations in 2015. The institution currently serves as the leading body for promoting the language in the East African region , as well as for coordinating its development and usage for regional integration and sustainable development. Swahili is among the first languages in Africa for which language technology applications have been developed. Arvi Hurskainen
6960-420: The General Assembly by its six main committees: As well as by the following two committees: The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among nations. While other organs of the UN can only make recommendations to member states, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25. The decisions of
7080-422: The League. When war broke out in 1939 , the League effectively closed down. The first step towards the establishment of the United Nations was the Inter-Allied Conference in London that led to the Declaration of St James's Palace on 12 June 1941. By August 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had drafted the Atlantic Charter ; which defined goals for
7200-427: The Soviet Union, and the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement on 27 July 1953. On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly approved resolution 181 , a proposal to partition Palestine into two state, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime. The plan failed and a civil war broke out in Palestine, that led to the creation of the state of Israel afterward. Two years later, Ralph Bunche ,
7320-400: The Soviet Union, before all the issues were resolved. By 1 March 1945, 21 additional states had signed the Declaration by the United Nations. After months of planning, the UN Conference on International Organization opened in San Francisco on 25 April 1945. It was attended by 50 nations' governments and a number of non-governmental organizations. The delegations of the Big Four chaired
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#17327652676837440-451: The Soviet Union, met and discussed the idea of a post-war international organization. The new international organisation was formulated and negotiated amongst the delegations from the Allied Big Four at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference from 21 September to 7 October 1944. They agreed on proposals for the aims, structure and functioning of the new organization. It took the conference at Yalta in February 1945, and further negotiations with
7560-499: The UN authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait . Brian Urquhart , the under-secretary-general of the UN from 1971 to 1985, later described the hopes raised by these successes as a "false renaissance" for the organization, given the more troubled missions that followed. Beginning in the last decades of the Cold War , critics of the UN condemned the organization for perceived mismanagement and corruption. In 1984, American President Ronald Reagan withdrew
7680-412: The UN established the United Nations Operation in the Congo (or UNOC), the largest military force of its early decades, to bring order to Katanga , restoring it to the control of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 11 May 1964. While travelling to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe during the conflict, Dag Hammarskjöld , often named as one of the UN's most effective secretaries-general, died in
7800-562: The UN had 51 member states ; as of 2024 , it has 193 sovereign states , nearly all of the world's recognized sovereign states. The UN's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its initial decades due in part to Cold War tensions that existed between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its mission has included the provision of primarily unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops charged with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles. UN membership grew significantly following
7920-430: The UN itself and operate with almost complete independence from it". These include specialized agencies, research and training institutions, programmes and funds and other UN entities. All organizations in the UN system obey the Noblemaire principle , which calls for salaries that will attract and retain citizens of countries where compensation is highest, and which ensures equal pay for work of equal value regardless of
8040-446: The UN's focus on promoting development, peacekeeping, human rights and global security. The Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals. In addition to addressing global challenges, the UN has sought to improve its accountability and democratic legitimacy by engaging more with civil society and fostering a global constituency. In an effort to enhance transparency, in 2016
8160-405: The UN's primary mandate was peacekeeping , the division between the United States and the Soviet Union often paralysed the organization; generally allowing it to intervene only in conflicts distant from the Cold War . Two notable exceptions were a Security Council resolution on 7 July 1950 authorizing a US-led coalition to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea , passed in the absence of
8280-420: The UN, 16 of them from Africa. On 25 October 1971, with opposition from the United States, but with the support of many Third World nations, the People's Republic of China was given the Chinese seat on the Security Council in place of the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan). The vote was widely seen as a sign of waning American influence in the organization. Third World nations organized themselves into
8400-580: The United Nations can establish various specialized agencies to fulfill its duties. Specialized agencies are autonomous organizations working with the United Nations and each other through the coordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council. Each was integrated into the UN system through an agreement with the UN under UN Charter article 57. There are fifteen specialized agencies, which perform functions as diverse as facilitating international travel, preventing and addressing pandemics, and promoting economic development. The United Nations system includes
8520-421: The United States' funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (or UNESCO) over allegations of mismanagement, followed by the United Kingdom and Singapore. Boutros Boutros-Ghali , the secretary-general from 1992 to 1996, initiated a reform of the Secretariat, somewhat reducing the size of the organisation. His successor, Kofi Annan , initiated further management reforms in
8640-662: The United States, and the UN has other offices in Geneva , Nairobi , Vienna , and The Hague , where the International Court of Justice is headquartered at the Peace Palace . The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future world wars , and succeeded the League of Nations , which was characterized as being ineffective. On 25 April 1945, 50 nations assembled in San Francisco , California, for
8760-465: The academic year 2005/2006. Kiswahili is now used widely in Burundi but is not recognised as an official language; only French, Kirundi, and English have this distinction. Since 2013, Swahili has been included in the all Burundian education system. Uganda adopted Kiswahili as one of its official languages (alongside English ) in 2022, and also made it compulsory across primary and secondary schools in
8880-611: The alphabet system from Arabic to Latin. After the First World War, Britain took over German East Africa, where they found Swahili rooted in most areas, not just the coastal regions. The British decided to formalise it as the language to be used across the East African region (although in British East Africa [Kenya and Uganda] most areas used English and various Nilotic and other Bantu languages while Swahili
9000-709: The assembly gathers at annual sessions at the General Assembly Hall , but emergency sessions can be summoned. The assembly is led by a president , elected by the member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents. The first session convened on 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London and comprised representatives of 51 nations. When the General Assembly decides on seminal questions such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters,
9120-593: The basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations , the UN and its agencies are immune from the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding the UN's impartiality with regard to host and member countries. Below the six organs are, in the words of the author Linda Fasulo, "an amazing collection of entities and organizations, some of which are actually older than
9240-589: The body's former headquarters in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands , making it the only principal organ not based in New York City. The ICJ's main function is adjudicating disputes among nations. Examples of issues they have heard include war crimes, violations of state sovereignty and ethnic cleansing. The court can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide advisory opinions on matters of international law. All UN member states are parties to
9360-459: The central idea of tree , which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono
9480-622: The century prior to the UN's creation, several international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross were formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and strife. During World War I , several major leaders, especially U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , advocated for a world body to guarantee peace. The winners of the war, the Allies , met to decide on formal peace terms at
9600-568: The coast of East Africa played a role in the growth and spread of Swahili. With the arrival of the Arabs in East Africa, they used Swahili as a language of trade as well as for teaching Islam to the local Bantu peoples . This resulted in Swahili first being written in the Arabic script. The later contact with the Portuguese resulted in the increase of vocabulary of the Swahili language. The language
9720-656: The council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions . The Security Council is made up of fifteen member states: five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and ten non-permanent members (currently Algeria , Ecuador , Guyana , Japan , Malta , Mozambique , the Republic of Korea , Sierra Leone , Slovenia and Switzerland ). The five permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions, allowing
9840-468: The country. The Swahili language is not widespread in Somalia and has no official status nationally or regionally. Dialects of Swahili are spoken by some ethnic minorities on the Bajuni islands in the form of Kibajuni on the southern tip of the country and in the town of Brava in the form of Chimwiini ; both contain a significant amount of Somali and Italian loanwords. Standard Swahili
9960-523: The date that Julius Nyerere adopted Swahili as a unifying language for African independence struggles. Swahili is a Bantu language of the Sabaki branch . In Guthrie's geographic classification , Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika. Historical linguists consider the Arabic influence on Swahili to be significant, since it takes around 15% of its vocabulary directly from Arabic , and
10080-831: The eighth secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon , the UN intervened with peacekeepers in crises such as the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War . In 2013, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 concluded that the organization had suffered
10200-500: The employee's nationality. In practice, the International Civil Service Commission , which governs the conditions of UN personnel, takes reference to the highest-paying national civil service. Staff salaries are subject to an internal tax that is administered by the UN organizations. The General Assembly is the primary deliberative assembly of the UN. Composed of all UN member states ,
10320-481: The entire world over". Although other bodies and agencies can propose new vocabularies, BAKITA is the only organisation that can approve its usage in the Swahili language. Tanzanians are highly credited for shaping the language to appear the way it is now. In Kenya, Kiswahili has been the national language since 1964 and is official since 2010. Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (CHAKITA) was established in 1998 to research and promote Kiswahili language in Kenya. Kiswahili
10440-485: The face of threats from the US to withhold its UN dues. Though the UN Charter had been written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against another, in the early 1990s the UN faced several simultaneous, serious crises within Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the nations that previously made up Yugoslavia. The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the United States' withdrawal following casualties in
10560-504: The failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East , Vietnam , and Kashmir , the UN increasingly shifted its attention to its secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange. By the 1970s, the UN budget for social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget. After the Cold War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in five years than it had in
10680-659: The five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters in New York City, while the International Court of Justice is seated in The Hague . Most other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva , Vienna , and Nairobi , and additional UN institutions are located throughout the world. The six official languages of the UN, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Arabic , Chinese , English , French , Russian and Spanish . On
10800-508: The following: Maho (2009) considers these to be distinct languages: The rest of the dialects are divided by him into two groups: Maho includes the various Comorian dialects as a third group. Most other authorities consider Comorian to be a Sabaki language, distinct from Swahili. In Somalia , where the Afroasiatic Somali language predominates, a variant of Swahili referred to as Chimwiini (also known as Chimbalazi)
10920-442: The former are kisu "knife", kiti "chair" (from mti "tree, wood"), chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo ). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba ( ki-umba ) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to diminutives in many languages is approximation and resemblance (having
11040-482: The gender of nouns in some languages with grammatical gender, so in Swahili adjectives, pronouns and even verbs must agree with nouns. This is a characteristic feature of all the Bantu languages . The ki-/vi- class historically consisted of two separate genders, artefacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils and hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12/13), which were conflated at a stage ancestral to Swahili. Examples of
11160-484: The intended purpose of maintaining international peace and security , developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international cooperation, and serving as a center for coordinating the actions of member nations. It is widely recognised as the world's largest international organization. The UN is headquartered in New York City , in international territory with certain privileges extraterritorial to
11280-583: The interior tend to use the Bantu equivalents. It was originally written in Arabic script . The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa , Tanzania , in 1711 in the Arabic script that were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India . Various colonial powers that ruled on
11400-463: The language continues to have a tradition of being written in Arabic script. Starting from the later half of the 19th century, continuing into the 20th century, and going on in the 21st century, a process of "Swahilization" of the Arabic Script has been underway by Swahili scribes and scholars. The first of such attempts was done by Mwalimu Sikujua , a scholar and poet from Mombasa . However,
11520-481: The largest gathering of world leaders in history, and it culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs), a commitment to achieve international development in areas such as poverty reduction , gender equality and public health . Progress towards these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed
11640-402: The name of the language ( سَوَاحِلي sawāḥilī , a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coasts'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab traders and the Bantu inhabitants of the east coast of Africa, which was also the time period when Swahili emerged as a lingua franca in the region. Due to concerted efforts by the government of Tanzania , Swahili
11760-422: The number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely. They generally range from 60 million to 150 million; with most of its native speakers residing in Tanzania. Swahili has a significant number of loanwords from other languages, mainly Arabic , as well as from Portuguese , English and German . Around 40% of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including
11880-461: The organization are five principal organs established by the UN Charter: the General Assembly , the Security Council , the Economic and Social Council , the International Court of Justice and the UN Secretariat . A sixth principal organ, the Trusteeship Council , suspended its operations on 1 November 1994 upon the independence of Palau ; the last remaining UN trustee territory. Four of
12000-506: The organization held its first public debate between candidates for secretary-general. On 1 January 2017, Portuguese diplomat António Guterres , who had previously served as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees , became the ninth secretary-general. Guterres has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and streamlining
12120-482: The organization to be more responsive and versatile to international needs. On 13 June 2019, the UN signed a Strategic Partnership Framework with the World Economic Forum in order to "jointly accelerate" the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development . The United Nations is part of the broader UN System, which includes an extensive network of institutions and entities. Central to
12240-405: The original emphatic consonants /dˤ, sˤ, tˤ, ðˤ/ and the uvular /q/ , or lengthening a vowel, where aspiration would be used in inherited Bantu words. Swahili is now written in the Latin alphabet. There are a few digraphs for native sounds, ch , sh , ng ' and ny ; q and x are not used, c is not used apart from the digraph ch , unassimilated English loans and, occasionally, as
12360-626: The other classes may be placed in this class. The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. In short, Borrowings may or may not be given a prefix corresponding to the semantic class they fall in. For example, Arabic دود dūd ("bug, insect") was borrowed as mdudu , plural wadudu , with the class 1/2 prefixes m- and wa- , but Arabic فلوس fulūs ("fish scales", plural of فلس fals ) and English sloth were borrowed as simply fulusi (" mahi-mahi " fish) and slothi (" sloth "), with no prefix associated with animals (whether those of class 9/10 or 1/2). In
12480-524: The plenary meetings. Previously, Churchill had urged Roosevelt to restore France to its status of a major power after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. The drafting of the Charter of the United Nations was completed over the following two months, and it was signed on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, upon ratification of
12600-553: The post, but over the years it has become accepted that the position shall be held for one or two terms of five years. The current secretary-general is António Guterres of Portugal, who replaced Ban Ki-moon in 2017. The International Court of Justice (or ICJ), sometimes known as the World Court, is the primary judicial organ of the UN. It is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice and occupies
12720-600: The post-war world. At the subsequent meeting of the Inter-Allied Council in London on 24 September 1941, the eight governments in exile of countries under Axis occupation , together with the Soviet Union and representatives of the Free French Forces , unanimously adopted adherence to the common principles of policy set forth by Britain and the United States. Roosevelt and Churchill met at
12840-560: The presence of Russian troops in Iranian Azerbaijan and British forces in Greece . British diplomat Gladwyn Jebb served as interim secretary-general. The General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN. Construction began on 14 September 1948 and the facility was completed on 9 October 1952. The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie , was the first elected UN secretary-general . Though
12960-532: The previous four decades. Between 1988 and 2000, the number of adopted Security Council resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased by more than tenfold. The UN negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War , launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia , and oversaw democratic elections in post- apartheid South Africa and post- Khmer Rouge Cambodia. In 1991,
13080-521: The process of naturalization of borrowings within Swahili, loanwords are often reinterpreted, or reanalysed, as if they already contain a Swahili class prefix. In such cases the interpreted prefix is changed with the usual rules. Consider the following loanwords from Arabic: Similarly, English wire and Arabic وقت waqt ("time") were interpreted as having the class 11 prevocalic prefix w- , and became waya and wakati with plural nyaya and nyakati respectively. Swahili phrases agree with nouns in
13200-407: The region. While the Arabs were mostly based in the coastal areas, European missionaries went further inland spreading Christianity. As the first missionary posts in East Africa were in the coastal areas, missionaries picked up Swahili and used it to spread Christianity, since it contained many similarities with other indigenous languages in the region. During the struggle for Tanganyika independence,
13320-421: The specifics, it has been historically purported that around 16–20% of the Swahili vocabulary is derived from loan words, the vast majority Arabic , but also other contributing languages, including Persian , Hindustani , Portuguese , and Malay . Omani Arabic is the source of most Arabic loanwords in Swahili. In the text "Early Swahili History Reconsidered". However, Thomas Spear noted that Swahili retains
13440-485: The spread of a standardized indigenous variation of Arabic script for Swahili was hampered by the colonial takeover of East Africa by the United Kingdom and Germany . The usage of Arabic script was suppressed in German East Africa and to a lesser extent in British East Africa . Nevertheless, well into the 1930s and 1940s, rural literacy rate in Arabic script as well as a local preference to write Swahili in
13560-401: The voiced consonants have devoiced, though they are still written mb, nd etc. The /r/ phoneme is realised as either a short trill [ r ] or more commonly as a single tap [ ɾ ] by most speakers. [x] exists in free variation with h, and is only distinguished by some speakers. In some Arabic loans (nouns, verbs, adjectives), emphasis or intensity is expressed by reproducing
13680-416: The widespread decolonization in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council . By the 1970s, the UN's budget for economic and social development programmes vastly exceeded its spending on peacekeeping . After the end of the Cold War in 1991, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking
13800-404: The world stage. The office has evolved into a dual role of an administrator of the UN organization and a diplomat and mediator addressing disputes between member states and finding consensus to global issues . The secretary-general is appointed by the General Assembly, after being recommended by the Security Council, where the permanent members have veto power. There are no specific criteria for
13920-535: Was formalised in an institutional level when the Germans took over after the Berlin conference . After seeing there was already a widespread language, the Germans formalised it as the official language to be used in schools. Thus schools in Swahili are called Shule (from German Schule ) in government, trade and the court system. With the Germans controlling the major Swahili-speaking region in East Africa, they changed
14040-495: Was initially spread by Arab slave traders along the East African coast. The word `Swahili' comes from an Arabic name for the area, meaning "coasts": The core of the Swahili language originates in Bantu languages of the coast of East Africa. Much of Swahili's Bantu vocabulary has cognates in the Unguja , Pemba , and Mijikenda languages and, to a lesser extent, other East African Bantu languages . While opinions vary on
14160-586: Was mostly restricted to the coast). In June 1928, an inter-territorial conference attended by representatives of Kenya , Tanganyika , Uganda , and Zanzibar took place in Mombasa . The Zanzibar dialect was chosen as standard Swahili for those areas, and the standard orthography for Swahili was adopted. Estimates of the total number of first- and second-language Swahili speakers vary widely, from as low as 50 million to as high as 200 million, but generally range from 60 million to 150 million. Swahili has become
14280-447: Was re-elected on 8 June 2021. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. The UN, its officers, and its agencies have won multiple Nobel Peace Prizes , although other evaluations of its effectiveness have been contentious. Some commentators believe the organization to be a leader in peace and human development, while others have criticized it for ineffectiveness, bias, and corruption . In
14400-571: Was used to strengthen solidarity within the nation, and remains to be a key identity of the Tanzanian people. Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes : /ɑ/ , /ɛ/ , /i/ , /ɔ/ , and /u/ . According to Ellen Contini-Morava , vowels are never reduced , regardless of stress . However, according to Edgar Polomé , these five phonemes can vary in pronunciation. Polomé claims that /ɛ/ , /i/ , /ɔ/ , and /u/ are pronounced as such only in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, as well as before
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