International Relations Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the reason explains the assertion, so (A) is the keyed answer. When the United States declared its war on terrorism after the attacks of 2001, President Bush said that every nation had to decide whether it was with the United States or with the terrorists. That meant that a state could not stay neutral, which is what the reason states: the US denied states the liberty to be neutral. The reason is therefore the content of the assertion. Option (B) denies the link, and options (C) and (D) deny a true statement.

Answer: A

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on 10 December, 1948.

The UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration in Paris on 10 December 1948, and the date is observed every year as Human Rights Day.

24 October 1945 is the day the UN Charter came into force (United Nations Day). 4 April 1949 is the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty that created NATO, and 10 January 1920 is the date the League of Nations came into being.

Answer: D

The key accepts all four statements: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The statements describe the different ways scholars date globalisation, as the standard textbook account sets them out. Some see it as an ongoing process as old as civilisation, through trade, migration and the spread of ideas (1). Others trace its origins to the expansion of European imperialism in Asia and Africa (2). Others link it to the revolution in transport and communication of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from steamships and the telegraph to air travel (3). And its effects came to be felt strongly from the 1970s, with the growth of multinational corporations and global finance (4).

Because the paper treats each as a valid view, every narrower option is incomplete.

Answer: D

All three are accepted, so the answer is 1, 2 and 3.

Article 1 of the UN Charter sets out the purposes of the United Nations: to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, and to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character.

Statement 3 words the third purpose loosely, but it is the same purpose, so the key accepts all three and no option leaving one out is right.

Answer: C

The pentagon was USA, USSR, China, Japan and Western Europe.

The idea of a pentagonal or five-power world was set out by US President Richard Nixon in 1971 and associated with Henry Kissinger's diplomacy. It described a shift from the rigid bipolar Cold War towards five centres of power: the two superpowers, plus China after its opening to the US, Japan as an economic power, and Western Europe as a bloc.

The other options are wrong because they name single European states (the UK, Germany) or a vague 'East Asia' instead of Western Europe as a whole and Japan.

Answer: C

India is a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982).

India ratified UNCLOS in 1995. It governs territorial waters, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf.

India has not acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, and deals with refugees through its own policies. Nor has it ratified ILO Convention 190 (2019) on violence and harassment at work, or ILO Convention 171 (1990) on night work.

Answer: C

The correct statement is that "Belt" refers to the overland routes and "road" refers to the sea routes, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.

China's One Belt One Road (Belt and Road Initiative), announced in 2013, has two parts: the Silk Road Economic Belt of overland corridors through Central Asia to Europe, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road of sea routes through South-East Asia, South Asia and Africa to Europe.

The other options misdescribe the belt and road and name regions, such as Antarctica or Australia, that are not its focus. India has not joined the initiative.

Answer: A

The name was coined by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The US President suggested 'United Nations' for the countries allied against the Axis powers. It was first used officially in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, in which 26 nations pledged to continue fighting together. The name was later carried over to the organisation set up by the UN Charter at San Francisco in 1945.

Winston Churchill approved the name, quoting Byron's use of 'United Nations', but did not coin it. Trygve Lie was the first Secretary-General (1946), and Charles de Gaulle led the Free French; neither named the organisation.

Answer: B

The 193rd and latest member is South Sudan.

South Sudan became independent from Sudan on 9 July 2011, after a referendum held under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the General Assembly admitted it to the United Nations on 14 July 2011, raising the membership to 193.

The other three joined earlier. Liechtenstein was admitted in 1990, Palau in 1994 and Serbia in 2000 (as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, continuing as Serbia after Montenegro's separation in 2006, when Montenegro became the 192nd member). No state has been admitted since South Sudan.

Answer: C

The incorrect match is International Monetary Fund - New York.

The IMF, set up at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the same city as its sister institution, the World Bank. New York is the seat of the United Nations Secretariat, which is the likely source of the confusion.

The other pairs are correct. The Food and Agriculture Organization is based in Rome, the International Labour Organization in Geneva, and UNESCO in Paris. So the only wrongly matched agency is the IMF.