United Nations

I

Introduction

United Nations (UN), international organization of nation-states, based on the sovereign equality of its members. Under its charter, the UN was established “to maintain international peace and security”; “to develop friendly relations among nations”; and “to achieve international cooperation in solving ... economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian [problems]” and in “encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms”. Members are pledged to fulfil the obligations they have assumed, to settle international disputes by peaceful means, to refrain from the threat or use of force, to assist the UN in actions ordered under the charter and to refrain from assisting any country against which such UN action is being taken, and to act according to the charter's principles. The UN won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2001.

II

Development of the UN

The United Nations is usually considered the successor to the League of Nations, the international organization formed after World War I to serve many of the same purposes. The League, however, failed to maintain peace and grew progressively weaker in the years just before World War II.

A

Origins

The first commitment to establish a new international organization was made in the Atlantic Charter, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain on August 14, 1941, at a conference held on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland. They pledged to establish a “wider and permanent system of general security” and expressed their desire “to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field”. The principles of the Atlantic Charter were more widely accepted in the Declaration by United Nations, signed on January 1, 1942, by representatives of 26 allied nations that were fighting against the Axis powers during World War II. In this document the term United Nations, suggested by Roosevelt, was first used formally.

Direct action to form the new organization was taken at a 1943 conference in Moscow. On October 30, representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Great Britain, China, and the United States signed a declaration in which they recognized the need to establish “at the earliest practicable date a general international organization”. Meeting in Tehran a month later, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin reaffirmed “the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the United Nations to make a peace which will…banish the scourge and terror of war”.

Following up on the Moscow declaration, representatives of the four powers met at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C., in the autumn of 1944, to work out a series of proposals for an international organization. They agreed on a draft charter that specified its purposes, structure, and methods of operation, but they could not agree on a method of voting in the proposed Security Council, which was to have the major responsibility for peace and security.

The voting issue was settled at the Yalta conference in February 1945, when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the last of their wartime negotiating summits. Essentially, the Soviet leader accepted the Anglo-American position that limited great-power prerogatives on procedural matters, but retained the right of veto on substantive issues. At the same time, the allied leaders called for a conference of United Nations to prepare the charter of the new organization.

Delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco on April 25, 1945, for what was officially known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization. During a two-month period, they completed a charter consisting of 111 articles, based on the draft developed at Dumbarton Oaks. The charter was approved on June 25 and signed the next day; it became effective on October 24, 1945, after ratification by a majority of the signatories. The bonds of the wartime alliance against common enemies undoubtedly hastened agreement on establishing the new organization.

B

Headquarters

On December 10, 1945, the United States Congress invited the UN to establish its headquarters in the United States. The organization accepted and in August 1946 moved to a temporary location in Lake Success, New York. Later that year a site was purchased bordering the East River in Manhattan, and plans for a permanent headquarters were drawn up. The site was granted a measure of extraterritoriality under an agreement between the United States and the UN. The complex, completed in mid-1952, includes the General Assembly Hall, the Secretariat Building, the Conference Building, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library.