United Nations

The First Incarnation: League of Nations

The original organization established to uphold peace and prevent the outbreak of further wars, the League of Nations (Societe des Nations) was formed at the conclusion of World War I through U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points Peace Program. The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion, a publication by South African Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts, became the genesis of the League of Nations, which was created on January 25, 1919, by part one of the Treaty of Versailles during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

The 44 founding members included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Japan, Norway, Poland, and Switzerland, with nations such as Austria and Bulgaria (1920), Hungary (1922), Germany (1926), Mexico (1931), Turkey (1932), and the Soviet Union (1934) later joining. Of the 44 [Page 704]founding nations, only 24 remained until the dissolution of the league in 1946.

United Nations (UN) programs are active all over Africa. In Senegal (left), the UN World Food Program estimates that 46 percent of households lack reliable access to food. In Benin (right), the UN Children?s Fund (UNICEF) works with USAID to fight child trafficking

During its 37-year existence, the League of Nations claimed many successes, such as resolving the crisis of The Aaland Islands and Upper Silesia in (1921), Turkey's typhoid and cholera outbreak in 1923, and the 1925 Balkan border intervention between Greece and Bulgaria. Its campaign to eliminate leprosy was a milestone, along with its actions to inform and improve the status of women and minimize drug misuse, smuggling, and child slavery. Yet the league suffered many embarrassments, such as the United States never becoming a member despite being the league's founding father. Other failures included the 1919 battle over Teschen by Poland and Czechoslovakia, with thousands of causalities; the 1920–21 war between Russia and Poland; and the Italy and Albanian conflict in 1923, in which the league was criticized for a lack of action. The demise of the league commenced with the outbreak of World War II, and subsequently its 34 remaining members agreed on dissolution on April 20, 1946, with the newly created UN inheriting the assets of the former league.

United Nations Creation and Establishment

The evolution of the UN was the vision of another U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with his 1942 “declaration by united nations” after 26 nations gathered during World War II with the intent of continuing the fight against Japan, Germany, and Italy. Over the next three years, momentum grew within the international community to replace the ailing League of Nations with a new, robust organization.

The United States, China, Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom deliberated in October 1944 on the potential vision and goals, culminating in 1945 with 50 national representatives attending the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, with the resulting UN Charter.

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