United Nations

The United Nations (UN) was founded in 1945 as an international, universal membership organization to replace the earlier League of Nations of 1919. Its membership now stands at 191. Only Taiwan and the Vatican City are not members. The UN is headquartered in New York City, with major programs based at Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi, and a global spread of offices in many capital cities. The UN was created by the allied powers during World War II. The charter was negotiated in 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, by four of the five permanent powers: China, Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States (the excluded allied power being France). The charter was adopted by fifty-one member countries at San Francisco in July 1945. The charter came into force on October 24, 1945. The charter that still governs the UN is therefore a prenuclear, pre–Cold War vision of the post–1945 world order that was created on the assumption of continued allied cooperation. In Article 27, the five great powers gave themselves permanent seats on the Security Council and power of veto over its resolutions. They also created a veto over the reform of these arrangements as set out in Article 108.

The founding purpose of the UN is defined in its charter as a fourfold mission. The first is the maintenance of international peace and security. Member states pledge not to threaten or use force against each other in Article 2 and agree to seek peaceful settlement of their disputes by negotiation in Article 33. If war does occur, the members further agree to take collective measures to suppress threats to the peace and acts of aggression. The second purpose of the UN is to develop friendly relations among states based on respect for equal rights and self-determination of peoples. Thirdly, the members agree to address international problems of economic, social, and humanitarian needs, including the promotion of human rights. Finally, the UN exists to provide a center for harmonizing the actions of its members. In pursuit of these objectives, the UN is not only a global center for the conduct of multilateral diplomacy, but also through its recognition of several thousand international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), it is a major focus of global civil-society efforts to lobby and influence the multilateral system.