United Nations
[6] 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.[14][15] By August 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had drafted the Atlantic Charter; which defined goals for 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.The Tehran Conference followed shortly afterwards at which Roosevelt, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, met and discussed the idea of a post-war international organization.[37] Though 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.[58] 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.[63][64][65][66] 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.Guterres has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to international needs.It is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice and occupies 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.[134] 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 the HIV/AIDS pandemic (the UNAIDS).[145][146] The UN, after approval by the Security Council, sends peacekeepers to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased or paused to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities.[168] Three UN bodies oversee arms proliferation issues: the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission.[169] Additionally, many peacekeeping missions focus on disarmament: several operations in West Africa disarmed roughly 250,000 former combatants and secured tens of thousands of weapons and millions of munitions.[131][171] In 1948, the General Assembly adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee headed by American diplomat and activist Eleanor Roosevelt, and including the French lawyer René Cassin.[221] Political scientists Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman and Desiree Nilsson of Uppsala University studied twenty years of data on peacekeeping missions, concluding that they were more effective at reducing civilian casualties than counterterrorism operations by nation states.[222] Georgetown University professor Lise Howard postulates that UN peacekeeping operations are more effective due to their emphasis on "verbal persuasion, financial inducements and coercion short of offensive military force, including surveillance and arrest", which are likelier to change the behavior of warring parties.[226] Reviewing the first 50 years of the UN's history, the author Stanley Meisler writes that "the United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its founders, but it accomplished a great deal nevertheless", citing its role in decolonization and its many successful peacekeeping efforts.Two secretaries-general, Dag Hammarskjöld and Kofi Annan, were each awarded the prize; as were Ralph Bunche, a UN negotiator, René Cassin, a contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull for his role in the organization's founding."[229] In a sometimes-misquoted statement, American President George W. Bush stated in February 2003—referring to UN uncertainty towards Iraqi provocations under the Saddam Hussein regime—that "free nations will not allow the UN to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society."[230][231][232] In 2020, former American President Barack Obama, in his memoir A Promised Land noted, "In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the UN had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside.Core features of the UN apparatus, such as the veto privileges of some nations in the Security Council, are often described as fundamentally undemocratic, contrary to the UN mission, and a main cause of inaction on genocides and crimes against humanity.A prime example of this issue was observed on 25 February 2022, when Russia used its veto power to block a resolution against its invasion of Ukraine, thereby underscoring a significant weakness in the UNSC's functioning.[242][243] After World War II, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the United States as the government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that created the new organization.Future French president Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it a machin (contraption), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.and "You can't spell communism without U.N."[252] In the United States, there were concerns about supposed threats to national sovereignty, most notably promoted by the John Birch Society, which mounted a nationwide campaign in opposition to the UN during the 1960s.[262] In September 2015, Saudi Arabia's Faisal bin Hassan Trad was elected chair of an advisory committee in the UN Human Rights Council,[263] a move criticized by the UN Watch.[264] The UNHRC has likewise been accused of anti-Israel bias by Ex-President of the United States George W. Bush, who complained that the Council focused too much attention on Israel and not enough on countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.Sahnoun claims that between the start of the Somali civil war in 1988 and the fall of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991, the UN missed at least three opportunities to prevent major human tragedies.[279] In 2004, the UN faced accusations that its recently ended Oil-for-Food Programme — in which Iraq had been allowed to trade oil for basic needs to relieve the pressure of sanctions — had suffered from widespread corruption, including billions of dollars of kickbacks.
193
UN member states
2
UN Observer States
(Palestine, Holy See)
2 eligible Non-Member States (Niue, Cook Islands)
Antarctica
UN (disambiguation)United Nations (disambiguation)ArabicChineseFrenchRussianSpanishMembers of the United NationsHeadquarters760 United Nations Plazainternational zoneOfficial languagesEnglishOfficial scriptCyrillicSimplified ChineseIntergovernmental organization193 member states2 observer statesSecretary‑GeneralAntónio GuterresDeputy Secretary-GeneralAmina J. MohammedGeneral Assembly PresidentPhilemon YangEconomic and Social Council PresidentBob RaeUN CharterLeague of Nationsinternational peacesecurityheadquartered inNew York CityextraterritorialUnited StatesGenevaNairobiViennaThe HagueInternational Court of JusticePeace PalaceWorld War IIaim of preventing future world warsSan Franciscoa conferencehuman rightshumanitarian aidsustainable developmentinternational lawmember statessovereign statesCold WarSoviet Unionmilitary observersdecolonizationtrust territoriesTrusteeship CouncilpeacekeepingGeneral AssemblySecurity CouncilEconomic and Social CouncilUN SecretariatUN Systemspecialized agenciesWorld Bank GroupWorld Health OrganizationWorld Food ProgrammeUNESCOUNICEFnon-governmental organizationssecretary-generalNobel Peace Prizescriticized it for ineffectiveness, bias, and corruptionHistory of the United NationsHaile Selassie Iinternational organizationsInternational Committee of the Red CrossWorld War IWoodrow WilsonAlliesParis Peace ConferenceCovenant of the League of NationsUnited KingdomFranceJapanese invasion of ManchuriaManchuriaSecond Italo-Ethiopian Warwar broke out in 1939Four PolicemenDeclaration of St James's PalaceFranklin RooseveltWinston ChurchillAtlantic Chartergovernments in exile of countries under Axis occupationFree French ForcesWhite HouseArcadia ConferenceAllied countriesLord ByronDeclaration by United NationsHarry Hopkinsreligious freedomFour PowersMaxim LitvinovT. V. SoongAxis powersMoscow ConferenceMoscow DeclarationsFour Power Declaration on General SecurityTehran ConferenceJoseph StalinAllied Big FourDumbarton Oaks Conferenceconference at YaltaUN Conference on International Organizationliberation of ParisCharter of the United NationsLondonIranian AzerbaijanGreeceGladwyn JebbTrygve LieUN secretary-generalDag HammarskjöldUS-led coalitionNorth Korean invasion of South Korea