As you just read in Adventure 3, the United Nations is an intergovernmental organisation formed in 1945 to promote international co-operation. It was established towards the end of World War 2, essentially to prevent another such conflict from ever occurring again. Its formation was suggested by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a successor to the previous (ineffective) League of Nations body. 51 member states in 1945 grew to 193 today, membership increasing particularly significantly in the 1960s following widespread decolonisation and independence.
As well as the six principal organs established by the U.N. Charter that we already know (General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, Trusteeship Council and Secretariat), other United Nations agencies now include the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation) and UNICEF (the U.N. Children’s Fund).
Its six official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The most prominent officer – and the de-facto leader – of the U.N. is the Secretary-General, a position currently held by the South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon.
The U.N.’s founding mission to preserve World Peace in the aftermath of World War 2 was shaped – and in some ways paralysed – over its first few decades by what became known as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (two of the founding permanent members of the Security Council) and their respective allies. As a result, the U.N’s focus shifted more onto social and economic development instead of preserving World Peace, but as the Cold War began to thaw in the 1980s, the U.N. increasingly refocused its attention on its primary goal of peacekeeping missions. Assessment of the U.N.’s effectiveness has thus far been mixed to say the least, some believing the organisation to be an important force towards World Peace, global security and human development, others describing it as ineffective or, worse, corrupt and biased.
To find out more about the long-running American-Russian conflict that stymied the U.N in its early years, click to Adventure 6: Cold War
To find out more about why the U.N. – for all its good intentions – still infuriates large numbers of people, click to Adventure 7: Criticism of the United Nations.
