A Brief History Of The United Nations

Today, the United Nations is one of the foremost international organizations created to promote global security, diplomacy, and peace. It was founded in 1945, following the horrors that the world experienced in World War II. World leaders, in a bid to prevent a repetition of those horrors, proposed the creation of a global organization dedicated to the securing of peace, and preventing the evils of war.

At inception, the UN had just 51 members. However, today, it has 193 member states. Since its formation, it has provided humanitarian aid and assistance to millions of people worldwide, and prevented conflicts by presenting opportunities for dialogue and peace.

The Atlantic Charter and the UN

In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill held a meeting, where they discussed the necessity of an international peace effort. The result was the Atlantic Charter, a document that outlined the ideal goals of war and opened the way for the development of the UN. Soon after, when the US joined the second world war in 1942, a group of 26 nations allied against Germany, Italy, and Japan came together to sign the United Nations declaration. The declaration primarily contained their war strategies.

The U.N. Charter

Over the years that followed, several meetings occurred to draft a post-war charter for the UN that would describe the appropriate roles of the organization. Finally, world leaders determined the principles and structures of the organization in San Francisco on the 25th of April 1945. After the end of the war, on October 24, 1945, the Official UN charter was ratified by 55 members.