The United Nations (UN)

The United Nations (UN) is a diplomatic and political international organization with the intended purpose of maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international cooperation, and serving as a center for coordinating the actions of member nations. It is widely recognized as the world’s largest international organization. The UN is headquartered in New York City, in international territory with certain privileges extraterritorial to the United States, and the UN has other offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and The Hague, where the International Court of Justice is headquartered at the Peace Palace.

The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future world wars and succeeded the League of Nations, which was characterized as being ineffective. On 25 April 1945, 50 nations assembled in San Francisco, California, for a conference and initiated the drafting of the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945. The charter took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. The UN’s objectives, as outlined by its charter, include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; as of 2024, it has 193 sovereign states, nearly all of the world’s recognized sovereign states.

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. Its mission has included the provision of primarily unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops charged with primarily monitoring, reporting, and confidence-building roles. UN membership grew significantly following the widespread decolonization in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council. By the 1970s, the UN’s budget for economic and social development programs vastly exceeded its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War in 1991, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.