978-1-4222-3430-3

Decolonization The United Nations began with general goals of peace and international welfare, but it had specific goals as well. One of these specific objectives was decolonization . European countries had started planting colonies in the sixteenth century, shortly after they discovered the existence of the New World. This was the age of exploration; explorers traveled all over the world,charting oceans and continents. In the nineteenth century, European colonization increased, as the leaders of the Western world realized the amount of land unclaimed by other industrialized nations was shrinking quickly. Africa, especially, was affected, as European countries rushed to stake claims on the world. The developed countries wanted colonies because of the natural resources and wealth they could bring in to their mother country,and sometimes because they provided a distant land where prisoners could be banished—as was the case with Australia in its early years as a British colony. After World War I, some countries tried to get rid of some of their colonies. The war had been extremely expensive and was followed by the Great Depression. Countries such as the United Kingdom could no longer afford to support a vast empire. At the same time, many colonies were not ready to become independent. These colonies had been ruled by an outside power for so long they needed to be rebuilt from within to regain the tools needed to govern themselves. Universal Declaration of Human Rights One of the most important documents of the United Nations, apart from the Charter, is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which established another specific goal of the UN. The Declaration is in- tended to guide the actions of the United Nations and its member coun- tries, giving an outline of the basic rights all humans have a right to expect. Although the Declaration is not part of international law, and therefore cannot legally be enforced, all member countries of the United Nations

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United Nations