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United Nations
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