9781422285503

The Creation of the United Nations Since the League of Nations failed to stop another global war,it was obvious to many world leaders that changes had to be made to create a viable peacekeeping organization. Initial steps toward that goal occurred in 1942. The term“United Nations”was used for the first time on January 1, 1942, in American president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Declaration by United Nations. This declaration was the promise by representatives of twenty-six nations to keep fighting until the members of the Axis powers finally admitted defeat. Unlike President Wilson and the League of Nations, President Roosevelt and this document had the support of the United States. Between August and October of 1944, representatives from China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States met at Dumbarton Oaks, a nineteenth-century mansion in Georgetown,Virginia, just outsideWashington,D.C.There,they worked to develop the framework that would establish and govern the United Nations. In April 1945, fifty countries sent representatives to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. The delegates discussed the proposals formulated at Dumbarton Oaks and wrote the UN Charter. Representatives of the fifty countries signed the charter on June 26, 1945; representatives from Poland did not attend the conference, but signed the charter later and became one of the fifty-one original members of the United Nations.

When China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the charter on October 24, 1945, the United Nations was officially born. Those signatories continue to play an important role in the United Nations and its policies. They are the five permanent members of the Security Council, established by the UN Charter.

Who owns the UN? Although the United Nations

Headquarters is located in New York City, it is not owned by New York City, the state of New York, or even the United States. The building and the land on which it sits are in an inter- national zone and owned by the members of the United Nations.

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Chapter One