The Formation Of The United Nations

Objectives of the United Nations

Describe about The Formation of The United Nations for Regional Organizations.

Among several memorable episodes of the 20^th century, the formation of the United Nations was one of the most important events that changed the course of history for the world. For the modern world of today, the United Nations is an embodiment of world peace and hope. United Nations serves as the platform for international security, global cooperation, discussions and dialogues and an avenue to give response to the security threats with collective measures. Up keeping of peace, international justice, growth in global economy, maintains of human rights and over all development of the human race of the entire world are some of the objectives of the United Nations. Around the world it takes global peacekeeping missions to fulfill the desired aim of global peace. After the devastations brought in the world by the two world wars and failure of the ineffective international bodies like the League of Nations, in 1945 the United Nations was founded to rectify the human follies and to bring some respite to the wounded mankind. At the end of the World War II, on 24th October 1945 was formed so that the world does not see such wars again (Weiss, 2011). The United Nations Organization has the objective to establish a synergy between different nations. Till now, it has been able to achieve its goals and objectives. However, there is a scope of improvement and there is certainly more that could be added to the roles and responsibilities of UNO.

The history behind the formation of the United Nations is as remarkable as the role it has played until now and the visions it has for the future of our world. United Nations was formed on the basis of several prior alliances, which came before it to serve the common global purposes. At several times in history such international treaties have been made to deal with the current crisis or to come up with stringency plans for a situation. However, United Nations was formed with the vision of an ongoing international body that would come forward to deal with any crisis faced by the world-. The concept of this intergovernmental body was founded on the 17^th century unit of the State, whose records are found in the history where many European countries came together in 1648 to end the Hundred Years War by the Treaty of Westphalia (Ginsburg, 2010). When the formation of statehoods started the Sates used the means of bilateral diplomacy as a mean to communicate with each other in case of any conflicts.  This procedure saw a major change by the 19^th century, when the multidimensional conferences on huge scales became new trend for the purpose of setting grounds for dialogue among Sates. In order to respond to the vast destructions caused by the Napoleonic Wars, four historically important conferences that happened in the period from 1815 to 1822. The Congress of Vienna was first such conference, which aimed to establish peace by the way of agreement among parties to stop violent events in the future.

History of International Conferences

In the 19^th century the conferences played major role in achieving the common international purposes (Nicolson, 2000). The Concert of Europe was one such example where the leaders of various European Nations came together around 30 times in more than one hundred years to solve serious international issues (Elrod, 1976). The major focus of this conference was security while at the same time River commissions emerged with an objective of controlling river navigation on the Danube and Rhine rivers. Likewise, the Universal Postal Union and the International Telegraphic Union were formed to take care of the growing request for intercommunication.  With more people migrating and mingling because of increased trading, the spread of diseases such as cholera became major world concern. This issue commissioned six international conferences during the period of 1851 and 1903. The years 1899 and 1907 saw two major global conferences at The Hague, Netherlands for the purpose of peace.  These conferences saw involvement of non-European nations for the first time and also broke the dominion of strong nations making everyone equal and reducing significance of the “great power” nomenclature which began with the Concert. Although these historical conferences were not able to formalize a permanent organization, nevertheless they play important role in putting the foundation for recognized multidimensional discussion procedure. This was main motivation, which saw the creation of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the League of Nations subsequent of the Great War.

While analyzing the formation of the United Nations, the formation of the League of Nations cannot be overlooked. With the World War I, the Concert of Europe came to an end. Though the end of the War saw beginning of two concepts, which gave birth to the League of Nations. The League of Nations combined the Concert’s status of great authority supervisory commission and The Hague’s concept of egalitarian universality. Soon the Council of League emerged as the executive committee, which granted perpetual positions to five major powers. The Assembly and Council, replicating the egalitarian model of The Hague perception, allowed identical voting privileges to every League member.  The formation of League not merely amalgamated the two previous philosophies but further additional level was included by way of founding a perpetual Secretariat and planning systematic periodic assemblies to promote institutionalization of the collaboration, which was originated by precursors like the conferences, river commissions, and public unions. But, the League trial met several grave hindrances and the World War II made it completely redundant (Goodrich, 1947).

Formation of the United Nations and its significance

During the years of the World War II, the people who still had faith in the idea brought in by the League were the President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt and the Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In this wartime Roosevelt coached his State Department workforce to reconstruct an outline grounded on the principles of the League. However, Roosevelt wanted this new organization to not merely give dialogues and consultation but also have “teeth” or the enforcement powers so that it can effectively stop violence.  There was need of new organizational strategies to incorporate the “executive” council, plenary assembly along with the new concept of enforcement powers. The idea of this wartime alliance was picked by Roosevelt from the example of wartime association of great powers of Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the US. 

The October 1943, the Moscow Declaration set the foundation stone where Roosevelt and Hull prudently arranged an arrangement amongst the foreign ministers of four to countries to ensure persistent assistance from them in the wartime. This was proposed to be accomplished by formation of an association whose main goal was preservation of global peace. This was an important move since these four major powers were looked forward to provide the military force to the organization to develop its enforcement powers. Also, concord of the complete Council was to be evaded.  It was necessary that the decisions of the Council were obligatory on all the organization members in order to guarantee the firmness of the enforcement warning.

The role of the United States was central in taking the initiation for formation of this new envisioned organization.  The democratic characteristics of the US influenced the development of the theoretical evolution fundamental to the structure and phrasing of the Charter. Despite being the forerunner the membership of the United States was dependent on the approval of the Senate, therefore Roosevelt worked on to convey to the Senate through dialogues in a special committee which was led by Democratic Senator Tom Connally and Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg so that he gets required support for his plan of a multidimensional perpetual organization.  Roosevelt not only wooed the two political parties of America but also convinced his people along with coordinating his proposal on a worldwide platform with the key supremacies.

Roosevelt called Dumbarton Oaks meeting for major world powers, after completion of initial planning for the new global organization (Hilderbrand, 2001). Following this meeting another was held after a few months at Yalta to resolve the matters left uncompleted at the Dumbarton Oaks meeting.  In Yalta the level of heads of State, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met beginning February 4 to February 11, 1945.  The word “peace loving nations” was given definition at the Yalta as those countries, which by March 1, 1945 affirmed war on the Axis powers.  The question of membership was fundamentally fixed along with other matters were the veto, trusteeship and the capability of the General Assembly which were resolved at Yalta (Rusell, 1958).   

The Role of the United States

Further amendments were completed in the Dumbarton Oaks proposal subsequent to the Yalta meetings. This corrected manuscript was then circulated to the countries that were requested to meet in San Francisco in order to write the final Charter. Though, in February and March, the Latin Americans held the “Inter-American Conference on the Problems of Peace and War”, preliminary meeting in Chapultepec, Mexico. They came up with demands of for a sturdier General Assembly, universality of membership, and guaranteed representation for Latin America on the Security Council (Arend, 1996). UNO is often accused that the formation of UNO is just a hygiene step that the developed nations like USA has taken. In fact, the formulation of UNO was dependent on the inputs of developed nations.

Finally, at the Conference at San Francisco the structure and language of the Charter for the new organization was settled. The name the United Nations was given to denote the united stand of the countries against the Axis powers. Along with the prime role of the United Nations as the organization to maintain global peace other issues that reached consensus in this meeting were membership in the organization, trusteeship, capability of the General Assembly and Security Council, the character of the Security Council and the authority of its members, use of the veto, the role of the Secretary-General and the outline for the use of power by the United Nations.

50 members then signed this Charter of the United Nations on June 26, 1945 at San Francisco and later Poland. Thus the total of initial members of the United Nations were 51. Ratification of the charter was individually done by all the nations and finally the United States Senate approved the Charter by vote of 89 to 2, on July 28, 1945. Truman ratified the final Charter by signing the ratification act. A majority of the initial fifty-one signatories was reached by October 24th, 1945, thus making October 24^th as the birthday of the United Nations.  By 27^th December it was ratified by all initial members (The founding of the United Nations international cooperation as an evolutionary process, no date).

Which began with merely 51 member states, today the United Nations has 193 strong members. United Nations has its headquarters in Manhattan, New York City with major offices located in Nairobi, Geneva and Vienna. The member states of the association sponsor it by voluntary and assessed aids. Along with its primary purposes of embracing the need of upholding global peace and security it works in direction to encourage human rights, protect the environment, nurture social and economic growth and provide humanitarian support in cases of natural disaster like floods, famine or situation of armed battles. The beacon of the world peace and progress of mankind is in the hands of United States. It is expected that there would be more changes in the structure of the United Nations with the change in the world economy.

With the above discussion it can be said that the United Nations has had few major and tangible impacts on the developed and developing nations. One of the positive impacts of the formation of UN is the improvement of political conditions across the world. The United Nations has provided a platform where different nations can interact and solve the issues politically and this has ultimately reduced the chances of wars between the nations. For example, United Nations has a key role to act as intermediary where India and Pakistan can talk and resolve the Kashmir issue. The formation of United Nations also had positive impact on the social attributes and society at large. With the establishment of United Nations, governments of different nations have been successful to create a platform where the bridge between the rich and poor could be reduced.

In the 20^th century the role of UNO has changed and likewise the impact of UN has also changed. For example, today, the UN has an important role to play in the climatic conditions. By the middle of the 20th century, it was becoming clear that human action had significantly increased the production of these gases, and the process of “global warming” was accelerating. The common man and the society looks at the UN to establish a platform where different nations can have a similar energy and climate policy. It is expected that UN would have a framework in place that would foster sustainable development across various geographies and it would ultimately have a positive impact on society. It can be said that the United Nations is at the forefront to save the planet. The organization has conducted various international summits to ensure that the problem of climate change and global warming could be minimized. The United Nations has been acting as the central bridge for the communication across different nations. This has eventually, increased the collective productivity of nations to fight with the issue of global warming, climate change and sustainable development and these issues are required to be resolved so that the society at large could be benefited.

How has United Nations bridged the social gap between the nations?

What is the role of United Nations to resolve the global political conditions?

Does UNO have a role to manage the global economic crises?

How can government of different nations use UNO as a platform to bring social justice?

How is the role of UNO different for developed nations and developing nations? 

References

Arend, A.C., 1996. United Nations, Regional Organizations, and Military Operations: The Past and the Present, The. Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L., 7, p.3.

Elrod, R.B., 1976. The concert of Europe: A fresh look at an international system. World Politics, 28(02), pp.159-174.

Ginsburg, T., 2010. Eastphalia as the Perfection of Westphalia. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 17(1), pp.27-45.

Goodrich, L.M., 1947. From League of Nations to United Nations. International Organization, 1(01), pp.3-21.

Hilderbrand, R.C., 2001. Dumbarton Oaks: the origins of the United Nations and the search for postwar security. UNC Press Books.

Nicolson, H., 2000. The Congress of Vienna: a study in allied unity, 1812-1822. Grove Press.

Rusell, R.B., 1958. A History of the United Nations Charter: The Role of the United Staes, 1940-1945. Washington: Brookings Institution [1958].

The founding of the United Nations international cooperation as an evolutionary process (no date) Available at: https://acuns.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/The_Founding_of_the_United_Nations_-_International_Cooperation_as_an_Evolutionary_Process.pdf (Accessed: 29 July 2016).

Weiss, T.G., 2011. United Nations and changing world politics. ReadHowYouWant. com.