- At the end of the Great War, an international peacekeeping organization was created to prevent a new world conflict:the League of Nations (LN) was created in 1919.
- The outbreak of the Second World War highlights the failure of the League of Nations and its inability to ensure peace in the world. But the idea of building a new organization is born. On October 30, 1943, the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom and China signed the Moscow Declaration in which these four countries affirmed their wish to create such an organization.
- The Charter of the United Nations was prepared in particular during the Yalta conference (February 1945), a conference which brought together the Allied powers to prepare for the end of the Second World War.
June 26, 1945
Characters
Winston Churchill
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Procedure
On June 26, 1945, fifty states signed the United Nations Charter at the San Francisco conference. Composed of a preamble and 111 articles, this charter constitutes the creation of the United Nations (UN). This text contains the rules of operation as well as the main organs that make up the UN (General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Secretariat and International Court of Justice).
The charter also specifies the “ Purposes and Principles” (Chapter 1) of the organization, emphasizing the principles of equality and sovereignty (authority) of States and the importance of using peaceful means to settle disputes between nations.
The text also provides for the measures and sanctions to be taken against States threatening international peace and security:economic sanctions or military interventions, for example. The UN has in fact set up a Military Staff Committee responsible for assisting the Security Council and an armed force to carry out possible military missions (the notion of "blue helmets" is not present in this founding text, it emerges at the end of the 1950s).
Consequences
- The definitive text of the United Nations Charter was ratified on October 24, 1945, the date of creation of the United Nations. The first General Assembly of the United Nations was held on January 10, 1946. The headquarters of the organization are located in the United States, in New York, but different administrations are located in Europe (Geneva and Vienna).
- The text of the Charter has not changed significantly since its ratification. However, the General Assembly, by voting resolutions, changed the original scope of the text, for example by affirming the right to decolonization in the 1960s.