Like the League of Nations, the United Nations was also founded as a response to the nightmare of war. As the end of the Second World War came into view, the victorious nations once more proposed, and met to establish, an organization of states which would be dedicated to the preservation of peace throughout the world in the future. Thus, during April of 1945, at a meeting held in San Francisco, a document was drawn, to be known as "the U.N. Charter," a kind of constitution for a new organization. In June of the same year, it was signed and thus adopted by delegates from fifty countries. And on October 24, 1945, the United Nations was officially established.
We are told that Winston Churchill's outlook for the success of the U.N. was in fact "less rosy" than President Roosevelt's--his pessimism springing from the prior failure of the League of Nations to accomplish similar goals.
The fundamental purpose of the U.N. has been declared to be the preservation of world peace and the betterment of humanity. These goals are embodied within, and proposed to be achieved by means of, its Four Purposes and Seven Principles.
The Purposes are, basically:
1. the preservation of peace and security throughout the world;
2. the encouragement of justice among nations in their dealings with each other;
3. the facilitation of cooperation among nations in dealing with such problems as should arise; and
4. the rendering of service to all peoples as an agency for the achievement of the aforesaid goals.
The Principles set forth the following precepts:
1. that all members shall enjoy equal rights;
2. that all members shall be bound by, and carry out their obligations pursuant to, the United Nations Charter;
3. that international disputes will be settled peacefully (Article 33 of the U.N. Charter requires states to settle disputes by means of negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or other peaceful means);
4. that force, or threat thereof, shall never be resorted to, except in self-defense;
5. that each member state will assist the U.N. in the performance of any action undertaken by it to accomplish any of the purposes set forth in the Charter;
6. that states who choose not to be members shall be bound by the same duty to preserve peace and security throughout the world as members are; and
7. that the acts of any member, within its borders, shall never be interfered with, so long as they inflict no harm upon other nations. (However, this last Principle must be construed together with the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a wise and just proclamation issued in 1948, which declares that all individual people possess certain fundamental rights that transcend states' sovereign rights.)
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