United Nations

The Covenant of the League of NationsLeague of NationsThe League of Nations was an international organization established under the Covenant of the League of Nations after the First World War. It existed from 1920 to 1946 with its seat in Geneva, Switzerland, and a total of 63 states became members; the United States never joined.Open the full entry was adopted shortly after the Paris Peace Conference opened in January 1919; the League of Nations remained in being until 1946.⁠[1]

On June 12, 1941, Allied representatives signed the Declaration of St James’s Palace in London, and on August 14, 1941, Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, the only president elected four times; he led the country through the Great Depression and World War II and greatly expanded the federal government’s role through the New Deal.Open the full entry and Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillSir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a British Conservative statesman and writer who served as Prime Minister in 1940–1945 and 1951–1955, led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.Open the full entry issued the Atlantic Charter.⁠[1]

On January 1, 1942, Churchill, Roosevelt, Maxim Litvinov and T. V. Soong signed the Declaration by United Nations, and representatives of 22 other nations signed the next day, making 26 original signatories. It was the first official use of the term “United Nations.”⁠[1]

The Moscow Declaration was signed on October 30, 1943, and the Tehran meeting followed in December 1943.⁠[1]

Discussions at Dumbarton Oaks were completed on October 7, 1944, and the proposed structure of the organization was circulated to Allied governments.⁠[1]

On February 11, 1945, the Yalta Conference resolved the question of voting in the Security Council and called for a conference in San Francisco.⁠[1]

The United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) met in San Francisco from April 25 to June 26, 1945, with delegates from 50 nations; the Charter was passed on June 25 and signed on June 26.⁠[1]

The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when the Charter had been ratified by the five major powers and a majority of the other signatories. Gladwyn Jebb of the United Kingdom served as Acting Secretary-General from that day until February 1, 1946.⁠[1][2]

John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) was an American philanthropist and the only son of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. He devoted most of his life to philanthropy and public affairs, giving away about $537 million in total; he led the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, built Rockefeller Center in New York and paid for the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York. In 1914 the Ludlow Massacre at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, controlled by his family, brought him nationwide criticism.Open the full entry offered $8.5 million to buy an 18-acre site on Manhattan’s East River for the UN; the General Assembly accepted the offer on December 14, 1946, and New York City completed the site with additional gifts of property. Wallace K. Harrison of the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry was chief architect, assisted by a ten-member Board of Design Consultants nominated by governments, and the General Assembly approved the plan on November 20, 1947.⁠[3]

On October 24, 1949, Secretary-General Trygve Lie laid the cornerstone in the presence of U.S. President Harry S. TrumanHarry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman (1884–1972) was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from Missouri and as vice president in 1945, succeeding Franklin D. Roosevelt on his death that year and serving as the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, a period spanning the end of World War II and the early Cold War.Open the full entry; Secretariat staff moved into their offices in August 1950, and the General Assembly first met in its hall at the opening of its seventh regular session in 1952.⁠[3]

The General Assembly took up a draft declaration at its first session in 1946 and referred it to the 18-member Commission on Human Rights, which first met early in 1947. Its drafting committee was chaired by Eleanor RooseveltEleanor RooseveltEleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) was first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 as the wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president, and later a United States delegate to the United Nations and chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Open the full entry of the United States; its members included René Cassin of France, who wrote the first draft, Charles Malik of Lebanon, the rapporteur, Peng Chung Chang of China, the vice-chairman, and John Humphrey of Canada, director of the UN Human Rights Division, who prepared the blueprint.⁠[4]

The final draft was put forward in September 1948, with more than 50 Member States taking part in the final drafting, and on December 10, 1948, the General Assembly, meeting in Paris, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by resolution 217 A (III), with eight nations abstaining and none dissenting.⁠[4]

After Palau became independent in 1994, the Trusteeship Council, which had overseen the Trust Territories, completed its work and suspended operation.⁠[5]

In 2001 the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize, the UN taking one half of the prize, “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.”⁠[6]

The Capital Master Plan, launched in 2008 as the largest renovation of the New York headquarters to date, was completed in 2014.⁠[3]

António Guterres took office as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations on January 1, 2017. Born in Lisbon in 1949, he graduated in engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico; he was a member of the Portuguese Parliament for 17 years from 1976, Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015.⁠[7]

As of November 2026 Guterres remains Secretary-General. Under Article 97 of the Charter the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, and the UN states that the next Secretary-General is expected to be elected in 2026 and to take office on January 1, 2027.⁠[2][8]

The UN has six main organs: the General Assembly, in which each member has one vote; the Security Council, responsible for peace and security, with 15 members, five of them permanent (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States); the Economic and Social Council, with 54 members serving three-year terms; the Trusteeship Council, now suspended; the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, the only main organ not located in New York; and the Secretariat, which carries out the day-to-day work under the Secretary-General. The Secretariat also has main offices in Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna. The official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.⁠[5]

The UN owns its headquarters site, which has a special status in the United States: U.S. officials may not enter without the Secretary-General’s consent, and the UN has agreed not to let the headquarters shelter people seeking to avoid arrest under U.S. law.⁠[3]

The Secretaries-General of the United Nations have been Trygve Lie (Norway, 1946–1952), Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden, 1953–1961), U Thant (Burma, now Myanmar, 1961–1971), Kurt Waldheim (Austria, 1972–1981), Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru, 1982–1991), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt, 1992–1996), Kofi A. Annan (Ghana, 1997–2006), Ban Ki-moon (Republic of Korea, 2007–2016) and António Guterres (Portugal).⁠[2]

Besides 2001, Nobel Peace Prizes in the UN system have gone to Ralph Bunche, UN mediator in Palestine (1950), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1954 and 1981), Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (1961), UNICEF (1965), the International Labour Organization (1969), the UN Peacekeeping Forces (1988), the International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei (2005), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore (2007), the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2013) and the World Food Programme (2020).⁠[9]

United Nations: Official website: https://www.un.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/un (opens in a new window).⁠[9]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/unitednations (opens in a new window).⁠[9]