Founded on a Signature in 1945
The United Nations is an international intergovernmental organization, established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June 1945.
Its articulated mission has four parts: maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among states, promoting international cooperation, and serving as a centre for harmonizing the actions of states in achieving those goals.
That last clause is the one that explains the institution. The UN was not built to govern above states — it was built to be the room where states coordinate. Its headquarters is in New York City, with further offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague. The timing matters too: the Charter was signed in June 1945, before the Second World War had fully ended, by countries who had watched the previous attempt at collective security fail.
Six Organs and a System
The UN comprises six principal organizations, which together with specialized and related agencies make up the UN System:
- The General Assembly
- The Security Council
- The Economic and Social Council
- The International Court of Justice
- The Secretariat
- The Trusteeship Council
The division of labour is deliberate. The General Assembly is where every member has a voice; the Security Council is where binding decisions on peace and security are made; the Court settles legal disputes between states; the Secretariat runs the organisation day to day.
The Trusteeship Council is the historical curiosity — created to supervise territories moving toward self-government, its work has essentially been completed, which is a rare thing for an international body to be able to say.
Nearly Every Country on Earth
There is a total of 193 member states, representing nearly all of the world's sovereign states, plus two observer states: the Holy See and the State of Palestine.
Near-universal membership is the UN's single greatest asset and its most persistent difficulty. It means almost no country can claim the organisation does not speak to it — and it means agreement requires reconciling 193 sets of national interests.
In practice much of the work has been developmental rather than military. The United Nations has primarily focused on economic and social development, particularly during the wave of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, when dozens of new states joined in quick succession and needed institutions, recognition and assistance.
Eleven Missions, and a Mixed Record
The UN currently operates 11 peacekeeping missions, by order of inception: in the Middle East, Kashmir, Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, the Western Sahara, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Read that list as a timeline and it becomes a map of unresolved conflicts — some of these missions have been in place for decades, which is either evidence of failure or evidence that the alternative was worse, depending on who is arguing.
The assessment in the record is genuinely two-sided. The UN has been recognised as a global leader of peace and human development, with many of its officials and agencies awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It has also been criticised for perceived ineffectiveness, bias and corruption. Both of those are the standing verdict, held simultaneously.
