The United Nations (UN) is a general international organization established at the end of World War II to promote international peace and security. It is the second such organization, having replaced the \TLeague of Nations\t, which was founded in the aftermath of World War I. ORIGINS AND PURPOSE The United Nations officially came into existence on Oct. 24, 1945, when 51 original members ratified its charter. The main purposes of the organization were to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"; develop friendly relations among states; cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems; and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. To enable it to work toward its goals, the UN was equipped with six major organs: the Security Council, General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, \TInternational Court of Justice\t, and the Secretariat. In addition, a number of specialized agencies were attached to the UN system to deal with specific international problems. The primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security was assigned to the Security Council. Based on the assumption that the five major military contributors to victory in World War II--the United States, the \TUSSR\t, Great Britain, France, and China--could reach unanimity on the question of peace in the postwar world, the Security Council was to be the international guardian of peace. The second major UN organ, the General Assembly, was to operate as a forum for debating world issues. The underlying assumption in creating the General Assembly was that the airing of disputes among nations could contribute to the pacific settlement of those disputes as well as to peaceful changes in the international system. A third principal organ, the Economic and Social Council, was created in the belief that a great deal of international strife was rooted in poverty and misery and that therefore the UN should do its utmost to help raise standards of living and improve economic conditions throughout the world. Because, moreover, the founders of the UN saw colonialism as another frequent source of war, they felt it necessary also to employ the new world organization to mitigate the anger of dependent peoples against their colonial masters. To devise a technique whereby independence could be gained with as little bloodshed as possible, they provided a fourth major organ, the Trusteeship Council. Yet another cause of war was believed by the founders of the UN to lie in the absence of common legal standards among nations. For this reason they included within the UN framework a world court--the International Court of Justice. Finally, the founders of the UN were convinced that the maintenance of peace required a nucleus of men and women whose loyalty was first and foremost not to any particular nation but to the entire international community. To form such an international civil service, they established a sixth major organ of the United Nations, the Secretariat, headed by the secretary-general. STRUCTURE AND POWERS The Security Council The organ with the primary responsibility for maintaining peace and security is the Security Council. Originally the Security Council had 11 members, but now it has 15. Five of these--China, France, the \TUSSR\t, Great Britain, and the United States--are permanent members. The other ten members are elected by the General Assembly for 2-year terms. Each member of the council has one vote. Decisions on matters of procedure must carry by an affirmative vote of at least 9 of the 15 members. Decisions on substantive matters also require nine votes, with no negative vote from any of the five permanent members. This is the so-called Great Power unanimity rule, often referred to as the "veto." All five permanent members have exercised the veto right at one time or another. If a permanent member does not support a decision but has no desire to block it through a veto, it may abstain; an abstention is not regarded as a veto. Under the charter, all members of the UN agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the council. While other organs of the UN make recommendations to governments, the council alone has the power to make decisions which member states are obligated under the charter to carry out. When a dispute leads to open warfare, the council may decide on cease-fire directives, enforcement measures, or collective military action. Sometimes it sends UN observers or peacekeeping forces to help reduce tensions in troubled areas. A state that is not a member of the UN or is a member of the UN but not of the Security Council may participate, without vote, in its discussions when the council considers that the country's interests are specially affected. The General Assembly The General Assembly is composed of all member states of the UN. It is the main deliberative organ of the UN and has the right to discuss and make recommendations on all matters within the scope of the charter. It has no power to compel action by any government, but its recommendations carry moral weight as an expression of world opinion. As new problems arise, the General Assembly initiates activities to deal with them. The General Assembly, consequently, has encouraged humanitarian relief efforts, development programs, campaigns against colonialism and racism, and the negotiation of treaties and other agreements on matters of global concern, such as the Law of the Sea. The General Assembly expanded its role during the Korean War. Under the Uniting for Peace resolution, adopted by the General Assembly in November 1950, the assembly gave itself the power to take action if the Security Council, because of the lack of unanimity of its permanent members, fails to act in a case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression. Each member of the General Assembly has one vote. Decisions on important questions--such as recommendations on peace and security; admission, suspension, and expulsion of members; and budgetary matters--need a two-thirds majority. Decisions on other questions are by simple majority. The regular session begins each year on the third Tuesday in September and continues usually until mid-December. The Economic and Social Council The Economic and Social Council, under the authority of the General Assembly, coordinates the economic and social work of the UN and the specialized agencies and institutions. The council makes recommendations and initiates activities relating to development, world trade, natural resources, human rights, population, social welfare, science and technology, and many other economic and social questions. The council has 54 members. One-third of its members are elected each year by the General Assembly for a 3-year term of office. Voting in the Economic and Social Council is by simple majority; each member has one vote. Trusteeship Council The Trusteeship Council was established to deal with nonindependent territories previously held under League of Nations mandate, territories taken from the defeated World War II powers, and such other territories as might be handed over to it by their possessors. It operates under the authority of the General Assembly. The Trusteeship Council consists of representatives of those states that administer trust territories, representatives of permanent members of the Security Council that do not administer trust territories, and enough others to assure that membership is divided equally between administering and nonadministering states. The principal activities of the Trusteeship Council include receiving annual reports from the administering states, periodically visiting the trust territories, and receiving petitions from the territories. Since its establishment, the Trusteeship Council has seen the 11 trust territories originally under its control transformed into other entities. International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice receives cases from states and international organizations. The court is also empowered to give advisory opinions when requested to do so by organs of the UN and specialized agencies. Generally, states have preferred to resolve their disputes outside of the jurisdiction of the court. Secretariat The first secretary-general of the United Nations was Trygve \TLie\t of Norway, who served until 1953. Dag \THammarskjold\t, of Sweden, served from 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in 1961, when he was succeeded by U THANT of Burma. Kurt \TWaldheim\t of Austria served two consecutive terms from January 1972 to December 1981. In January 1982, Javier \TPerez de Cuellar\t of Peru began a five-year term, which was extended, in October 1986, through 1991. He was succeeded in December 1991 by Butros Ghali of Egypt. The Secretariat, an international staff working at UN headquarters and in the field, carries out the day-to-day work of the UN. Each staff member takes an oath not to seek or receive instructions from any outside authority; under the UN Charter, each member state undertakes not to seek to influence the Secretariat in the discharge of its duties. In practice, however, this provision has been violated. The work of the secretary-general and the staff is varied and includes providing mediation in resolving international disputes; administering peacekeeping operations; preparing surveys of world economic trends and problems; studying human rights and natural resources; organizing international conferences; compiling statistics; and interpreting speeches, translating documents, and servicing the communications media of the world with information about the UN. Specialized Agencies The specialized agencies attached to the United Nations system can be divided roughly into two groups. The first group, the major purpose of which is to broaden and facilitate communications among nations, includes the Universal Postal Union (UPU; see \TPostal Union, Universal\t), the \TInternational Civil Aviation Organization\t (ICAO), the \TWorld Meteorological Organization\t (WMO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO). The second group may be called the "welfare" agencies, in the sense that each is intended to improve world economic, social, and cultural conditions and thus build defenses for peace. The oldest of these is the \TInternational Labor Organization\t (ILO). Other agencies in this group include the \TFood and Agriculture Organization\t (FAO), the \TWorld Health Organization\t (\TWho\t), the \LUnited Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiz\lation (\TUNESCO\t), the \TWorld Bank\t, the \TInternational Development Association\t (IDA), the \TInternational Finance Corporation\t (IFC), the \TInternational Monetary Fund\t (IMF), the \TInternational Atomic Energy Agency\t (IAEA), the \TGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade\t (\TGATT\t), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR; see \TRefugees, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for\t), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 1945 The UN has experienced many changes since 1945 when the United States was the most dominant of the 51 states in the organization. Today the organization has about three times as many member states (166 in 1991), and the representatives from Africa, Asia, and Latin America play major roles in its affairs. The paralysis that affected much of the organization's activities during the 45 years of the cold war began to lift a little with the collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. The cold war between the United States and the \TUSSR\t had a serious impact on the UN as members were divided into often-competing blocs, each armed with the veto powers of one of the superpowers. This often translated into an inability to act militarily against aggression or to take firm action to end conflicts between emerging nations. The major military action taken under UN auspices was approved during a boycott by the Soviet Union, and the Korean war was fought largely by U.S. forces, although there was ostensibly a unified UN command structure. The United Nations has since engaged in other military activities, but these have not been on the scale of the Korean War, nor were the military forces of the United States directly involved. The UN established several major peacekeeping forces in the Middle East, Africa, and Cyprus. The UN military action in the Middle East was considerably less dramatic than the Korean campaign. The first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) that was dispatched to the troubled area in 1956 never exceeded 6,000 troops. UNEF was not meant to be a fighting army; its purpose was to serve as a symbol of the UN's involvement, which, it was hoped, would succeed in bringing about the neutralization of the disputed areas. It constituted for the first time a genuine international police force not dominated by any single power. In fact, all the great powers were specifically excluded from it. The second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II) was established immediately after the conclusion of the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors in late October 1973. The force was deployed by the Security Council along the disengagement line that had been negotiated between Israel and Egypt by U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger. In May 1974, in the wake of the disengagement arrangement that had been worked out by Secretary Kissinger between Israel and Syria, the Security Council established a small (1,250-person) UN Disengagement Observer Force drawn from UNEF. They were transferred for patrol duty to the GOLAN HEIGHTS. In an attempt to separate Israelis and Palestinian guerrillas, the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was established in 1978. By mid-1982, 7,000 troops had been deployed to southern Lebanon; they were brushed aside when Israel occupied west Beirut in September 1982, but they stayed on. Perhaps the most complex military challenge to confront the United Nations was the one that occurred in the Congo between 1960 and 1964. The UN force of 20,000 mostly African troops had to attempt to keep brutal tribal warfare to a minimum, assume some governmental functions, and forestall great power intervention. In March 1964 yet another peacekeeping experiment was launched, this time in Cyprus. When the Greek and Turkish communities on that island found themselves unable to resolve their differences and civil war became an increasingly ominous threat, the Security Council met in emergency session and authorized a peace force. Three thousand British troops already on the island were deputized as UN policemen, and in addition Canada, Sweden, Ireland, and Finland contributed troops, bringing the total to 7,000. Along with its peacekeeping operations, the UN has also been responsible for a number of important treaties in the area of arms control. Most significant among these are the treaties demilitarizing outer space (1967), prohibiting the spread of nuclear weapons (1968), prohibiting the emplacement of nuclear weapons on the ocean floors (1971), imposing a ban on biochemical warfare (1975), and establishing a ban on environmental warfare (1976). Negotiations to eliminate all chemical weapons were begun in 1991. The 1970s witnessed an integrated approach by the United Nations to deal with some of the world's most critical nonmilitary problems. A series of global conferences was organized under UN auspices to address the main challenges facing the world. The first of these was a World Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. The year 1974 saw a number of global conferences concerned with such matters as raw materials and development, the law of the sea, world population, and world food. All these conferences emphasized the need to respond to global challenges with global initiatives. This "planetary management" movement continued to gather momentum throughout the 1970s and during the 1980s, with more international conferences held. These dealt with the status of women in the world, urban growth, the spread of deserts, and, once more, the law of the sea. Until recently the United Nations was the object of considerable scorn because of its seeming inability to deal with political crises, particularly those involving conflicting interests of the United States and the Soviet Union. But easing East-West tensions and the dawn of a new era of Soviet-American cooperation in the late 1980s led to a dramatic increase in the UN's effectiveness. In 1987 the Security Council ordered a halt to the \TIran-Iraq war\t, which ended in a truce 13 months later. In 1988 the organization mediated conflicts in Cambodia, Angola, and Western Sahara, for which its 10,000-member peacekeeping forces received that year's Nobel Peace Prize. The next year it brokered withdrawal of Soviet armed forces from Afghanistan and a year later monitored the free elections in Nicaragua that ended that country's civil war. But the most conspicuous evidence of change by far was the UN's cohesive response to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when 28 member states, authorized by the Security Council, rolled back the invasion in the \TPersian Gulf War\t of 1991. In addition, the personal intervention of Secretary General Javier \TPerez de Cuellar\t was widely credited with achieving success in negotiations that year to free U.S. and European hostages long held by the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The organization's "intermediary role" was credited by Iran, where many of the negotiations were held, with resolving differences among Muslim and Israeli interests. John G. Stoessinger Bibliography: Finkelstein, Lawrence S., ed., Politics in the United Nations System (1988); Fromuth, Peter J., ed., A Successor View: The United Nations of Tomorrow (1988); Haas, Ernst B., Why We Still Need the United Nations (1986); Harrelson, Max, Fires All Around the Horizon: The U.N.'s Uphill Battle to Preserve the Peace (1989); Hilderbrand, Robert C., Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security (1990); Stoessinger, John G., The United Nations and the Super-Powers, 4th ed. (1977); United Nations, United Nations at Forty (1986) and the United Nations and Disarmament (1986).