HISTORY OF THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER
On October 24, 1945 the United
Nations officially comes into existence.
In 1945, representatives of 50
countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations conference on
international organization to draw up the United Nations charter. Those
delegates deliberated on the basis of proposals worked out by the
representatives of china, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United
States at Dumbarton oaks, United States in august-October 1944.
Before the United Nations was established, there was the League
of Nations. Near the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed
Congress on January 8th, 1918 and unveiled the steps he felt were
necessary for securing peace, the Fourteen Point
Plan. Part of the fourteen point plan was the creation of the League
of Nations:
A general association of nations must be formed
under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of
political independence and territorial integrity to great and small States
alike.
The League of Nations was
established in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles.
The League of Nations was established at the end of World
War I as an international peacekeeping organization.
Although US President Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiastic
proponent of the League, the United States did not officially join the League
of Nations due to opposition from isolationists in Congress.
The League of Nations effectively resolved some
international conflicts but failed to prevent the outbreak of the Second World
War.
The
experience of the First World War
World War I was the most destructive conflict in human
history, fought in brutal trench warfare conditions and claiming millions of
casualties on all sides. The industrial and technological sophistication of
weapons created a deadly efficiency of mass slaughter. The nature of the war
was thus one of attrition, with each side attempting to wear the other down
through a prolonged series of small-scale attacks that frequently resulted in
stalemate.
Though the origins of the war were incredibly complex, and
scholars still debate which factors were most influential in provoking the
conflict, the structure of the European alliance system played a significant role.
This system had effectively divided Europe into two camps, based on treaties
that obligated countries to go to war on behalf of their allies.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, American and
European leaders gathered in Paris to debate and implement far-reaching changes
to the pattern of international relations. The League of Nations was seen as
the epitome of a new world order based on mutual cooperation and the peaceful
resolution of international conflicts.
The
establishment of the League of Nations
The Treaty of Versailles was negotiated at the Paris Peace
Conference of 1919, and included a covenant establishing the League of Nations,
which convened its first council meeting on January 16, 1920.
The League was composed of a General Assembly, which
included delegations from all member states, a permanent secretariat that
oversaw administrative functions, and an Executive Council, the membership of
which was restricted to the great powers. The Council consisted of four
permanent members (Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy) and four
non-permanent members. At its largest, the League of Nations was comprised of
58 member-states. The Soviet Union joined in 1934 but was expelled in 1939 for
invading Finland.
Members of the League of Nations were required to respect
the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all other nation-states and to
disavow the use or threat of military force as a means of resolving international
conflicts. The League sought to peacefully resolve territorial disputes between
members and was in some cases highly effective. For instance, in 1926 the
League negotiated a peaceful outcome to the conflict between Iraq and Turkey
over the province of Mosul, and in the early 1930s successfully mediated a
resolution to the border dispute between Colombia and Peru.
However, the League ultimately failed to prevent the
outbreak of the Second World War, and has therefore been viewed by historians
as a largely weak, ineffective, and essentially powerless organization. Not
only did the League lack effective enforcement mechanisms, but many countries
refused to join and were therefore not bound to respect the rules and
obligations of membership.
The
United States and the League of Nations
US President Woodrow Wilson enunciated the Fourteen Points
in January 1918. The Fourteen Points laid out a comprehensive vision for the
transformation of world politics. Wilson believed that affairs between nations
should be conducted in the open, on the basis of sovereignty,
self-determination (the idea that all nations have the right to choose their
own political identity without external interference), and the disavowal of
military force to settle disputes. Wilson’s vision for the post-war world was
hugely influential in the founding of the League of Nations
President Wilson’s intense lobbying efforts on behalf of US
membership in the League of Nations met with firm opposition from isolationist
members of Congress, particularly Republican Senators William Borah and Henry
Cabot Lodge. They objected most vociferously to Article X of the League’s
Covenant, which required all members of the League to assist any member
threatened by external aggression. In effect, Article X would commit the United
States to defending any member of the League in the event of an attack.
Isolationists in Congress were opposed to any further US involvement in
international conflicts and viewed Article X as a direct violation of US
sovereignty. As a result, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and the
United States never became a member of the League of Nations.
Though the League had failed to prevent the outbreak of
another world war, it continued to operate until 1946, when it was formally
liquidated. By this time, the Allied powers had already begun to discuss the
creation of a new successor organization, the United Nations. The United
Nations, which is still in existence today, was based on many of the same
principles as the League of Nations, but was designed specifically to avoid the
League’s major weaknesses. The UN boasts much stronger enforcement mechanisms,
including its own peacekeeping forces, and the membership of the UN is
substantially larger than that of the League even at its peak.
1941:
The Declaration of St. James' Palace
The
sentences from the Declaration of St. James' Palace still serve as the
watchwords of peace: “The only true basis of enduring peace is the willing
cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of
aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security; It is our intention to
work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace, to this
end.”
In June 1941, London was the home of nine exiled
governments. The great British capital had already seen 22 months of war and in
the bomb-marked city, air-raid sirens wailed all too frequently.
Practically all Europe had fallen to the Axis and ships on
the Atlantic, carrying vital supplies, sank with grim regularity. But in London
itself and among the Allied governments and peoples, faith in ultimate victory
remained unshaken.
And,
even more, people were looking beyond military victory to the postwar future.
“Would
we win only to live in dread of yet another war? Should we not define some
purpose more creative than military victory? Is it not possible to shape a
better life for all countries and peoples and cut the causes of war at their
roots?”
12
June 1941: An Inter-Allied Declaration
On the twelfth of that month the representatives of Great
Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa and of
the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia and of General de Gaulle of France, met
at the ancient St. James’ Palace and signed a declaration.
1941:
The Atlantic Charter
Two leaders issued a joint declaration destined to be known
in history as the Atlantic Charter. This document was not a treaty between the
two powers. Nor was it a final and formal expression of peace aims. It was only
an affirmation, as the document declared, “Of certain common principles in the
national policies of their respective countries on which they based their hopes
for a better future for the world.”
Two months after the London Declaration came the next step
to a world organization, the result of a dramatic meeting between President
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.
In August 1941, the Axis was still very much in the
ascendant, or so it seemed, and the carefully stage-managed meetings between
Hitler and Mussolini, inevitably ending in “perfect accord,” sounded grimly
foreboding. Germany had flung herself against the USSR but the might of this
new ally was yet to be disclosed. And the United States, though giving moral
and material succor, was not yet in the war.
14
August 1941: A Joint Declaration
Then, one afternoon, came the news that President Roosevelt
and Prime Minister Churchill were in conference “somewhere at sea”—the same
seas on which the desperate Battle of the Atlantic was being fought— and on
August 14 the two leaders issued a joint declaration destined to be known in
history as the Atlantic Charter.
This document was not a treaty between the two powers. Nor
was it a final and formal expression of peace aims. It was only an affirmation,
as the document declared, “Of certain common principles in the national
policies of their respective countries on which they based their hopes for a
better future for the world.”
1942:
Declaration of the United Nations
Representatives of 26 countries fighting the
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, decide to affirm their support by Signing the Declaration
by United Nations. This important document pledged the signatory governments to
the maximum war effort and bound them against making a separate peace.
On New Year’s Day 1942,
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, and
T. V. Soong, of China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the United Nations
Declaration. The next day the
representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures. This
important document pledged the signatory governments to the maximum war effort
and bound them against making a separate peace.
United Nations
Declaration
The complete
alliance thus effected was in the light of the principles of the Atlantic Charter, and the first clause of the
United Nations Declaration reads that the signatory nations had:
« . . . Subscribed to a common
program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the
President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dated August 14, 1941, known as
the Atlantic Charter ».
Three years later, when
preparations were being made for the San Francisco
Conference, only those states
which had, by March 1945, declared war on Germany and Japan and subscribed to
the United Nations Declaration, were invited to take part.
1943:
Moscow and Teheran Conferences
“We are sure that our concord will win an enduring peace.
We recognize fully the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the
United Nations to make a peace which will command the goodwill of the
overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish the scourge and terror
of war for many generations.”
By 1943 all the principal Allied nations were committed to
outright victory and, thereafter, to an attempt to create a world in which “men
in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.” But the
basis for a world organization had yet to be defined, and such a definition
came at the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, the United
States and the Soviet Union in October 1943.
30
October 1943: Moscow
The United States Secretary
of State, the venerable Cordell Hull, made the first flight of his life to
journey to Moscow for the conference. On October 30, the Moscow Declaration was signed by Vyaches Molotov, Anthony Eden, Cordell
Hull and Foo Ping Shen, the Chinese Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
1
December 1943: Teheran
In December, two months after the four-power Declaration,
Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, meeting for the first time at Teheran, the
capital of Iran, declared that they had worked out concerted plans for final
victory.
Moscow
Declaration
The Declaration pledged further joint action in dealing
with the enemies’ surrender and, in clause 4, proclaimed:
“That they [the Foreign Ministers] recognize the necessity
of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international
organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all
peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and
small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
1944-1945: Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta
The Dumbarton
Oaks Conference constituted the first important step taken to carry out
paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need
for a post-war international organization to succeed the League of Nations.
The principles of the world organization-to-be were thus
laid down. But it is a long step from defining the principles and purpose of
such a body to setting up the structure. A blueprint had to be prepared, and it
had to be accepted by many nations.
7
October 1944: Dumbarton Oaks
For this purpose,
representatives of China, Great Britain, the USSR and the United States met for
a business-like conference at
Dumbarton Oaks, a private mansion
in Washington, D. C. The discussions were completed on October 7, 1944, and a
proposal for the structure of the world organization was submitted by the four
powers to all the United Nations governments and to the peoples of all
countries for their study and discussion.
A
Proposal for the World Organization
1.
Structure
According to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, four principal
bodies were to constitute the organization to be known as the United Nations.
There was to be a General Assembly composed of all the members. Then came a
Security Council of eleven members. Five of these were to be permanent and the
other six were to be chosen from the remaining members by the General Assembly
to hold office for two years. The third body was an International Court of
Justice, and the fourth a Secretariat. An Economic and Social Council, working
under the authority of the General Assembly, was also provided for.
2.
Roles and Responsibilities
The essence of the plan was that responsibility for
preventing future war should be conferred upon the Security Council. The
General Assembly could study, discuss and make recommendations in order to
promote international cooperation and adjust situations likely to impair
welfare. It could consider problems of cooperation in maintaining peace and
security, and disarmament, in their general principles. But it could not make
recommendations on any matter being considered by the Security Council, and all
questions on which action was necessary had to be referred to the Security
Council.
The actual method of voting in the Security Council -- an
all-important question -- was left open at Dumbarton Oaks for future
discussion.
4.
Armed Forces in the Service of Peace
Another important feature of the Dumbarton Oaks plan was
that member states were to place armed forces at the disposal of the Security
Council in its task of preventing war and suppressing acts of aggression. The
absence of such force, it was generally agreed, had been a fatal weakness in
the older League of Nations machinery for preserving peace.
Yalta
Charter
Leaders of the major allied powers of World War II meeting
at Yalta in the Russian Crimea to decide on military plans for the final defeat
of Germany.
Extensive press and radio discussion enabled people in
Allied countries to judge the merits of the new plan for peace.
Much attention was given to the differences between this
new plan and the Covenant of the League of Nations, it being generally admitted
that putting armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council was a notable
improvement.
11
February 1945: Yalta - the question of voting
One important gap in the
Dumbarton Oaks proposals had yet to be filled: the voting procedure in the
Security Council. This was done at Yalta in the Crimea where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin,
together with their foreign ministers and chiefs of staff, met in conference.
On February 11, 1945, the conference announced that this question had been
resolved, and it summoned the San Francisco Conference.
“We
are resolved,” the three leaders declared, “upon the earliest possible
establishment with our Allies of a general international organization to
maintain peace and security… “We have agreed that a Conference of United
Nations should be called to meet at San Francisco in the United States on the
25th April, 1945, to prepare the charter of such an organization, along the
lines proposed in the formal conversations of Dumbarton Oaks.”
5
March 1945: San Francisco - an invitation
The invitations were sent out on March 5, 1945, and those
invited were told at the same time about the agreement reached at Yalta on the
voting procedure in the Security Council.
12
April 1945: Change at the Helm
Soon after, in early April, came the sudden death of
President Roosevelt, to whose statesmanship the plans for the San Francisco
Conference owed so much. There was fear for a time that the conference might
have to be postponed, but President Truman decided to carry out all the
arrangements already made, and the conference opened on the appointed date.
1945:
The San Francisco Conference
Forty-six nations, including the four sponsors, were
originally invited to the San Francisco Conference: nations which had declared
war on Germany and Japan and had subscribed to the United Nations Declaration.
One of these nations - Poland - did not send a
representative because the composition of its new government was not announced
until too late for the conference. Therefore, a space was left for the
signature of Poland, one of the original signatories of the United Nations
Declaration. At the time of the conference there was no generally recognized
Polish Government, but on June 28, such a government was announced and on
October 15, 1945 Poland signed the Charter, thus becoming one of the original
Members.
Fifty
Nations, Soon to Be United
The conference itself invited four other states - the
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic, newly-liberated Denmark and Argentina. Thus delegates of fifty
nations in all, gathered at the City of the Golden Gate, representatives of
over eighty per cent of the world's population, people of every race, religion
and continent; all determined to set up an organization which would preserve
peace and help build a better world. They had before them the Dumbarton Oaks
proposals as the agenda for the conference and, working on this basis, they had
to produce a Charter acceptable to all the countries.
Delegations
and Staff Number 3,500
There were 850 delegates, and their advisers and staff
together with the conference secretariat brought the total to 3,500. In
addition, there were more than 2,500 press, radio and newsreel representatives
and observers from many societies and organizations. In all, the San Francisco
Conference was not only one of the most important in history but, perhaps, the
largest international gathering ever to take place. The heads of the
delegations of the sponsoring countries took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings:
Anthony Eden, of Britain, Edward Stettinius, of the United States, T. V. Soong,
of China, and Vyacheslav Molotov, of the Soviet Union. At the later meetings,
Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, V. K. Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and
Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov.
Plenary meetings are, however, only the final stages at
such conferences. A great deal of work has to be done in preparatory committees
before a proposition reaches the full gathering in the form in which it should
be voted upon. And the voting procedure at San Francisco was important. Every
part of the Charter had to be and was passed by a two-thirds majority.
This is the way in which the San Francisco Conference got
through its monumental work in exactly two months.
One
Charter, Four Sections
The conference formed a "Steering Committee,"
composed of the heads of all the delegations. This committee decided all
matters of major principle and policy. But, even at one member per state, the
committee was 50 strong, too large for detailed work; therefore an Executive
Committee of fourteen heads of delegations was chosen to prepare
recommendations for the Steering Committee.
Then the proposed Charter was divided into four sections,
each of which was considered by a "Commission." Commission one dealt
with the general purposes of the organization, its principles, membership, the
secretariat and the subject of amendments to the Charter. Commission two
considered the powers and responsibilities of the General Assembly, while
Commission three took up the Security Council.
Commission four worked on a draft for the Statute of the
International Court of Justice.
This draft had been prepared by a 44-nation Committee of
Jurists which had met in Washington in April 1945. All this sounds
over-elaborate — especially when the four Commissions subdivided into twelve
technical committees — but actually, it was the speediest way of ensuring the fullest
discussion and securing the last ounce of agreement possible.
Clashes
of Opinion
There were only ten plenary meetings of all the delegates
but nearly 400 meetings of the committees at which every line and comma was
hammered out. It was more than words and phrases, of course that had to be
decided upon. There were many serious clashes of opinion, divergences of
outlook and even a crisis or two, during which some observers feared that the
conference might adjourn without an agreement.
There was the question, for example, of the status of
"regional organizations." Many countries had their own arrangements
for regional defence and mutual assistance. There was the Inter-American
System, for example, and the Arab League. How were such arrangements to be
related to the world organization? The conference decided to give them part in
peaceful settlement and also, in certain circumstances, in enforcement
measures, provided that the aims and acts of these groups accorded with the
aims and purposes of the United Nations.
Treaties
and Trusteeship
The conference finally agreed that treaties made after the
formation of the United Nations should be registered with the Secretariat and
published by it. As to revision, no specific mention was made although such
revision may be recommended by the General Assembly in the course of
investigation of any situation requiring peaceful adjustment.
The conference added a whole new chapter on the subject not
covered by the Dumbarton Oaks proposals: proposals creating a system for
territories placed under United Nations trusteeship. On this matter there was
much debate. Should the aim of trusteeship be defined as
"independence" or "self-government" for the peoples of
these areas? If independence, what about areas too small ever to stand on their
own legs for defence? It was finally recommended that the promotion of the
progressive development of the peoples of trust territories should be directed
toward "independence or self-government."
Debates
and Vetoes
There was also considerable debate on the jurisdiction of
the International Court of Justice and the conference decided that member
nations would not be compelled to accept the Court's jurisdiction but might
voluntarily declare their acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction. Likewise the
question of future amendments to the Charter received much attention and
finally resulted in an agreed solution.
Above all, the right of each of the "Big Five" to
exercise a "veto" on action by the powerful Security Council provoked
long and heated debate. At one stage the conflict of opinion on this question
threatened to break up the conference. The smaller powers feared that when one
of the "Big Five" menaced the peace, the Security Council would be
powerless to act, while in the event of a clash between two powers not
permanent members of the Security Council, the "Big Five" could act
arbitrarily. They strove, therefore, to have the power of the "veto"
reduced. But the great powers unanimously insisted on this provision as vital,
and emphasized that the main responsibility for maintaining world peace would
fall most heavily on them. Eventually the smaller powers conceded the point in
the interest of setting up the world organization.
This and other vital issues were resolved only because
every nation was determined to set up, if not the perfect international
organization, at least the best that could possibly be made.
The Last Meeting
Thus it was that in the Opera House at San Francisco on
June 25, the delegates met in full session for the last meeting. Lord Halifax
presided and put the final draft of the Charter to the meeting. "This
issue upon which we are about to vote," he said, "Is as important as
any we shall ever vote in our lifetime."
In view of the world importance of the occasion, he
suggested that it would be appropriate to depart from the customary method of
voting by a show of hands. Then, as the issue was put, every delegate rose and
remained standing. So did everyone present, the staffs, the press and some 3000
visitors, and the hall resounded to a mighty ovation as the Chairman announced
that the Charter had been passed unanimously.
The
Charter Is Signed
The next day, in the
auditorium of the Veterans' Memorial Hall, the delegates filed up one by one to
a huge round table on which lay the two historic volumes, the Charter and
the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Behind each delegate stood the other members of the
delegation against a colourful semi-circle of the flags of fifty nations. In
the dazzling brilliance of powerful spotlights, each delegate affixed his
signature. To China, first victim of aggression by an Axis power, fell the
honour of signing first.
"The Charter of the United Nations which you have just
signed," said President Truman in addressing the final session, "is a
solid structure upon which we can build a better world. History will honour you
for it. Between the victory in Europe and the final victory, in this most
destructive of all wars, you have won a victory against war itself. . . . With
this Charter the world can begin to look forward to the time when all worthy
human beings may be permitted to live decently as free people."
Then the President pointed out that the Charter would work
only if the peoples of the world were determined to make it work.
"If we fail to use it," he concluded, "we
shall betray all those who have died so that we might meet here in freedom and
safety to create it. If we seek to use it selfishly - for the advantage of any
one nation or any small group of nations — we shall be equally guilty of that
betrayal".
The
Charter Is Approved
The United Nations did not come into existence at the
signing of the Charter. In many countries the Charter had to be approved by
their congresses or parliaments. It had therefore been provided that the
Charter would come into force when the Governments of China, France, Great
Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and a majority of the other
signatory states had ratified it and deposited notification to this effect with
the State Department of the United States. On October 24, 1945, this condition
was fulfilled and the United Nations came into existence. Four years of
planning and the hope of many years had materialized in an international
organization designed to end war and promote peace, justice and better living
for all mankind.
Bibliography:
The
United Nations: Library of Congress
The
League of Nations: khanacademy
History
of the United Nations: United Nations
Charter
of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice.
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