History Structure and Membership Role in the Global Community UN Organizations Limits and Liabilities The UN emblem shows the world held in the “olive branches of peace”.

The International Labour Organization was also created under the Treaty of Versailles as an affiliated agency of the League. What existed before the United Nations? The forerunner of the United Nations was the League of Nations, an organization conceived in similar circumstances during the first World War, and established in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security." The League of Nations ceased its activities after failing to prevent the Second World War.

 Inter-Allied Declaration "To work together, with other free peoples, both in war and in peace“  Signed in London on June 12, 1941, the Inter-Allied Declaration was a first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.  Atlantic Charter. On August 14 th 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom proposed a set of principles for international collaboration in maintaining peace and security. The document, signed during a meeting on the ship H.M.S. Prince of Wales, "somewhere at sea", is known as the Atlantic Charter.

The Need Revisited  Yalta Conference. On February 11 th, 1945, following meetings at Yalta, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin declared their resolve to establish "a general international organization to maintain peace and security." The allies recognized there had to be a stop-gap so someone like a Hitler could never rise and throw the world into such turmoil as seen in the previous two world wars.

 The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24 th, 1945, when the UN Charter had been ratified by a majority of the original 51 Member States. The day is now celebrated each year around the world as United Nations Day.  The purpose of the United Nations is to bring all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity and the well-being of all people.

Why a UN? To keep peace throughout the world. To develop friendly relations between nations. To work together to help people live better lives, to eliminate poverty, disease and illiteracy in the world, to stop environmental destruction and to encourage respect for each other's rights and freedoms. To be a center for helping nations achieve these aims.

The doctrine that says if there's a massive abuse of human rights by a government or that it can't stop it, then the international community has the right, the responsibility, to intervene, and that the General Assembly accepted in September, 2005 It changes the philosophy of the UN from a membership that is organized to protect their own interests, to a philosophy that is to focus on the protection of the population of the world no matter what country they live.