Abstract
The United Nations was founded in the period immediately following the Second World War. The swiftness with which the new international organization was established owed much to a considerable amount of planning and lobbying by private groups particularly in the United States prior to the end of the war. In addition, and partly as a result of that pressure, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the leaders of the other Allied powers had signed three documents which proved crucial to a gathering momentum toward the creation of a new international organization. In August 1941, aboard a ship off the coast of Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter, where they put forward the principle of the establishment of a ‘wider and permanent system of general security’.1 In January 1942, twenty-six countries allied against the Axis powers signed the Declaration of United Nations. This was the first time the term ‘United Nations’ was used, and the document affirmed the principles set out in the Atlantic Charter. Finally, on 30 October 1943, leaders of the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and the United States signed the Moscow Declaration iterating the principle of establishing an international organization which would focus on the maintenance of international peace and security.
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Notes and References
A.L. Bennett (1988), International Organizations: Principles and Issues, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 4th edn., p. 43.
United Nations Charter, Preamble.
The total number of participating states does not include Poland because it did not participate in the UNCIO, although it subsequently signed the Charter as a founding state.
See Bennett, 1988, p. 50; G. Goodwin (1966), ‘The General Assembly of the United Nations’, in E. Luard (ed.), The Evolution of International Organizations, London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 43–6.
For an account of the complex workings of the specialized agencies of the UN system and their interrelationships, see D. Williams (1987), The Specialized Agencies and the United Nations: The System in Crisis, London: C. Hurst & Company.
I.L. Claude (1966), ‘The Security Council’, in Luard (ed.), p. 72.
The Gulf War and the protection of Kurds in Northern Iraq, the establishment of the humanitarian mission in Bosnia followed by the establishment of the mission in Somalia are all examples of shifts in how we understand the principle of sovereignty. For further discussion, see Chopra and Weiss, 1992; Weiss and Campbell, 1991; Formuth, 1993; Camilleri and Falk, 1992.
Originally the SC had 11 members, including the permanent five. A majority was seven for all votes except an absolute majority of six for electing jurists to the International Court of Justice.
UN Doc. Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council, Chap. 4, rule 18.
In practice, abstention by a permanent member is considered a ‘concurring’ vote, for a permanent member to block a substantive vote, that country would have to register a veto or ‘no’ vote.
UN Charter, Chapter V, Art. 24(1) and Art. 25.
UN Charter, Chapter VII, Art. 42.
See G.R. Berridge (1991), Return to the UN: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts, London: Macmillan, pp. 3–11.
In practice this restriction is often ignored by the GA.
Figures quoted from William Pace from the Center for Development of International Law, Washington, DC, 21 September 1993.
For a more lengthy discussion of how these precedents came about, see N. Elaraby (1987), ‘The office of the Secretary-General and the maintenance of international peace and security’, in United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 177–209.
Elaraby, in UNITAR, 1978, p. 187.
Before March 1992 the name of the DPKO was the Office of Special Political Affairs, its current U-S-G is Kofi Annan.
E.B. Haas (1987), ‘The collective management of international conflict, 1945–1984,’ in UNITAR, p. 7.
B. Urquhart (1981), ‘International peace and security: thoughts on the twentieth anniversary of Dag Hammarskjold’s death’, Foreign Affairs, 60(1):7.
This section follows the argument set out in H. Scheltema (1988), ‘Transformations within the United Nations’, in J. Harrod and N. Schrijver (eds), The UN Under Attack, Aldershot: Gower, pp. 1–7.
Scheltema, in Harrod and Schrijver, 1988, p. 4.
J. Kaufman (1988), ‘Developments in decision-making in the United Nations’, in Harrod and Schrijver, p. 17.
The Soviet Union had been boycotting the Security Council meetings since January 1950 over the issue of representation of China.
UN Doc. SCR 1501, 25 June 1950.
UN Doc. SCR 1588, 7 July 1950.
UN Doc. GAR 377 (v) 3 November 1950.
For a more detailed description of the UN involvement in Korea, see R. Higgins (1970), United Nations Peacekeeping, 1946–1967: Documents and Commentary, Vol. 2, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 153–314.
Haas, in UNITAR, 1987, pp. 9–10.
H. Miall (1992), The Peacemakers: Peaceful Settlement of Disputes Since 1945, London: Macmillan.
H. Wiseman (1987), ‘The United Nations and international peacekeeping: a comparative analysis’, in UNITAR, p. 265.
James, in UNITAR, 1987, p. 219.
Urquhart, 1981, p. 8.
Wiseman offers the following definitions of the different types of peacekeeping operations: observer missions function ‘to observe, investigate and report on the compliance of the parties to a cease-fire. The size of these missions is generally very small, about 100 personnel, but not over 1,000.’ Force-level missions function as ‘interposition of military forces between belligerents to ensure the maintenance of a cease-fire and such other matters as detailed in a mandate. The numbers employed on such operations have generally ranged from 3,000 to 20,000, which is an indication of the magnitude of their tasks’ (in UNITAR, 1987, p. 263–4).
These missions were the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) set up in 1948 and the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) set up in 1949. Both of these observer missions are still active.
Rikhye, 1984, p. 1.
For a detailed description of the Suez Crisis, see The Blue Helmets, 1990; Urquhart, 1987; James, 1990a.
A. James (1990a), Peacekeeping in International Politics, London: Macmillan, p. 212.
B. Urquhart (1987), A Life in Peace and War, New York: Harper Row, p. 133.
Urquhart, 1987, p. 133.
G. Abi-Saab (1978), The United Nations Operation in the Congo 1960–1964, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 6.
Urquhart, 1981, pp. 6–7.
F.T. Liu (1990), ‘United Nations peacekeeping: management and operations’, Occasional Papers on Peacekeeping, No. 4, New York: International Peace Academy, p. 7.
Urquhart, 1981, p. 6.
Wiseman, in UNITAR, 1987, pp. 264–99.
Wiseman, in UNITAR, 1987 p. 288.
Wiseman, in UNITAR, 1987, p. 289.
G.L. Sherry (1990), ‘The United Nations reborn: conflict control in the post-cold war world’, Critical Issues, No. 2, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, pp. 7–10.
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© 1994 A. B. Fetherston
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Fetherston, A.B. (1994). A Brief History of United Nations Peacekeeping, 1945–87. In: Towards a Theory of United Nations Peacekeeping. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23642-8_1
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