The name 'United Nations' first meant the wartime Allies, coined by Roosevelt
Before it was a building in New York, the United Nations was a military coalition. Franklin Roosevelt used the phrase for the countries fighting the Axis, Churchill liked it because Byron had used it, and joining meant declaring war. Only in 1945 did the label pass to a permanent peace organisation.
The organisation was designed as a second attempt. The League of Nations, pushed by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War, came into force on 10 January 1920, but the United States never joined, and nearly every major decision needed unanimity. It could not stop Japan in Manchuria, which simply walked out after forty members voted against its occupation, and it failed Ethiopia when Haile Selassie appealed at Geneva in 1936. Once war began in 1939 the League effectively shut, though one of its last acts was expelling the Soviet Union for invading Finland.
Planning for a replacement ran through the war. Roosevelt and Churchill drafted the Atlantic Charter in August 1941, and at the Arcadia Conference that December Roosevelt, Churchill and Harry Hopkins wrote the Declaration by United Nations, adding religious freedom at Roosevelt's insistence. It was signed on New Year's Day 1942 by the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China, with twenty-two more countries signing the next day. The Moscow Declarations of October 1943 publicly promised a new general organisation, and the Dumbarton Oaks talks in autumn 1944 sketched its structure.
Delegates from 50 governments met in San Francisco from 25 April 1945 and spent two months drafting the Charter, which they signed on 26 June. The body formally came into being on 24 October 1945, once the five permanent Security Council members and most other signatories had ratified. Churchill had lobbied to put France back among the great powers, which is why it holds one of those seats.
Today there are 193 member states plus two observers, the Holy See and the State of Palestine. Headquarters are in New York, with further offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague, and six principal organs ranging from the General Assembly to the International Court of Justice. Eleven peacekeeping missions were running at last count. Its record draws both Nobel Peace Prizes and accusations of ineffectiveness, bias and corruption.
Source: United Nations
