Today (Saturday), October 24, marks the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the United Nations (UN). The day is known as United Nations Day.
The global accord which greeted the UN’s formation in 1945 was the natural response to the horrors of the Second World War.
The first Article of the UN’s Charter says: ‘To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace...’.
“The Charter became the foundation for the wide-ranging and complex international system which has grown since then, and which is considered by some analysts to now be threatened,” said John Langmore AM, a professor of University of Melbourne, in an article titled ‘Celebrating 75 Years: The UN’s Past and Future’.
“One of the UN’s major achievements is to have survived for so long. Its survival is due to the lessons the founders learnt from the previous attempt at global governance,” he added.
“The League of Nations failed because its membership wasn’t universal; it required unanimity to make decisions; it didn’t set conditions for use of force; and had few sanctions,” he continued.
[The full article is available: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/celebrating-75-years-the-un-s-past-and-future.]
