United Nations Day

What the day is

United Nations Day is observed on October 24. The Charter had been signed in San Francisco that June, but a treaty takes effect on ratification, and on this date in 1945 enough member states had ratified it for the organization to formally exist.

Origin and background

The UN was built directly on the failure of the League of Nations, and its structure reflects that. The League had no great-power enforcement mechanism and lost several major members; the UN tied the victorious powers of the Second World War into a Security Council with permanent seats and vetoes, on the reasoning that an organization the great powers could ignore would be useless, and one they could dominate would at least keep them inside it.

That design is also the source of most criticism. The veto means the Council cannot act against the interests of any permanent member or their close allies, which has blocked responses to several major conflicts. Reform proposals have circulated for decades and go nowhere, because amending the Charter requires the agreement of the very members whose privilege would be reduced.

The work that attracts less attention is where the record is stronger. The UN's specialized agencies handle civil aviation standards, postal coordination, telecommunications spectrum, refugee protection, food aid, labor standards and disease surveillance. The eradication of smallpox was coordinated by the World Health Organization and remains one of the outstanding achievements of international cooperation.

Membership has grown from the original fifty-one states to nearly two hundred, mostly through decolonization, which changed the General Assembly's character entirely.

How to take part

• Read the Charter's preamble. It is short, and it was written by people who had just watched a world war.
• Look up what the specialized agencies actually do; most people know only the Security Council.
• Read about the smallpox eradication campaign as a concrete case of what coordination achieves.
• Check your own country's voting record and treaty ratifications.
• Form a view on the veto after reading both the case for it and against it.