United Nations

Association of states for international peace, security, and cooperation, with its headquarters in New York City. The UN was established on 24 October 1945 by 51 states as a successor to the League of Nations. Its Charter, whose obligations member states agree to accept, sets out four purposes for the UN: to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations; to cooperate in solving international problems and in promoting respect for human rights; and to be a centre for the harmonizing the actions of nations. The UN has played a role in development assistance, disaster relief, cultural cooperation, aiding refugees, and peacekeeping. Its membership in 2007 stood at 192 states. It is funded from contributions from member states. Ban Ki-moon from South Korea became secretary general in 2006.

The UN system spends around £15 billion a year, taking into account the UN staff of over 50,000, the basic infrastructure (for which there is an annual budget of $1.9 billion), peacekeeping operations, and the programmes, funding, and operations of its specialized agencies (but excluding the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which provide billions more in development loans).

The UN has six principal institutions. Five are based in New York: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and the Secretariat. The sixth, the International Court of Justice, is located at the Peace Palace in the Hague, Netherlands. There are six official working languages: English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. The name ‘United Nations’ was coined by US president Franklin D Roosevelt.

The former secretary general Kofi Annan and the UN itself were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Agencies
The UN operates many specialized agencies that work with the UN and each other through the coordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council. They are involved either in promoting communication between states, for example, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); or concerned with welfare of states, for example, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (known as the World Bank). Much of the work of the specialized welfare agencies concerns developing countries and comprises fieldwork assistance and research. However, the agencies also provide international standards relevant to all countries. Though autonomous, the specialized agencies were created by intergovernmental agreement, and are related to the UN by special arrangements.

Peacekeeping
In its peacekeeping role, the UN has had mixed success. Of the 62 operations set up since 1948, two-thirds (44) were established after 1991; 47 operations have completed their mandates. At the start of 2007 there were 15 peacekeeping operations, involving 45,000 personnel. The UN's peacekeeping troops are loaned voluntarily by member states, who pay the troops at their own national rates, but are reimbursed by the UN at a flat rate of US$1,000 per soldier per month. The peacekeeping budget for 2005–06 was over $5 billion.

Funding
The UN has always suffered from a lack of adequate and independent forces and funds. In early 2006 member states owed the UN over US$3.2 billion for past and current assessments – US$2.9 billion for peacekeeping and US$0.3 billion for the regular UN budget.

Members contribute financially according to their resources, an apportionment being made by the General Assembly, with the addition of voluntary contributions from some governments to the funds of the UN. The regular contributions are determined by a country's capacity to pay, based on its gross national product (GNP) and adjustments for its levels of external debt and per capita income, which are reviewed every three years. More than three-quarters of the UN's regular budget is paid by the ten largest contributors: the USA (which pays 22%); Japan (20%); Germany (9%); the UK (6%); France (6%); Italy (5%); Canada (3%); Spain (2%); China (2%); and Mexico (2%). The 25 members of the European Union (EU) contribute together 38% of the budget.