ABSTRACT
The UN was created to ‘save the succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ (Preamble). It was the second attempt in the twentieth century to establish an international mechanism for peace and security by incorporating lessons learned from the first attempt, the ill-fated League of Nations. After debating extensively about its nature, structure and function, those delegates from fifty countries who gathered at the historic Opera House in San Francisco, California, unanimously adopted the Charter of this new international organization on 25 June 1945. On the following day, they held a signing ceremony at the Herbst Theatre auditorium of the Veterans’ War Memorial Building next door (later, Poland was added to the group to make the official number of original members of the UN fifty-one). The 111-article Charter subsequently came into effect on 24 October, the day which is commemorated as ‘UN Day’. Although the particular expression was not directly used in the languages of the Charter, the idea of collective security (and its fulfilment) was recognized as the essential goal of this world body. The UN Charter stresses that the main purpose of the organization is ‘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, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression’ (Preamble, Chapter I, Article 1-1 and Chapter VII, among others). The creation of the UN, with the concept of collective security at its core, can be seen as a manifestation of an attempt at global governance.
