THE UNITED NATIONS

By Miguel Molina Díaz

The historical antecedents which resulted in the creation of the United Nations begin with the Congress of Vienna in 1814. It was a conference of ambassadors who represented European states, which after 25 years of Napoleonic wars, wanted to give order to the devastated continent fortifying the monarchies. The ambassadors met for 8 months and the result of their work was 100 hundred years of peace; this period was called the Concert of Europe. This was one of the first international agreements achieved in order to establish world peace. In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Arch-duke of Austria-Hungary was killed by a Serbian terrorist and that was the pretext used to start the war for the world’s hegemony. When the war was over the countries who won created an organization called the Society of Nations and its objective was to guaranty the peace by writing the world’s constitution. The winners established strong punishments to Germany, and their Society of Nations didn’t cover all the existent nations. Those were the main mistakes that provoked the Second World War in 1939, which caused the death of around 60 million people. The war ended after 6 years, because of the surrender of Germany, after which the Allies tried to re-organize the world.

On October 24th, 1945, the United Nations were officially created during a convention held in San Francisco, USA. The organization was established to maintain peace and security in the world. Today the UN has 192 members and is the biggest international organization in the world. It is run by the General Secretary, the General Assembly and the Council of Security. This last one is the only entity whose resolutions are to be obligatorily applied by the members, and also the only one that is able to intervene in bellicose conflicts. The main office of the United Nation is located in New York City and its General Assembly meets once a year. The International Court of Justice is the judicial entity of the United Nations; it has to mediate in states’ conflicts and the members have the obligation to accept their resolutions. The court is located in The Hague and it is formed by 15 magistrates.

It is very clear that the United Nations are not doing a successful job despite they could stop a third world war, because the right of veto of the G5 is an antidemocratic method used for the convenience of those countries. For this reason the UN wasn’t able to stop Vietnam and Iraq invasions, so we all have to reorganize and reconstruct our organization of peace.