US Military History Companion: United Nations

(est. 1945). President Franklin D. Roosevelt foresaw the need for “Four Policemen”—the
United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China (France was added later)—to order
the post–World War II world and repel all attempts at aggression and violence. Meeting
in San Francisco in 1945, the founders of the United Nations tried to fulfill that vision by
creating a Security Council with five permanent members charged with saving
“succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The UN Charter set up a military staff committee—consisting of the chiefs of staff or

their representatives from the five permanent members—to take over the strategic
direction of any military operation of the Security Council. Although this committee has
met regularly for more than a half century, it has never directed any UN military
operation. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union could never
agree sufficiently on military issues to share a joint command. Even after the Cold War,
this kind of cooperation proved impractical. Yet, despite an inert military staff committee,
the United Nations has been heavily involved in military action.

In one instance, the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, the Security
Council did act like a team of Roosevelt‐inspired policemen. The Council condemned
North Korean aggression, called on the world to aid South Korea, and authorized a UN
command under U.S. Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur. But the United Nations managed to do
all this only because the Soviet Union was boycotting sessions of the Security Council to
protest the denial of a Council seat to Communist China. Although fifteen other countries
dispatched troops or air support to Korea under a UN flag, the Americans commanded
and dominated the UN force and fought the three‐year Korean War as if it were their
own.

Aside from the accident of the Soviet boycott during the initial Korean crisis, the United
Nations had no significant role in dealing with the Cold War. During the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962, for example, the United Nations served as no more than a theater as U.S.
ambassador Adlai Stevenson displayed photographic evidence of the Soviet Union
installing missiles and launchers in Cuba. And Secretary General U Thant earned only
contempt from President Lyndon B. Johnson during the late 1960s for trying to mediate
an end to the Vietnam War.

The United Nations dealt instead with crises on the periphery of the Cold War. A major
innovation in UN work arose from the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Looking for a way to
ease the British, French, and Israeli troops out of Egypt after their ill‐fated intervention,
Dag Hammarskjold, the urbane Swedish bureaucrat who headed the United Nations as
secretary general, persuaded all sides to accept UN troops in their place. That had never
been done before. In a remarkable feat of management and energy, Hammarskjold and his
chief aide, the African American Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph Bunche, put together
in one week the United Nations' first peacekeeping force—6,000 troops from 9 countries.
The United States offered surplus helmets, which were quickly painted blue and passed to
the troops, the first “Blue Helmets,” as UN peacekeepers would come to be known.
In 1960, the United Nations dispatched Blue Helmets to the former Belgian Congo (now
the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to restore law and order out of bloody chaos and
replace the Belgian troops, who no longer had any place in an independent African
country. Hammarskjold, who would die in a plane crash while on a Congo mission,
interpreted Security Council resolutions as broadly as possible and directed his troops to
put down the secession of Katanga. The suppression was so controversial and bloody,
however, that UN peacekeepers would not engage in military offensives for another thirty
years. Quiet patrolling of cease‐fire lines in trouble spots like Cyprus (between Greek and
Turkish Cypriots), the Sinai (between Egyptians and Israelis), and the Golan Heights
(between Syrians and Israelis) would become the hallmark of UN peacekeepers, earning
them the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

The character of UN peacekeeping was transformed by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in
1989 and the end of the Cold War. Euphoria over the Persian Gulf War of 1991
contributed to the change. Although this war was not officially declared a UN war as the
Korean War had been, the Security Council played a key role with resolutions authorizing
the United States and its Coalition partners to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The war
persuaded UN diplomats and bureaucrats that the Security Council, as long as the United
States and Russia agreed, could now literally attempt anything. Some analysts felt that
Franklin Roosevelt's dream would be realized at last.

The United Nations found itself dealing with a host of crises in different ways:
monitoring human rights violations, supervising elections, creating democratic
institutions, feeding the hungry, as well as policing the peace in such flashpoints as El
Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, Haiti, and Rwanda. But its new confidence was swiftly
shattered by ill‐fated missions to Somalia and Bosnia.

When eighteen U.S. Army Rangers died in Mogadishu in October 1993 during their
abortive manhunt for a Somali warlord, President Bill Clinton decided to withdraw all
U.S. troops, crippling the mission. Although the fallen rangers had operated outside UN
command, aides of Clinton unjustly put the blame on Secretary General Boutros Boutros‐
Ghali, despoiling the image of the United Nations in American eyes. That image
worsened in the Bosnian crisis (1992–95). The United Nations proved incapable of
halting Serb aggression and protecting Muslim civilian populations from massacre in
towns that had been designated “safe areas” by the Security Council. This impotence
stemmed from the failure of the United States and its European allies to agree on a
strategy for dealing with Serb aggression. UN peacekeepers found themselves patrolling
Bosnia under the authority of scores of contradictory toothless resolutions from the
Security Council. When the United States brokered a peace agreement at Dayton, Ohio,
in 1995, NATO troops supplanted the UN peacekeepers and enforced the agreement.

The animosity toward the United Nations so intensified in the United States that
Congress refused to pay all the assessments that Washington owed, precipitating a
financial crisis. UN diplomats and officials commemorated the fiftieth anniversary in
October 1995 in a depressed mood, convinced that the United Nations no longer would
have the funds or public support to mount many peacekeeping missions.

The Origins and Establishment of the United Nations

There is considerable debate about the United States' motives for the establishment of the
UN. From the point of view of some commentators, the administration of President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945) viewed the UN as a potential pillar of a wider
effort to construct an international order in which U.S. manufacturers and investors
would be able to continue to benefit economically following the end of World War II.
Other observers emphasize the role of liberal (or Wilsonian) idealism in the foundation of
the UN and its importance as an effort to move beyond the Great Power rivalry of the
pre-1945 era. Related to this perception is the view that Roosevelt envisioned the UN as a
vehicle by which the Soviet Union could be brought into a more cooperative and less
confrontational international order. From this perspective, the UN was a way of
maintaining and broadening the alliance after 1945 between the victorious powers in
World War II.

At the same time, even if the establishment of the UN represented an immediate response
to World War II, it built on rather than displaced the ideas about, and the practices of,
international relations that had emerged prior to the 1940s. For example, the UN was
clearly a successor organization to the League of Nations. But, given the discredited
reputation of the League, the UN could not be established directly on its foundations.
Many observers regard the UN as an improvement on the overall structure of the League
of Nations. From the perspective of the United States and its wartime allies, one of the
most significant improvements was to be the way in which the UN was even more
explicitly grounded in the principle of the concert (or concerted action) of the Great
Powers. The notion that the Great Powers had unique rights and obligations in
international relations was already a major element behind the establishment of the
League of Nations, particularly its main decision-making body, the Council. In the UN,
however, the major allied powers were given permanent seats on the Security Council,
which came with the right of veto on any UN security initiative. The main framers of the
UN also sought to enlarge the organization's role in social and economic affairs (in
contrast to the League). This flowed from the knowledge that a broad international effort
would be required to deal with a range of problems related to reconstruction following
the end of World War II. There was also a sense that mechanisms for countering the kind
of wholesale violation of human rights that had characterized the Nazi regime needed to
be set up. Furthermore, in light of both the Great Depression and World War II there was
a growing concern that economic inequality and poverty facilitated crisis and war.

The Operation and Growth of the United Nations

The Security Council, as already suggested, is the most important body of the UN. It is in
permanent session and is responsible for the maintenance of international peace and
security. It has the power to call on the armed forces of member governments to provide
peacekeeping forces and to intervene in conflicts and disputes around the world. The
Security Council was established with five permanent members and ten rotating
members. The permanent members are the major allied powers that won World War II:
the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), Great Britain, France, and China
(Taiwan held the Chinese seat until 1971). The five permanent members all have an
absolute veto on any resolution of the Security Council. After 1945 international power
politics, as played out at the UN, were directly linked to the (sometimes dubious)
proposition that these five states were the most politically and militarily significant in
world affairs. The veto also meant that although these five powers were prevented, in
theory, from using force in a fashion that went against the UN Charter, their veto in the
Security Council protected them from sanction or censure if they did engage in unilateral
action. The Security Council thus represented a major arena for Cold War politics at the
same time as the Cold War, which pitted its members against each other, ensured that the
ability of the Security Council to act was often profoundly constrained.

While the Security Council's focus was on issues of peace and war, the General Assembly
was given particular responsibility for social and economic issues. Over the years, as this
brief has grown, a range of specialized, often semiautonomous, agencies have emerged.
For example, the International Labor Organization, which had been set up by the League
of Nations, was revitalized. The UN also established the World Health Organization, the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and the Food and
Agriculture Organization, not to mention the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development and the United Nations Development Programme. By the 1990s there were
nineteen separate UN agencies. Some of the most significant UN organizations that
emerged after 1945 now operate almost entirely independently. This is particularly true of
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (the World Bank).

The Cold War, Decolonization, and the United Nations in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

The UN, as already emphasized, was profoundly shaped by the emerging Cold War. In
this context the United States increasingly perceived it as an important element in its
policy toward Moscow. For example, a U.S. Department of State memorandum in April
1946 observed, "[t]he Charter of the United Nations affords the best and most
unassailable means through which the U.S. can implement its opposition to Soviet
physical expansion." Meanwhile, Moscow's early resistance to Washington's preferred
candidates for the presidency of the General Assembly and the post of the UN's first
Secretary-General ensured that the UN would be an important forum for the wider Cold
War. The UN was also directly involved in and shaped by the rising nationalist sentiment
against colonialism and the move toward decolonization, as well as the question of racial
discrimination that was directly or indirectly connected to the colonial question. For
example, the UN passed a resolution on 29 November 1947 that called for the end of the
British mandate in Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state, with
Jerusalem being put under international administration. The Arab delegates at the UN
were unhappy with these proposed arrangements and responded by walking out of the
General Assembly. On 14 May 1948 the state of Israel was officially proclaimed,
followed by the start of open warfare between the new state of Israel and neighboring
Arab states. A cease-fire was eventually agreed to under the mediation of Ralph Bunche
(a U.S. citizen and senior UN official), who subsequently received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Israel was formally admitted to the UN in May 1949. The conflict between the Dutch
colonial government in the Netherlands East Indies and the de facto government of the
Republic of Indonesia was also brought before the UN in the late 1940s. The United
States exerted its influence inside and outside the UN, and in March 1949 the Dutch
government agreed to move quickly to decolonize and recognize Indonesian
independence. The Cold War backdrop was important in this trend. The United States was
concerned that Moscow's support for national liberation movements, such as that in
Indonesia, might enhance the influence of the Soviet Union, and it realized at the same
time that U.S. support for decolonization would advance U.S. influence.

The Korean War (1950–1953) was a turning point for the UN, and for U.S. Cold War
policy. In September 1947 the United States placed the Korean question before the
General Assembly. This was done in an effort to wind back the United States'
commitment to the Korean peninsula. Subsequently the General Assembly formally
called for the unification of what was at that point a Korea divided between a northern
government allied to the Soviet Union (and later the Peoples' Republic of China, or PRC)
and a southern government allied to the United States. Following the outbreak of war
between the north and the south on 25 June 1950, the Security Council quickly began
organizing a UN military force, under U.S. leadership, to intervene in Korea. This was
made possible by the fact that Moscow had been boycotting the Security Council since
the start of 1950. The Soviet Union was protesting the fact that China's permanent seat on
the Security Council continued to be held by the Kuomintang (KMT) government that
had been confined to Taiwan since the Chinese Communist Party's triumph on the
mainland at the end of 1949. In Korea it quickly became clear that the United States (and
its UN allies) were entering a major war. The resolutions of the General Assembly on
Korean unification were soon being used to justify a full-scale military effort against the
North Korean regime. The initial aim of U.S.-UN intervention to achieve the limited goal
of ending northern aggression was quickly transformed into a wider set of aims, centered
on the reunification of the peninsula under a pro-U.S.–UN government. The ensuing
conflict eventually brought the PRC directly into the war.

It was initially thought that U.S.-UN intervention in Korea indicated that the UN had
overcome the paralysis that had afflicted the League of Nations in any conflict where the
rival interests of Great Powers were involved. But, once the Soviet Union resumed its
seat on the Security Council in August 1950, Moscow challenged the validity of the
resolutions of the Security Council that underpinned UN operations in Korea.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was also highly critical of Secretary-General Trygve Lie's
keen prosecution of UN actions in Korea. Moscow opposed his reelection in 1951, but
the United States managed to ensure that he remained in the post until the end of 1952. At
the same time, Moscow's delegation at the UN avoided having anything to do with the
Secretary-General, dramatically weakening his position. In the wake of the signing of an
armistice agreement in Korea on 27 July 1953, U.S. influence at the UN went into
relative decline. Another result of the Korean War was two decades of Sino-U.S. hostility.
Until 1971 Washington successfully prevented all attempts at the UN to have the PRC
replace the KMT in China's permanent seat in the Security Council.
The decline of U.S. influence in the 1950s was primarily a result of the way in which the
process of decolonization increasingly altered the balance of power in the General
Assembly. A key event in the history of decolonization and the growth of the UN was the
Suez Crisis that followed the seizure of the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956 by the Egyptian
government of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954–1970). The canal was of considerable
commercial and strategic importance to Great Britain and France. Despite the objections
of the Security Council, London and Paris, with the support of the Israeli government,
attacked Egypt. The UN responded, with U.S. and Soviet support, by setting up and
dispatching a 6,000-strong United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to manage a cease-
fire and the withdrawal of Anglo-French troops from the Canal Zone. The UNEF, which
continued to operate as a buffer between Egypt and Israel from 1956 to 1967, was
important for the history of future peacekeeping efforts. It flowed from a resolution of the
General Assembly and clearly set the precedent (not always followed) that UN
peacekeeping forces should work to prevent conflict between opposing sides rather than
engage in the conflict.

The growing significance of decolonization for the UN became clear when, following
Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, a UN force (Opération des Nations Unies
au Congo, or ONUC) was asked to intervene. The UN operation in the Congo, from July
1960 to June 1964, was the biggest UN action since the war in Korea in the early 1950s.
The Congo crisis started with a mutiny in the former Belgian colonial military
establishment (Force Publique) that had become the Armée Nationale Congolaise
following independence. When troops attacked and killed a number of European officers,
the Belgian administrators, and other Europeans who had remained behind after
independence, fled the country, opening the way for Congolese to replace the European
military and administrative elite. Shortly after this, Moise Tshombe led a successful
secessionist effort to take the wealthy Katanga province out of the new nation. At the end
of 1960 President Kasa Vubu dismissed the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and a
week later Colonel Joseph Mobutu seized power, holding it until February 1961, by
which time Lumumba had been killed. Meanwhile, Belgian troops intervened to protect
Belgian nationals as civil war spread in the former Belgian colony. The assassination of
Lumumba precipitated a Security Council resolution on 21 February 1961 that conferred
on ONUC the ability to use force to stop the descent into civil war. Prior to this point
ONUC had only been allowed to use force in self-defense. During operations in the
Congo, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash and was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. Even with upwards of 20,000 UN-
sponsored troops in the Congo, however, a cease-fire was not agreed to and Katanga was
not brought back into the Congo until 1963. All ONUC troops were withdrawn by the end
of June 1964, in part because the UN itself was on the brink of bankruptcy (a result of the
French and Soviet government's refusal to contribute to the costs of ONUC). It was not
until the UN operation in Somalia in 1992, almost thirty years later, that the UN again
intervened militarily on the scale of its operation in the Congo in the early 1960s.

The Un and the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s

By the 1970s the emergence of a growing number of new nation-states in Africa and Asia
over the preceding decades had clearly altered the balance in the UN in favor of the so-
called "Third World." This shift was readily apparent when the Sixth Special Session of
the General Assembly of the United Nations in April 1974 passed the Declaration and
Programme of Action for the Establishment of a New Economic Order. This represented
a formal call for a New International Economic Order in an effort to improve the terms
on which the countries of the Third World participated in the global economy. In the late
1970s the UN also established the Independent Commission on International
Development (the Brandt Commission), presided over by former West German
Chancellor Willy Brandt. However, by the start of the 1980s, calls at the UN and
elsewhere to address the North-South question were increasingly rebuffed, particularly
with the Debt Crisis and the subsequent spread of neoliberal economic policies and
practices. With the support of Margaret Thatcher's government in Britain (1979–1990)
and the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) in the United States, the IMF and
the World Bank increasingly encouraged the governments of the Third World to liberalize
trade, privatize their public sectors, and deregulate their economies. This trend was
strengthened by the end of the Cold War, by which time virtually all branches of the UN
had become sites for the promotion of economic liberalism and what has come to be
known as globalization.

The United Nations After the Cold War

The Cold War had undermined the expectation, prevalent in the late 1940s and early
1950s, that the UN would provide the overall framework for international security after
1945. With the end of the Cold War, however, the UN was presented with an opportunity
to revive the major peacekeeping and security activities that many of its early proponents
had anticipated. For example, while the UN dispatched a total of 10,000 peacekeepers to
five operations (with an annual budget of about $233 million) in 1987, the total number
of troops acting as peacekeepers under UN auspices by 1995 was 72,000. They were
operating in eighteen different countries and the total cost of these operations was over $3
billion. Early post–Cold War initiatives were thought to augur well for the UN's new role.
The major civil war in El Salvador, which had been fueled by the Cold War, came to a
negotiated end in 1992 under the auspices of the UN. Apart from El Salvador, the
countries in which the UN has provided peacekeepers and election monitors include
Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, East Timor, Macedonia, Mozambique,
Rwanda, Somalia, and the Western Sahara. While Cambodia and East Timor, for
example, are seen as UN success stories, the failure of the UN in Angola and Somalia
highlights the constraints on the UN's role in the post–Cold War era.

The UN's new post–Cold War initiative in relation to peacekeeping was linked to the
appointment of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General at the beginning of 1992.
Shortly after taking up the new post, Boutros-Ghali presented the Security Council with
his "Agenda for Peace." This document laid out a range of major reforms to facilitate a
greatly expanded peacekeeping role. Boutros-Ghali wanted member states to provide
permanently designated military units that could be deployed quickly and overcome the
UN's well-known inability to act quickly in a time of crisis. A number of states expressed
an interest in such an arrangement at the same time as changes were made at UN
headquarters in New York. The UN military advisory staff was expanded with a focus on
intelligence activities and long-range planning, and efforts were made to enhance
communications between officers on the ground and UN headquarters. There was even
some talk of forming a multinational military establishment, made up of volunteers that
would be under the direct control of the UN. These initiatives made little progress,
however, in the context of an organization comprised of nation-states that were very wary
of providing soldiers and equipment in ways that might diminish their sovereignty.
Furthermore, there was little or no possibility of a more effective and united intervention
by the UN in situations where the national interests of the major powers were thought to
be at stake. At the same time, the fact that a number of countries, including the United
States and Russia, fell behind in their payment of dues to the UN suggested the prospects
for a more activist and revamped UN were still limited. As a result of concerted U.S.
opposition, Boutros-Ghali was not reappointed as Secretary-General for a second term,
further dampening the momentum toward a more assertive UN. His replacement, Kofi
Annan, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, has emerged as a much more
cautious and conciliatory Secretary-General.

Organization and Principles

The Charter of the United Nations comprises a preamble and 19 chapters divided into 111
articles. The charter sets forth the purposes of the UN as: the maintenance of international
peace and security; the development of friendly relations among states; and the
achievement of cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and
humanitarian problems. It expresses a strong hope for the equality of all people and the
expansion of basic freedoms.

The principal organs of the UN, as specified in the charter, are the General Assembly, the
Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council (see
trusteeship, territorial), the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat. Other
bodies that function as specialized agencies of the UN but are not specifically provided
for in the charter are the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development and the associated International Finance Corporation
and International Development Association, the International Civil Aviation
Organization, the International Labor Organization, the International Maritime
Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the International Telecommunication
Union, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization, the Universal Postal Union, the World Health Organization,
the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Meteorological
Organization. Temporary agencies have included the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration, the International Refugee Organization (whose
responsibilities were later assumed by the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which is still in existence.
The official languages of the UN are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and
Spanish. The working languages of the General Assembly are English, French, and
Spanish (in the Security Council only English and French are working languages).

The definition,.
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to
facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development,
social progress and human rights issues.

Aims
The stated aims of the United Nations are to maintain international peace and security, to
safeguard human rights, to provide a mechanism for international law, and to promote
social and economic progress, improve living standards and fight diseases.[2] It provides
the opportunity for countries to balance global interdependence and national interests
when addressing international problems. Toward these ends it ratified a Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.[3]

Peace and security

The 1945 UN Charter envisaged a system of regulation that would ensure "the least
diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources". The advent of
nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the Charter and provided
immediate impetus to concepts of arms limitation and disarmament. In fact, the first
resolution of the first meeting of the General Assembly (24 January 1946) was entitled
"The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery
of Atomic Energy" and called upon the commission to make specific proposals for "the
elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons
adaptable to mass destruction". [citation needed]

Disarmament

Main article: General Assembly First Committee

The UN has established several forums to address multilateral disarmament issues. The
principal ones are the First Committee of the General Assembly, the UN Disarmament
Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament. Items on the agenda include
consideration of the possible merits of a nuclear test ban, outer-space arms control, efforts
to ban chemical weapons and land mines, nuclear and conventional disarmament,
nuclear-weapon-free zones, reduction of military budgets, and measures to strengthen
international security. UN peacekeepers are sent to regions where armed conflict has
recently ceased (or paused) to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage
combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military,
peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states of the UN. All UN
peacekeeping operations must be approved by the Security Council.

Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The founders of the UN had envisaged that the UN would act to prevent conflicts
between nations and make future wars impossible. Those hopes have not been fully
realized. During the Cold War (from about 1945 until 1991), the division of the world
into hostile camps made peacekeeping agreement extremely difficult. Following the end
of the Cold War, there were renewed calls for the UN to become the agency for achieving
world peace, as several dozen military conflicts continue to rage around the globe.
However, the breakup of the Soviet Union also left the U.S. in a unique position of global
dominance, creating a variety of new challenges for the UN.

UN peacekeeping light armed mechanised vehicle in Bovington tank museum, Dorset

The UN Peace-Keeping Forces (called the Blue Helmets) received the 1988 Nobel Prize
for Peace. In 2001, the UN and Secretary General Kofi Annan won the Nobel Peace Prize
"for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." [19] The UN maintains a
series of United Nations Medals awarded to military service members who enforce UN
accords. The first such decoration issued was the United Nations Service Medal, awarded
to UN forces who participated in the Korean War. The NATO Medal is designed on a
similar concept and both are considered international decorations instead of military
decorations.

un hq

Interior of the
Security Council chambers.
Un assembly

wartime pic..
UN peacekeeping missions. Dark blue indicates current missions, while light blue
represents former missions

.ban-ki-moon..secratory general.

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