As we celebrate New Year’s Day and the start of 2022, The Leaders Council looks back on this day 80 years ago, a day which brought the birth of a global organisation that in its present-day form continues to have a major influence on our daily lives: the United Nations.
The UN was born on this day in 1942, when then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill issued a declaration, signed by representatives from 26 countries, called the “United Nations.”
The signatories of the declaration pledged to channel its resources into defeating the Axis powers, and to subsequently create an international post-war peacekeeping organisation to ensure an atrocity such as World War II could never come to pass again.
The signing of the declaration came after Churchill travelled to Washington DC for the Arcadia Conference, a summit with the US president which saw both sides discuss a unified Anglo-American war strategy and plans for future peace.
The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese brought the US into the Second World War, and both the Americans and British recognised the need for a united front against the Axis. To achieve this, the president and PM created a combined general staff for the purpose of co-ordinating military strategy against Germany and Japan.
The UN agreement was one of the major achievements of the Arcadia Conference. The signatories, led by the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, all agreed not to pursue a separate peace with German, Italy or Japan, and would act in unison.
It was, however, the promise to act in the interest of post-war peace and the pledge to preserve “life, liberty, independence, religious freedom and the rights of man and justice” that would prove the most significant.
Photo: the UN flag taken from Wikimedia Commons
