Category: UN Creation

Twenty Members of the Union of American Republics met in Mexico City to consider the problems of war and peace.

Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and Marshal Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea. The communiqué issued at the end of the conference addressed the next step in founding the United Nations:

We are resolved upon the earliest possible establishment with our allies of a general international organization to maintain peace and security. We believe that this is essential, both to prevent aggression and to remove the political, economic and social causes of war through the close and continuing collaboration of all peace-loving peoples.The foundations were laid at Dumbarton Oaks. On the important question of voting procedure, however, agreement was not there reached. The present conference has been able to resolve this difficulty.We have agreed that a Conference of United Nations should be called to meet at San Francisco in the United States on April 25th, 1945, to prepare the charter of such an organization, along the lines proposed in the informal conversations at Dumbarton Oaks.The Government of China and the Provisional Government of France will be immediately consulted and invited to sponsor invitations to the Conference jointly with the Governments of the United States, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As soon as the consultation with China and France has been completed, the text of the proposals on voting procedure will be made public.

As subsequently made public, all parties agreed to an American plan concerning voting procedures in the Security Council, which had been expanded to five permanent members following the inclusion of France. Each of these permanent members was to hold a veto on decisions before the Security Council.  A report was issued after the conference.

Francis O. Wilcox, The Yalta Voting Formula, Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev., Vol. 39, No. 5, p. 943 (1945)

The first concrete step toward the creation of a general international organization was taken in the late summer of 1944 when the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations took place. The first phase of the conversations was between the representatives of the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, and the United States from August 21 to September 28. The second phase, between the representatives of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, took place from September 29 to October 7. As a result of these conversations, the four powers reached a number of agreements that were embodied in the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals.

Further Reading:

• American Journal of International Law, Vol. 39, No. 1 (January 1945)
• Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, 1944–1994
• Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, Vol. I, p. 614 (1966)
• Robert C. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security (1990)
• Angeliki E. Laiou, Ernest R. May, The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations and the United Nations, 1944–1994 (2008)
• Stephen Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, Chap. 3 (2003)
• UNCIO Documents, Vol. 3, Dumbarton Oaks Documents (1945)

Before the establishment of a general international organization, as contemplated in the Moscow Declaration, a number of United Nations conferences were held to discuss certain special issues. These conferences led to the establishment of a number of specialized agencies.

• The Conference of Allied Ministers of Education, which first met in London in October 1942, drafted plans for a United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization.
• The United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, held in Hot Springs, Virginia, from 18 May to 3 June 1943, which set up an Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture to draw up a Constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
• The Agreement creating the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was signed in Washington on 9 Nov 1943, by representatives of 44 nations, and on the following day the first meeting of the UNRRA Council took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
• The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference was held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from July 1 to 22, 1944. The Conference drafted the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund and the Articles of Agreement of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
• The International Civil Aviation Conference was held in Chicago from 1 Nov to 7 Dec 1944. It drafted a Convention on International Civil Aviation and an Interim Agreement on International Civil Aviation.

The Declaration of Four Nations on General Security, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, contemplated the establishment of a general international organization, based upon the principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving States and open to membership by such States, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.  This was one of four declarations signed at the Conference of Foreign Secretaries which took place in Moscow from October 19-30, 1943.  The first of the four declarations – The Declaration of Four Nations on General Security – is Annex 1 of the Secret Protocol of the meeting.  The fourth declaration – The Declaration of German Atrocities – signed by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin, is Annex 10 of the Secret Protocol.