Origin and Evolution

http://research.un.org/en/UN70/1946-1955

June 1941 - The Inter-allied Declaration of St. James's Palace

The Inter-allied Declaration of St. James's Palace

In the midst of the Second World War, representatives from allied governments (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa) and the exiled governments (Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, France) met in June 1941 at St. James’s Palace in London. The declaration they signed there includes these striking words, “The only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security”...“It is our intention to work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace, to this end.”

August 1941 - The Atlantic Charter

The Atlantic Charter

As World War II continued to rage, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom met in August 1941, on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean to lay down a vision for a post-war world. There they would agree to a "common program of purposes and principles" embodied in text of the Atlantic Charter. It was later signed by the rest of the allied governments.

January 1942 - Declaration by United Nations

Declaration by United Nations

On 1 January 1942, President Roosevelt; Prime Minister Churchill; Maxim Litvinov, of the U.S.S.R; and T.V. Soong, of China, signed a short document which later came to be known as the United Nations Declaration. The next day representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures. This important document pledged the signatory governments to the maximum war effort and bound them against making a separate peace. It marks the first time the term "United Nations" was ever used.