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View all search resultsUN80: Our achievements should give us hope for a better future
The United Nations was created not to take humanity to heaven but to save us from hell. In that mission, it has not failed.
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A man pauses outside the entrance to the Assembly Building at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, the United States, on September 21, 2015. (Reuters/Mike Segar)
E
ighty years ago this month, the Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, the United States, turning the page on decades of war and offering hope for a better future.
For 80 years the UN has stood as the highest expression of our hopes for international cooperation, and as the fullest embodiment of our aspiration to end the “scourge of war.” Even in a world steeped in cynicism, this is a milestone worth acknowledging.
The UN remains the only organization of its kind, and the only one to have endured for so long. That longevity is remarkable when we consider the context of its founding: assembled from the rubble of not one, but two global cataclysms. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, had collapsed in disgrace.
No organization is flawless. But to paraphrase the second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld: the UN was created not to take humanity to heaven but to save us from hell. In that mission, it has not failed.
We continue to witness heart-wrenching scenes of war, in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere. The recent escalation between Iran and Israel is a stark reminder of the fragility of peace particularly in the tension-prone Middle East region.
Yet amid the violence, we have managed to avert a third global war. In a nuclear age, that is an achievement we can never take for granted. It is one we must preserve with the full force of our efforts.
Over the past eight decades, much of human development also bears the direct imprint of the UN. Consider the success of the Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000 by 189 Member States and more than 20 international Organizations, which gave the world a shared roadmap for action.
