【明報專訊】Established 68 years ago today (24 October 1945), the United Nations (UN, 聯合國) remains an extremely important organisation, its significance all the more obvious at a time of growing global conflicts.
The background
The UN's predecessor was the League of Nations (國際聯盟), an intergovernmental organisation founded in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference (巴黎和會), which ended the First World War. The failure of the League of Nations to prevent the Second World War made nations realise the need to build a new organisation with more powers.
Negotiations on the UN's formation had already been underway before WWII ended in 1945. On June 26 that year 50 of the 51 original member countries of the UN signed the United Nations Charter (聯合國憲章). On October 24 that year the UN came into existence.
The UN's organisation
The UN is comprised mainly of six organs: the General Assembly (聯合國大會), the Security Council (聯合國安全理事會), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC, 聯合國經濟及社會理事會), the Secretariat (聯合國秘書處), the International Court of Justice (國際法庭) and the United Nations Trusteeship Council (聯合國託管理事會), which is currently inactive.
Currently the United Nations has 193 member states. Since 2007 Ban Ki-moon (潘基文) has been Secretary-General (秘書長) of the UN.
The UN's tasks
The main responsibilities of the UN include maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations on equal terms and encouraging international cooperation in solving intractable human problems.
The UN carries out a number of tasks to fulfil these purposes. The UN may, with the Security Council's approval, send troops (called the Peacekeeping Force, 維和部隊) to a region where there have been military conflicts. The force received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.
The UN helps promote democracy, human rights and other universal values, and has assisted countries with little or no democratic history, including Afghanistan (阿富汗) and East Timor (東帝汶), in holding elections. Its organisations, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO, 世界衛生組織) and UNAIDS (聯合國愛滋病規劃署), help fight diseases around the world.
China and the UN
The Republic of China (ROC, 中華民國), then led by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), was one of the five countries that ratified the United Nations Charter in 1945. These five countries were the permanent members of the Security Council (安理會常任理事國).
The ROC managed to maintain its status in the UN after the Kuomintang's defeat by the Chinese Communist Party and its subsequent retreat to Taiwan. In 1955, it even exercised its veto over Mongolia's application for joining the UN.
But there were constant arguments over which government should represent China in the UN. Finally, on 25 October 1971, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758 (2758號決議), under which the People's Republic of China (PRC) was recognised as "the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations" and "the representatives of Chiang" were expelled from the place which they had "unlawfully" occupied at the UN.
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