9781422285510

History Behind the UN Charter Most constitutions or charters contain older ideas—previous documents inspire the people who write them. The UN Charter is no different. Its history reaches back at least a century or more. For as long as people have existed, they have warred against one another and violated each other’s rights. After more than a half million Europeans died in wars in the early nineteenth century, nations gathered together at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the first global meeting intended to negotiate a peace. The Vienna Congress

made agreements that helped European nations keep peace between them for almost a century. However, the agreements of Vienna fell apart with World War I, which caused more than 20 million deaths. The world had never seen such horrors. Reacting to the horrors of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States led the movement to create a new organization called the League of Nations. The basis for President Wilson’s plan was an article titled “The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion,” by General Jan Smuts of South Africa.This article expressed the belief that “civilization is one body and. . .we are all members of one another.” Founders organized the League of Nations around a document titled the Covenant of the League of Nations. The primary goal of the League was to use discussion as a means to settle disputes between nations,but the covenant did not include the term“human rights.” Ironically, the United States, despite the fact that Woodrow Wilson was U.S. president when he

Official presidential portrait of Woodrow Wilson, by Frank Graham Cootes done in 1913. President Wilson proposed the League of Nations as an integral part of carving out a peaceful solution and path forward from the horrors of World War I.

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Chapter One