80 Accomplishments in 80 Years
Part One: 1945 - 1961
1945 The UN Charter goes into effect.
1946 UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, later the UN Children’s Fund) is created to aid children in war-torn Europe.
1946 The UN General Assembly’s first resolution addresses the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.
1946 World Health Organization is created to achieve the highest level of health for all people everywhere.
1946 The Constitution of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) goes into effect. American poet, Archibald MacLeish, wrote the preamble to the Constitution, noting that “wars begin in the minds of men.”
1948 General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. American Eleanor Roosevelt was one of architects of the Declaration.
1948 The UN Troop Supervision Organization (UNTSO), the first peacekeeping operation, is established to monitor ceasefire agreements in the first Arab-Israeli War.
1949 The UN secures a ceasefire between Israel and Arab nations, ending the first Arab-Israel War; the UN mediator, Ralph Bunche, an American, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
1951 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, also known as the Genocide Convention, goes into effect.
1951 UN Convention Related to the Status of Refugees leads to the creation of the UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
1954 The UN High Commissioner for Refugees wins first of two Nobel Peace Prizes
1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child outlines the basic rights of children including protection, nutrition, healthcare and education.
1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Peoples and Countries affirms the right of self-determination of peoples.
1960 Seventeen nations, all but one in Africa, are admitted to UN membership.
1960 The UN Operation in Congo (ONUC), the largest UN peacekeeping operation up to that time, is established to help the new nation maintain its territorial integrity and independence.
1961 World Food Programme is established. In its first mission it provides wheat, sugar and tea to the survivors of an 1962 earthquake in Iran that killed 12,000 people.
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