The goal is world peace. That is why the United Nations was founded 75 years ago. But they could not prevent many crises and genocides, not even the war in Syria.
Peter Mücke, ARD studio New York
The place could not be more symbolic: In a memorial hall for war veterans, the then US President Harry S. Truman in San Francisco called to the representatives of the founding nations of the United Nations: “You should become the architects of a better world, ours is in your hands Future.”
On June 26, 1945 – World War II in the Pacific was not yet over – 50 countries signed the United Nations Charter. “The same charter, the values of which have prevented the scourge of the Third World War, which many feared,” said Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General today.
One of his famous predecessors, Dag Hammarskjöld, head of the UN from 1953 to 1961, had already stressed that the United Nations was not founded to bring us to heaven, but to protect us from hell.
By the way, Germany has only been helping here since 1973. The basic contract between the Federal Republic and the GDR created the conditions for this. Willy Brandt was the first Federal Chancellor to speak to the United Nations in New York.
“The ability of man to reason has made the United Nations possible. The tendency of man to be unreasonable makes it necessary.”
Angry speeches and confused appearances
A balance sheet that is still valid today, 75 years after the start of a new world order. 75 years of talking about war and peace, death and terror in the United Nations. The headquarters on New York’s East River, completed in 1951, was the scene of remarkable appearances by state leaders.
Around 1960, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe to emphasize his anger speech.
Or in 2009, when the then Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi tore up some pages of the UN Charter after a confused appearance.
Legendary was the appearance of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez before the UN General Assembly when he described US President George Bush as the devil. His speech still smells of sulfur in the hall.
Lengthy diplomatic business
These are the moments when the United Nations makes headlines. Otherwise, diplomatic business in New York is tedious – some say boring. But it is also effective: the United Nations is also responsible for the fact that the Cold War did not turn into a Third World War.
But there are also dark chapters: “The worst chapter is perhaps not having prevented the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990s,” says former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The Srebrenica massacre is one of them. And today the helplessness of the international community in the civil war in Syria.
Even 75 years after the birth of the United Nations, there is still a long way to go that Willy Brandt once declared: “The victory of reason will be one day when all states and regions are united in a world neighborhood on the principle of the United Nations live and work together. “
