The United Nations has 193 members and an annual general budget of $3.72 billion. Its peacekeeping forces have 60,000 military personnel stationed around the globe. However, as it marks its 80th birthday, the organisation increasingly seems like a spectator in a might-is-right world.

How was the UN created?

Initial planning began in 1939, when it became clear that the League of Nations had failed in its job of preventing another world war. The term “ united nations ” was first used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a 1942 declaration by 26 nations that pledged to fight against the Axis powers.

The UN’s basic shape was hammered out by “the Big Four” – the US, the USSR, Britain and China – at a conference in Washington DC in late 1944 – and agreed by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at the Ya

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