99 Fun Facts About United Nations

The Charter of the United Nations was signed in 1945 in which city?

Delegates from 50 nations signed the Charter in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, closing a conference that had opened in the city on 25 April.

Which US president is credited with coining the term 'United Nations' to describe the wartime Allies?

Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the name, which Churchill accepted; the Declaration by United Nations was signed by 26 Allied governments on 1 January 1942.

The United Nations officially came into existence on which date, now marked as United Nations Day?

The Charter entered into force on 24 October 1945, once the five permanent Security Council members and a majority of the other signatories had ratified it.

Which UN organ appoints the Secretary-General on the Security Council's recommendation?

Under Article 97 of the Charter the General Assembly appoints the Secretary-General on the recommendation of the Security Council, usually for a five-year term.

Which country joined the UN in July 2011, becoming its 193rd member state?

South Sudan joined on 14 July 2011, five days after declaring independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011.

Where is the headquarters of the United Nations?

The United Nations headquarters stands on the East River in New York City; construction began in 1948 and the complex was completed in 1952.

Which family donated the money to buy the East River site for the UN headquarters?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. put up $8.5 million; Philadelphia had offered land in Fairmount Park and elsewhere.

Which neighbourhood's name is sometimes used as a nickname for the UN itself?

Turtle Bay, the neighbourhood surrounding the UN headquarters, is often used as shorthand for the organisation; slaughterhouses occupied the site before it was bought in 1946.

Which two famous architects developed the final designs for the UN headquarters complex?

Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier produced the merged scheme, known as 23-32, that a design board chaired by Wallace Harrison adopted for the headquarters in 1947.

How many principal organs did the UN Charter establish?

The Charter's Chapter III established six principal organs, among them the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat.

Which principal organ suspended its operations in 1994 after Palau gained independence?

The Trusteeship Council suspended operations on 1 November 1994, a month after Palau, the last remaining trust territory, became independent.

Which principal organ of the UN is the only one not based at its headquarters?

The International Court of Justice sits in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, and settles legal disputes between states.

Which of these is NOT one of the six official languages of the United Nations?

German is not an official UN language; the official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

How many members sit on the UN Security Council?

The Security Council has fifteen members: five permanent and ten elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms, five each year.

Which of these is NOT one of the five permanent, veto-holding members of the Security Council?

Germany, an Axis power in 1945, was never given a permanent seat; the five permanent members are the principal Second World War Allies named in the Charter.

How many affirmative votes does a Security Council resolution need to pass?

That means all five permanent members plus at least four elected members.

In 1971 the PRC took the Chinese Security Council seat from the government based where?

The Nationalist government had retreated to Taiwan in 1949; General Assembly Resolution 2758 of October 1971 transferred the seat to the PRC.

Where did the first session of the General Assembly convene in January 1946?

The first General Assembly met in London at the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on 10 January 1946, with 51 nations represented.

Who was the first elected secretary-general of the United Nations?

Trygve Lie, Norway's foreign minister, was elected the first Secretary-General on 1 February 1946 and announced his resignation in November 1952.

Which secretary-general died in a 1961 plane crash in Africa, winning a posthumous Nobel?

Dag Hammarskjöld died on 18 September 1961 when his plane crashed near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, en route to ceasefire talks with Katanga's leader Moïse Tshombe.

Which country vetoed a second term for Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1996?

America (the United States) cast the lone veto against a second term for Boutros-Ghali in November 1996, with the other 14 Council members supporting him.

In 1981 which country cast 16 vetoes to block a third term for Kurt Waldheim?

China cast 16 successive vetoes against Kurt Waldheim in 1981, backing Tanzania's Salim Ahmed Salim; the deadlock ended with the choice of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.

António Guterres, who became UN secretary-general in 2017, is from which country?

António Guterres, Portugal's prime minister from 1995 to 2002, took office as Secretary-General on 1 January 2017.

Which country is the only one ever to attempt to withdraw from the United Nations?

Indonesia withdrew in January 1965 in protest at Malaysia's election to the Security Council, founded the short-lived CONEFO, and resumed its seat in September 1966.

What colour are the helmets that give UN peacekeepers their nickname?

UN peacekeepers wear blue helmets or berets, giving them the nickname 'Blue Helmets'; the peacekeeping forces won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

The first UN peacekeeping force was created in November 1956 in response to what?

The UN Emergency Force was sent to Egypt after the Suez Crisis, when Britain, France and Israel invaded in October 1956; Lester Pearson won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for proposing it.

The longest-running active UN peacekeeping mission has been stationed since 1948 in which region?

UNTSO, the UN Truce Supervision Organization, has observed ceasefires in the Middle East since May 1948, initially between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

The 1950 resolution authorising a US-led force in Korea passed only because which member was absent?

The Soviet Union was boycotting the Council over the PRC's exclusion, so it could not veto the June 1950 resolution that authorised force in Korea.

Who chaired the committee that drafted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the Commission on Human Rights drafting committee; the Declaration was adopted in Paris on 10 December 1948.

How many nations sit on the Human Rights Council that replaced the Commission on Human Rights in 2006?

The Human Rights Council has 47 member states, elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms and distributed among regional groups.

UNICEF was created in 1946 originally to help children where?

UNICEF was set up in December 1946 to feed and care for children in post-war Europe; it became a permanent agency in 1953 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

In 1980 the World Health Organization announced the global eradication of which disease?

Smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Assembly in May 1980, the last natural case having occurred in Somalia in 1977.

In which city is the World Food Programme headquartered?

The World Food Programme is headquartered in Rome, as are the FAO and IFAD, the UN's other two food agencies; it was founded in 1961.

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and which other UN body?

The IPCC won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; UNEP itself was founded in 1972.

Which set of eight global development targets was due to be met by 2015?

The Millennium Development Goals, eight targets adopted at the Millennium Summit in September 2000, ran to 2015, when the Sustainable Development Goals succeeded them.

In 1984 which US president pulled American funding from UNESCO over alleged mismanagement?

Ronald Reagan's administration withdrew the United States from UNESCO at the end of 1984, citing mismanagement and politicisation; the United Kingdom and Singapore followed in 1985.

The 1975 General Assembly resolution repealed in 1991 had declared what to be a form of racism?

Resolution 3379 of November 1975 declared Zionism 'a form of racism and racial discrimination'; the General Assembly revoked it in December 1991.

In which year did 17 new states, 16 of them African, join the UN in a single wave of decolonisation?

In 1960, the 'Year of Africa', 17 newly independent states joined in a single session, 16 of them African and the other Cyprus.

The white emblem on the UN flag shows a world map surrounded by branches of which tree?

Two olive branches, a classical symbol of peace, surround the polar map; the emblem was approved in December 1946 and the flag adopted in October 1947.

Which poet wrote the words to Pau Casals's 1971 'Hymn to the United Nations'?

W. H. Auden wrote the text at U Thant's request; Casals conducted the premiere at UN headquarters on United Nations Day 1971, but it was never adopted as an official anthem.

Which UN body has won the Nobel Peace Prize twice, in 1954 and 1981?

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, won in 1954 for resettling Europe's displaced people and again in 1981 for aiding refugees worldwide; the UN itself shared the 2001 prize with Kofi Annan.

The failed predecessor to the UN, which the United States never joined, was called what?

The League of Nations began in January 1920 under the Treaty of Versailles; the US Senate refused to ratify membership, and the League was dissolved in 1946.

What was the 1941 Roosevelt-Churchill document setting out goals for the post-war world called?

The Atlantic Charter, issued by Roosevelt and Churchill after their August 1941 shipboard meeting off Newfoundland, set out eight principles for the post-war world.

By law the US refuses to pay more than what share of the UN peacekeeping budget?

Legislation passed by Congress in the mid-1990s caps American contributions to peacekeeping at 25%, below the higher share the UN assessment scale assigns to the United States.

At which 1944 conference did the Allied Big Four negotiate the aims and structure of the new world organisation?

It ran from 21 September to 7 October 1944; the last issues were settled at Yalta in February 1945 after further talks with the Soviets.

Which two entities hold non-member observer state status at the UN?

The Holy See and Palestine hold non-member observer state status, the Holy See since 1964 and Palestine since a General Assembly vote in November 2012.

UNMOGIP, one of the smallest UN missions, monitors a ceasefire in which region?

UNMOGIP has observed the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir since January 1949 and was the second peacekeeping mission the UN established.

To what percentage was the ceiling on any one member's share of the UN regular budget cut in December 2000?

The ceiling on any single member's assessed share of the regular budget was lowered to 22% in December 2000, under pressure from the United States, the largest contributor.

Which rule requires UN salaries to match the highest-paying national civil service, regardless of nationality?

The Noblemaire principle, dating from a 1921 report by French delegate Georges Noblemaire, pegs Professional-grade UN pay to the best-paid national civil service, the US federal service.

The knotted-gun sculpture outside UN headquarters was made after the murder of which musician?

John Lennon was an acquaintance of the Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, who answered the shooting by tying the barrel of a .357 Magnum in a knot. Luxembourg bought the bronze and gave it to the UN in 1988.

Which comic-book hero did the UN name an honorary ambassador in 2016, then drop after staff protests?

Wonder Woman got the title on the 75th anniversary of her first appearance, to champion the empowerment of women and girls. A staff petition called the character overtly sexualised, and the role ended within two months.

The UN observes 19 November each year as a world day dedicated to which household fixture?

The toilet has had an official UN day since 2013, after Singapore tabled its first ever resolution to create one. The date marks the founding of the World Toilet Organization by a Singapore philanthropist in 2001.

Which leader spoke for about four and a half hours, the longest address ever made to the UN's full membership?

Fidel Castro spent most of the marathon denouncing Washington's policies towards its southern neighbours. During the same trip he held a meeting with Malcolm X.

A tapestry of which Picasso painting hangs at the entrance to the UN Security Council chamber?

Guernica, Picasso's protest at the 1937 bombing of a Basque town, greets diplomats on their way in. A collector commissioned the woven copy in 1955 after the painter refused to sell him the original.

Which Cold War leader is said to have pounded his shoe on a desk during a heated UN debate?

Nikita Khrushchev was protesting at a Philippine delegate who said Moscow had swallowed up its satellite peoples. Eyewitness accounts conflict over whether the shoe ever actually struck the desk.

Since 1951 the United Nations has enjoyed which privilege once reserved for sovereign states?

Issuing stamps began under a deal with the US Post Office, and collectors can buy them priced in dollars, Swiss francs or euros. They are valid only on mail posted from UN offices.

By long tradition, which country gives the first speech at the UN's annual gathering of world leaders?

Brazil has spoken first at the opening debate for decades. In 2011 Dilma Rousseff used the slot to become the first female leader ever to open it.

A greeting recorded by a UN secretary-general is leaving the solar system aboard which twin NASA probes?

Voyager 1 and 2 each carry a golden record on which Kurt Waldheim speaks in English, ahead of greetings in 55 languages and a hello from Carl Sagan's young son.

Which staple crop did the United Nations honour with its own International Year in 2008?

Potato growers got the spotlight because the crop is a staple that can strengthen food security for the world's poor. The tuber shared 2008 with the International Year of Sanitation.

Since 1950, children have carried small orange UNICEF collection boxes from door to door on which holiday?

Halloween fundraising for UNICEF began when a Philadelphia family sent their children out to collect nickels and dimes in decorated milk cartons. By 1969 some 3.5 million children were taking part.

Which film star earned the US Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador?

Audrey Hepburn said she took the role out of gratitude for the international aid she received as a child under wartime occupation. Her first field mission for the agency was to Ethiopia in 1988.

Which activist addressed the United Nations on her 16th birthday in 2013, a day the UN named after her?

Malala Yousafzai used the speech, less than a year after a Taliban gunman shot her on a bus home from an exam, to call for worldwide access to education.

Which British actress launched the UN Women campaign HeForShe with a widely shared speech in 2014?

Emma Watson, newly appointed a goodwill ambassador, invited men and boys to join the push for gender equality. Twitter painted the campaign's hashtag on a wall at its headquarters.

Which former US vice president shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN's climate science panel?

Al Gore took one half of the prize and the IPCC the other, for building up and spreading knowledge about man-made climate change.

The United Nations marks 18 July, his birthday, as an international day honouring which Nobel Peace laureate?

Nelson Mandela is honoured with action rather than a holiday: people are asked to give 67 minutes to helping others, one for each year he spent fighting injustice.

Goal 1 of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, calls for an end to what?

Poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the full target, and like the other 16 goals it carries a 2030 deadline.

The United Nations has kept a major office in the Palais des Nations since 1946 in which Swiss city?

Geneva hosts the office even though Switzerland itself stayed outside the organisation until 2002. When finished, the palace was the continent's second-largest building complex by volume, after Versailles.

UNESCO, the UN agency behind the World Heritage List, has its headquarters in which capital city?

Paris has housed UNESCO's secretariat since 1958 in a seven-storey building shaped like a three-pointed star.

UN peacekeepers have patrolled a buffer zone known as the Green Line on which Mediterranean island?

Cyprus has hosted the force since 1964, when it arrived to stop fighting between the island's Greek and Turkish communities. The demilitarised zone it patrols runs for more than 180 km.

The UN's scandal-hit Oil-for-Food Programme let which country under sanctions sell oil to buy humanitarian supplies?

Iraq could trade crude for food and medicine without rebuilding its military, under a scheme set up in 1995. It became notorious for widespread corruption and the abuse of its funds.

In 1995 lightly armed Dutch UN peacekeepers failed to stop a massacre at which Bosnian 'safe area'?

Srebrenica had been declared a UN-protected enclave two years earlier, yet 370 Dutch soldiers could not prevent its capture. Judges in the Netherlands later held the state liable for failing to prevent some of the deaths.

Which city hosted the UN's 1992 Earth Summit, where the climate convention behind the Kyoto Protocol was born?

Rio de Janeiro welcomed the summit exactly 20 years after Stockholm staged the first global conference on the environment.

Which 1987 agreement to protect the ozone layer became the first treaty ratified by every UN member state?

The Montreal Protocol has phased out about 98% of the chemicals that eat away at the ozone layer. Kofi Annan called it perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.

Which UN ranking, launched in 1990, scores countries on life expectancy, schooling and income?

The Human Development Index was devised by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq to shift attention from national income to people's lives. It sorts countries into four tiers.

Which kingdom's pursuit of 'gross national happiness' led the UN to create an International Day of Happiness?

Bhutan has chased the idea since the 1970s, and its prime minister steered a 2011 UN resolution calling for a more holistic approach to growth. The day itself falls on 20 March.

Which 1967 agreement, drafted under UN auspices, stops any country claiming the Moon as its own territory?

The Outer Space Treaty also bans nuclear weapons from orbit and keeps the Moon for peaceful purposes. Its bar on sovereignty has stirred arguments over mining celestial bodies for profit.

The UN's World Heritage system grew from a campaign to save which Egyptian temples from the Aswan Dam?

Abu Simbel was among 22 historic sites threatened by the dam's rising waters, and the rescue went so well that it led to the World Heritage Convention of 1972.

Which 2005 Nicole Kidman thriller was the first film ever shot inside United Nations headquarters?

The Interpreter got in only after its director Sydney Pollack appealed to Kofi Annan in person. Earlier requests had been refused, and the fallback was a costly set in Toronto.

Which language was the last to be added to the official languages of the United Nations, in 1973?

Arabic joined the five languages in use since the UN's founding, and 18 December, the date of the vote, is now marked as UN Arabic Language Day.

The world map on the United Nations emblem is centred on which point of the globe?

The North Pole sits at the centre of a projection made popular by the wartime maps that the cartographer Richard Edes Harrison drew for Fortune and Life magazines.

In Model United Nations, which document do delegates usually write and hand in before the conference begins?

A position paper sums up a delegate's research and the line their country will take. Delegates write it after studying the guides that organisers prepare for each committee.

Kofi Annan, who shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations itself, came from which country?

Ghana was still the Gold Coast when he was born in Kumasi. He became the first secretary-general to be chosen from the ranks of the UN's own staff.

Which Burmese diplomat became the first Asian to lead the United Nations, taking office in 1961?

U Thant had been in the job for less than a year when he helped to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Two months later he ordered the UN operation that ended Katanga's secession from the Congo.

Which UN-linked nuclear watchdog shared the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize with its director, Mohamed ElBaradei?

The IAEA grew out of President Eisenhower's 'Atoms for Peace' speech to the UN, which called for a body to watch over the spread of nuclear technology.

At which February 1945 summit did Stalin accept the veto formula that brought his country into the United Nations?

Yalta produced a secret understanding that each permanent member of the Security Council could block decisions it disliked, which secured Stalin's commitment to join.

Which 1944 conference at a New Hampshire hotel created the IMF, now part of the United Nations system?

Bretton Woods drew 730 delegates from 44 Allied nations to the Mount Washington Hotel. Its formal name was the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, a year before the UN itself existed.

Which US ambassador confronted Moscow's envoy over missiles in Cuba at an emergency UN Security Council session?

Adlai Stevenson showed aerial photographs of the launch sites and told his opposite number not to wait for the translation before answering yes or no. The exchange later inspired a courtroom scene in a Star Trek film.

Which territory did the United Nations govern directly from 1999 until it became an independent state in 2002?

East Timor was run by a UN transitional administration under the diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello, which handed most of its functions to the new government on 20 May 2002.

The Japanese Peace Bell at UN headquarters was cast from what, gathered from more than 60 countries?

Donated coins, among them gold pieces from the Pope, were gathered over three years by Chiyoji Nakagawa, who had paid his own way to a UN session to pitch the idea.

Which UN agency, the oldest in the UN family, began in 1865 as a union to standardise telegraph traffic?

The ITU started out as the International Telegraph Union, formed in Paris by 20 European states, and now shares out the radio spectrum and satellite orbits.

Which UN agency, created by the Treaty of Versailles, gives employers and workers a say alongside governments?

The ILO won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969, half a century after its founding, and its three-way structure of governments, employers and workers is unique in the UN system.

Before its permanent headquarters opened in 1952, the UN worked from a converted gyroscope factory in which village?

Lake Success lent the UN part of the Sperry Gyroscope plant from 1946, and even the Security Council met there. In 2005 officials explored setting up a temporary base on the old site.

What French name is given to the travel document the United Nations provides to its own officials?

The laissez-passer has two grades: the standard issue works like a service passport, while a red version for the most senior officials carries the standing of a diplomatic passport.

Which Polish-Jewish lawyer invented the word 'genocide' and lobbied the UN to outlaw the crime in 1948?

Raphael Lemkin built the word during the Second World War from the Greek for a people and the Latin for killing. Many clauses of the UN's Genocide Convention were based on his proposals.

In 2011 the UN's food agency declared which livestock disease only the second ever eradicated worldwide?

Rinderpest was last confirmed in 2001, the end of an eradication campaign that had run since the middle of the 20th century. Its name is simply a borrowed word meaning cattle plague.

Which country donated the UN Security Council chamber, whose mural shows a phoenix rising from its ashes?

Norway offered in 1950 to decorate and furnish the room, and one of its artists, Per Krohg, painted the mural as a symbol of the world's rebirth after war. It later paid $5 million to renovate the chamber.

Which UN mediator became the first Black winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950?

Ralph Bunche took over the mediation after his chief, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in Jerusalem, and went on to negotiate the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and its neighbours.

Which Canadian general commanded the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide?

Roméo Dallaire led an ill-equipped mission that had been sent to help carry out a peace accord, not to fight. He told the story in his memoir Shake Hands with the Devil.

Which former Latin American president became the first head of UN Women in 2010?

Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile, took charge of an agency that had just been formed by merging four smaller UN bodies working for women.