50 Fun Facts About United Nations

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

Fifty nations attended the conference that opened on 25 April 1945; the Charter was signed on 26 June and the UN came into existence on 24 October.

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

Churchill accepted the name, noting that Lord Byron had used it; the Declaration by United Nations was signed on New Year's Day 1942.

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

That was when the five permanent Security Council members and a majority of the other 46 signatories had ratified the Charter.

How many member states does the United Nations have?

The Holy See and Palestine are the two non-member observer states.

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

It joined five days after declaring independence from Sudan.

Where is the headquarters of the United Nations?

Construction began in September 1948 and the complex was completed in October 1952; other major offices are in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.

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 Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood is sometimes used as a nickname for the UN itself?

Before the UN arrived the site held slaughterhouses, tenements and a pencil factory.

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

A board of architects led by Wallace Harrison oversaw the project, built by Harrison & Abramovitz.

How many principal organs did the UN Charter establish?

One of them suspended operations in 1994 after the last trust territory became independent.

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

Palau was the last remaining UN trust territory.

Which UN principal organ is the only one NOT based in New York?

The 'World Court' sits in the Peace Palace in The Hague and has 15 judges serving nine-year terms, each from a different nation.

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

Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

How many members sit on the UN Security Council?

Five are permanent and ten are elected for two-year terms, five each year on a regional basis.

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

The five are China, France, Russia, the UK and the US; a permanent member can block adoption of a resolution but not debate.

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 vote passed over US opposition and was seen as a sign of waning American influence at the UN.

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

It met at the Methodist Central Hall with 51 nations represented; British diplomat Gladwyn Jebb was interim secretary-general.

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

The Norwegian foreign minister took the post in 1946.

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

He was flying to meet Katanga rebel leader Moise Tshombe during the Congo operation.

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

His successor Kofi Annan pushed further management reforms under US threats to withhold dues.

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

Since then no incumbent has sought a third term.

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

He had previously led the UN's refugee agency and became the ninth person to hold the job.

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

It left in 1965 in protest at Malaysia's election to the Security Council, set up a short-lived rival called CONEFO, and returned in 1966.

UN peacekeepers are nicknamed after the colour of their helmets. What colour?

The UN has no army of its own; troops are volunteered by member states, and the peacekeeping forces won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

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

Canada's Lester Pearson won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for organising it; the UN could not act on the simultaneous Soviet invasion of Hungary.

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

The UN Truce Supervision Organization; the Cyprus force deployed by U Thant in 1964 is another of the longest-running.

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

Cold War paralysis otherwise limited the UN to conflicts far from the superpower rivalry.

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

French lawyer René Cassin, another member of the committee, later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

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

The same year the General Assembly passed a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

UNICEF was created in 1946 originally to help children where?

It later expanded worldwide and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

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

The WHO is one of the UN's largest agencies and has since worked to eradicate polio, river blindness and leprosy.

Roughly how many people does the World Food Programme feed in an average year?

It works in about 80 nations and is funded by voluntary contributions rather than the regular UN budget.

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.

In 2000 the world's leaders adopted eight global targets to be met by 2015. What were they called?

The Millennium Summit was the largest gathering of world leaders in history; the SDGs succeeded them in 2015.

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

The United Kingdom and Singapore followed suit.

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

It passed with Soviet and Third World support over strenuous American and Israeli opposition.

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

Third World members later organised themselves as the Group of 77, which had grown to 133 countries by 2013.

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

The map is an azimuthal equidistant projection centred on the North Pole; the flag was adopted in October 1947.

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

Auden wrote it in three days at U Thant's request; it was never adopted as an official anthem.

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

The UN as a whole shared the 2001 prize with Kofi Annan.

In 2010 the UN suffered its worst ever loss of life when 101 staff died in an earthquake in which country?

Nepalese peacekeepers were later identified as the source of the cholera outbreak that followed there.

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

It began in 1920, needed unanimity for most decisions, and effectively closed when war broke out in 1939.

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

The UN's structure was then negotiated at Dumbarton Oaks in 1944 and finalised after Yalta.

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

It was actually assessed at about 27% in 2024; in January 2026 Guterres warned members of an 'imminent financial collapse'.

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 Cook Islands and Niue, in free association with New Zealand, are full members of several UN specialised agencies instead.

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

It had just 113 civilians and experts in the mid-2020s, compared with close to 19,200 uniformed personnel in the South Sudan mission.

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

The reduction from 25% came under pressure from the United States, the organisation's largest contributor.

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

The International Civil Service Commission applies it, and staff pay is also subject to an internal UN tax.