We built order from ruins

Photo: MANUEL ELIAS/UN Photo

EIGHTY years ago this month, the Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, United States, turning the page on decades of war and offering hope for a better future. For 80 years the UN has stood as the highest expression of our hopes for international cooperation, and as the fullest embodiment of our aspiration to end the “scourge of war”. Even in a world steeped in cynicism, this is a milestone worth acknowledging.

The UN remains the only organisation of its kind, and the only one to have endured for so long. That longevity is remarkable when we consider the context of its founding: assembled from the rubble of not one, but two global cataclysms.