The international organization founded in 1945 to promote peace, human rights, and international cooperation among its 193 member states — the central institution of the postwar international order.
The UN system as postwar international architecture: the UN's institutional contributions include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the international treaty system, peacekeeping operations, the specialized agencies (WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, FAO, IMF, World Bank), and the Sustainable Development Goals. Whatever its operational failures, the UN provided the legal and normative framework within which post-1945 international relations operated — including the prohibition on aggressive war that made WWIII-scale conflict less likely. Critics see it as ineffective when great power interests clash; defenders note it still prevents more conflicts than it fails to resolve.
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