On June 26, 1945, fifty nations signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco. A delegate from each nation gave a short speech before signing the Charter. China signed first with its delegate, Dr. V. Wellington Koo, declaring that the world needed “trust & collaboration to make this greatest of international experiments a success.” The ceremony on June 26 represented the culmination of two months of work at the United Nations Conference on International Organization. But it also marked the start of years of work to create other UN agencies and to find a permanent home for the UN General Assembly.
The United Nations History Project has created a Twitter account to trace the founding of the United Nations in real time, seventy years later. The project started in late April with the opening of the San Francisco conference. On June 26, it will tweet the speeches of all fifty delegates. The project will continue over the next few years. Among other events, the Twitter feed will record the debates over the creation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the UN moving to New York, and the accession of new member states such as Poland.
The Twitter account aims to give a sense of the UN’s creation in real time. The UN did not just spring into being on June 26 when delegates signed the Charter. Its creation took years of negotiation and compromise. Follow the account (@UN_History) to see the UN’s development unfold!