On this day – August 21st

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference opened on August 21st 1944.

It constituted the first important step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need for a postwar international organization to succeed the League of Nations. At the conference, delegations from Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States deliberated over proposals for the establishment of an organization to maintain peace and security in the world.

The conversations were held in two phases, since the Soviets were unwilling to meet directly with the Chinese.In the first phase, representatives of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened between August 21 and September 28. In the second, representatives of Republic of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States held discussions between September 29 and October 7

The stated purposes of the proposed international organization were:
1.To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace;
2.To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3.To achieve international co-operation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems; and
4.To afford a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.

At the United Nations Conference on International Organization, also known as the San Francisco Conference, in April-June 1945, the Security Council veto powers were established and the text of the United Nations Charter was finalized.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.