The United Nations Charter Was Signed
On this day · 26 June 1945
In a war-weary San Francisco theatre, fifty nations put pen to paper and built the modern world's most ambitious peace project.
On 26 June 1945, delegates from 50 nations gathered at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco’s Veterans War Memorial Building to sign the Charter of the United Nations. The signing capped a two-month gathering, the United Nations Conference on International Organization, which had run since 25 April as the Second World War drew to a close in Europe.
The text had been adopted unanimously the previous day at the San Francisco Opera House. It established the core organs of the new body, from the Security Council to the General Assembly, and embedded the Statute of the International Court of Justice as an integral part of the document.
Delegates of fifty nations met to draft a blueprint for collective security and human dignity.
The Conference was a vast undertaking: 850 delegates, swelling to roughly 3,500 people with advisers and staff. The Charter did not take effect immediately; it entered into force on 24 October 1945 once the five permanent members and a majority of signatories had ratified it, a date now marked annually as United Nations Day.
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