Peace and security
A central part of the UN mandate as set out in the Charter is the maintenance of world peace. Over the years, the UN has played a major role in helping defuse international crises and in resolving protracted conflicts.
The world organization has undertaken complex operations involving peacekeeping operations, preventive diplomacy, peacebuilding and humanitarian assistance and in recent years has played a vital role in addressing some of the most prolonged and difficult conflicts.
Peace and security by topic
The role of the security council
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security with special emphasis on disarmament.
Article 26 of the Charter states that the Security Council shall "promote the establishement and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources".
More on UN and peace and security
- The website of UNA Sweden with information on Peace, Security and Disarmament
- Dag Hammarskjöld Library's (New York) research guide on Peace and Seucrity.
- Peace & Security. The UN website.
- Global Issues Overview. A website that offers an overview of global issues, and links to other resources for additional information.
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library. UN official documents and open access publications, UN maps, UN voting data and speeches.
- UN iLibrary. UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS. UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus is a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (in United Nations Digital Library). References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, Sweden and the UN Library in New York and the UN library in Geneva.