The United Nations
In 1945, in the wake of the destruction of World War II, the leaders of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the U.N. Security Council) met with their counterparts from 22 nations to create the United Nations.
Read this article, which describes the many goals and activities of the United Nations, which include offering international conferences and international observances; promoting arms control and disarmament; human rights, humanitarian assistance, international development, and peacekeeping; helping broker treaties; and helping to enforce international law.
Financing
The UN system is financed in two ways: assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The regular two-year budgets of the UN and its specialized agencies are funded by assessments. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by national income statistics, along with other factors.
The assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be overly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a "ceiling" rate, setting the maximum amount any member is assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the assembly agreed to revise the scale of assessments to make them better reflect current global circumstances.
As part of that agreement, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25 to 22 percent; this is the rate at which the United States is assessed. The United States is the only member that meets that ceiling; all other members' assessment rates are lower. Under the scale of assessments adopted in 2000, other major contributors to the regular UN budget for 2001 are Japan (19.63 percent), Germany (9.82 percent), France (6.50 percent), the United Kingdom (5.57 percent), Italy (5.09 percent), Canada (2.57 percent), and Spain (2.53 percent).
Special UN programs not included in the regular budget (such as UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the World Food Programme are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments.