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42.

From the League of Nations to the United
Nations: Lessons for the Future

STATEMENT
BY MR. VLADIMIR PETROVSKY
UNITED NATIONS UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL
DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE AT GENEVA
SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT

Palais des Nations Wednesday, 17 April 1996

T omorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the formal cessation of the

League of Nations and the decision to transfer its assets to the new
World Organization United Nations. All too often, one hears the
word “failure” associated with the League of Nations. This, to me, misses the
point. Viewing the history of international relations as something which lives,
perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the League as "not having been
an immediate success.” Born in the aftermath of the First World War, the
League of Nations, headquartered here in Geneva, occupies a special place in
the history of multilateral diplomacy as the first international organization of its
kind. It was an impressive experiment from which we learned some important
lessons. The best of what the League stood for - the determined and sustained
quest for peace, the primacy of the rule of law, and the abhorrence of war -
continues to find its expression in the successor to the League, the United
Nations.

The processes and structures enshrined in the Covenant of the League and
subsequently developed during its years of work, provided invaluable
experience from which the United Nations was to benefit, and a meaningful

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