and security. All member states were to have an equal voice in the General Assembly, which decides budgetary matters and votes on other policy issues in non-binding resolutions. Fifteen specialized agencies carry out operations in the social and economic spheres.Created at the dawn of the Cold War, the United Nations placed nuclear arms control and disarmament near the top of its agenda. It promoted a number of arms agreements, including the Limited Test Ban Treaty and bans on testing under the seas and in outer space. In 1957, the U.N. created the International Atomic Energy Agency to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In 1968, the General Assembly drafted the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it extended indefinitely in May of 1995. (9)The United Nations also has had an active role in promoting human rights around the world. “Stalin could kill eight million peasants in the Ukraine in the 1930s and nobody raised a whisper,” Urquhart recalls. “Nobody had ever heard of human rights on the international stage, and now they have, thanks in large part to the U.N.”The General Assembly created the Commission on Human Rights in 1946, and two years later adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On a related issue, the assembly in 1960 called for the independence of colonized countries in Africa and Asia. Following the wars of independence of the 1960s, forty-three newly independent countries joined the U.N. (10)To promote its goals in the economic and social realms, the U.N. set up specialized agencies focusing on the improvement of the agriculture, health care, communications and economic development. In 1964, it established the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development to facilitate trade with developing countries. The following year saw the creation of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) to oversee the growing task of coordinating economic assistance programs carried out in the field by U....
