Heritage

112 heritage for peace and reconciliation | manual for teacherContentsunderstanding. It was an inspiration to integrate these ideas of international cooperationinto existing educational systems. The League of Nations and a number ofnongovernmental organizations worked together on these ideas, especially throughthe International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, an organization that was thepredecessor of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO).It took until 1941 before the idea of a strong world political body returned to the forefront.During the war, on 14 August, the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt,and the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, met on board the British ship, thePrince of Wales, off the shore of Newfoundland. There, they signed the Atlantic Charter,in which they explained the principles of their post-war policies. Policies aimed ata more peaceful and fair world, and safeguarding the four freedoms of human beings:freedom from need, freedom from fear, freedom of opinion and freedom of religion.In the following years, other countriessigned the principles of thischarter, which forms the idealisticbasis of the United Nations. Thepreparatory work for the actualformation of the organization tookquite some time. Although thegoals were obvious, the concretemeans of achieving those goals requiredlong discussions betweenthe delegates of many countries, allof whom had to take into considerationtheir own national interests.During the foundation conference,which took place in San Franciscofrom 25 April to 26 June 1945, theUnited Nations finally received itscurrent form – it became effectiveon 24 October that year.An early draft version of the Universal Declarationof Human Rights© Greg Kinch/UN PhotoThe United Nations serves to maintainpeace in the world, to guaranteesecurity, to encourage friendlydiscourse between States, to defend