UN at 78.

After years of destruction and death, the end of World War II must have seemed excruciatingly slow to happen. Hitler committed suicide in April 1945 and Germany surrendered in May. Japan, which was technically defeated in the Philippines and other occupied territories early in the year, held out and a surrender was not formally signed until September.

A few weeks later, on Oct. 24, 1945, 51 nations including the Philippines (then a Commonwealth under the US) signed a United Nations Charter establishing the UN.

Finally, it seemed, world peace would come but I wouldn't be surprised if there was much skepticism at that time ... and in our own times. After all, a League of Nations was established in 1920 right after the end of World War I, and while it managed to establish international cooperation around epidemics, slavery, refugees, and the improvement of labor conditions, it failed to prevent a second, bloodier world war less than 20 years later.

But hopes for world peace continued and as early as 1942, in the thick of World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom already signed an Atlantic Charter envisioning a post-war world, culminating in the UN.

Today the UN has 193 member states, many winning their independence from their colonizers between 1945 and 1960, sometimes through bloody struggles. I mention this because as former colonies became part of the UN, they often espoused fierce nationalism and spoke out against the superpowers.

The UN has built a huge bureaucracy throughout its 78 years, with highly specialized agencies. Many of these agencies are in the Philippines, some with regional offices, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) with Manila hosting the Western Pacific Regional Office.

The Philippines has always been active in the UN, including sending, since 1963, some 15,000 Filipinos to participate in 21 peacekeeping operations.

Filipinos are also found in many of the UN offices, including the two international headquarters in New York and Geneva. Standing out are the Filipinos, most are women, working as interpreters, a crucial role when you think of what mistranslations can do.

With so many member nations and with diverse political philosophies, the UN is highly politicized. The WHO meetings often became word (not world) wars.

The Philippines has been known to be mostly aligned, when voting on international issues, to the United States. President Rodrigo Duterte turned things around, taking an anti-UN stand...