League of Nations (Differently)

The League of Nations (LN) is an intergovernmental organisation that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for harmonising the actions of nations. It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organisation in the world. The LN is headquartered on international territory in Geneva, Switzerland and has also offices in many cities across the world.

The LN was established with the Treaty of Versailles on 10 January 1920, two years after the end of the, with the aim of preventing future wars. The organisation currently has 144 member states, which includes all sovereign states except for the Vatican City. According to its Statute, the organisation's objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.

The LN's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the between the  and  and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles. LN membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization beginning in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council. By the 1970s, the UN's budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War in the late 1970s, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.