Nepal, June 27 -- Eighty years ago, in June, the Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, turning the page on decades of war and offering hope for a better future. For 80 years, the United Nations stood as the highest expression of our hopes for international cooperation and as the fullest embodiment of our aspiration to end the "scourge of war." Even in a world steeped in cynicism, this is a milestone worth acknowledging.

The United Nations remains the only organisation of its kind and the only one to have endured for so long. That longevity is remarkable when we consider the context of its founding: It was assembled from the rubble of not one but two global cataclysms. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, had colla...