The United Nations — the big international organisation that almost every country in the world belongs to. It was set up in 1945, right after the Second World War, by countries who had just seen how badly things could go and wanted somewhere to talk before fighting. Its main offices are in New York City. Its work is wider than just stopping wars: it sends peacekeeping troops, coordinates disaster relief, runs refugee programmes, and sets health and human-rights standards, and a whole set of other bodies sit under it — the World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNESCO. You say it letter by letter, U-N, and it takes the: the UN. It is worth knowing that the UN cannot force a country to do anything the way a government forces its citizens; it works by agreement, pressure, and sometimes a Security Council vote, which is why people often complain it is slow or weak. Newspapers write both UN and U.N., the second more common in American papers.