The United Nations Organization was born in 1945 after a long process of many states charting how its existence should be. As of this moment, it is composed of 193 member states and 2 observer states.
The UNO's role is to encourage and to press for the progress of peace and rights in the world. It does that through treaties and covenants that are signed and then ratified by interested countries. After this process, groups inside each country can count on these documents to press their governments to act on the treaties signed.
One of many possible indicators of its importance is the number of countries that ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966): 173. Once a country ratifies a Covenant it compromises to enforce it as policy in its territory.
