CERN grew out of a UNESCO resolution and its convention bars military work

Background

CERN's origins lie in the 1940s, when scientists in Europe and North America saw the need for a world-class European physics facility, to stop the brain drain to America and to unite post-war Europe. At an intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951, the first resolution on a European Council for Nuclear Research (in French, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) was adopted. Two months later an agreement was signed establishing the provisional Council, and the acronym CERN was born. The CERN Convention was agreed in June 1953 and signed by 12 States. It states that the Organization shall have no concern with work for military requirements and that its results shall be published or otherwise made generally available. CERN began in 1954, is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and its main area of research is particle physics.