The Charter of the United Nations

Jayantha DHANAPALA

Sixty-seven years ago, the Charter of the United Nations was signed. That was on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The Charter came into force on October 24, 1945. The Statute of the International Court of Justice is an integral part of the Charter. There are many who believe that if the drafting of the Charter were to be conducted today no consensus agreement would be reached on it.

In many ways the Charter represents the constitution of the United Nations and forms the bedrock of international law. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 sought to reorder the shape of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. That order survived till the 1914-18 World War.

Equality of all nations

The Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations then attempted to establish a new world order but inherent deficiencies and Adolf Hitler's Nazi policies rent it asunder.

Thus the UN Charter is an ambitious redrawing of the world order and that it has survived almost seven decades despite vast global changes is a tribute to its architects.

The Charter consists of a Preamble and 19 Chapters. There is provision for amendments and the amendments that have been adopted have included those relating to the composition and voting procedures of the Security Council and the membership of the Economic and Social Council.

The Charter is a very pragmatic document and combines the soaring aspirations of humankind with the hard realities of power politics. Read together with the Statute of the International Court of Justice and the Declaration of Human Rights it is a delegitimisation of wars of aggression and a reaffirmation of the rule of international law, human rights, equality of all nations and the promotion of economic and social advancement for all peoples.

The Charter also forms the value base of the organization setting out the purposes and principles of the UN in the Preamble and in Chapter 1.

That has been the ethical foundation on which the UN has built its work over the years. For example, the Millennium Declaration adopted in September 2000 identified the shared values of the UN community as Freedom, Equality, Solidarity, Tolerance, Respect for Nature and Shared Responsibility.

There has also been a consensus established that the core areas of the UN's work are in peace and security, human rights and development and that all three of these areas are interconnected and interlaced so that you cannot have one without the other.

Democratic principle

The architects of the UN wisely built into the organization an indispensable equilibrium amongst the principal organs of this world body benefiting from the experience of the League of Nations.

Thus while the General Assembly functions as the Parliament of Nations based on the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of nations (Article 2:1) making recommendations on a wide range of issues and approving the budget, it is the Security Council that acts on behalf of the UN members in its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security using the powers vested in it under Chapter VI - Pacific Settlement of Disputes - and Chapter VII - Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.

Amidst the unfulfilled demands for the reform of the Security Council, and especially its enlargement, tensions appear to have grown between the General Assembly and the Security Council.

The current debate on UN reform has been seriously complicated by deep-seated concerns that, under the guise of reform, attempts are being made to change the equilibrium that is inherent in the Charter.

The need for change is recognized. That however should not be an occasion for a struggle for power over the organization by one group of countries over the other. Whether it is a group enjoying the power of the purse or the power of the majority we need to allow the equilibrium to remain as difficult as it may be. To upset it is to unravel the Charter.

Jayantha Dhanapala is a former UN Under-Secretary-General and a life member of United Nations Association of Sri Lanka (UNASL)