United Nations Charter
The
United Nations Charter is the
constitution of the
United Nations. It was signed at the
United Nations Conference on International Organization in
San Francisco on
June 26,
1945 by 50 of the 51 original member countries (
Poland, the other original member, was not represented at the Conference, signed it later). It entered into force on
October 24,
1945, after being ratified by the five founding members—the
Republic of China,
France, the
Soviet Union, the
United Kingdom, and the
United States—and a majority of the other signatories.
As a
Charter it is a constituent treaty, and all members are bound by its articles. Furthermore, it explicitly says that the Charter trumps all other treaty obligations. It was ratified by the
United States on
August 8,
1945, making that nation the third, after
Nicaragua and
El Salvador, to join the new international organization.
Most countries in the world have now ratified the Charter. The
Vatican City, is a permanent observer state and therefore is not a full signatory to the Charter.
An "Introductory Note" details the actual
amendments to the Charter.
The Charter itself consists of a
preamble, broadly patterned after the preamble of the
Constitution of the United States, and a series of articles divided into chapters.
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Chapter I sets forth the purposes of the
United Nations, including the important provisions of the maintenance of international
peace and
security.
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Chapter II defines the criteria for
membership in the United Nations.
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Chapters III-XV, the bulk of the document, describe the organs and
institutions of the UN and their respective powers.
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Chapters XVI and XVII describe arrangements for integrating the UN with established
international law.
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Chapters XVIII and XIX provide for
amendment and
ratification of the
Charter.
The most important chapters are those dealing with the
enforcement powers of
UN bodies:
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Chapter VI describes the
Security Council's power to investigate and mediate
disputes;
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Chapter VII describes the Security Council's power to authorize economic,
diplomatic, and military sanctions, as well as the use of military force, to resolve disputes;
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Chapters IX and X describe the UN's powers for economic and social cooperation, and the
Economic and Social Council that oversees these powers;
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Chapters XII and XIII describe the
Trusteeship Council, which oversaw
decolonization;
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Chapters XIV and XV establish the powers of, respectively, the
International Court of Justice and the
United Nations Secretariat.
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Nuremberg Principles*
Implications of the Charter for the Bush Doctrine*
Full text of the charter*
Searchable/cross-referenced/Trackback-enabled text of the charter*
Charter of the United Nations at Law-Ref.org - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
