Need to review UN Charter to reflect change
AS we mark UN Charter Day today (October 24), it is important to acknowledge that Agenda 2030 on sustainable development represents the most significant ground-level achievement of the UN since 1945, giving it a “human face”. Anchored in Article 1 and Chapter IX of the UN Charter, which advocate the mutual benefits of international socio-economic cooperation, Agenda 2030’s derailment due to violent conflicts extracts a massive toll on humanity. In 2022, the UN Secretary-General reported that the number of people adversely impacted by conflicts worldwide exceeded 2 billion.
The UN Summit of the Future held in September 2024 characterised Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the “central objective of multilateralism” and called for strengthening the UN Charter to “keep pace with the changing world”.
However, the summit adopted a “Pact for the Future” predominantly to reiterate the agreed commitments on Agenda 2030, without proposing any time-bound process for reviewing and strengthening the Charter. The consequent ambiguity for the future of multilateralism bodes ill for “we the peoples”, in whose name the UN Charter was adopted in June 1945 “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.
An effective response to the crisis facing multilateralism must be formulated within the framework and provisions of the UN Charter by the UN General Assembly (UNGA). As a legal treaty, the Charter balances mutually agreed principles and objectives with specific provisions regulating different aspects of multilateral governance. The UN’s second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, famously remarked in 1956 that the purposes of the UN Charter are “expressions of universally shared ideals which cannot fail us, though we, alas, often fail them”.
Article 24 of the Charter puts the “primary responsibility” for maintaining international peace and security on the UNSC. The track record of the UNSC’s failure in recent years to fulfil its responsibility is well documented. It failed to provide political leadership to the UN’s fractured response to the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It has compromised on countering terrorism by adopting double standards based on the political agendas of its permanent members. Its inability to resolve conflicts globally has undermined national efforts of UN member-states to implement Agenda 2030 in an increasingly polarised, confrontational and unpredictable world.
Aggravating its acts of omission, the UNSC has been unable to enforce its own unanimous decisions, denting the declared objectives of the SDGs. The highly publicised human suffering and destruction in recent years in Afghanistan (despite UNSC Resolution 2513 of March 2020), West Asia (despite UNSC Resolution 242 of November 1967), and Ukraine (despite UNSC Resolution 2202 of February 2015), are only a few examples of the inability of the UNSC to lead the way to sustainable peace.
Prima facie, the UNSC should not be in such a situation. Article 25 of the Charter makes the UNSC decisions legally binding obligations for all UN member-states. The UNSC is given powers to impose economic sanctions under Article 41 and use armed force under Article 42 of the Charter to enforce its decisions. Any attempt by the UNGA to assert predominance on issues of peace and security are restricted by Article 12 of the Charter, which prevents the UNGA from making any recommendation on any dispute or situation on the UNSC’s agenda unless requested to do so by the UNSC, while Article 10 of the Charter makes the UNGA recommendations voluntary, not mandatory like the UNSC decisions.
The crisis in multilateralism is due to the biggest anomaly of the UN Charter, which is the coexistence of two contradictory processes of decision-making within one treaty. Article 18 of the Charter upholds the democratic principle of sovereign equality in decision-making in the UNGA on the basis of one-country one-vote, providing for decisions being taken by consensus or by a majority vote if there is no consensus. Article 27.3 of the Charter, on the other hand, gives a dictatorial power of “veto” to China, France, Russia, the UK, and the United States as the five permanent members (P5) of the UNSC, allowing them to override without any explanation decisions proposed by each other, or by any of the 10 democratically elected non-permanent members of the UNSC representing the world’s geographical regions.
The consequence is that while the vast majority of the UNGA membership may have firm views and proposals on how to respond to the growing political fragmentation of the multilateral system, only the UNSC can take decisions that oblige members of the UNGA under the Charter to uphold international peace and security. The first step towards strengthening the multilateral system must, therefore, begin with removing the contradictions within the Charter on decision-making.
The Charter contains an agreed framework in Article 109 for reviewing the provisions of the treaty. This was highlighted by Sir A Ramaswamy Mudaliar, who signed the Charter on behalf of India, in his first statement to the UNGA on January 18, 1946. He said that the veto had not been acceptable to “many nations”, including India, and should be reviewed after 10 years, as referred to in Article 109. The UN’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism recommended in 2023 to the Summit of the Future a “Charter Review Conference” to focus on the UNSC reform. Yet, so far, there has been no public discussion within the UNGA or the UNSC on implementing the review clause of Article 109 by convening a General Conference of the UN.
As the UN prepares to mark its 80th anniversary in September 2025, it is time to prioritise coordinated action to convene a UN General Conference to review and strengthen the Charter, as committed by the UN’s Summit of the Future. Such a “rule of law”-based initiative must be taken by countries that have publicly committed to “reform multilateralism”, including India. Only then can the ongoing crisis in multilateralism be effectively overcome.
