United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned yesterday that the UN Charter was under assault like never before as the 193-member world body marked the 80th anniversary of the signing of its founding document.
“We see an all too familiar pattern: Follow when the Charter suits, ignore when it does not. The Charter of the United Nations is not optional. It is not an à la carte menu. It is the bedrock of international relations,” Guterres said. Countries regularly accuse each other of breaching the Charter, but few face concrete consequences.
In recent years Russia and Israel have been called out by the General Assembly for violating the Charter with their wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, respectively.
Both conflicts still rage. In the past week, Iran accused the US of violating the Charter with its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the US justified them under the Charter as self-defence.
The United Nations was born out of the end of the Second World War and the Charter was signed in San Francisco by an initial 50 states on June 26, 1945.
It came into force four months later with the aim of saving succeeding generations from war and upholding human dignity and the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.
&uuid=(email))