The United Nations Charter outlines the UN's organizational structure and principles. As a weak confederation, the UN relies on cooperation between its members to implement its functions. The Charter's principles have at times enabled or hindered UN action, depending on members' political will. The UN's main goals are maintaining peace and security, promoting economic and social cooperation, and protecting human rights. The Charter establishes six principal organs: the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Secretariat, and International Court of Justice. Their roles are to consider issues, make recommendations, coordinate programs, and support the UN's objectives.

1. A. Le Roy Bennett and James K.
Oliver, International Organizations
Chp.4
Basic Principles and Organizations of the
United Nations

2. Basic Principles and Organizations of the United
Nations
 The United Nations charter outlines all the United
Nations’ subsequent relationships and programs.
As a written constitution, the Charter provides the
UN’s organizational structure, principles, powers
and functions.
 Because the UN is at most, a weak
confederation, its members’ obligations are
limited and only their cooperation can bring about
the implementation of the UN functions. It has no
measures of enforcing its measures, unlike
individual governments, and even the final
interpretation of Charter obligations is made by its
members.

3. Basic Principles and Organizations of the United
Nations
 As with most constitutions, not all principles and
practices can be determined merely by reading
the Charter. Interpretation and actual usage of the
document have been important. Only by
examining UN practices can its Charter’s
functions, nonfunctions and malfunctions really
be understood. Sometimes its constitutional
principles have acted either as catalysts or as
barriers to action; at other times, the attitude and
will of the members have been more influential.

4. Objectives of the United Nations
 The statement of purposes in the UN Charter is
both general and redundant. The aims are broad
enough to express the desire of war-weary
nations for an organization and program capable
of helping them to avoid future military contests
and to improve economic and social relationships
among states.
 The primary goal of both the League of Nations
and the United Nations is to maintain international
peace and security. The means for goal
achievement include peaceful settlement of
disputes and collective measures for the
prevention and removal of both threats to the

5. Objectives of the United Nations
 Major
sections of the Charter detail the
instruments and methods for implementing this
objective. The Security Council is assigned
primary responsibility for peace maintenance but
shares this function with the General Assembly
and the International Court of Justice. Chapter VI
of the Charter is devoted to methods of peaceful
settlement of disputes, and Chapter VII outlines
measures to be taken in the more serious
situations involving threats to the peace,
breaches of the peace, and acts of agression.

6. Objectives of the United Nations
 Second
to peace maintenance, the Charter
emphasizes the aim of promoting international
economic and social cooperation. The Economic
and Social Council is to serve as the major organ
for implementing this goal,
with substantial
support from the General Assembly and from
such autonomous international specialized
agencies in the econoic and social sphere as
governments may create and bring into formal
relationship with the United Nations.

7. Objectives of the United Nations
 A third purpose of the United Nations is to
promote respect for human rights for all peoples.
The reference in Article 1 to human rights and
fundamental freedoms lacks any specific or
detailed meaning and provides no guidelines for
implementation. No further definition appears
elsewhere in the Charter. Major responsibilities
for promoting human rights are assigned to the
General Assembly and to the Economic and
Social Council.

8. Basic Principles of the Charter
 The first principle: the sovereign equality of all
members. Equality refers to legal status rather than to
size, power and wealth.
 The fact that the United Nations is an organization of
sovereign states places drastic restrictions on the
independent power of the organization. Sovereignity
indicates that the members reserve the power of
ultimate decision making for themselves and confer
no real authority upon the international agency. This
reservation of authority requires the United Nations to
depend for its effective performance on the
willingness of the members to cooperate in collective
action and to accept stalemate or frustration when
cooperation is withheld in favor of national interests.

9. Basic Principles of the Charter
 Closely related to the primary goal of the United
Nations to maintain international peace and
security are the twin principles that all member
states (1) shall refrain from the threat or use of
force in any manner inconsistent with UN
purposes (2) shall settle their international
disputes by peaceful means. The substitution of
peaceful settlement for the reliance on force has
been disappointing in the UN record. Portions of
the UN Charter that envision the establishment of
international military forces have not been
implemented.

10. Basic Principles of Charter
 Two other Charter principles closely related to
those of peaceful settlement and international
enforcement are (1) the obligations of members
to support enforcement actions of the United
Nations and to refrain from giving assistance to
states that are the objects of UN preventive or
enforcement action and
2) collective
responsibility to require nonmember states to
conform sufficiently to Charter principles to
ensure the maintenance of international peace
and security.
 Without the cooperation of nonmember states,
any assurance of efficacious action by the United

11. Basic Principles of Charter
 The “domestic jurisdiction” clause, forbids the
United Nations “to intervene in matters which are
essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any
state. The impossibility of always drawing a clear
distinction between domestic and international
affairs makes reconciliation of this clause with the
positive obligations of this Charter difficult. (Yet
the United Nations is so generally ineffective that
individual nations have little to fear concerning
interference from the United Nations).

12. Basic Principles of the Charter
 Another principle of the Charter is the statement
found in Article 51- the “right of individual or collective
self-defense” against armed attack. The primary
responsibility for dealing with acts of agression
resides in the Security Council, and member states
are obligated to report their responses to enemy
attacks to the Security Council but are not required to
wait for effective UN action before taking self-defense
measures.
 By ignoring the obligation to report individual or
collective self-defense measures to the Security
Council or by the use of the veto in the Security
Council, a major power may nullify the role of the
United Nations and proceed to handle the situation

13. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Charter designates six agencies as
principal organs of the United Nations.
These are (1) the General Assembly, (2)
the Security Council, (3) the Economic
and Social Council, (4) the Trusteeship
Council (5) the Secretariat and (6) the
International Court of Justice

14. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The
General Assembly: is central to the
organization. This centrality was not necessarily
established by design in the Charter but was
soon achieved through vigorous exercise by the
General Assembly of its clearly designated
functions and through its assertion of additional
authority in areas, such as the maintenance of
peace and security, in which its Charter mandate
is ambigious.
 The General Assembly serves as an arena for
general debate for the United Nations. Of the six
principal organs, the General Assembly is the
only one in which all member states are

15. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 General Assembly meets within a three month
period each year. Regular sessions begin on the
third Tuesday in September.
 The Charter provides for the calling of special
sessions of the General Assembly, and as of
1999 twenty-three such sessions have met. Few
examples: Palestine (1947),
Disarmament
(1978), Drug Problems (1998)

16. Principal Organs of the United
Nations
 The bulk of the work of the General Assembly is
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carried on in the seven main committees to which the
agenda items are allocated according to subject
matter.These committees are:
Political and Security Committee
Special Political Committee
Economic and Financial Committee
Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee
Trusteeship Committee
Administrative and Bugdetary Committee
Legal Committee
Each member of the United Nations is entitled to be
represented on each of the main committees.

17. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The most comprehensive and important function of
the General Assembly is its power to discuss and
recommend. Article 10 of the Charter grants an
almost unlimited mandate to the General Assembly in
regard to the range of subjects that the body may
consider.
 Two limitations:
 The General Assembly may discuss but make no
recommendation on “any dispute or situation” under
consideration by the Security Council.
 General
Assembly’s authority is limited to
recommendations that are not binding on member
states. Whether recommendations will be enforced or
even observed as guidelines depends upon the
cooperation and action of individual states.

18. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 A second function assigned to the General
Assembly is the supervision and review of all
activities of the United Nations. The General
Assembly acts as a central coordinating body for
the other United Nations organs and agencies. In
this capacity it receives and reviews annual
reports from the Secretary-General, the Security
Council, the Economic and Social Security, and
the Trusteeship Council.

19. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 Deciding financial matters constitutes a third
major function of the General Assembly. The
General Assembly has the authority to consider
and approve the budget, to apportion expenses
among the members, and to examine and make
recommendations on the budgets of the seperate
specialized agencies.
 Within the General Assembly resides the
exclusive power to elect the nonpermanent
members of the Security Council and all members
of the Economic and Social Council. The
selection of judges of the International Court of
Justice is the joint responsibility of the General
Assembly and the Security Council.

20. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 Furthermore, except for the original members, the
General Assembly shares with the Security
Council control over admission of states. A twothirds vote is required in the General Assembly to
admit an applicant. By a similar vote the
Assembly may suspend the rights and privileges
or may expel a member state, but all these
actions
are
dependent
upon
a
prior
recommendations of the Security Council.

21. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The final area of major responsibility of the
General Assembly is its role in Charter
amendment and revision. This function includes
the General Assembly’s power to propose
amendments by a two-thirds of the member
governments, including all the permanent
members of the Security Council.

22. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Security Council:
 The big powers visualized the Security Council as
the paramount organ of the United Nations.
Without cooperation among the most powerful
states, solutions were virtually impossible.
Therefore, it was felt that the big powers should
have positions of authority on the Security
Council commensurate with their responsibilities
for maintaining world peace and security.
 Primary responsibility for maintaining peace and
security was concentrated in the Security Council,
and unanimity among the permanent members
was required on all votes on substantive matters.

23. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 During the first three years the Security Council
held an average of more than 130 meetings per
year and debated a substantial number of critical
political issues. Yet the development of the Cold
War doomed the continued collaboration among
the great powers that was necessary for effective
Security Council action. Growing disagreement
manifested itself in the increasing use of the veto
by the Soviet Union.

24. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 In 1965, the adoption of the first amendments to
the Charter, providing for an enlargement of the
Security Council from eleven to fifteen members.
The General Assembly adopted a resolution
alloting the ten effective nonpermanent seats as
follows: five for Africa and Asia, two for Latin
America, one for Eastern Europe and two for
Western Europe and other states.
 Current members: Azerbaijan, India, South Africa, Colombia,
Morocco, Togo, Germany, Pakistan, Guatemala, Portugal

25. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The primary function of the Security Council is to
maintain international peace and security. In
carrying out this function the Security Council
may place on its agenda for consideration any
dispute, threat to the peace, breach of the peace,
or act of agression, with due consideration to the
principle of domestic jurisdiction.
 In accepting the Charter, all members agree that
the Security Council acts on their behalf and that
they will carry out any Council decisions. This
means that Security Council decisions are
binding, but compliance is difficult to enforce. A
preliminary difficulty is reaching agreement
among Security Council members on a firm and
effective course of action.

26. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 A secondary but important function of the Security
Council is its participation in the elective process that
it shares with the General Assembly. Before the
General Assembly can admit a state as a new
member of the United Nations, the Security Council
must recommend admission.
 Since admission of states is a substantive matter, any
permanent member of the Council may block
admission by a negative vote. The process of
selecting a Secretary-General is identical to the
requirements for admission of members and is,
therefore, also subject to the veto. The only instance
in which a majority vote of th Security Council is
sufficient for a decision is the selection of judges of
the International Court of Justice. The judges are
elected by an absolute majority vote of the General
Assembly and of the Security Council, proceeding
independently of each other.

27. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)
 The Economic and Social Council has fifty-four
members was created as one of the six principal
organs of the United Nations. All members are
elected by the General Assembly for three-year
terms, with one-third of the terms expiring each
year. No state is entitled to continous
membership but to assure adequate support of
programs, all the permanent members of the
Security Council except the Republic of China
have been regularly reelected.

28. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 In broad terms, the mission of the Economic and
Social Council is to promote the welfare of all peoples
elsewhere.
 More than three-fourths of the UN budget is spent in
support of economic and social programs.
 The functions of the Economic and Social Council
may be divided into three general categories: (1)
deliberation and recommendations (2) research and
reports (3) coordination.
 Because of the diversity of programs and the
numerous agencies involved in international
economic and social work, the task of coordination is
of central importance and difficulty among the
functions of the Economic and Social Council.

29. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Trusteeship Council
 (Inactive since 1994)
 The role of the Trusteeship Council was to
provide, on behalf of the international community,
supervision of those non self-governing territories
that were designated as trust territories.
 The administration of each territory was carried
out by a specific state, but certain supervisory
responsibilities were performed by the General
Assembly through the agency of the Trusteeship
Council.

30. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Secretariat:
 The UN Secretariat is a body of international civil
servants headed by the Secretary-General. It is
constituted of full-time employees of the
organization, who must preserve their neutrality in
the interests of serving the entire membership
and of promoting the international goals of the
United Nations.
 The independence of the Secretary members
from national pressures was a principle not
clearly stated in the Covenant but established at
the inception of the League of Nations by its
Secretary-General.

31. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 The Secretary-General is appointed by the General
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Assembly, acting by two-thirds vote, upon recommendation
of the Security Council.
The major functions of the Secretary-General are outlined
in the Charter and they include:
1- to be the chief administrative officer of the organization
2- to act as secretary to all the major delegate bodies of
the United Nations
3-to perform functions assigned by the General Assembly
and the 3 councils
4- to make an annual report to the General Assembly on
the work of the organization
5-to appoint the Secretariat staff under regulations
established by the General Assembly.

32. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 International Court of Justice (headquarters in
The Hague): The Statute of the ICJ is an integral
part of the Charter and is almost identical to the
Statute of the previous Permanent Court of
International Justice (PCIJ). Yet, unlike the
League arrangement, all members of the United
Nations are automatically members of the ICJ.
 The Court is composed of fifteen judges elected
by concurrent vote of the General Assembly and
the Security Council. No two judges may be of
the same nationality. Judges serve nine-year
terms , with the terms of five judges expiring
every third year. No limit is set on the number of
terms for which a judge may be reelected.

33. Principal Organs of the United Nations
 In hearing a specific case, if there is no judge on
the Court of the nationality of one or more of the
states that are parties to the case, such state or
states may appoint a national judge to sit for that
case. These additional judges participate with full
voting rights.
 Only states may bring cases before the Court, but
no state is required to submit any case for
hearing and decision. This lack of compulsory
jurisdiction is a major deficiency of international
as contrasted with national legal systems.
 In addition to hearing cases, the ICJ is authorized
to give advisory opinion on legal questions.