How the UN Charter Can Help Guide a Polarized World

David J. Scheffer is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, with a focus on international law and international criminal justice. He served as senior advisor and counsel to the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations (1993–1997) and as the UN secretary-general’s special expert on UN assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (2012–2018). This article draws upon his co-authored book, The UN Charter: Five Pillars for Humankind.

When the UN General Assembly convenes this month—with a daunting agenda of critical global issues—delegates will acknowledge the eightieth anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Charter and the creation of the United Nations. Many heads of state, foreign ministers, and UN ambassadors are expected to herald this seminal moment and express their belief that there remains purpose in the organization’s continued efforts to pursue peace and security, economic and social progress, human rights, respect for international law, and peacemaking.

Still, the United Nations faces much criticism and a developing financial crisis, which has led to renewed dialogue about the direction of the organization. In its eightieth year, the UN Charter should remain at the center of this conversation. This includes an assessment of its relevance and meaning as the constitutional document that guides the United Nations, its specialized agencies, and their many global operations.

Although often honored more in the breach than in the observance, the Charter remains the normative backbone of the United Nations that binds all 193 of its member states, offering legal and political guidance to both nations and multilateral bodies. With the world facing a host of existential challenges—armed aggression, pandemics, massive migrations, authoritarianism, climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the dark side of artificial intelligence (AI)—a modern interpretation of the UN Charter could restore the strength of its words.

The UN Charter’s origins in World War II

The aggression of the 1930s that led to World War II blew through the guardrails aimed at preventing conflict that were erected by the post-World War I Covenant of the League of Nations. The inspiration for the UN Charter derived primarily from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The key principles were embodied in the Atlantic Charter signed by Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941, and then endorsed five months later by a group of twenty-six countries who opposed the Axis Powers and called itself the “United Nations.”

As World War II raged, summit meetings of the U.S., Soviet, and British leaders in Moscow (joined by China), Tehran, and Yalta—and a significant drafting session at Dumbarton Oaks (again joined by China) in Washington, DC—paved the way for the final negotiations. The process concluded with the signing of the UN Charter by 50 countries on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco. The U.S. Senate quickly ratified the Charter in a 89–2 vote just over a month later, thanks to a prior year of community-level groundwork laid by Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry S. Truman.

Maintain international peace and security

This year’s General Assembly will focus heavily on the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars and armed conflicts in Eastern Congo, Myanmar, and Sudan—just as it did last year. These conflicts have begun to meld conventional warfare with autonomous weapons and AI.

The most noteworthy provision of the UN Charter has always been Article 2(4), which requires member states to refrain “from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The meaning of “force” is so multidimensional now that the provision’s relevance applies across a multitude of playing fields. Beyond conventional use of military forces, munitions, and advanced weaponry, the “threat or use of force” can encompass endless permutations of irregular warfare, human-induced ecological catastrophes, unchecked viral outbreaks, hacked energy blackouts, and space-based disrupters.

Likewise, Article 2(7) of the Charter prohibits the United Nations from intervening in “matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state…” A modern interpretation of these words would consider the shrinking parameters of what truly constitutes only the internal affairs of any state. National sovereignty undergirds the Charter, but transnational phenomena of unprecedented dangers—many not even imagined in 1945—now swamp peoples’ lives and the security, economies, cultures, and ecologies of nations. A government’s reliance on Article 2(7) to keep the United Nations and its member states at arms length is increasingly implausible.

Chapter VII of the Charter authorizes non-military and military responses for threats to international peace and security, but the fractious Security Council has stymied such enforcement actions. Threats to peace and acts of aggression require pragmatic understanding about how conflicts unfold under complex modern circumstances, as well as a keen appreciation of how malicious technology, disinformation, and unchecked authoritarianism can disrupt peace and enable innovative and destructive acts of aggression. The very nature of modern warfare, with its blizzard of new technologies, continually broadens the application of Article 51, which confirms the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense”—far beyond the conventional acts of war understood in 1945.

Protect human rights and fundamental freedoms

Also squarely on the General Assembly’s agenda is the advancement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, as well as the plight of the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar. Such topics are no surprise, as human rights and fundamental freedoms are foundational tenets of the Charter, evoking equality and the values of each person’s dignity and well-being. The Charter spawned the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and an impressive amount of codification and institutionalization of human rights in the twentieth century, with a momentum that has prevailed into the twenty-first century. But the headwinds confronting this eighty-year endeavor remain fierce, as today’s autocrats undermine human rights norms and atrocity crimes continue to demolish lives on a daily basis.

The future reading of the Charter should be guided by three principles. First, human rights and freedoms should be understood as universal and all-inclusive for peoples around the world. There should be no pockets of denial sustained by those in power via historic, political, or repressive cultural barriers because they fear the principles at stake. Second, civil society has an important stake in this enterprise and its role should be respected. Third, the Charter should be a beacon for both individual and collective human rights, especially benefiting those impacted by systemic human rights violations.

Promote economic and social progress

The eightieth General Assembly will focus on the Sustainable Development Goals, international financial institutions, climate, mental health, and disease control. Granted, the United Nations is not—and should not become—a vast governing body responsible for the world’s economic prosperity or social well-being. Those goals are primarily the responsibilities of the private and government sectors of the 193 sovereign UN nations. But the guiding principles of economic and social cooperation among member states are deeply embedded in the Charter and the work of the Economic and Social Council that it created.

The United Nations’ fifteen specialized agencies—including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, and World Health Organization—are authorized and guided by the Charter to pursue critical priorities of economic development, public investment, agriculture, employment, education, health, and telecommunications. They will continue to be on the front lines of massive global challenges in the coming years.

Enable the peacemakers

The United Nations will commemorate and promote its long-standing goal of global nuclear disarmament on September 26. The UN Charter was finalized less than two months before the dawn of the nuclear age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and so the terminology of nuclear weapons is absent from its pages. But for eighty years, the United Nations has warned against the threat of nuclear war and pressed governments to negotiate issues such as test bans and disarmament.

The Charter encourages, often to no avail since World War II, a robust effort at waging peace and avoiding armed conflicts under various Charter authorities available to the General Assembly, Security Council, International Court of Justice, and secretary-general. None of these authorities are used as proactively as they could be by these UN bodies. For example, Article 14 of the Charter empowers the General Assembly to “recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin” for a wide range of conflicts in the world. Such language is essentially open-ended and enables the General Assembly to influence parties to select peaceful remedies for their disputes.

Articles 52 and 53 of the Charter favor regional approaches to peace and security issues and dispute resolution, and should be used more robustly. Under Article 99, the secretary-general has the power to bring to the attention of the Security Council “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” Secretary-General António Guterres did so regarding the Israel-Hamas war in December 2023, two months after the war broke out, and could exercise this authority—akin to a cattle prod—more often to energize the Security Council.

Reform

Reform at the United Nations, which is a top priority of the United States and central to Guterres’s UN80 Initiative, will be widely discussed in the opening weeks of the General Assembly, as will the election of his successor. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has eliminated almost all U.S. funding for the UN system and UN peacekeeping for fiscal year 2026, so UN reform that works to recapture funding streams will be a paramount objective.

As for revision of the Charter, it theoretically could be amended to jettison outdated provisions, streamline the structure and administration of the United Nations, and modernize the composition of the Security Council, but the prospects of any such amendments are practically nil. The better course probably lies in improving management of the United Nations and a realistic interpretation of the Charter that demonstrates its value during the turbulent times ahead.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.