Let’s Save the United Nations - human rights, freedom, democracy and peace
A growing number of governments feel entitled to trample on international law, breach the Charter of the United Nations, the international conventions on human rights and the decisions of international tribunals without anything happening
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Sep. 24 2024.
The work of the United Nations, according to the principles set forth in the Preamble and the first Articles of its founding Charter, can be seen as the development and promotion of the rule of law, based on the realization that justice is an essential condition for achieving the ideal of universal fraternity. [...] There is a need to ensure the uncontested rule of law and tireless recourse to negotiation, mediation and arbitration, as proposed by the Charter of the United Nations, which constitutes truly a fundamental juridical norm. There is a need to prevent this Organization from being delegitimized, since its problems and shortcomings are capable of being jointly addressed and resolved
Papa Francesco, Fratelli Tutti, 2020
On the 24th of October 1945 the United Nations Charter came into effect. A clear,
powerful and brave choice of positive peace made in the aftermath of the Second World War and 70 millions dead. For the first time in the history of international treaties, groundbreaking new principles are established as the cornerstone of the international order. In charge of states is the prohibition of the threat and use of force, the obligation of a peaceful solution to disputes and international cooperation, the compliance of human rights and the self-determination of peoples.
Thanks to the UN, it has been possible to promote the process of decolonisation, bring the problem of underdevelopment in the South to the global stage, mature the philosophy of the “human development”, as attested by the Reports published by the United Nations Development Program, to foster a culture of gender equality and environment preservation. Most importantly, to bring into existence international law of human rights, that is, the ensemble of international legal conventions that recognise the innate rights of individuals and peoples and impose their observance, shattering the myth of the absoluteness of the sovereignty of states both internally and in their international relations.
As regards peace and international security, the Charter arranges for the institution of a collective security system aimed at providing the maximum world organization of the necessary tools, including coercive ones, to preserve peace and international security. But during its nearly 80 years of existence, the UN has had to come to terms, rather than with its principles and the guidelines of its Statute, with the constraints resulting from the political will of the permanent members with Security Council veto power. The problem of the UN’s deficiencies and delays lies not in the Charter, but in the will of those who are legally obliged to implement it, that is, the rulers of UN member States. To instrumentalise the UN is to perpetrate violence to peoples who have the least voice. To pick on the UN, instead of its member States, means to miss the target.
Two truths must be unceasingly repeated: governments that do not behave in compliance with the UN Charter and with international human rights standards are operating in illegality; those who, at every level of governance, act to build an international order of peace has international law on her/his side: it is strong in legal, as well as in moral and international legitimacy.
Article 4 of the Charter established that “membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states”: today, these States are 193. And there is no peace! Wars are rampant.
Today, the UN and the Charter are under attack. Institutions and international laws are crumbling. The UN, unfairly accused of supporting Hamas and of being a swamp of antisemitism, is militarily attacked by the Israeli army in Lebanon. UNIFIL is a United Nations peace mission, created by a Security Council resolution. There are governments that want to weaken or destroy the UN, the UN Charter and and the international human rights law, that is what we can consider the first part of a world Constitution, also founded on resistance and anti-fascism.
It is inconceivable how democratic regimes sanction common crimes to preserve the rule of law and justice within their state, leaving the most heinous crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, unpunished.
The ongoing destruction of the international architecture and of the pillars of global coexistence, which, at the end of the Second World War, allowed us to overcome difficult times of crisis, is a crime that must be stopped with no hesitation.
We must tragically note that while the world is burning around Europe, heads of States or governments of EU Member States are not concerned on how to put out the flames, but are concerned on how to defend their own national borders to prevent people trying to flee those flames from reaching us.
Instead of starting a global mediation for peace, they are launching a deranged race for armament. Nato estimates for 2024 indicate a military expenditure by European States of $476 billion, more than double the military expenditure of ten years ago, out of a global military expenditure of over $2.4 trillion.
Instead of putting effort into defending and strengthening the United Nations and the international human rights law, which the UN itself created, they are serving as a crutch to an American hegemony, now in decline, reviving the old international law of armed and border sovereignties, and fueling wars.
Rather than political leaders committed to ‘saving future generations from the scourge of war and reaffirming faith in fundamental rights, dignity and the value of the human person’, they become sleepwalkers heading for the precipice, dragging with them the populations they are supposed to serve.
Our future cannot be entrusted to the madness of rulers who:
- fuel endless, increasingly bloody wars, a frightening new global arms race, the
devastation and dehumanization of entire peoples and countries;
- are incapable of taking the necessary decisions to manage the climate crisis and
migration processes with respect for human rights;
- have failed to fully implement the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 as set
out in the UN Agenda, once again letting criminal neoliberal policies prevail over social, economic, climate and gender justice.
The road that governments are duty-bound to take is solemnly indicated in the Universal Declaration where it states that ‘Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. This is the compass of humankind.
The alternative before us is: accept what is presented as ‘inevitable’ or defend, democratize and relaunch the UN by adapting it to the world of the 21st century.
The UN is like the earth: we only have one. Knowing that it is weak and sick must push us to act with even more determination to relaunch it. The UN way is the only ‘realpolitik’ that can save us from hell.
The alternative to the UN is the law of the strongest, that is, the third world war, a world out of control, the rule of lawlessness, arbitrariness, and impunity, planet-wide environmental devastation, the systematic violation of fundamental human rights, the end of freedoms and democracy, and international chaos.
The time has come to revive the spirit if not also, in full, the letter of the UN Charter.
The UN must once again become the global construction site for building peace in the world, a guarantor of international legality, an institution of democratic global governance aimed at preventing conflicts and promoting respect for the rights of the individual and peoples and human security. This is an urgent necessity.
The UN we need is the UN of Peoples who want to live together in peace and take care of our common heritage. A legitimate claim, because it is based on the literal text of the Preamble of the UN Charter - ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...’.
The UN way is the legal, institutional and non-violent way to peace. There are no rights without institutions and without rights there is no peace! This statement is valid in all levels of governance, ‘from cities to the UN’.
The Pact for the Future adopted at the UN on the 23rd of September by the Heads of State and Government goes in the desired direction.
The ‘unwavering commitment’ to international law and the principles and goals set forth in the UN Charter is reaffirmed. Also affirmed is the centrality of the United Nations in a multilateral architecture that, to keep pace with a changing world, must be strengthened through greater representativeness, inclusiveness, interconnectedness and stable funding.
In order to promote the strengthening, democratization and revitalisation of the UN, a
strong and audacious initiative of all women and men who want to defend and build peace by acting outside and inside the institutions is indispensable.
Almost eighty years after its foundation at a time marked by so many deep disagreements, after decades of debates, working groups, committees of experts, reports and recommendations ‘without follow-up’, we know that no successful reform of the United Nations will be possible without taking an extraordinary initiative.
With this in view, we call on the Parliament, political and trade union forces, local governments and civil society organizations, the world of schools and universities, to promote the creation of an informal group of ‘like-minded states’ (as was the case for
the Ottawa Convention to ban anti-personnel mines or the Statute of the International Criminal Court) determined to promote a ‘Universal Convention for the Strengthening and Democratisation of the United Nations’ following the example of the ‘conventional way’ pioneered by the European Union to take
important institutional steps.
The conventional way is the original outcome of a compromise between intergovernmentalism (apex body of states) and international democracy, in the form of a pluralistic ad hoc body, equipped with greater representativeness than the ordinary organs of the ‘commissioning’ institution: a formula that allows for the participation of new actors and that has the precise mandate to elaborate, in an official way, a ‘draft’. In the case of the European Union we had two ‘European Conventions’, one for the preparation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the other for the preparation of the ‘Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’. Both these bodies referred their product to the relevant EU institution, i.e. in this case the European Council, for appropriate follow-up.
The ‘Universal Convention for the Strengthening and Democratisation of the United Nations’ should be established by a General Assembly resolution - within the framework of which the power of veto cannot be exercised - with a mandate to draw up an organic document of proposals concerning the organs and functions of the UN. The ‘Convention’ would thus take the form of an ad hoc body, created by the General Assembly, composed not only of UN member states and specialized agencies, but also of representatives of national parliaments, the European Parliament, supranational parliamentary assemblies, local government bodies and global civil society organizations.
Let’s stop the destruction of law, legality and international architecture. Let’s save the UN and together with human rights, freedom, justice, democracy and peace. Let’s do it together!
PerugiAssisi Foundation for the Culture of Peace
Human Rights Centre ‘A. Papisca’ of the University of Padua
P.S. 30 years for the UN - To promote the UN of the peoples, in 1992, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we launched a ‘Call for the democratization of the United Nations’ signed by numerous authoritative representatives of associations, culture and institutions. In that call we solicited ‘a real process of structural reform’ of the UN as essential to the construction of a more just, peaceful and democratic world order, having as a value reference the paradigm of human rights and democracy, the core of the new international law inscribed in the UN Charter, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the subsequent international legal conventions. That call was followed by an uninterrupted series of PerugiAssisi marches, national and international campaigns such as ‘Reclaim Our UN’, initiatives, documents and seven editions of the Peoples UN Assembly (Assemblea dell’ONU dei Popoli).
On 24 October 2024 we launch a new popular and institutional initiative to defend and re-launch the UN that will culminate in a new Peoples UN Assembly (6-12 October 2025) and the PerugiAssisi March for Peace and Fraternity ‘Imagine All The People’ on 12 October 2025.
This document is open to contributions and proposals from all those who wish to defend and revitalize the United Nations system in order to build a more just and humane world for all.
Any contribution can be sent to: PerugiAssisi Foundation for the Culture of Peace, via della viola 1 (06122) Perugia - Tel. 335.1401733 - email
adesioni@perlapace.it - www.perlapace.it