Purposes and Principles
| Author | Alexandre Tavadian |
| Pages | 93-160 |
93
Chapter 2
PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES
Delegations from fty states worked on the nal text of the Charter of
the United Nations (UN Charter) during the San Francisco conference.
A large number of people were split into committees and subcom-
mittees that worked simultaneously on specic parts or topics of the
UN Charter. One of these technical committees had the responsibility
to prepare draft provisions of the Preamble, Purposes, and Princi-
ples. This part sets the tone for the entire UN Charter. T he Preamble
needed to have a “language and tone which [would] lead its way to the
hearts of men, [would] awaken the imagination of the common man
to the points at issue, kindle his feelings and move him.”1 The most
dicult part of this task was to conceive a text that not only had “liter-
ary sense of harmony, rhythm and appealing moral beauty” but also
“juristic consideration of precision and logical sequence.”2 The other
diculty was to draw up a sharp and clear-cut distinction between
what should be included under the Preamble, Purposes, and Princi-
ples. “Some questions were transferred during the deliberations from
the Preamble to Purposes, from Purposes to Principles and from
Principles back to the Preamble.”3
1 United Nations Conference on International Organizations, Commission I,
General Provisions, Verbatim Minutes of First Meeting of Commission I, Doc
2006 I/6 (15 June 1945) at 1 [Conference on International Organizations].
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid at 16.
94 | UNITED NATIONS LAW, POLITICS, AND PRACTICE
A. PREAMBLE
It is noteworthy that, initially, the founders of the UN did not plan
to insert a preamble in the UN Charter. The chief delegate of South
Africa, Field Marshal Smuts, proposed the inclusion of the preamble,
arguing that,
[W]hatever eorts we might make to dene the Organization —
could only hope to succeed if it found support in the public opinion
of mankind all over the world. Because of that, it was essential that
it should not only be drafted in as precise terms as we could nd,
but that there should be great warmth and simplicity, at least in the
rst lines, so that we may hope to nd an answer in the hearts of
humanity.4
The Preamble of the UN Charter is the ideology of the organiza-
tion. It sets forth the declared common intentions that brought coun-
tries together in San Francisco to harmonize, organize, and regulate
their international action.5 It diers signicantly from the style of pre-
ambular clauses of international agreements and conventions. It is
drafted in the name of the peoples of the United Nations as opposed
to in the name of states, making it clear that the UN is not so much
about states and their governments as it is about its peoples who
have endured the horrible experience of World War II. It expresses
the hopes of mankind to be preserved forever from the repetition of
such horrors. A US delegate to the San Francisco conference stated
that the text of the Preamble was intended to “express the intentions,
the ideals, and the emotions which animate the nations as we join
together in this great new world Organization. It is a sort of preface,
and probably many millions of people will read it and it alone, and
not read further into the more complicated parts of the UN Charter.
We had hoped that the Preamble might be so simple and clear and
moving that it might hang upon the wall of every home in all our
member nations, and be understood by common man everywhere,
4 Ibid at 13.
5 Ibid at 17.
Chapter 2: Purposes and Principles | 95
and warm their hearts and strengthen them after the long exhaustion
and sorrow of war.”6 The Preamble of the UN Charter reads as follows:
• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which
twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
• to rearm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity
and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and
women and of nations large and small, and
• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the
obligations arising from treaties and other sources of inter-
national law can be maintained, and
• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom.
• To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another
as good neighbours, and
• To unite our strengths to maintain international peace and sec-
urity, and
• To ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of
methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common
interests, and
• To employ international machinery for the promotion of the Eco-
nomic and social advancement of all peoples,
• Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representa-
tives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited
their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed
to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby estab-
lish an international organization to be known as the United
Nations.
Normally, preambular clauses are not an integral part of a
legal instrument; it may be useful for the purposes of teleological
6 Ibid at 19.
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