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UN chief warns 80-year-old founding charter 'not an a la carte menu'
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 26, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
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Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 26, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
UN Chief Guterres warns the UN Charter is under assault, emphasizing its non-optional role in international relations amid ongoing global conflicts.
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that the U.N. 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 a 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 United States of violating the Charter with its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the U.S. justified them under the Charter as self-defense.
The United Nations was born out of the end of World War Two 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.
While the United Nations had done a lot of good over the past eight decades, senior U.S. diplomat McCoy Pitt said the world body should not "overlook the shortcomings that limit the UN's potential."
"We regret that the U.N. has lost sight of its founding mission. In this regard, wars still rage on multiple continents," he said. "The principles of the UN Charter must remain at the heart of this institution, not just as an agreement for a better world, but also as a continuing call to action."
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Antonio Guterres warned that the UN Charter is under unprecedented assault and emphasized that it is not an optional framework but the foundation of international relations.
Countries like Russia and Israel have been called out by the General Assembly for violating the UN Charter, with Iran also accusing the U.S. of such violations.
The UN Charter was signed on June 26, 1945, in San Francisco by an initial 50 states and came into force four months later.
Critics, including senior U.S. diplomat McCoy Pitt, argue that the UN has lost sight of its founding mission and that its shortcomings limit its potential to address ongoing global conflicts.
The U.S. justified its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as self-defense, claiming that these actions were in accordance with the UN Charter.
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