Specific Features of the Principles of the UN Charter as Fundamental Principles of International Law

This paper addresses a cornerstone aspect of the theory and practice of modern international law that has retained its relevance over time: the norms of the UN Charter, which are both formally and substantively proclaimed as the Organization’s guiding principles and have, in addition, formed the basis of the entire post-war world order. The principles of the UN Charter enjoy the status of paramount norms, designated expressis verbis in the Charter as «basic principles». The inclusion in the text of the Helsinki Final Act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe of ten principles intended to guide participating states in their mutual relations gives rise to a number of unresolved questions concerning their relationship to the principles of the UN Charter. These questions include whether the Helsinki principles should be afforded the same qualification as «basic» principles; whether they possess a legal nature identical to that of the Charter principles; and, by means of a more nuanced analytical approach, whether their hierarchical position is identical to — or distinct from — that of the Charter’s principles. Such analytical techniques can assist in identifying and distinguishing the principles of the UN Charter from other legal categories that may be mistaken for «principles of international law», notably jus cogens norms, and can help clarify the frequently invoked but imprecise formulation of the «rules on which the international order is based». Against this background, both substantively — by virtue of the discourse itself — and methodologically, the examination of the specific features of the UN Charter’s principles occupies a primary position among scholarly responses to the principal challenges confronting international legal science.

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