"In order
to ensure prompt and effective action by the United
Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council
primary responsibility for the maintenance of
international peace and security, and agree that in
carrying out its duties under this responsibility the
Security Council acts on their behalf".
At a time when a new United Nations General Assembly
opens in New-York it is worth recalling this first
paragraph of Article 24 of the Carter. Since
responsibility implies power and authority, without which
an agent of whatever sort cannot truly be described as
responsible, it follows that Article 24 is in
contradiction to Article 2, paragraph 7, which excludes
the right of the United Nations to "intervene in matters
which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of
any state.
Is this contradiction a mere oversight, or was it
knowingly inserted by the drafters of the Charter who
were "playing a double game", wishing on the one hand to
encourage membership by saying to the Nation-States, "All
right, national sovereignty will be safeguarded", while,
on the other, reminding these same States that if they
really want peace they will have to face up to the
problem of sovereignty ? For if the United Nations is to
be given any real responsibility, then all states, and
particularly the five permanent members of the Security
Council, must be prepared to forego unconditional
sovereignty.
One may suspect that this Article 24 may have inspired
the drafters of some national constitutions, for example
that of France which includes the following sentence :
France is prepared to consent, on a strictly reciprocal
basis, to such a limitation of sovereignty as would be
required for the institution and preservations of peace".
This clause was retained even by General De Gaulle. One
finds similar clauses in the constitutions of Italy
(Article 11) and of the German Federal Republic (articles
24, 25 and 26).
Even when the terms are less precise, some other
constitutions tend towards the same notion : those of
Japan (art. 9 and 98), India (Art. 51, §d),
Costa-Rica (Art. 12), Belgium (Art. 25bis) Luxemburg
(Art. 49bis) and Denmark (Art. 20, to which one may add
about twenty other constitutions which allude to the
possibility.
U Thant, while Secretary General of the United Nations
once declared that "we must change the outdated and
unworkable concept of unlimited national sovereignty". In
the light of this realization, jurists of each country
could perhaps get included, in their own constitutions,
such a clause as put forward for Switzerland : "The Swiss
Confederation consents, as far as it is required for the
establishment of a just peace among states, to limit (on
a reciprocal basis) its exercises of sovereignty".
After that, a conference of representatives from the
163 states could proceed to these reciprocal
arrangements, and start the process of a last giving
mankind : World law to guarantee its survival.
