We the Peoples of the United Nations?


The official English translation of the UN Charter begins with seven words: "We the peoples of the United Nations." The Second Charter of the United Nations 2024/2025 proposes changing this to six words: "We the people of the world." In the language of the Global Governance Forum, this edit would probably fall somewhere between a legacy update and a normative change of the existing Charter. It does not seem to be a major structural reform - or is it perhaps the most important structural reform of the entire Second Charter? Unfortunately, the drafters of the Second Charter have not provided us with a rationale for their proposed update. Nevertheless, they have given us a timely and substantive benchmark for conversation. Here I will begin to discuss two possible edits. The first possible edit is from "We the peoples" to "We the people." The second possible edit is from "of the United Nations" to "of the world."

Until I am able to afford my own copy of the Simma Summa, or possibly achieve online access through library membership, I will have to restrict myself to information about the individual UN Charter articles that is freely available online. Wikipedia currently has four relevant entries: Preamble to the United Nations Charter; Preamble to the United States Constitution; Virginia Gildersleeve; and Sol Bloom. According to the first of these:

Jan Smuts from South Africa originally wrote the opening lines of the Preamble as, "The High Contracting Parties, determined to prevent a recurrence of the fratricidal strife which twice in our generation has brought untold sorrow and loss upon mankind. . ." which would have been similar to the opening lines of the Covenant of the League of Nations. After considerable argument at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, held in San Francisco, particularly Soviet insistence that language regarding the equal rights and self-determination of peoples be included in the Charter, the Preamble was modified significantly. The opening phrase "We the peoples of the United Nations. . .", echoing the preamble of the United States Constitution, was suggested by US conference delegates Virginia Gildersleeve and Sol Bloom.

Alain Pellet has made available through his website further insights in the form of a 1986 article he co-authored with Jean-Pierre Cot titled "What They Had in Mind: The Preamble to the Charter." Taking all of this into account, and at very first blush, we can posit a number of different alternatives for the first phrase of a reformed UN Charter:
  • We the High Contracting Parties
  • We the Member States
  • We the peoples
  • We the people
  • We the human beings
We can also posit a number of different alternatives for the second phrase of a reformed UN Charter:
  • of the United Nations
  • of the world
  • of the Earth
  • of the Solar System
At the conservative end of the spectrum, I can see language like "We the Member States of the United Nations." At the progressive end of the spectrum, I can see language like "We the Human Beings of the Solar System." 

(Interestingly enough, we don't yet seem to have a name for our Solar System. I note in passing on this point both the Habitable Worlds Observatory | NASA Science and the Helios System).