Three days separate us from the opening of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 8, and questions are being urgently raised: is the UN Charter still effective? Is it still able to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, as the opening pledge made at San Francisco on June 26, 1945, declared?
Looking at the state of international peace last year, 2025, we find it saw the highest number of armed conflicts since the Second World War, while reports suggest NATO may find itself in a confrontation with Russia that could lead to a third world war. And while millions endure hardship, total global spending on armaments reached some $2.9 trillion.
As for the Security Council, charged under the Charter with maintaining international peace and security, its harvest amounts to little when set against a promise made and not kept.
Was there a flaw at the founding, at the moment the Charter took shape?
What is certain is that the idea of the veto has appeared, from eight decades ago to this hour, as the blemish marring the United Nations' path, granting five states a privilege of which the rest of the world's states were deprived. It is worth recalling, however, that the Charter was passed at the time only after agreement on a text that appeared as Article 109, opening the door to amendment through a review conference within ten years.
That article provides: "A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any nine members of the Security Council. Each Member of the United Nations shall have one vote in the conference."
The 1945 Charter was the innovation of its age. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, had collapsed under the weight of conflict in Europe in less than 20 years.
But the matter was not free of the distinctions drawn by the victors, who write history and charters as they see fit and as they aspire, in whatever accords with their interests, without regard for what becomes of the defeated. Yet, instead of ten years, 81 have passed without the political will materializing to convene the conference; and what was accepted then as a temporary option later became a permanent hierarchy.
For more than eight decades, the five members enjoying the veto have gone on watching wars, or managing them as they please, without the least anxiety or unease at condemnation by the Security Council, since the veto guarantees escape from the slightest attempt to approach them or their allies, while others face severe penalties running from the economic to the military. Today it seems the time has come to carry out an obligation deferred for eight decades.
Bolstered by the reform commitments of the 2024 Summit of the Future and by the Article 109 Coalition, a growing group of states is preparing to work toward reclaiming the unabridged spirit of San Francisco.
Over this past May and June, Romania called for activating the Charter's amendment article through the coming General Assembly, and India raised the question of Charter review at the Security Council. Germany, for its part, noted that there was an interesting initiative on Article 109 worth considering, while the president of Kyrgyzstan asked his diplomats to begin studying possible amendments and proposals and to prepare to table them in September. At the same time, Brazil, India, and South Africa have jointly urged the convening of a review conference under Article 109.
But can the five permanent members, armed with the veto, accept an amendment of this kind - one that pulls from beneath their feet a carpet of power and immunity that can be neither blocked nor turned back?
Whatever the case with the great powers and their concern to protect their interests around the world, amending the Charter is not an imposed legal duty. It is a pressing and recurring need, demanded by many countries, that would address the imbalances in the organization's structure - foremost among them the expansion of the Security Council, given the growing role of the middle powers, which play a very important part in resetting the courses of the new world order - as well as amending or abolishing the veto held by the five, so as to reflect the new international balances.
The Charter has been amended only a few times - enlarging the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council - and not once has Article 109 been used to convene the general review conference it promises. Today the world appears eager for a reform that would confer an effective collective international legitimacy, without quota-sharing or imperial condescension. Will we see the amendment that is sought? Let us watch.
