The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States: Chapter I

In one line

Resolution 3281 (XXIX) sets out fifteen lettered fundamentals of international economic relations in Chapter I, and then, in articles 1 to 5, the right to choose an economic system, full permanent sovereignty with the power to regulate foreign investment and transnational corporations and to nationalise on compensation settled by domestic law, co-operation over shared resources, the right to trade, and the right to form producers' associations.

Adoption

Adopted on 12 December 1974 at the twenty-ninth session, by 120 votes to 6, with 10 abstentions.

The six against and the ten abstaining were industrialised States. So the instrument that contains the programme's legal claims was adopted over the objection of every State whose conduct it sought to regulate, which is the fact that decides its legal status.

Compare the Declaration of 1 May, adopted without a vote precisely because the same States chose not to force a division on a text of principle. When principle became articles, they voted.

Chapter I: the fifteen fundamentals

Economic as well as political and other relations among States shall be governed, inter alia, by the following principles.

(a) Sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of States. (b) Sovereign equality of all States. (c) Non-aggression. (d) Non-intervention. (e) Mutual and equitable benefit. (f) Peaceful coexistence. (g) Equal rights and self-determination of peoples. (h) Peaceful settlement of disputes. (i) Remedying of injustices which have been brought about by force and which deprive a nation of the natural means necessary for its normal development. (j) Fulfilment in good faith of international obligations. (k) Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. (l) No attempt to seek hegemony and spheres of influence. (m) Promotion of international social justice. (n) International co-operation for development. (o) Free access to and from the sea by land-locked countries within the framework of the above principles.

Four of the fifteen are not in the Charter of the United Nations and are the additions to notice.

(e) mutual and equitable benefit, which is the equity claim in the vocabulary of exchange.

(i) remedying of injustices brought about by force which deprive a nation of the natural means necessary for its normal development, which is a restitution principle.

(m) promotion of international social justice, which is the programme's whole premise in four words.

(n) international co-operation for development, which asserts development as a shared undertaking.

And (k) respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is in the list, which is why this instrument belongs in a human rights paper and not only in an economic one.

(o) free access to and from the sea by land-locked countries is the interest of a particular group written into a general instrument, and it recurs in article 125 of the law of the sea convention of 1982.