Equity and Sovereign Equality

In one line

Sovereign equality means every State has equal legal status and one vote whatever its size or wealth, equity means that States in unequal positions must be treated unequally to reach a just result, and the New International Economic Order needed both because sovereign equality supplied the votes and equity supplied the justification for what they voted for.

Sovereign equality

Article 2(1) of the Charter of the United Nations: the Organization is based on the sovereign equality of all its Members.

The Friendly Relations Declaration of 1970 elaborates it in six elements: States are juridically equal; each enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty; each has the duty to respect the personality of other States; the territorial integrity and political independence of the State are inviolable; each has the right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems; and each has the duty to comply fully and in good faith with its international obligations and to live in peace with others.

In the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States it appears twice: as fundamental (b), sovereign equality of all States, and in article 10, which begins all States are juridically equal.

What sovereign equality delivered

The vote. Under article 18 of the Charter each Member of the General Assembly has one vote, so decolonisation converted equality of status into a working majority. [Decolonisation, Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement].

The right to choose an economic system, in article 1 of the 1974 Charter and principle (d) of the Declaration, which is sovereign equality applied to policy.

The right to regulate foreign investment and to nationalise, in article 2, which is sovereign equality applied to property within the territory.

And the prohibition of economic coercion, in article 32, which is sovereign equality applied to relations between States.

What sovereign equality could not deliver

Formal equality is exactly the problem the programme identified. Equal treatment of unequals reproduces inequality, and a rule that every State may charge the tariff it likes, or that trade concessions must be reciprocal, is formally equal and works to the advantage of the party with more to trade.

Sovereign equality also cuts against the programme. If every State is sovereign and equal, then a developed State's freedom to set its own tariffs, to decide its own aid budget and to refuse a treaty is as protected as a developing State's freedom to nationalise. The principle that supplied the votes also supplied the refusal.

That is the answer to a question that asks about both: sovereign equality is a shield, and a shield is held by both parties.