Chapter XVIII of the

United Nations Charter The Charter of the United Nations (UN) is the foundational treaty of the UN, an intergovernmental organization. It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the UN system, including its six principal organs: the ...

deals with amendments. The process is essentially modeled after the amendment process for the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...

in that: *A two-thirds

supermajority A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority ru ...

is required for adoption; *Ratification by a supermajority of the respective states is required; *There are two methods of proposing amendments; *The more common of those methods is for the "first branch" (in the case of the UN, the General Assembly) to submit an amendment to the states; *Another method, not actually used in practice, is to call a convention to propose amendments. *The amendment procedure itself contains a provision that does not allow states (in the case of the UN, the permanent five members of the

UN Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, and ...

) to be deprived of their suffrage (in this case, their veto and/or permanent UNSC membership) without their consent. (This is analogous to the

entrenched clause An entrenched clause or entrenchment clause of a constitution is a provision that makes certain amendments either more difficult or impossible to pass. Overriding an entrenched clause may require a supermajority, a referendum, or the consent of the ...

contained in

Article Five of the United States Constitution Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process for altering the Constitution. Under Article Five, the process to alter the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments, and subsequent ratification. Amendment ...

). There have been several

amendments to the United Nations Charter Amendments to the United Nations Charter can be made by a procedure set out in Chapter XVIII of the UN Charter. The UN Charter has been amended five times since 1945. Amendment process Article 108 provides: Amendments to the present Charter sha ...

since 1945, mostly to reflect increases in the size of the organization. However, the fundamental structure has remained the same. Nonetheless, the UN amendment process arguably favors the flexibility and continued existence of the organization more than the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

amendment process specified by Article 26 of the

Covenant of the League of Nations The Covenant of the League of Nations was the charter of the League of Nations. It was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Creation Early d ...

, which stated, "Amendments to this Covenant will take effect when ratified by the Members of the League whose representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the Members of the League whose Representatives compose the Assembly. No such amendment shall bind any Member of the League which signifies its dissent therefrom, but in that case it shall cease to be a Member of the League."

References

Divisions and sections of the Charter of the United Nations {{UN-stub