Articles 1 and 17 of the Charter of the United Nations, signed at San Francisco on 26 June 1945, form part of the foundational text governing the Organization. Article 1, situated in Chapter I ("Purposes and Principles"), enumerates the four cardinal purposes of the United Nations: (1) to maintain international peace and security through collective measures and the peaceful settlement of disputes in conformity with justice and international law; (2) to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; (3) to achieve international cooperation in solving problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character and in promoting human rights; and (4) to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations toward these common ends. Article 17, located in Chapter IV concerning the General Assembly, governs the budget: paragraph 1 vests in the General Assembly the power to consider and approve the budget; paragraph 2 provides that the expenses of the Organization "shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly"; and paragraph 3 authorizes the Assembly to examine the administrative budgets of specialized agencies.
The juridical weight of these provisions is considerable. Article 1 supplies the interpretive lodestar against which subsequent Charter chapters — notably Chapters VI and VII on dispute settlement and enforcement — are read. Article 17(2) creates a binding, legally enforceable obligation on members, distinct from voluntary contributions. The apportionment is determined by the scale of assessments, calculated principally on capacity to pay (gross national income), with adjustments for low per-capita income and a ceiling and floor. The interplay of Article 17 with Article 19 — which suspends the vote of a member in arrears equal to or exceeding its contributions for the preceding two full years — gives the financial obligation real consequence.
The most authoritative judicial gloss came in the International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion Certain Expenses of the United Nations (1962), where the Court held that the costs of the peacekeeping operations UNEF (Suez) and ONUC (Congo) constituted "expenses of the Organization" within the meaning of Article 17(2), binding on all members, even those (such as the USSR and France) who disputed the operations' legality. The Court reasoned that an expense incurred in pursuit of a purpose under Article 1 is presumptively a legitimate Organizational expense. As of 2026 the United States remains the largest assessed contributor under the Article 17 scale, and chronic arrears continue to test the Article 19 sanction.
For the international-law paper of FSOT, UPSC, CSS, and BCS examinations, these articles are tested at the intersection of institutional law and the binding character of Charter obligations. Examiners favour the linkage of Article 1's purposes to Article 17 funding through the Certain Expenses opinion, and the chain Article 17 → Article 19 → loss of vote. Candidates should distinguish assessed (mandatory) from voluntary contributions and recall the capacity-to-pay basis of the scale of assessments.
Example
In its 1962 Certain Expenses Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice held that UNEF and ONUC peacekeeping costs were Article 17(2) "expenses of the Organization," binding even on the dissenting USSR and France.
Frequently asked questions
Article 1 enumerates the four purposes of the United Nations: maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations based on self-determination, achieving international cooperation on economic and humanitarian problems, and serving as a centre to harmonize nations' actions. It is the interpretive lodestar for the whole Charter.