UN General Assembly
1948

For that reason, in many instances in the past, recommendations of the General Assembly had not been complied with. This was so in the case of the Union of South Africa, in connexion with the Palestine problem, the admission of certain nations to membership in the United Nations and with several other issues which might be cited to illustrate the ineptness of recommendations made by the General Assembly. Some naive observers imagined that the General Assembly was a world government or a supreme court of justice empowered to legislate or hand out judgments. That was a wrong conception. The United Nations was only a group of nations united by an international treaty called the Charter. That treaty preserved, untouched, the sovereign prerogatives of its signatories which might not be violated or ignored except with their consent. The only effective safeguard of the honest respect of the treaty was the good faith, fair play, justice and honour of its signatories, together with the necessary justice in the recommendations which might be issued by the General Assembly or the Security Council.