UN General Assembly
1979

19. At the end of this decade we must view our adherence to the United Nations Charter not as a rigid and immutable—and therefore abstract and unrealistic— affirmation of principles but rather as a code of conduct enriched, in its interpretation, by the elements of the experience acquired in the 1970s. 20. We consider that at each stage of the history of international relations, new types of rights and their corresponding duties as well as increasingly definite standards of behaviour take shape and give renewed vigour and a wider interpretation to the principles laid down in the Charter. 21. In the 1970s the profound changes that have occurred in the social and economic order existing among nations as well as the unexpected nature of many conflicts have shown that the code of conduct laid down in the Charter indissolubly links all nations, large or small, powerful or weak, leading some to reconsider the weakness of their strength and others to measure the strength of their weakness.