UNITED NATIONS: Chance Majority

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement. —United Nations Charter, Article 2(7)

Since it joined the U.N., South Africa has persistently invoked this Charter article to resist U.N. inquiries into the question of racial discrimination in the South African Union. Long before its present intolerant leadership got control of the country, Field Marshal Jan Smuts contended in 1946 that "the question of the U.N.'s right to intervene in the domestic affairs...

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