Atlantic Charter

The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration of war aims issued by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 14 August 1941. Although it was neither a treaty nor an institutional blueprint, its principles provided an important normative foundation for the movement that produced the United Nations.

Principles later reflected in the United Nations

The Charter envisaged an international order based on peace, political choice, economic cooperation and restraint on the use of force.

• It opposed territorial changes made without the consent of the peoples concerned and supported restoration of sovereign rights and self-government.
• It advocated equal access to trade and raw materials, improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security.
• It sought freedom from fear and want, freedom of the seas and the abandonment of force.
• Its call for a wider and permanent system of general security anticipated the United Nations objective of maintaining international peace and security.

From shared principles to an international organization

The Atlantic Charter supplied common purposes around which the wartime coalition could organize.

• In the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, 26 governments subscribed to the Atlantic Charter's principles and adopted the name “United Nations.”
• The Moscow Declaration of 1943 subsequently recognized the need for a general international organization based on the sovereign equality of peace-loving states.
• The Dumbarton Oaks proposals of 1944 developed the institutional framework, while the San Francisco Conference of 1945 adopted the Charter of the United Nations.

Nature of its contribution

The Atlantic Charter was a normative precursor, not the constituent instrument of the United Nations. It helped define the purposes of the emerging order and broadened Allied war aims, but later negotiations created the UN's organs, membership rules, powers and collective-security machinery.