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The study is concerned with the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States’ in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, which was unaninously adopted by the XXVth session of the United Nations General Assembly on October 24, 1970. In the first part of this study the author describes the process of the progressive development and codification of the principles of friendly relations and co-operation among states in the General Assembly and its special committee for the codification of these principles in the period 1962 to 1970. In the same part he also examines the general provisons of the Declaration on Principles of Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, which he considers as one of the most important documents of international law adopted in the recent period. In the second part of his study, the author analyzes in detail all the seven principles of friendly relations and cooperation among states codified in the Declaration; he considers them to constitute a comprehensive system of fundamental and universal rules of international law, essential for safeguarding peaceful co-existence among states with different social systems and for promoting friendly co-operation among all the states of the world. He gradually clarifies the principle under which states have the obligation to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations; the principle that states shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means so as not to endanger international peace and security and justice; the principle concerning the duty not to intervene in matters within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, in accordance with the Charter; the duty of states to co-operate with one another in accordance with the Charter; the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; the principle of the sovereign equality of states; the principle that states shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the Charter. In the third and final part of his study, the author deals with the question of the legal nature of the Declaration on Principles of Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States. He notes that it is difficult to answer this question because the declarations adopted thus far by the United Nations General Assembly are only beginning to take shape. At the same time it is not possible to rely in this respect on any authorities because thus far individual authors have dealt mostly with particular declarations rather than with all of them comprehensively; they have been adopting a rather utilitarian position on the declarations, or have been influenced by personal sympathies, which have produced quite contradictory results of theoretical study in this field. While some authors view the declarations of the General Assembly as a new source of obligations for states, as an authoritative interpretation of the valid general international law, or “instant” customary law, other authors consider them to be merely non-mandatory recommendations of the General Assembly which, although they may have considerable moral and political significance, in no case have the character of a legal rule. This lack of identity of views on the legal character of General Assembly declarations is not something extraordinary or surprising. After all, these declarations are a new phenomenon, and a rare one, and, moreover, the declarations adopted thus far differ from each other considerably by their content and goal. In the course of the twenty five years since the establishment of the United Nations Organization, the General Assembly adopted, as of October 24, 1970, the total of fifteen declarations. Considering the fact that during that same period the General Assembly had passed more than 2.600 resolutions, the declarations represent only somewhat more than one half of one per cent of the total General Assembly resolutions. In order to find the answer to the question asked above, it is obviously necessary to pursue a different line of investigation - namely one of a thorough study and evaluation of all the declarations adopted by the General Assembly. United Nations practice and the position taken by individual states with respect to the drafting, approval and application of particular declarations should provide a more reliable key to determining the legal character of the Declaration on Principles of Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States. United Nation practice shows that the form of a “declaration” is being used only exceptionally for formal and solemn instruments appropriate for those rare occasions when principles of major and lasting significance and importance and of universal scope are being proclaimed. The U. N. General Assembly has been making use of this form more frequently only in the past decade when at most of its regular sessions it has passed at each session one and very rarely more declarations among some 120 approved resolutions. The declarations adopted by the General Assembly may be divided into two categories from the viewpoint of their relationship to international law: declarations in which the General Assembly confirms, interprets, progressively develops and codifies the principles contained in the United Nations Charter, or universally recognized principles and rules of contemporary international law; the second category includes declarations in which General Assembly sets forth political and ethical ideas as well as postulates of a programmatic character, concerning the maintenance of world peace and security as well as the development of international co-operation in the economic, social and cultural fields. The following five declarations may be placed in the second category: the Declaration on the conversion to peaceful needs of the resources released by disarmament, the Declaration on the denuclearization of Africa, the Declaration on the promotion among youth of the ideals of peace, mutual respect and understanding between peoples, the Declaration on social progress and development, and the Declaration on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations. In these declarations, which have the character of recommendations and contain political or ethical postulates, the General Assembly urged states, international governmental and non-governmental organizations, municipal social bodies as well as individuals, to strive for the attainment of certain goals and objectives in the sphere of maintenance and strengthening of international peace and security, and in the field of economic, social and cultural co-operation. The first category contains ten declarations, five of which set forth rules directly concerning relations between states and their mutual behaviour, while the remaining five are concerned with the protection of human rights in general or of specific human rights. The first sub-category is made up of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the Declaration on the prohibition of the use of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, the Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of their Independence and Sovereignty, and the Declaration of Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States. In the instruments falling within this category, the General Assembly confirmed the validity of universally recognized principles and rules of conventional or customary international law, and. in particular, interpreted and applied the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations with regard to changed conditions in the world, specifying in concrete terms and enriching the general rules of behaviour among states with new elements codified in a dynamic and progressive spirit, or even proclaimed new norm-setting elements. As for the second sub-category, we may place therein the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and the Declaration on Territorial Asylum. These documents express the opinion of the international community regarding the content of human rights, representing the desirable standard of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and should serve as a guideline to individual states for their internal activity in this sphere. They contain both politico-ethical and norm-setting elements. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains rules which the states began to observe in their practical activities and subsequently embodied them in a more specific and developed form in the International Covenants on Human Rights. Similarly, the principles contained in the Declaration of the United Nations on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination were somewhat later - in 1965 - embodied in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It should, of course, be stressed that this division of declarations into a category of “legal declarations” and “political declarations” is not absolute and that the declarations of the first category may also formulate important political postulates, just as the declarations of the second category may include juristic elements. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, just as the Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention proclaim besides rules of international law also important political postulates calling for the immediate elimination of all forms of colonialism and specifying the imperative necessity of creating favourable conditions for permitting all states, especially the developing countries, choose freely, without pressure and duress, their political, economic and social institutions. In the Declaration on the Occasion of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations, on the contrary, the Member-States re-affirmed, besides setting the objectives of their activity in the forthcoming period, their loyalty to the Charter of the United Nations and reasserted their will to meet the obligations contained therein. These links between the international legal and political parts of some declarations do not reduce their universal significance but, on the contrary, make them important international instruments. On the one hand, they demonstrate the organic link between international law and international politics, the influence they wield on each other and their mutual dependence, and, on the other hand, their importance is being raised as documents serving both as norm-setting guidelines and as programmatic postulations for the foreign and domestic activities of individual states. Therefore, there is no insurmountable barrier between the two categories and many of the ideas proclaimed as programmatic are gradually transformed into legal norms which in turn affect the character of the document wherein they had been proclaimed. The first category of declarations with a legal content brings together documents in which the General Assembly formulates universally recognized principles and rules of international law in their different stages of development. Some of the declarations codify the lex lata and others contain elements de lege ferenda. The Declaration on the prohibition of the use of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons solemnly confirms rules of international law, whose validity as universally binding rules had been cast in doubt by some states. In contrast, the Declarations of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space proclaims some new rules governing the peaceful use of outer space and of celestial bodies, which had been unknown in previous international law. The declarations of the first category can thus contain both declaratory and constitutive elements, and both normsetting and political parts. In spite of these differences existing between the individual declarations, it is possible to apply to them the opinion expressed by the General Assembly with respect to a 1949 project of a Declaration of the Rights and Obligations of States, namely that the proposed declaration represented an important and significant contribution to the progressive development of international law and its codification. Therefore, we may say of the declarations of the first category that they represent a new and non-traditional means of a progressive development and codification of the universally recognized principles and rules of international law. The legal significance of each declaration, its lifespan and its impact on the behaviour of individual states depend, of course, not only on its norm-setting content but also on the degree of support it enjoyed when it was being approved, on the degree of its subsequent application and implementation by individual states and, last but not least, on how much it is in accord with the existing and the future conditions under which the international community will develop. An exceptionally important factor in determining the legal significance of a decleration is the extent to which it was supported by individual states during the drafting and adoption proceedings. A declaration which had been drawn up after careful preparation and a thorough study of practices prevailing in individual states and of different authorities on the respective subjectmatter, and which is the outcome of a consensus among the socialist, the Western and the non-aligned states, and, in particular, among the leading powers of the opposing political systems, Constitutes an act of codification of universal nature. Such declaration may become an important form of the progressive development and codification of the universal principles of international law and may positively influence both the domestic and foreign policies of individual states, as well as the activities of international organizations. The Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, adopted on October 24,1970, meets all these conditions to a still greater extent than the other declaration passed earlier by the United Nations General Assembly, and offers all the prerequisites for becoming a truly effective instrument of the international community and every individual state for attaining the objectives of the Charter of the United Nations, the maintenance and strengthening of international peace and security in particular, as well as for promoting mutually advantageous and equal international co-operation in the economic, scientific, technological, social, humanitarian and cultural fields. In contrast to the other declarations, which progressively developed or codified only a single, narrow aspect of the activities of states, the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States progressively develops and codifies an entire spectrum of the most important universal principles of contemporary international law. These principles are of vital importance not only to individual states but also to the whole international community, if in the future it is to develop under conditions of peaceful co-existence. This Declaration represents a code of the most fundamental rules of behaviour of states, whose innermost purpose is to ensure peaceful co-existence between states of different social systems and international co-operation on a world-wide scale. The chairman of the special committee for the codification of these principles did not exaggerate when he said in the debate in the Legal Committee of the XXVth General Assembly on September 23, 1970, when presenting his committee’s report, that the importance of the Declaration equalled the importance of the Charter of the United Nations. The legal value of the Declaration was raised by the fact that its draft had been made on the basis of a consensus, that it was eight years in making, and that in the course of this period the representatives of all the three basic groups of states and Great Powers had intensively negotiated and sought formulations acceptable to all. Its exceptional importance was also underlined by the fact that the document was solemnly adopted by all the Member States at the jubilee session of the General Assembly on the day of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the entry of the U. N. Charter into effect. The codification of the legal principles of friendly relations and co-operation among states created a good psychological atmosphere in which all states - socialist, non-aligned and Western - shared in redrafting the most important parts of the map of general international law so that it should correspond to the deep political, economic and social changes that have occurred in the world after the second world war, as well as to the growing demands placed on international Jaw as a result of the continuing, revolutionary development and tremendous scientific progress throughout the world. The active participation of all the major groups of states and Great Powers in the codification and the comprehensive proclamation of the seven principles in a progressive and developed form contributed to the consensual foundation of international law. The creative contribution of all states to their formulation and embodiment in the Declaration placed the seven principles on a broad and solid base. The Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States is not, of course, the last act of codification, adopted by the international community in this field. But it does represent a key point and a milestone in the progressive development and codification of these principles, which will continue through the entire historical epoch of co-existence between states with differing social systems and different levels of economic development. States will further develop, specify in more concrete terms and codify especially at the United Nations but also in regional scope the seven principles comprehensively and individually through resolutions, conventions, treaties or even bilateral agreements. Moreover, they will also implement the content of the individual principles in their policy which they will eventually raise to the status of customary law. Just as the process of peacel co-existence is advancing on the world-wide scale in the form of a struggle between progressive and conservative social forces, so the continued progressive development and codification of the legal principles governing peaceful co-existence will not avoid a struggle and a clash of opinion between the carriers of progressive ideas, represented by the socialist states, the Soviet Union in particular, and supported by the non-aligned powers, and the advocates of outdated and harmful views, represented by the Western powers. But the principal endeavour should aim at making the imperialist and colonial powers consistently observe these principles in their relations with other states. In the conclusion of its Declaration of Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States the General Assembly appealed to all states to be guided by these principles in their international conduct and to develop their mutual relations on the basis of the observance of these principles. If all states do heed this appeal, the Declaration will have found its application and will thereby meet its main purpose: it will encourage the strengthening of international legality and universal application of the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, and thus will help safeguard peaceful co-existence, maintain international peace, promote co-operation among states and spur a lasting progress of all mankind.