About UNCharter.org
The UN charter is one of the most important documents of the modern world. In the past few years it has come under increased scrutiny, as it is drawn into some of the key debates of our time. Despite that, the UN website does not provide an adequate version of the charter, lacking simple search functionality or valid, accessible HTML.
The site was initially developed between October 19th-20th 2004, with the comparative texts function added on November 2nd 2004.
This site now contains the full (english) text of the UN Charter, searchable and cross-referenced. I'm working on offering the site in all the official languages, providing other formats (perhaps docbook?) and some REST-based web services hooks.
I'm also considering the next stage of development. Should this site grow to provide a forum for civil society discussion of the United Nations? Inspired by this blog entry I'm soliciting comments on the next stage. Please post your comments here.
UNCharter.org was conceived, designed and developed by James Stewart, a freelance web developer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. The site is driven by PHP/MySQL using the Smarty Templating Engine. Some credit is also due to Colin Leverett, for being there when the inspiration struck and providing critiques thereafter.