COLLECTIVE SECURITY PROVISIONS IN UN CHARTER

Elaborating on a newly compiled dataset of all Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter VII in the thirty years from 1990 to 2019, this Article is the first attempt to survey aggregated Council practice with a view to analyzing the ways in which the Council's non-forcible measures have been transformed as a consequence of the growth in importance of non-state actors in international relations. The data demonstrate that the Council has increasingly adopted resolutions that apply and draw in individuals and other non-governmental actors more than what previous studies merely suggest. Related is the second, and more significant, finding of the Article: in light of the aggregate practice analyzed, the Article argues that, by expanding the preventative use of its powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the SC has inserted itself into a new interface between international lawmaking and peacebuilding. It has operated in the context of both conflict prevention and actions on generalized threats, adopting non-forcible measures that not only address the immediate objective of crisis management, but also increasingly engage in mapping out future regulation and structure of governance. Though the further expansion of these developments remains uncertain, the Article also contends that their normative implications are already significant. To mention the most salient: the establishment of direct international duties on armed groups and individuals by the Council; its growing influence on the external articulations of statehood and the internal dynamics of transitions towards peace; the mediated imposition on associations and corporations established under private law of prophylactic obligations; the creation, via its quasi-legislative resolutions, of a completely regulated international sphere where terrorists and proliferators are starved of means and chances to perpetrate attacks.

"The Charter … will be expanded and improved as time goes on. No one claims that it is now a final or a perfect instrument. It has not been poured into a fixed mold. Changing world conditions will require readjustments-but they will be readjustments of peace and not of war." (President Harry S. Truman) Is there a connection between the German right-wing tradition (Nazi ideology) and politics of prevarication regarding the purposes and principles of the UN Charter?

Les opérations militaires menées par la France contre Daech bousculent les normes du jus contra bellum. Le consentement donné par l’Irak assure certes la légalité des bombardements des positions djihadistes sur le territoire de cet Etat. Mais seule une conception de la légitime défense en décalage avec la lex lata permet de fonder juridiquement les frappes françaises en Syrie. La résolution 2249 adoptée par le Conseil de sécurité après les attentats du 13 novembre 2015 constitue un petit monstre normatif inapte à leur fournir une base juridique autonome ; elle entérine en revanche un rabaissement des fonctions du Conseil de sécurité dans l’utilisation de la force contre le terrorisme.

ABSTRACT

The military operations conducted by France against ISIS blur the rules of jus contra bellum. The legality of French strikes on the territory of Iraq is covered by the consent of that State. But only an extended interpretation of self-defence can justify the bombing in Syria. Security Council resolution 2249 adopted after the events of 13 November 2015 is a normative little monster incapable of providing an autonomous legal basis for the strikes. Instead, it acknowledges the downgrading of the Security Council’s role in the use of force to fight terrorism.

This chapter identifies and addresses the ‘water security paradox’ in the context of the current water security discourse and demonstrates the important role of international law in de-securitising this debate.  The work considers state practice, relevant treaties and case studies to support their position.

What are the dividing lines and similarities between the various types of operations conducted under the UN collective security system? What are the main characteristics and functions of each type? How have Peace Operations developed in recent UN practice and what connotations does this have for the traditional bedrock principles governing UN Peacekeeping?

In the 2004 Socialist Register, which appeared less than a year after the Second Gulf War commenced, Amy Bartholomew and Jennifer Breakspear published an essay on the prevalence of human rights rhetoric in what they and many others were then inclined to characterize as the "new imperialism". Bartholomew and Breakspear put pen to paper in the wake of a flurry of troubling developments in the United States: the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001; the attacks of September 11, 2001; the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; the administration’s "unsigning" of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in May 2002; the invasion and occupation of Iraq; the normalization and programmatic consolidation of a variety of neoconservative proposals to realize a "new American century"; and the concomitant elaboration of the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive or anticipatory self-defence, according to which powerful self-styled "liberal democracies", chief among them the United States, are entitled to intervene in other states for the purpose of neutralizing imminent or prospective threats. Taking stock of these developments, Bartholomew and Breakspear trained their lens on Michael Ignatieff, whose writings provided a foil for their argument on behalf of a "critical cosmopolitanism" that would avoid utopian idealism while encouraging trenchant critique of state power. In their view, socialist strategy necessitated commitment to international legality and international morality alike. And this, in turn, called for a cosmopolitanism that would take human rights seriously enough to countenance the temporary suspension of post-1945 norms of non-intervention and sovereign equality under exceptional circumstances. Sovereignty was to be respected and safeguarded, but not at the expense of losing sight of the importance of protecting human rights or fetishizing the "defined territory" that international lawyers continue to regard as constitutive of statehood. This essay revisits the questions with which Bartholomew and Breakspear were concerned, but it adopts a different posture and offers a different set of responses. It does so with an eye to the current conjuncture, highlighting continuities between the Trump administration and its predecessors in regard to questions of humanitarian intervention. I argue that the modalities of such intervention have evolved since 2004, with the most prominent contemporary form being the "responsibility to protect", an "emerging doctrine" of sorts whose conceptual imprecision renders it all the more useful politically. I argue further that recent actions in Syria and elsewhere have demonstrated that the animating logic of humanitarian intervention--that military action may be ‘legitimate’, indeed necessary, even when in violation of relevant law--remains operational to a very significant degree. The willingness of Trump and others to mobilize the moralistic rhetoric of "humanity" in support of bombing campaigns works hand in glove with their disdain for many forms of international law (including, importantly and not without irony, human rights). Indeed, such interventionism builds upon efforts to de-formalize the international law of the use of force that have been underway since the conclusion of the Cold War, particularly since NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In the context of questions of intervention, Trump’s is not a world "turned upside down" so much as a particularly crass expression of a world that many have sought to craft for the better part of three decades by recourse to more "flexible" forms of (military and non-military) intervention.

On 4 April 2017, the Syrian regime used the chemical weapon against the civilian population in Syria. In response, the USA conducted a strike against the Syrian military base. The USA did not provide any legal justification of that action but given President Donald Trump’s statement issued after the attack, one may assume that the USA considered not only the use of chemical weapons against civilian population, but also the general threat to the USA and its allies, all along with the breach of the UN SC resolutions and Chemical Weapons Convention as the sufficient reasons for the attack. The paper analysis these reasons from the standpoint of public international law and discusses them in the context of the prohibition of the use of force. It seeks to examine the problem whether this intervention could potentially change the contemporary paradigm of the use of force. The first part of the paper explores the reasons behind the strike as provided by the USA administration and their legality, the second one analysis the reaction of the international community, while the final one attempts to fit this intervention in the framework of the existing States’ practice with regard to the use of force

The PDF of the Keynote Presentation that accompanied my talk given to the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, February 22, 2016. I offer a brief history of mass atrocity response and prevention from the Cold War to the present crisis in Syria. I explore the origins and current normative and operational status of the Responsibility to Protect principle. The talk can be viewed above in the video section.

This paper initially examines philosophical approaches to the international use of force in an historical context before examining the development of the doctrine of collective security as the unifying value of international relations at the end of the First World War and subsequently.  States’ right of self-defence is seen as an exception to this doctrine.  Drawing on analytical legal theory and theories of legal reasoning, it explores the nature of an exception to a rule.  This classification can be difficult to identify as legal propositions can compete rather than exist in a hierarchical rule-exception relationship. The parameters of self-defence as an exception to the doctrine of collective security and the prohibition on the use of force is explored in this light, casting doubt on the validity of contemporary attempts to expand self-defence to justify extra-territorial attacks on non-State actors within States deemed unwilling or unable to curb their hostile activity.

Ao contrário de 2001, a ONU foi conduzida por ações unilaterais de seus membros a aceitar o uso da força na Síria e no Iraque. Ao invés de propor normas que viabilizem uma arquitetura global de combate ao terrorismo, a ONU aquiesce diante dos estados. A autorização de 2015 tem objetivos mais limitados que os de 2001 – é circunscrita espacialmente, singulariza o ISIS como ameaça à paz e segurança internacionais e legitima os últimos meses de ações militares na região. Nesses termos, lembra a autorização dada em 1990 para libertar o Kuwait ocupado pelo Iraque de Saddam Hussein.