Maintenance and Restoration of International Peace and Security by Means of Force

Abstract

The celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Organisation eclipsed another very important anniversary: almost exactly 25 years ago, on 29 November 1990, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution S/RES 678 authorising Member States to “use all necessary means […] to restore international peace and security” in Kuwait. For the UNSC this was a landmark moment. It announced the beginning of a new era, in which the UN could finally use means of force in order to promote collective security. Since 1990, the UNSC has indeed given, by means of Chapter VII resolutions, dozens of such authorisations to use force (“all necessary means”) in a great variety of cases, countries and situations. The editors of this book asked us to examine this question under both the prism of the “past” and the prism of “future” evolutions in this field. The first part of our analysis proceeds to an assessment of these 25 years of UNSC use of force mandates in order to identify what the major legal issues and problems during the practice of use of force mandates were. We then proceed, in the second part of our analysis, to an examination of different paths and proposals that could permit to improve the system of UNSC use of force mandates and make it more functional and legitimate.

Keywords: International Law, Use of Force, United Nations Security Council, International Organisations, International Security, United Nations