The Reality of the Substantive Constraints Imposed on the Powers of the United Nations Security Council

Abstract

The Security Council enjoys particular importance as a result of its responsibility for achieving the primary objective for which the Organization was established, namely the maintenance of international peace and security. The General Assembly also enjoys certain competences in this field. However, assigning this principal responsibility to the Security Council is mainly due to the desire to achieve a degree of effectiveness and speed in resolving problems that threaten peace, since it is a body of limited membership, which makes it more suitable and in a better position to carry out this task.
To this end, the Charter of the United Nations recognized its right to issue binding decisions and its authority to intervene in international disputes regardless of the consent or objection of the disputing states. Yet, for a long period, the Council remained unable to effectively carry out its core tasks, which were very limited, whether in the field of the peaceful settlement of disputes under Chapter VI of the Charter, or in the field of taking the necessary measures in the event of a threat or act of aggression under Chapter VII, whether those disputes concerned situations arising from conflicts of interest between colonial states and newly independent states, or issues affecting the vital interests of the permanent members. There was near consensus that the reason for this incapacity lay in the veto power.