The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (139 page)

¹This central theme in respect of the Council is similar to that in respect to the UN more generally as evidenced by many of the contributors to Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (eds.),
The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Weiss and Daws accept (p. 4) that ‘state sovereignty remains the core of international relations’ and they seek to contribute to ‘greater analytical precision and historical reflection about the balance between change and continuity within the United Nations’.

²UN Charter, Art. 7.

³UN Charter, Art. 23. Text in italics consists of amendments that came into force on 31 Aug. 1965. Before that date the Security Council consisted of eleven members, of whom six were elected by the General Assembly. The second sentence of Art. 23(2) originally read: ‘In the first election of nonpermanent members, however, three shall be chosen for a term of one year.’

⁴As the International Court of Justice stated in its discussion of the Security Council’s powers in its Advisory Opinion of 20 July 1962 on
Certain Expenses of the United Nations
: ‘The responsibility conferred is “primary”, not exclusive.’
ICJ Reports 1962
, 163. This case, which confirmed that the Security Council is within its powers in initiating peacekeeping operations and requiring member states to pay for them, is mentioned further in notes 8 and 33 below.

⁵The word ‘disarmament’ is mentioned only in Art. 11(1), which is in
Chapter IV
, on the General Assembly; and in Art. 47(1), which is in
Chapter VII
, on the Security Council.

⁶UN Charter, Art. 27. Text in italics consists of an amendment that came into force on 31 Aug. 1965. Before that date the requirement was for an affirmative vote of seven members (out of a total Council membership of eleven).

⁷In June 1946 the Security Council adopted Provisional Rules of Procedure. Although there have been only minor subsequent changes, the last of which was on 21 Dec. 1982, the rules remain provisional. On their negotiation and content, and also the evolving role of custom, see Sydney D. Bailey and Sam Daws,
The Procedure of the UN Security Council
, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 9–18, and 441–54 for the rules themselves. The rules can also be found at
www.un.org/Docs/sc/scrules.htm
. In addition, a valuable guide to procedure and practice is
The Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council
, issued at regular intervals by the Secretary-General at the request of the General Assembly, all volumes of which are available at
www.un.org/Depts/dpa/repertoire

⁸The Security Council’s powers to establish peacekeeping operations were the key point of contention that led to the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion of 20 July 1962 in the
Certain Expenses of the United Nations
case.
ICJ Reports 1962
, 163, & 175–7.

⁹The term ‘enemy state’ referred to the Axis powers which had fought in the Second World War. Naturally the provisions of the Charter directed against them (i.e. those in Articles 53, 77, & 107) came to be seen as out of date. The General Assembly’s 2005 World Summit Outcome document contained a commitment to delete the references to ‘enemy states’ in the UN Charter. See ‘2005 World Summit Outcome’ of 16 Sep. 2005, UN doc. A/Res/60/1 of 24 Oct. 2005, para. 177. The ‘enemy state’ provisions of the Charter had not been amended by the end of 2007.

¹⁰Christine Gray,
International Law and the Use of Force
, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 282–327.

¹¹As established in 1920, the League Council had four permanent members (France, Italy, Japan, and UK) plus four non-permanent ones, each elected for a three-year period. In the subsequent two decades the numbers of both the permanent and the non-permanent members changed. The number of non-permanent members was progressively increased. In the last such increase, by revision of 2 Oct. 1936, the Council raised the non-permanent membership from ten to eleven.

¹²Much emphasis has been placed on collective security in works published in different periods of the UN’s history. See e.g. Fernand van Langenhove,
La Crise du système de sécurité collective des Nations Unies 1946–57
(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1958); Jean-Pierre Cot and Alain Pellet (eds.),
La Charte des Nations Unies: Commentaire Article par Article
(Paris: Economica, 1985), 7 & 75; and Bruno Simma (ed.),
The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary
, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 42, 760, & 770.

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