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The United Nations (UN) Security Council consistently delegates its Chapter VII powers to UN Member States. Interestingly, although the first few instances of Korea and Southern Rhodesia were seen at the time as being exceptional sui generis cases, they only now, however, appear as part of a continuum in this practice. The Council has delegated its Chapter VII powers to Member States for the attainment of the following five objectives: to counter a use of force by a State or entities within a State; to carry out a naval interdiction; to achieve humanitarian objectives; to enforce a Council declared no-fly zone; and to ensure implementation by parties of an agreement which the Council has deemed is necessary for the maintenance or restoration of peace. This chapter examines whether the UN Security Council has complied with the requirements that flow from the legal framework governing delegation of its Chapter VII powers.

The remaining entity to which the United Nations (UN) Council has delegated its Chapter VII powers is regional arrangements or agencies. This chapter examines this particular delegation, first by looking at the competence of the Council to delegate Chapter VII powers to regional arrangements. There are two issues which arise in such cases. The first is the legality of a delegation to a regional arrangement from the perspective of the UN; the second is the legal implications of such a delegation from the perspective of the regional arrangement. The legality of the practice of the Council in delegating Chapter VII powers to regional arrangements, in particular to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is discussed, together with the legality of the exercise of these powers by the regional arrangement concerned. The policy considerations relating to delegation of Chapter VII powers to regional arrangements are also explored.

Under the scheme of the United Nations (UN) Charter, any military enforcement measures designed to maintain or restore international peace would depend on forces supplied by UN Member States. Article 43 of the Charter contained provision for UN Members to contribute forces to the UN Security Council by way of formal agreement. The Council has delegated to Member States the competence to carry out military enforcement action under their own command and control. There is no express provision in the Charter for such a process. This chapter clarifies the contours of the legal framework which governs this process by examining the competence of the UN Security Council to delegate Chapter VII powers to UN Member States, the limitations on this competence, and who has responsibility for the acts of a force carrying out military enforcement action.

The six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) possess the authority to establish and utilise subsidiary organs in the attainment of their Charter ohjectives. The establishment and termination of UN subsidiary organs is governed by a legal framework consisting of the relevant provisions of the UN Charter and those parts of the general law of international institutions that relate to this activity, while the lawfulness of the acts of subsidiary organs will depend on the subsidiary complying with the legal mandate conferred on it by the principal. The former deals with the competence of principal organs to establish and terminate subsidiary organs while the latter is concerned with the subsidiary remaining within the bounds of its delegated mandate. This chapter looks at those elements of the general legal framework that govern the processes of establishment and termination of UN subsidiary organs.

As the final decade of the twentieth century began, the United Nations contemplated a new role in world politics. The idea of a ‘new world order’, a term famously used by U.S. President George W. Bush, became pervasive. The end of bipolarity acted as a catalyst for a changed sense of the importance of humanitarianism in world politics. In particular there seemed to be a chance to revive — or perhaps, more correctly, belatedly inaugurate — the UN's founding ambition of collective security based on military enforcement. The Persian Gulf War, coming in the immediate wake of the end of the Cold War, did not deliver a new world order of genuine UN collective security and humanitarian intervention through military enforcement. In 1992, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali produced a major report on the state of UN peacekeeping and military intervention: An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping. This was followed by a Supplement to An Agenda for Peace, issued in 1995.

With the creation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, the UN Security Council was envisaged to play a central role in the maintenance or restoration of international peace and security. To this end, UN Member States agreed in Article 24 of the Charter to confer on the Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. The specific powers which the Charter gives the Council to achieve this objective are contained in Chapter VII. However, the Security Council has had to delegate its Chapter VII powers to entities that have an enforcement capacity which the Council at present lacks: in particular, it lacks a military force which it can use directly to carry out military enforcement action. This chapter constructs the legal framework governing the process of delegation of Chapter VII powers by the UN Security Council.

This book provides a legal analysis of the institutional mechanisms and processes which the United Nations (UN) employs force to maintain or restore international peace. The focus is both on the law pertaining to the use of force by the UN and on the development of the emerging institutional processes which the UN uses to maintain international peace. The UN Charter constitutes a collective security system which gives the UN Security Council the primary role to maintain and restore peace and, under Chapter VII, broad powers to achieve these objectives. To deal with an increasing demand for military enforcement action, coupled with its limited military and financial resources, the Security Council delegates its Chapter VII powers to some states (for example the coalition against Iraq) and invokes the regional possibility (a delegation of power to regional arrangements).

The aim of any collective security system is to preserve, and ensure the observance of, certain community defined values. Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council is mandated to determine what these community values are — what constitutes a threat to, or breach of, international peace and what is the appropriate measure to maintain or restore peace. The danger with the delegation of Chapter VII powers by the Security Council is that the interests of States may not converge with the most effective way to achieve the community defined values at best and at worst may even conflict with the attainment of such an objective. This is where application of the legal framework governing the process of delegation of Chapter VII powers is of primary importance. The role of law here is to prescribe the limits which regulate the delegation and exercise of these powers to ensure that the community-defined goal is achieved.