Transcription
Hello everyone. Welcome to our fourth lecture of this course. Today, we're going to talk about the collective security system under the UN Security Council.
First, let's discuss what is actually collective security. So, here we have various definitions across different handbooks, but in a broad sense, it covers the authorization of the use of force by a competent body, which could be the UN Security Council or regional organizations. In that regard, it's very much to juxtapose their unilateral use of force by states when states themselves decide whether they feel they have a right to resort to force, yes or no. Whereas here, it is then an international organization saying yes or no, there is a right to resort to force.
Now, there is also a difference between collective security on one hand and collective self-defense. So, in the context of collective security, the actions can be far broader in what it covers. It's a lot more extensive. The parameters are also differently different in that regard. For instance, the circumstances that trigger Chapter Seven determinations do not need to amount to an armed attack. The threshold is much lower, as we're not focusing on Article 51, but we're focusing as an initial threshold for Article 24 of the UN Charter. In collective security, it's also the UN Security Council who determines who participates, while in while in self-defense, it is the victim state. So, who has there the ability to determine who as which other states are allowed to participate, are allowed to assist, is very different. You, the Security Council, is the one who is determining in any collective security actions, while on the Council of collective of self-defense, it's the victim state who decides this.
Now, the measures of self-defense, what we know already, they need to be proportionate and necessary. Whereas we see actually in the context of collective security, the limits are very different, as it's directly linked to the goal of maintaining international peace and security and restoring international peace and security. The idea behind it is then also that it can be far more encompassing the type of force that is allowed to be used in the context of collective security than that that is allowed in the context of collective self-defense. Moreover, the timing is also very different. In the concept of self-defense, there needs to be a link to the immediacy, the urgency to repel further armed attacks. While in the context of collective security, such timing is not available. Actually, we're on the other end of it. We know know actually that it's based on the moment that the UN Security Council comes to an agreement as to what to do. We have the example, for a tragic example, of the Rwanda genocide, where it was actually while the UN Security Council was still debating on what would be the the next attacks that we know that the atrocious genocide took place. Here, collective self-defense is something that states cannot just decide to do themselves. So, they need to be there needs to be a victim state who says, "Hey, I have been a victim of s of an armed attack. Moreover, I'm asking you to help me." Thus, there needs to be an explicit request for help and assistance in this regard.
The guiding framework for collective security, as well as so to a large extent, there the right to self-defense is of course the Charter, but also other rules of international law are relevant, such as international human rights law, international humanitarian law. We see this in particularly in what we're going to look at more specifics in week six when we look at the peacekeeping troops and the extent to which their mandate is actually in compliance with international law and international human rights law. But think also the targeted sanctions regimes that we're going to talk about today. What is that correlation there with human rights law there as well? For this course, we're focusing purely and on the use of *jus ad bellum*, so the course, the the laws that apply for the ability to resort to force. So, what parameters exist there? We won't be able to deal extensively with the interlinkages with international humanitarian law, *jus in bello*, or international human rights law.
So, first step is, so what is the scope of an authority for collective security? So, actually, collective security is not defined in the UN Charter. It is meant, it is widely accepted when you look at Article 11 of the UN Charter that collective measures actually refers to collective security. So, when we check in Article 11 and the purposes of the United Nations, and we see that its purposes are to maintain international peace and security and to that end, take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means and in conformity with principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situation which might lead to a breach of peace. So, the intention is there very much that the UN should apply collective measures for the prevention as well as the removal of threats of aggressions, and it's only to resort to collective security or to the use of force after other peaceful means have failed to prevent such threats or acts of aggressions. Thus, peaceful dispute settlement is its point of departure.
Now, when we do a deep dive, we first need to look at, so what was this body again? The UN Security Council. I'm going to assure that most of you know already what it's about and what and what are its main competences, but let's take a short look again as a sort of like a short refresher. So, we start with Article 23, where we see that the Security Council shall consist of 15 members of the United Nations. That China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the USA are to be the permanent members of the Security Council. The other members are the are um distributed as followed: so the African group of states has three seats, the Asia-Pacific group has two, the Eastern European group has one, the Latin American and Caribbean group has two, and the Western European and other groups have two. And each of these groups have their own electoral norms, and an Arab seat alternates between the African and Asian blocks by informal agreement. For instance, Turkey and Israel, who have never served on the Security Council, they're actually part of the group Western European and others group.
Now, I'm more than sure that most of you have heard about our frustration that we have with the UN Security Council as it is. And it's built on several pillars. One is only 15 members, really representative of the UN Security Council of the United Nations, in light that we have over 192 states. Should it is it really of these days that we have five permanent members, which means that they have a veto right, meaning that if they disagree or if they do not want a certain resolution to be adopted by the UN Security Council, even though all the other 14 agree, they can stop that resolution from being adopted. So, we have a discussion on the veto power, where this discussion on how big it should be or it shouldn't be. There's huge discussion on what should the role be at all of the UN Security Council in this day and time. You know, what role is there for multilateral organizations? Do we need to move back to the states? Do we actually need to accord them with more powers? Is their role feudal or highly political? All these different opinions very valid and very interesting here. So, for this course, we take the UN Security imperfect UN Security Council as it is for granted. So, we take it on *prima facie* value, and what we aim to understand is, so all that chatter and discussion and critique, how is it influencing what it can do? So, how does it influence its powers, its mandate? What is the influence of geopolitics when we talk about issues on the use of force or threats to international peace and security, and particularly in whether the UN Security Council is able to act or not act?
The UN Security Council has a wider range of tasks. So, it fosters negotiations, it can impose sanctions, it can authorize the use of force, including peacekeeping missions. And it can do all that because of Article 24, because see, this is an article part of the UN Charter, meaning that all the member states to the UN agreed with giving this power to the to the Security Council, and that it has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and that they agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility, the Security Council shall act on their behalf, that it shall act in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN, and that the specific powers are laid down in Chapters Six, Seven, Eight, and Twelve. And this is where we'll look at further. States are required to follow and carry out decisions adopted under Chapter Seven, based on Article 25 of the UN Charter, meaning that states have agreed that we will carry out these decisions. We'll take a later look at it. What are the implications of this?
So, again, what was the framework again that we're looking at? So, of course, we have Article 11, which deals there with the principles and purposes of the UN Charter. We have Article 24, which formulates the prohibition of unilateral use of force. And then we go in further detail into Chapters Five, Six, Seven, and Eight, dealing with the pacific roles there for the UN Security Council. Now, as the UN Security Council aims to peacefully resolve international disputes, involving a Chapter Six of the UN Charter, which authorizes the Security Council to call on parties to seek solutions via negotiation, arbitration, or other peaceful means. That's the part of the peaceful settlement of international disputes. We can see in various slowly slinger on situations which have been deemed to be a threat to international peace and security, for instance, or that is getting close to that, that we see first UN Security Council actually calling for negotiation, resort to these dispute settlement systems if you are in disagreement, before indeed we move on to the next step. If the peaceful settlement of international dispute, for whatever reason, is not possible, that's when we resort to Chapter Seven, which empowers the Security Council to take more assertive actions. Think of imposing of sanctions or authorizing the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.
So, as I said, the decisions of the UN Security Council under Chapter Seven are actually binding for the member states to the UN, to the United Nations, and that's based both on Article 25 of the UN Charter, and we also see in Article 103 of the Charter that the obligations stemming from the UN Charter actually prevail over other treaty obligations that are there. It gives a form of primacy there to the rules of the UN Charter, and that's really the very legal background to this whole discussion. Whenever we talk about what the Security Council is allowed to do or not, we need to go back to the law. What does the law say? Is there ambiguity there? As we know, often there is.
Okay, so the big main point of departure is Article 39. It's the main threshold article. So, through the determination under Article 39 of the UN Charter, the Security Council fulfills actually a legal requirement, and that in determining there this crisis that I'm here identifying and determining to be a threat to international peace and security, is an international one. And so, we're assuring you that we're not meddling in the internal affairs of the United Nations member states. Why does it do that? It does so so that it's clear that there's no um conflict with the prohibition of intervention. As we know, the territorial integrity of each state is a very important cornerstone of the United Nations, meaning that whatever happens within that state's borders, we do not intervene. Other states have no right to intervene by force or by other methods. But here, the idea is that even if something happens just within that state, if the UN Security Council determines that that what is happening there constitutes an international a threat to international peace and security, it means that it levels it up as into becomes part of the mandate and it falls within the ambit of what the UN Security Council can do. So, its precise powers and the type of actions it will take is very context-dependent.
Now, the first question is, of course, what is a threat to international peace and security? So, being very simple, it is whenever the UN Security Council says it's one. And yes, we can write lengthy blocks and scholarly work about that, whether that's right or not, but that's very much how it has so far been interpreted. So, you will see scholarly work also going on. It goes beyond its mandate, it should actually be doing less. And others at saying, no, it actually needs to be doing more. For instance, a huge discussion is right now, should climate change actually be also be considered to be a threat to international peace and security? So, what have we seen that the type of actions or type of situations that the UN Security Council has determined to be a threat? So, for instance, the massive violations of a people's rights or the repression of a people by the governments. I think in Kosovo, in Iraq, the UN Security Council did this. But similarly, for instance, the rumored attempt in Iraq to assassinate the then US President George Bush, under whose government Iraq was expelled from Kuwait in 1990, was similarly deemed to be a threat to international peace and security, criticized as well. So, we see the the approach of the UN Security Council change in the years. In the beginning, peace was a very classic concept, as in peace means no war. That's that's all we're looking at. But by now, it's much broader than that. It is also an international order system that's based on justice. So, merely lacking war doesn't mean that there's peace established, and also that it might actually be conflicting there with justice. It might be threatening there for the peace. So, here, there's on purpose no definition of what constitutes peace or the threat to peace in the UN Charter, precisely to leave it open to the context, to as an evolving concept based on the circumstances, and to reinterpret throughout on what should be its meaning. So, for instance, the UN Security Council set themselves in 1992, and they said, "Look, a lack of an interstate conflict alone is not peace, but economic, social, humanitarian, environmental instability is a threat to peace and security." And that declaration was the origin of the changing concept of peace and security Council. So, by now, we know that, for instance, threats from poverty, disease, environmental breakdown are similarly considered to be threats to international peace and security. Threats from conflicts between states, threats from violence and massive human rights violations within states, threats from terrorism, organized crime, proliferation of weapons, and others there as well. We see there's massive lobbying and involvement of other stakeholders in trying to get the UN Security Council to declare something a threat to international peace and security. The most recent one is, for instance, that various important stakeholders have been trying to get the UN Security Council to come to a conclusion saying that threats posed by ransomware attacks against hospitals and other healthcare facilities and services should be deemed to be a threat to international peace and security. And here, when discussing that issue, you see precisely what is the problem. So, most member states on this issue, for instance, acknowledge, yes, the UN Security Council has a role in addressing cybersecurity. But there's a lot of discussion, so what should that role be? Because that all depends on what do you see the role of the world, what do you see the world role of a United Nations in setting the norms? For instance, some members say, yes, the Security Council should become a platform for raising awareness, discussing emerging trends, sharing lessons. Other say, no, the UN Security Council needs to be more active in this regard. It needs to get into investigations on Article 34 of the UN Charter into, for instance, looking at specific cyber attacks. It needs to get into dispute resolution in this regard. Russia, for instance, was an example here that had a different point of view here, as the Western Europeans and others group there. And Russia said, no, the Security Council is not the appropriate forum for discussing cybersecurity. It should actually be dealt with in more inclusive forums, such as a different, for instance, the Organization of Economic Cooperation, or in another human rights setting, or a different setting. So, here you see the discussion, what becomes part of what can be declared a threat to international peace and security is very much also a discussion, should the UN Security Council get at all? What should its role be? How should it look like? It's all there on the best. And there you can see huge variety amongst the states on how they perceive the role of the organization. And then, of course, if you do not feel reflected by the UN in Security Council decisions, if you feel its decisions are biased, if you feel like, look, the P5 is very much against how what we stand for, then you don't want to give more power to the Security Council because you're very much afraid it's going to be used against you, right? So, all these geopolitics very much play a role here in also the interpretation and the push for further normative developments.
So, these are a website that I also included in Moodle, where you can actually get a really great overview of what are the decisions that the Security Council took depending on a specific article, and you can see it per year or group of years, and gives a summary also there. So, this particular one is a thematic issues that UN Security Council determines something as a threat to international peace and security. Others, for instance, these threats have been based more on region or a country-specific. So, we see, for instance, here, dealing with terrorism-related issues. We can see here also issues related with the weapons of mass destruction, for instance, related.
Now, note, the determination in itself doesn't mean that a binding decision has been taken as to what needs to be done and that states need to follow up. That comes in the next article. This is the first thing where actually the UN Security Council says, "This is part of my mandate. I'm allowed to talk about this. This becomes an agenda point. I might allocate people for it. We might have a specific committee on it to look at this further." It says it falls within the scope of what I do. After Article 39, you come then to the issues then on Article 40, what are the provisional measures? So, provisional measures is something that the UN Security Council can do in order to prevent an aggravation of a situation, and it may then make recommendations or decide upon the measures provided for in Article 39 and call the parties concerned to comply with these. So, it could be, for instance, that it has conflicting states to not do anything that could worsen the situation. It can also ask very specific measures in that regard, as well, enter into negotiations with a view of resolving the disputes, etc. The idea is that provisional measures do not prejudge the rights, claims, or positions of the parties involved. So, it applies equally there to both. It's not choosing sides in that regard. However, of course, depending on the type of threat that it identified, and if it identifies a particular state as the aggressor, of course, in that it influences as it says, "You're here on the wrong side of things."
So, when provisional measures are issued, the Security Council must monitor it. It actually needs to take note. Are you failing? Are you complying with them? Yes or not? Think also here, the withdrawing of armed forces. Have the forces actually moved? Is there actually a ceasefire? Are you actually allowing for humanitarian assistance? Yes or no? So, for instance, in 1990, the Council cited Article 40 to actually demand from Iraq its withdrawal after Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 2006, for instance, the Council explicitly invoked Article 40 to demand that Iran suspend its nuclear program. Now, the reality is that in the majority of the cases, the UN Security Council would actually adopt resolutions covering both Article 39 and Article 40, as the UN Security Council doesn't meet every day. When there is a crisis, the idea is it's best to act immediately to make the determination and impose immediately the provisional measures on the affected state.
Now, yes, there is on purpose a difference between recommendations and deciding. So, recommendations are not binding. Deciding are decisions that are binding, as we said before. It links to Article 25 of the UN Charter, and there's an obligation then for member states to carry this out. Going here to the next article, Article 41. So, in Article 41, the UN Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed forces are there to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the members of the United Nations to apply such measures. It could be complete or partial interruption of economic relations and others there as well. If the UN Security Council had already adopted an issue provisional measures, the UN Security Council is only allowed to go to Article 41 when it determines that these were not lived up to. In other words, it needs to give the state the time to comply with the provisional measures. Article 41, in a majority of the cases, involves sanctions, targeted sanctions, economic state-side sanctions, etc. Once there is a sanctions in place, once sanctions are issued, a sanctions mechanism is set up. Who will monitor how other states are implementing with their decisions?
Now, the effectiveness of collective security is not just determined by how many actions or sanctions it is able to impose, but also how much is the Security Council actually able to prevent its efforts from being undermined by other states. For instance, if there are sanctions in place, but states find a backdoor way and still being dealing or being in negotiations with a particular state of economic transactions. So, the effectiveness and the compliance of sanctions is a huge aspect of it. So, now, going again back to this document that I was referring to before, this is, for instance, an overview where you actually see the type of measures that you can actually have per Article 41. And often, and what you see here is that it's a huge variety of measures, but a lot of them involve, for instance, asset freezing, arms embargoes, travel restrictions. It can also be the prohibition of having certain goods or producing certain materials, engaging negotiation for to sell, for instance, of certain materials or to buying thereof. So, in 2023, there was actually no sanctions imposed measures imposed subject to Article 40 of the UN Charter. Sorry, let's rephrase. So, in in 2023, we actually didn't have any explicit provisional measures. What we do have in place today is still is a very extensive sanctions mechanism. Just Google UN Security Council sanctions committees, and if you're not aware of them yet, it's massive. There are over 15 different, there are 15 different sanctions committees dealing with a whole different range of criteria of who is sanctioned, is it the state, are it individuals, or it entities, for what reasons, and for what, for how long, how can you be delisted, etc., etc.
To give a short overview, and this is a research that I is part of my doctoral thesis, and also afterwards still have very much been involved with, is the question of accountability in regards to the UN Security Council targeted sanctions regimes. So, this is the story. We have, for instance, I take the example of the most extensive sanctions committee. So, the UN Security Council doesn't just adopt sanctions against states. It came to the realization that economic sanctions directed to a state are far less efficient. First, the entire population suffered by such sanctions. They do not have the outcome they want to have. They're very, they have a huge human rights impact in that regard, and often it leaves outside of the scope those that are actually in control in the particular country that you might have deemed as the aggressor in violation of certain rules of international law. So, the idea came along the years to get actually involved in more targeted sanctions, meaning directly listing individuals or entities that are involved in something that you have deemed to be a threat to international peace and security. Hence, here is where the UN Security Council ISIL Das and Al-Qaeda sanctions committee come in. Post 9/11, there were more extensive sanctions being adopted in the context of counterterrorism. One of them is indeed focused on those that have been associated with being associated with ISIL and Al-Dases, and Al-Qaeda. As a result, the UN Security Council sanctions committee, it has a list of people that are listed there. Any state can suggest an individual entity to be listed there. Those designated are subject to an asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo. It contains right now, but it contained a lot more in the past, over 80 individuals and 250 individuals.
So, what is the impact of these type of sanctions? Designated individuals are often unable to access their property, receive social security benefits, they face problems getting to work, and they have their ability to travel domestically in international internationally restricted. And the point is, when you're listed and you feel you should not have been listed, you face serious problems in challenging these decisions because often you're not told what are the reasons for your listing, you do not have access to the evidence underlying the decision, and you do not know which state suggested you for listing. The only thing you can do is actually go to the umus person procedure and ask there to be delisted. That implies already that you know first that you're listed, because not always that happens. Often you just go to the stores and you realize you cannot pay for what you want to pay for, and then you need to ask what happened. And the bank would just tell you, "I'm sorry, I'm following this order." You need to follow up the chain of command, and then you come to the realization that your country, for instance, Germany, actually put you on the list because of UN Security Council listing, and then you need to figure out, so, but why did I end up on the list? It's hugely problematic in that regard also because there's no standard or burden of proof for those designating you on that list. There's not a minimum threshold to be held. If things go well, there is of course further scrutiny, but things don't always go well. And we've seen that is with very thin information, people can get listed. Moreover, as it's a preventative nature, there's not official evidence requirements, meaning that even evidence obtained out of torture can be admitted. Thus, if you were tortured, and as a result, you testify to whatever they would say, for instance, that you were affiliated with ISIL, with IS, Al-Qaeda in this regard, and that's how you get listed, it's very hard to refute it in that fact, because in itself, in a national context, often evidence obtained through torture is not permitted. It's a use of evidence violations, but here we do not have that. So, it's a highly imperfect situation where there's no standard or burden of proof, they're not clear procedural requirements in place, and you might also be listed just because you're that unfortunate that you have exactly the same name as someone else that might need to be on that list, yes or no. So, that's sort of the human face to these type of measures. We always think when UN Security Council, perhaps we think more of UN Security Council, the peacekeeping missions, etc., but the sanctions is a massive component of the work that UN Security Council does, and it's also something there to take into account.
So, the language of Chapter Seven of the UN Security Council is inherently broad enough, and it has been interpreted broad enough to actually allow the UN Security Council to approve any chosen course of measure. Think also there, military action. We'll look at in a second against a state which is deemed necessary to maintain international peace and security. You, the General Assembly has often asked the UN Security Council, "Make sure that the procedures are fair and clear for placing individuals and entities on a list and for removing them and for granting humanitarian exceptions." We have the European Union, we have domestic courts, we have regional human rights bodies, who have all said, "UN Security Council, you need to up your game here. You need to comply with human rights requirements of due process, for instance." And reality is still very far from that, because precisely, I mean, what is fair and clear procedures? How do we take into account that it's such a special circumstances that this is what it should be allowed? My personal point of view is very much when you give a huge amount of discretion, a black box of extensive powers to an organization, you need to be able to test it, to review it, to put parameters to question it. How do I ensure that one person's freedom fighter is not becoming another person's terrorist? So, how do I assure that I'm not my my the opposing party that I'm not able to just list them on whatever list to make sure that they cannot participate in society or that I actually remove them as political opponents in that regard? There's a huge, because there's a black box of discretionary power, there's a huge chance of misuse, right? And we have seen this here similarly as well. It's a huge problem that we have a lack of enforcement mechanism and compliance mechanisms. As we seen in the concept of self-defense, for instance, we know that there's a very small subset of states who have a very extensive broad interpretation of what constitutes the right to self-defense. We have Israel and the USA, for instance, who saying, well, we can take preemptive measures, while the majority of the states say, well, this is not allowed on international law. But it will not result into a UN Security Council determination that it was an act of aggression in this regard, precisely because it's geopolitics relations and the role of the USA and its P5 member there, right? So, there's a lot of things that it's always two different paradigms. There's the legal paradigm, what is the UN Security Council allowed to do? And then there's the other, the accountability and questioning paradigm. Okay, but how do we question this? Is this okay? And and and what is there as a mechanism to put this to question and to actually think this through? And that's where you see also the different points of view very much between the various states, precisely on how they stand in these different debates and how they feel the role of an international organization should be.
So, coming to the last slide, if the UN Security Council thinks that Article 41 measures imposition would not be inadequate, we then get to Article 42. Article 42 are the forceable measures. So, we have situations where the UN Security Council went through each step, Article 39, 40, 41, 42, but it can also determine that because of the gravity of the situation, we cannot first go to the non-forceable measures. We immediately need to resort to the forceable measures. So, Article 42 reads, "Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proven to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security." The idea with Article 42 was very much that the Article 43, that we would have a UN Army, so that they will be able to deploy the UN Army. The reality is very different, as we know. So, the reality is, if we come to Article 42 measures, it then as specific states or it um gives a mandate to peacekeeping missions to then take those actions. So, there's an extra contractual step involved afterwards. And what what happens there? What is the scope of that mandate and those powers? What are the restraints? Is something that we will look to through in depth in our last week.
So, here, check for instance, I want to mention the discussion on the invasion of Iraq, for instance, in 2003 by the US and UK. They both attempted to get a UN Security Council determination and come to an Article 42 declaration saying that forceable measures should be taken. However, the UN Security Council could not come to that conclusion. For instance, in the book of Abbas, its chapter, you will see an extensive discussion of the various resolutions there. Both states argued there, but we have actually enough because there's an implicit UN Security Council authorization there, at the time, based on previous UN Security Council resolutions on Chapter Seven. Iraq has not complied with it, so we're allowed to do something here. For those that remember this, um, resulted in a huge backlash in the international community, saying, "No, actually, here afterwards, a violation of international law happened here." So, the key moment in that aspect was this moment in the UN Security Council where Mr. Powell addressed a council chamber on the 5th of February 2003, and he laid out the case why the US invasion of Iraq of the following month, and why it is backed up by the law, as he said. He said, "It's all backed up by solid sources. We're giving here facts and conclusions, and Saddam Hussein's regime will stop at nothing until something stops him." And he gives a multimedia presentation, and he gave detailed video and slideshows of satellite images, audio recordings of intercepted phone calls, illustrated showings to all show that yes, we have here the mobile production facilities for biological agents. The heart was here of the argument that Saddam was determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction and to make more, including anthrax. And he held like a tiny valve, beige powder-like substance, and he said, "Less than a teaspoon of this dry anthrax, about this amount, would shut down the United States Senate." Saddam Hussein has actually not been verified to be accounted for even one of the teaspoon of these materials. And he says, "Actually, they have not been accounted for all the biological weapons that they have admitted. It's evidence, it's not conjecture. You need to act." The Security Council actually did not act at that moment, and that's what afterwards we know the US, with the assistance there of the of the United Kingdom, invaded their Iraq. It led on several countries to extensive discussions and out CRI saying this was a violation here of international law. In the United Kingdom, and for instance, in the Netherlands, who were initially buying into the argument of Powell and agreed there that there was a basis for this, it led to extensive parliamentary inquiries. And these investigative inquiries came to the conclusion that actually there was not such a legal basis. There have never been a legal basis in that case on the basis of the UN Security Council resolution. Thus, there wasn't an implied UN Security Council resolution. That's not enough to have those implied. And they argued moreover, because the Security Council could not come to the conclusion at that given meeting that there was a right to resort to force, that was evidence of the fact that a legal basis was lacking. The problem is, as we know, is when a state uses force and it violates a principle, violates the principle of the UN Charter, that a lot of times, unfortunately, and it's the most dark side of international law, very little happens because we have a massive compliance problem and an enforcement problem in that regard, right? We cannot bring it to the UN Security Council because the USA would be able, in particularly, to ensure that any resolutions that would come to the conclusion saying that they act in intervention with the with the UN Charter, they would be able to veto it. And similarly, the U, the USA has actually withdrawn support of the International Court of Justice. So, another state like Iraq would not be able to bring the case before the International Court of Justice. So, that's the reality that is out there, and that is very much often in contrast with how the legal terms are.
So, overall, as we know, the U, the UN Security Council doesn't have its own troops. They need to go into separate contracts with regional organizations or states or peacekeeping-related troops. And all of those, we're going to look at them through the institutional lens. What do they do? What is their mandate? What's the applicable law? What's happening in the context of human rights here? Because peacekeeping missions have a huge footprint within the specific countries, and the type of actions that they take, it goes beyond merely, let's say, the use of force. We had the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, for instance, which was a full, all-encompassing mission where the UN assumed everything from including to collecting the garbage, to signing the diplomas, to issuing the passports in that regard. Here, on the slide, you see a few examples of the authorization of the use of force in 2023. And again, on the website, you can find further information on the different ones that are there.
I'm going to do my best in the coming weeks there to respond to each of your contributions and to give more specific feedback on the situations that you all have been referring to and to what extent these are complying there with international law. Think there also with the situations you're referring to, also the essay requires you to refer to or utilize a very specific situation. So, you can use your contribution as a way of testing and finding out, like, do I get what's happening here? Do I tackle all the different issues? Is anything missing? And then, above all, ask whenever you have any doubt, you can post it below. Detailed feedback that I give for week one, it's already there online. For week two, it's soon to be online as well, and you can similarly reply to the general forum or send me an email. I look forward to reading the remainder of your contributions regarding to this particular topic and the other topics as well. Take care and talk to you soon.