scholarly journals A Review of the Academic Debate about United Nations Security Council Reform

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-101
Author(s):  
Bjarke Zinck Winther
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Global South ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Academic Debate

Abstract This article outlines and discusses the research on UNSC reform. The interdisciplinary field of UNSC reform research can be placed into two broad categories and four sub categories, each indicating the degree to which scholars believe in the benefits of either structural or working methods reform. These include topics such as legitimacy and efficiency and the question of (un)equal representation. The role of The Global South will feature heavily in analyses of how best to reform the UNSC, and of which actors or structures mainly prevent a reform from materialising. There has been a significant gap in research focusing on how the factors that feature as instruments of opposition, e.g. the presented benefits and detriments of the different approaches to reform, can potentially be converged to rethink the direction of the research.

The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Organizational Relationships ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
International Mediation ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship

The United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations Security Council spend significant amounts of time on their relationship with each other. They rely on each other for such important activities as peacekeeping, international mediation, and the formulation and application of normative standards in defense of international peace and security—in other words, the executive aspects of the UN’s work. The edited book The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship aims to fill an important lacuna in the scholarship on the UN system. Although there exists an impressive body of literature on the development and significance of the Secretariat and the Security Council as separate organs, an important gap remains in our understanding of the interactions between them. Bringing together some of the most prominent authorities on the subject, this volume is the first book-length treatment of this topic. It studies the UN from an innovative angle, creating new insights on the (autonomous) policy-making of international organizations and adding to our understanding of the dynamics of intra-organizational relationships. Within the book, the contributors examine how each Secretary-General interacted with the Security Council, touching upon such issues as the role of personality, the formal and informal infrastructure of the relationship, the selection and appointment processes, as well as the Secretary-General’s threefold role as a crisis manager, administrative manager, and manager of ideas.

Governing Proliferation Finance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Mallard
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Nuclear Nonproliferation ◽  
Global Regulation ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Global System ◽  
Financial Transactions

As the critical sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program demonstrate, the implementation of sanctions against nuclear proliferators has led to the creation of a global system of surveillance of the financial dealings of all states, banks, and individuals, fostered by United Nations Security Council resolutions—a new and unprecedented development. This chapter asks: Which actors have been in charge of designing and implementing sanctions against nuclear proliferators? Which legal technologies have they developed to regulate global financial transactions? Answering these questions generates a better understanding of key processes in global governance: the increasing role of the Security Council as a global legislator; the “financialization” of global regulation, with the increasing role played by international and US domestic financial institutions that were historically foreign to the field of nuclear nonproliferation; and the judicialization of the enforcement of sanctions, which is accompanied by the multiplication of secondary sanctions against sanctions-evaders.

What Future for the UN Charter System of War Prevention?

2003 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Falk
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Inspection Process ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship

President George W. Bush historically challenged the United Nations Security Council when he uttered some memorable words in the course of his September 12, 2002, speech to the General Assembly: “Will the UN serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” In the aftermath of the Iraq war there are at least two answers to this question. The answer of the U.S. government would be to suggest that the United Nations turned out to be irrelevant due to its failure to endorse recourse to war against the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The answer of those who opposed the war is that the UN Security Council served the purpose of its founding by its refusal to endorse recourse to a war that could not be persuasively reconciled with the UN Charter and international law. This difference of assessment is not just factual, whether Iraq was a threat and whether the inspection process was succeeding at a reasonable pace; it was also conceptual, even jurisprudential. The resolution of this latter debate is likely to shape the future role of the United Nations, as well as influence the attitude of the most powerful sovereign state as to the relationship between international law generally and the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy.

scholarly journals Due Process and the Iraq Sanctions: A Response to Devika Hovell

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 13-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Due Process ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Cholera Epidemic ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
And Function

Devika Hovell raises deeply significant questions about the role of due process in the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Hovell gives us a fine-grained analysis of what exactly makes due process so compelling; in her approach, the reasons why it is compelling will vary in different contexts, depending upon the particular value and function it serves. In particular, she discusses three ways of articulating the values underlying due process, and the models of due process that would follow from each. She then discusses how her analysis would play out in two situations: The Council’s use of asset freezes, and the role of the UN in the cholera epidemic in Haiti. In her case studies, she looks at situations where due process has been insufficient, and discusses some of the UN’s attempts to remedy this, and the organizational difficulties in doing so.

China and United Nations Security Council Sanctions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Poh
Keyword(s):  
Correlation Analysis ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Guinea Bissau

Chapter 5 uses the dataset of sanctions-related resolutions tabled at the UNSC from 1971 to 2016 to present a correlation analysis that examines the extent to which expectations derived from the ‘rhetoric-based’ hypothesis align with China’s voting behaviour at the UNSC. Thereafter, it examines the backgrounds, debates, and outcomes concerning three case studies: UN sanctions against the DPRK (2006-2016); Syria (2011-2016); and Guinea- Bissau (2012). It examines whether the hypothesised constraining role of China’s sanctions rhetoric or one of the competing explanations best accounts for the outcomes in each case. It finds that China’s sanctions rhetoric had frequently prompted its decision-makers to act or vote in ways that were not the most favourable to China’s immediate political and economic interests.

Bordering on Crisis

2021 ◽  
pp. 269-289
Author(s):  
Brian Wilson ◽  
Nora Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Crisis Management ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Terrorist Organization ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Pacific Ocean

A vessel plying the Pacific Ocean with approximately 500 migrants, some of whom might have deadly contagions, along with members of a terrorist organization, is emblematic of contemporary multiagency crisis response challenges: vague reports, agencies with overlapping authorities, balancing competing legal considerations, and an urgency to act. While crisis management isn’t new, the strategic response landscape now includes formal collaborative frameworks. A key element of interagency alignment involves lawyers who are increasingly being called upon to advise in crisis situations. More than a dozen states, multilateral instruments, and United Nations Security Council resolutions formally acknowledge the benefits of collaboration to address threats, yet the elements and competencies, as well as inclusion, of crisis lawyering receive scant attention. This chapter examines the role of an attorney in an inter-agency crisis management and includes “Rules for Crisis Lawyering in a Multiagency Environment.”

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