The security council

Abstract

The UN Security Council’s (Council) relationship to and role in the implementation of the concept and doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is important and even crucial for a number of reasons. First, there can be little doubt that the failures of the Council in adequately responding to a number of major humanitarian crises in the closing decade of the last century were one of the main reasons for the development of the concept in the first place. The examples of such failures, on the part of the international community in general and the Security Council in particular, to adequately respond to widespread, systematic violations of fundamental human rights and humanitarian law in relation to the crimes and atrocities committed in the Balkans and Rwanda are well known and had a catalytic effect upon the efforts inside and outside the UN Organisation to redress this inadequacy and prevent future recurrence of such atrocities in the future. One such initiative has been the development of R2P and its subsequent endorsement by the UN, including the Security Council itself. Second, the primary role of the Council in the maintenance and restoration of international peace and security and its powers to do so under the UN Charter are a crucial component of R2P, in particular of its third pillar, the duty to take timely and adequate measures to respond to mass crimes and violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including the taking of coercive measures to halt such violations.