The UN Security Council



In many debate rounds, the UN Security Council is often a must-know topic. This post will be a short primer and offer additional resources so that if you are ever faced with a UN or Security Council resolution...you are well armed!

Background: 
  • The UN Security Council is the United Nation's primary body for crisis-management.
  • The UN Security Council has the ability to pass binding resolutions on the other 193 member state in an effort to maintain peace. 
  • The structure of the council remains largely unchanged since 1946, which causes some debate among members about its efficacy and authority to establish lasting policies. 
  • The Security Council has five permanent members--China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (P5). Any of these members can veto any resolution. The ten elected members, are not afforded a veto power. Following WWII, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were victors and established the post-war order. Along with the United Kingdom, they shaped the Security Council. 
  • Including the Soviet Union, Russia has been the most frequent veto user. The U.S. is the second most frequent. 
  • The selection of the ten rotating members is based in part on equitable geographic distribution. The Africa Group has three seats. The Asia-Pacific group as two seats. The Eastern European group has one seat. The Latin American and Caribbean Group has two seats. And finally, the Western European and Others Groups has two seats. 
  • The Security Council aims to peacefully resolve conflicts underneath Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which authorizes negotiation, arbitration, and other peaceful remedies to conflicts. 
  • Peace-keeping missions are the most visible line of effort used by the Security Council to maintain peace and stability. 
  • The SC authorized fifty-four peace keeping operations in the decades following the Cold War 
  • The SC can use the sanction mechanisms outlined in Article 41 of the UN Charter
  • The following excerpt for a CFR articles provides great guidance on when and is it necessary for the SC to authorize the use of force

"Under the UN charter, the use of force is legal only in cases of self-defense or when it has been authorized by the council. The question of legitimate use of force—as distinct from strict legality—remains contentious.

NATO’s seventy-eight-day-long air war in Kosovo is the most-cited case in arguing for the legitimacy of humanitarian interventions that lack Security Council authorization. The bombing campaign was undertaken to protect Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing by Serbs, then leading rump Yugoslavia, after Russia indicated it would block authorization in the council. An independent commission of scholars later deemed the intervention “illegal but legitimate.”

The emergence of the responsibility to protect (R2P) in the early 2000s appeared to justify the use of force outside Security Council authorization by qualifying the principle of noninterference in sovereign affairs. The doctrine, as adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, stipulates that states have a responsibility to protect their populations from crimes against humanity; the international community has a responsibility to use peaceful means to protect threatened populations; and when a state “manifestly fails” to uphold its responsibilities, coercive measures should be collectively taken.

Successive U.S. administrations have argued that humanitarian intervention can legitimately be undertaken with the backing of regional organizations or coalitions of the willing. But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon rejected this position, saying, “The responsibility to protect does not alter, indeed it reinforces, the legal obligations of Member States to refrain from the use of force except in conformity with the Charter.” This debate was revived in the run-up to the 2011 NATO-led Libya intervention and continues with the ongoing Syrian civil war." 

  • The largest critics of the Security Council include the developing world, which argue that the structure and composition of the council is neo-colonialist and does not represent the changing geopolitical relations. 
  • The efficacy of the council has also been placed into question following inaction in the Rwandan genocide and in Sarajevo. 
  • The likelihood for reform is small considering all the P5 members would have to vote and it is unlikely they would vote to curb their own authority and power.

Additional Resources: 



Debate Motions: 

This House would abolish the Security Council. 

This house would abolish the U.N. 

This house regrets a world with the establishment of the U.N.

WSDC New Zealand finals round click here. 

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