Positive Duties of the Security Council Under the UN Charter and International Law

Abstract

The current international context, characterised by a crisis in the multilateral institutions including the United Nations Security Council (sc), invites one to explore an often-overlooked question: whether the UN Charter and international law impose positive duties on the sc. To answer this question, this article offers a theoretical approach to an issue that has not received much attention from the authors. This exploratory study discusses the existence of duties of the sc; it analyses those duties under the Charter and international law, especially in Article 39, in the UN Purposes and Principles, and in the jus cogens norms. The article deals with the content and scope of the duties, arguing for a due diligence nature of them, and it also addresses the issue of the consequences of breaches, especially the institutional consequences within the UN system.