Council Action Research Articles

Challenges and Prospects for the Law of Armed Conflict — A Humanitarian Perspective

The law of armed conflict, as the international legal system that regulates the conduct of war and mitigates its catastrophic consequences, has in recent years faced the challenges of high-tech forms of warfare, the involvement of non-state actors, and the complexities of civil-military integration. To address the complexity of non-international armed conflict, international humanitarian law should be “strategically” disseminated, non-government parties should be urged to issue unilateral declarations or codes of conduct, and the UN Security Council Action Plan model and the Geneva Call’s “Deed of Commitment” model should continue to be explored and implemented. The distinction between combatants and civilians in cyber-armed conflict requires more attention to actual behavior than to the appearance of the operator, with full consideration of the relationship between full membership and function. For the use of autonomous weapons systems, we must balance military interests and the consequences of damage, maximize the recognition and decision-making capabilities of autonomous weapons systems, and maintain human oversight and control during high-risk decisions.

학교폭력 사안 처리 제도에 관한 연구

The School Violence Countermeasures Review Committee is held for the purpose of fostering students into healthy members of society through the protection of the victims and the guidance and education of the perpetrators. Currently, there are many problems before the school violence case is received and the council's action is decided. For example, after receiving a case of school violence, an administrative lawsuit will be filed if the victim, the perpetrator, or the parents take a sensitive attitude toward the other student, or if they do not agree to the action by notifying the students or parents of the School Violence Countermeasures Review Committee in writing. In this study, we intend to derive problems that are currently occurring at each stage of the school violence case handling process and seek improvement measures. To this end, a survey was conducted on the members of the school violence council on their perception of problems occurring in the school violence case handling system. The collected questionnaire data was classified into open coding, axis coding, and selective coding based on the statements of the study subjects, and the analysis data was categorized into the stages of the school violence case handling system. Finally, problems were derived based on the categorized contents. First, it was found that the initial problem of receiving school violence and checking the facts was insufficient to guide the victims, perpetrators, and guardians on the process of handling the case after receiving school violence. In addition, psychological counseling was not provided to the victim during the initial investigation process, and the perpetrator was branded as a separate measure from the victim. Second, the problem in the investigation stage of the school violence case was that the investigation into the victim and the perpetrator was delayed, and the attachment of witness statements related to the case was insufficient. In other words, it was found that there was a lack of objective data collection to support the statements of students on both sides. Third, even the smallest matter for the principal to draw conclusions was often referred to the council, and problems often occurred at the deliberation of a dedicated agency and the principal's own decision stage. Fourth, in the process of deliberating on school violence, it was found that it was difficult to judge the case and decide on action when the statements and evidence collected during the first and second investigations were insufficient. This study has a limitation in that it only collects opinions from some local deliberators. However, this study is meaningful in that it derives problems and suggests alternatives to the school violence case handling system.

The practice of the UN Security Council pertaining to the environment and armed conflict, 1945–2021

AbstractContemporary ecological and climate crises have thrown into sharp relief debates around what roles and responsibilities, if any, international security bodies ought to have in addressing environment-related matters. Building on a wider catalogue of the United Nations Security Council's practice concerning the environment, in this article, we provide a snapshot of the Council's practice pertaining in particular to the environment and armed conflict. In addition to setting out key aspects relating to the personal, geographical and temporal scope of that practice, we identify four armed-conflict-related substantive themes arising in the Security Council's actions in this area: (1) relations between conflict and natural resources; (2) relations between conflict and adverse environment-related phenomena; (3) relations between conflict and chemical and biological weapons; and (4) adverse impacts of conflict on the environment. Through this examination, we aim in part to provide stakeholders with a more extensive and detailed basis on which to evaluate what actions the Council has taken – and, by inference, which actions it has not taken – with respect to the environment and armed conflict.

Women's participation and social demands in the Italian 1960s: the case study of the National Council of Italian Women

ABSTRACT The National Council of Italian Women (CNDI) was an internationally-oriented confederation of women's associations founded in Rome in 1903, which was affiliated with the International Council of Women (ICW). Previous studies on the Italian Council have considered its origins and the biographical aspects of its members in the first half of twentieth-century Italy, while the Council developments and action during the democratic regime of the second half of the twentieth century have been less studied. First, this article aims to understand the impact of female associations on Italian social policy developments by examining the CNDI between 1958 and 1963. The study makes a historical reassessment of an emancipatory narrative, addressing the participation and social demands of Italian women in the context of the ‘economic miracle’. Second, this article reflects on the role of NGOs and voluntary activism in shaping welfare state developments in the post-war period. The analysis will use primary and edited sources from the CNDI and the Ministry of Labour held at the Central Archive of the State in Rome. The CNDI represents a significant case study that aids in our understanding women's social demands from below.

The UN Security Council and Non-Traditional Security Threats: Why the Failures of the Council's Covid-19 Response Dampen Hopes for Council Action on Climate Change

Since the late 1990s, the mandate of the United Nations Security Council has evolved significantly as the Council has increasingly engaged with non-traditional security threats. Such matters create economic, societal and/or political instability that places livelihoods in peril and increases risks of conflict. COVID-19 presents one such threat. This article analyses the Security Council's COVID-19 response and highlights the challenges preventing effective and efficient action, with a view to understanding the Council's present capacity to deal with emerging non-traditional security threats, particularly climate change. Key challenges include the political conflict within the Council, principally between permanent members, as well as the Council's limited "toolkit" for action, which is primed to respond to traditional security threats. Considering the burden that such challenges had on the Council's COVID-19 response efforts, it is argued that the Council cannot be primarily relied on to manage other non-traditional threats. This is especially so in the case of climate change, which presents a more complex, multifaceted threat than a pandemic. A role for the Council that addresses consequences of climate change that most clearly fall within the Council's mandate is proposed.

Notes on Contributing Authors

Michael A. Figueroa is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He specializes in musics of the SWANA region and its diasporas, with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab diaspora in North America, and issues related to music, poetry, and multimedia. He is the author of City of Song: Music and the Making of Modern Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2022), and co-editor of Performing Commemoration: Musical Reenactment and the Politics of Trauma (University of Michigan Press, 2020).Morgan James Luker is Associate Professor of Music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He is author of The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and the founding director of Tango for Musicians at Reed College (www.reed.edu/tango).Althea SullyCole is an ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist from New York City. She has studied her primary instrument, the kora, a 21-stringed harp from the Mandé region of West Africa, for ten years, three of which were spent in Dakar, Senegal. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University and the Sylvan C. and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in the Musical Instruments Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Deonte L. Harris, assistant professor in the International Comparative Studies program at Duke University, holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include global Black studies, diaspora studies, critical race studies, and the anthropological study of value. These broader interests animate his current book-in-progress, which investigates the local, diasporic, and global dimensions of Caribbean carnival culture in postwar UK, and the value of carnival among Black Britons of Caribbean heritage. Harris is a past chair of the SEM Student Union (2014–2016); former member of the SEM Council and Diversity Action Committee (2017–2020); and current co-chair of the Gertrude Rivers Robinson Network of Black Ethnomusicologists (2020–2022).Katie Young is a postdoctoral research fellow based at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. At present, she is researching experiences of music at night for Black-Irish and Afrodiaporic musicians in Cork and Galway, Ireland, as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) NITE research project. She recently received her PhD in Music from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Russia’s Foreign Policy Actions and the Syrian Civil War in the United Nations Security Council

ABSTRACT Focusing on the meeting records of the United Nations Security Council draft resolutions that Russia vetoed to stop the Council action targeting the Syrian regime, this article explains the rationale behind the diplomatic shield Russia has provided to Syria. It explores Russia’s motivations, interests, perceptions, and fears through five distinct themes identified from the meeting records. By doing so, it offers further evidence on Russia’s adaptive and responsive position in the negotiated international order that is formed in confrontation with the West. It also demonstrates that the discourses in the Council function as part of a process in which Russia’s national identity, values, and priorities in international politics are constructed socially.

Changing the date: Local councils, Australia Day and cultures of national commemoration

In recent years, a small but growing number of Australian local councils have emerged as major actors in the movement to change the date of Australia Day by electing to replace or cancel local events held on 26 January. This article draws on Lyn Spillman’s analysis of the 1988 Australia Bicentenary to make sense of these developments and their implications for cultures of national commemoration in Australia. For Spillman, the Bicentenary marked a shift towards a thinner conception of national identity which was intended to increase buy-in for Australia Day but risked fostering fragmentation. Arguing that local council actions to ‘Change the Date’ can be understood within these fragmentary dynamics, the article shows how the federal politicisation of Australia Day has seen these councils present local vernacular commemorations as preferable to official ones and promote an alternative moral vision of the place of Indigenous peoples in the nation.

Revisiting Security Council action on terrorism: New threats; (a lot of) new law; same old problems?

AbstractThe devastating events of 9/11 triggered the adoption of Resolution 1373 (2001) by the UN Security Council, a contentious development which was much debated and was widely seen as presaging a new type of activity by the Security Council – legislating for all UN member states. And yet, in the counter-terrorism sphere at least, the Council’s legislative activity in the years following 9/11 was relatively modest. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, that activity has been far exceeded by the Council’s response to the emergence of ISIL in 2014. This more recent activity is of interest beyond the confines of counter-terrorism, but has received far less scrutiny to date. This article will remedy this gap, revisiting, in light of the recent activity, the relative merits and disadvantages of making counter-terrorism law through Security Council resolutions. It makes two main contentions. The first is that – due to some factors which were anticipated in the early 2000s and many which were not – Security Council resolutions on terrorism constitute a distinctive category of international law-making and pose serious challenges for the application of organizing principles and processes of general international law. The second is that, for these reasons as well as doubts as to the necessity and efficacy of recent action, making counter-terrorism law through Security Council resolutions should be the exception rather than the norm.

Is Climate Change a Threat to International Peace and Security?

Is climate change a threat to international peace and security? If so, what actions, if any, should the United Nations Security Council (“Council”) take to combat the climate crisis? Scientists and security professionals alike predict massive climate destabilization this century to include climate migration, competing resource wars, and violent conflict. And four island nations will be uninhabitable by mid-century, threatening their territorial integrity and very sovereignty. In this Article I argue that climate change can no longer be conceptualized as a future environmental and sustainability issue that the Council can ignore. Rather, climate change is a complex security threat that will increasingly stress and test international institutions and existing governance models. Yet is a “Climate-Security Council” truly realistic in light of the Council’s institutional design and current political paralysis? What could spark Council climate action? And how should the Council respond to the climate crisis? I address these questions, and others, proceeding in four parts. I first describe climate change’s security impacts, analyzing climate change’s cataclysmic impacts on international peace and security. Second, I analyze the Council’s gradual willingness to tackle non-traditional security threats, thus offering a possible roadmap for future climate action. In doing so, I analyze climate change’s existential threat to several island nations, a vanguard climate-security challenge that strikes at the core of the Council’s authority and legal responsibilities. Third, I address the challenges and opportunities represented by any Council climate action. I conclude by arguing that the Council should explicitly declare climate change a threat to international peace and security. Doing so unlocks the door to a menu of legally binding Council actions necessary to meet the existential challenges of our “climate security century.”

Rada Jesza jako przykład instytucjonalizacji ruchu osadniczego w Izraelu

<p>Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie działalności Rady Jesza, która po ponad trzech dekadach może zostać uznana za w pełni ukształtowaną i zinstytucjonalizowaną organizację reprezentującą żydowskich osadników na Zachodnim Brzegu. Wytworzyła ona szerokie sieci powiązań i wachlarz działań promujących osadnictwo w kraju i za granicą oraz dąży do uznania żydowskiej obecności na tym obszarze. Autor uznał, że w analizie pomocny będzie nowy instytucjonalizm z naciskiem na sieciowość i racjonalność wyboru. W ukazaniu rozwoju ruchu osadniczego wykorzystano także metodę ilościową. W tekście przedstawiono krótki rys historyczny Rady Jesza, sposoby działania organizacji oraz rozwój żydowskich osiedli w Judei i Samarii. Hipotezę niniejszego artykułu oparto na stwierdzeniu, że Rada Jesza, pomimo iż z początku była związana z radykalną ideologią narodowo-religijną, to stała się ona na przestrzeni lat swojego funkcjonowania zinstytucjonalizowaną organizacją, która rości sobie przez to prawo reprezentacji wszystkich osadników. Przeprowadzona analiza Rady Jesza pozwala stwierdzić, że jest to w pełni zinstytucjonalizowana organizacja, mająca wypracowany szeroki zakres działań i narzędzi pozwalających na realizację celów wewnątrz państwa i poza jego granicami.</p>

ULTRA VIRES AND THE LIMITS OF LEGALITY OF THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL (UNSC)

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is, in many ways, a unique institution. It exercises legislative, judicial and executive powers; operates with few legally binding checks and balances and has even been described as being ‘unbound by law’. The UNSC represents one of the organs of the United Nations. The Council has broad powers to maintain international peace and security, most notably under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and its decisions are binding on UN members. At the same time, some of the Council’s actions have been labelled as ultra vires and the lack of a binding, legal oversight mechanism to reign in Council action has been decried. Accepting that there is a difficulty in imposing legally binding checks and balances on the UNSC, this article argues that approaching the Council’s Chapter VII powers as a form of emergency powers may help to illuminate the role that non-legal restraints can play in curbing its power. In particular, this article uses Oren Gross’ ‘extra-legal measures model’ to show how the extra-legal measures model offers a descriptive account of UNSC action under Chapter VII and then builds on the gap in the application of the model to the Council to highlight areas for the development of better restraints. The first section provides a brief history of the United Nations as an International Institution; the second section sketches the United Nations Security Council and its powers under Chapters VI and VII of UN Charter; the third section looks at the Ultra Vires acts of the UNSC; the concluding section looked into various models and most especially “Oren Gross” model as an extra legal measure that would provide answer to the limits of legality of the UNSC. To achieve this, the work explored various relevant literatures and also using data and information retrieved from both the primary sources and secondary sources as reference bank.

Dentists hail Council action

Dentists hail Council action

Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices: Precedent pressure, ratchet effect, and council action regarding intrastate conflicts

AbstractBased upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P).

The Politics of Queer Disidentification and the Limits of Neoliberalism in the Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equality in Houston

The Politics of Queer Disidentification and the Limits of Neoliberalism in the Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equality in Houston Wesley G. Phelps (bio) On a warm, humid October afternoon in 1985, former Houston mayor Louie Welch stood outside Kaphan's Restaurant, near the Astrodome. As crew members from the local ABC affiliate Channel 13 set up equipment, Welch chatted jovially with the men, anticipating the interview that would run on the station's 5:00 p.m. broadcast. Nineteen eighty-five was an election year in Houston, and Welch, who had served as Houston's mayor from 1964 to 1974, eagerly sought to get back into the game. His decision to return to politics after a profitable decade in the private sector centered on challenging the popular incumbent, Kathy Whitmire, who in 1981 had become the first woman elected to the mayor's office in Houston's history. Welch hoped to build on his earlier political career, which had focused on the sunny and bipartisan theme of promoting the city's growing economy and business-friendly environment. In this new chapter, however, he also hoped to combine that earlier economic focus with the current reality of a city divided by volatile social issues. During this particular television interview, Welch planned to discuss his four-point plan to combat the spread of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Houston. As the former mayor stood in front of the camera waiting for the broadcast to begin, he continued to engage in small talk with the camera operator, even joking that he could only remember two of the four points in the proposal. When another offcamera individual laughed and asked him to try to remember just one of his points, Welch quipped that the first point in his plan to curb the spread of AIDS would be "to shoot the queers." Little did he know that [End Page 311] the broadcast had just gone live to his remote location, and his gaffe was televised across the city of Houston.1 Welch's public blunder was certainly not the first antigay remark uttered during the campaign. Houstonians had been involved in an intense and emotional debate about sexuality and citizenship since the previous year, when the city council approved amending the city's nondiscrimination and affirmative action ordinances to add sexual orientation to the list of reasons a person could not be denied employment. During the ensuing months, there had been a campaign and public referendum to overturn the council's action. Antigay activists had likewise launched a political campaign, known as the Straight Slate, aimed at unseating Mayor Whitmire and all the city council members who had voted in favor of the amendments. Despite it being said as a joke, Welch's utterance reflected just how hate-filled the campaign had become by the fall of 1985. An analysis of this episode in Houston's recent history is critical to a fuller understanding of the role sexuality has played—and continues to play—in municipal politics. In 1970 New York City activists introduced the nation's first municipal bill to protect the employment rights of gays and lesbians, sparking a wave of activism supporting similar initiatives in cities and small towns across the country. Despite the significance of this political movement, as historian Kevin J. Mumford has recently argued, historians have not paid enough attention to the ways these local battles played out over the subsequent two decades. This lack of analysis seems particularly true for this period in the American South, where there remains a need for more work on gay and lesbian political activism generally, and particularly in the post-1970s period. An examination of Houston's own battle over a pair of nondiscrimination amendments in the mid-1980s reveals not only the contours of local politics but also the significant influence that gays and lesbians have had on the development of the city. As historian Timothy Stewart-Winter has argued in his groundbreaking study of Chicago, gays and lesbians have exerted significant influence on the reshaping of American cities in the second half of the twentieth [End Page 312] century.2 This has certainly been the case in...

Three Questions about “Informal Regulation”

In the grand debates of international law, the jus ad bellum is often proclaimed dead, and just as often praised as the “cornerstone” of the contemporary legal order. Both perspectives tend to ignore that the jus ad bellum is not static, but a body of law that states adjust over time. In an important contribution, Monica Hakimi proposes to look at one particular aspect of such adjustment, a concept she frames as “informal regulation” through Security Council action. This essay engages with Hakimi's approach. It inquires whether this approach is as “informal” as Hakimi suggests, and asks whether “informal regulation”—rather than constituting a new category of state activities to study—is not already part of conventional approaches to the jus ad bellum. Proceeding from Hakimi's analysis, the comment assesses whether there is room for “informal regulation” beyond the Security Council.

Would a Code of Conduct for the Un Security Council Make its Response to Mass Atrocities More Consistent and Accountable?

The use (or threat) of the veto by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council has frequently undermined the pursuit of humanitarian objectives and has called into question the Council’s willingness and ability to live up to its responsibility to protect. In light of the Council’s frequent failures to discharge its responsibility to protect civilians in Syria and elsewhere, a code of conduct – sometimes called the responsibility not to veto – has been proposed for the permanent members who are asked not to use their veto to obstruct Council action in cases of mass atrocities. The aim of this initiative is to make the Council’s exercise of its responsibility to protect less arbitrary and more transparent. This article subjects the debate about the code of conduct to critical scrutiny and explores the code’s potential contribution to strengthening the rule of law in global governance.

Indemnity – how much protection do I need?

Dental nurses may feel increasingly worried about their potential liability regarding complaints, claims or General Dental Council (GDC) action against them. Andrew Collier considers potential risks and how to protect your professional status

Climate Change and the UN Security Council: Bully Pulpit or Bull in a China Shop?

Although claims about climate/conflict links remain contested, concerns that climate change will affect peace and security have gained traction in academic, activist, and policy circles. One set of pressures for responsive action has centered on the UN Security Council, which has held several often-contentious debates on the topic. Whether the Council should address climate change is a highly politicized question, tied to controversies about the Council’s mandate, membership reform, and the appropriate division of labor in the UN system. Lost in this political debate has been a more fundamental question—what exactly could the Council do? We examine six specific proposals for Council action culled from the academic and policy literature and the public positions of member states. These include incorporating climate risks into peacekeeping operations, developing an early-warning system, managing the threat to small-island states, engaging in preventive diplomacy, addressing climate refugees, and embracing a climate-related analogy to the norm of a responsibility to protect. For each proposal, our analysis—which is based on interviews conducted at the UN, archival research, and case histories of past instances of adapting the Council’s focus to new challenges—examines what it would mean and require for the Council to act. We also identify a series of measures that constitute a “pragmatic transformative” agenda. These steps recognize the poor fit between the climate challenge and the Council as it is currently constituted, but also the potential to use climate as part of a larger transformation toward the better Council the world needs.

Humanitarian Assistance and the Security Council

Over the years, the Security Council has on several occasions dealt with humanitarian assistance issues. However, it is Security Council Resolution 2165(2014), related to the situation in Syria, that has brought the role of the Security Council to the forefront of the debate. It is against this background that the article discusses the legal issues arising from Security Council action facilitating humanitarian assistance to be delivered in situations of non-international armed conflict.Following a brief survey of relevant practice of the Security Council related to humanitarian assistance, the article considers the relevance, if any, of Article 2(7) of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) to humanitarian assistance to be delivered in such situations. It then moves on to analyse whether a rejection by the territorial state of humanitarian aid to be delivered by third parties may amount to a situation under Article 39 of the UN Charter. It then considers in detail whether (at least implicitly) Resolution 2165 has been adopted under Chapter VII and, if this is not the case, whether it can be still considered to be legally binding.The article finally considers what impact the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2165 might have on the interpretation of otherwise applicable rules of international humanitarian law and, in particular, the right of third parties to provide humanitarian assistance in a situation of a non-international armed conflict in spite of the absence of consent by the territorial state, and the obligations that members of the Security Council, permanent and non-permanent, have under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions when faced with a draft resolution providing for the delivery of humanitarian assistance, notwithstanding the absence of consent by the territorial state.