Security 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Resolutions on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict and the Accountability of the Security Council

This article analyses the thematic resolutions on the protection of civilians in armed conflict (the ‘humanitarian resolutions’) with a view to assessing how their adoption has altered the concept of humanitarian intervention. The article provides an overview of the content of the humanitarian resolutions, it examines possible circumstances in which they may activate the system of collective security and act as a constraint to Security Council (SC) action. By using the ongoing conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh as a case study, the article evaluates how states can activate the General Assembly in its role of collective security actor to overcome an unjustifiable SC inaction when there is a genuine threat to the peace stemming from humanitarian concerns. The argument put forward is that although the humanitarian resolutions do not limit the discretionary powers of the SC, they are able to generate an indirect form of political accountability of the SC for failure to make an Article 39 determination.

China’s position on international intervention: A media and journalism critical discourse analysis of its case for “Sovereignty” versus “Responsibility to Protect” principles in Syria

Chemical weapons use was a red-line that Damascus-directed forces crossed in the current and ongoing Syrian civil conflict. Russia and the United States disagreed not only about whether the weapons had indeed been used, but also regarding whom to identify as the weapons use perpetrators. That the United States and Russia would find themselves diametrically opposed initially on policy and military prescriptions regarding Syria is generally and theoretically explained by those countries’ long-standing material and security interests in the region. Even a couple of years prior to this red-line moment—and as the early brewing civil conflict in Syria was raising the concerns of the international community—what action should be taken in Syria was the subject of considerable and heated public debate as well as name-calling between Russia and the United States at the United Nations. While the United States and Russia staked-out opposing positions on Syria on the basis of either material or national security reasoning, the Chinese interest in the dispute outcome was—and remains—less obvious or easily understood. In a previous United Nations–sanctioned action enabling intervention on Libya to oust Muammar Gaddafi, China did not veto the Security Council action … despite its significant material interests in that country. A short while later, at the outset of the Syrian stirrings and talk of United Nations action, China made clear that it would not enable a Security Council approach that could lead to intervention, either unilaterally by a third country or via a military coalition of state actors. This work uses a media critical discourse analysis approach to understand the official Chinese position in the case of Syria—a position that stands in contrast to its recent and prior intervention-tolerant foreign policy position on Libya at the end of the Gaddafi-era. One conclusion of this study is that China is still formulating its dynamic and seemingly disjointed foreign policy position in the Middle East at present, and that the promotion of the principles of Sovereignty over Responsibility to Protect is the current trump card in its now dominant anti-interventionist foreign policy posture.

The Building Blocks of Hybrid Justice

The commission of mass atrocities — genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes — inevitably generates clarion calls for accountability from a range of international actors, including civil society organizations, governments, and United Nations bodies. These demands often center on an appeal that the situation be taken up by the International Criminal Court (ICC) via a Security Council referral or action by the Prosecutor herself. Although the ICC is now fully operational, its jurisdiction remains incomplete and its resources limited. Furthermore, the ICC is plagued by challenges to its legitimacy, erratic state cooperation, and persistent perceptions of inefficacy and inefficiency. Originally envisioned as a standing institution that would obviate the need for new ad hoc courts, it is now clear that the ICC cannot handle all the atrocity situations ravaging our planet. As such, there is an enduring need for the international community to create, and enable, additional accountability mechanisms to respond to the commission of international crimes when the political will for an ICC referral is lacking, the ICC is inappropriate or foreclosed for whatever reason, or only a fraction of the abuses or perpetrators in question are before the ICC. This contribution analyzes the accumulated experience with international, hybrid, and internationalized judicial institutions prior to and since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 1994. This paper assumes the continuing utility of such mechanisms as tools to provide accountability for mass violence amounting to international crimes, particularly in situations requiring an alternative or supplement to the ICC. It thus focuses on practical elements of institutional design, with particular attention to the origins, structure, jurisdictional limitations, financing, and procedures of the hybrid courts, dedicated chambers, specialized prosecutorial cells, and other accountability innovations established to prosecute atrocity crimes at the domestic level with some measure of international support, expertise, and/or personnel. From this historical and comparative analysis, the paper develops a taxonomy of models and a “menu” of elements that can be mixed and matched as new accountability mechanisms are under consideration for historical, current, and emerging atrocity situations, such as Syria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, North Korea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Libya, Burundi, and even the July 2014 downing of Malaysian Air Flight 17 (MH-17) over rebel-controlled Ukraine.

Paths to intervention

Over the past two decades, the United Nations Security Council has responded more strongly to some humanitarian crises than to others. This variation in Security Council action raises the important question of what factors motivate United Nations intervention. This article offers a configurational explanation of selective Security Council intervention that integrates explanatory variables from different theories of third-party intervention. These variables are tested through a comparison of 31 humanitarian crises (1991–2004) using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The analysis shows that a large extent of human suffering and substantial previous involvement in a crisis by international institutions are the key explanatory conditions for coercive Security Council action, but only when combined with negative spillover effects to neighboring countries (path 1) or with low capabilities of the target state (path 2). These results are highly consistent and explain 85% of Security Council interventions after the end of the Cold War. The findings suggest that the Council’s response to humanitarian crises is not random, but follows specific patterns that are indicated by a limited number of causal paths.

NATO Intervention in Kosovo in light of Security Council Actions and International Law

The horrors of World War Two made it universally clear that the world cannot progress without general respect for human rights. Still, the need for humanitarian intervention arose several times before 1999, but international political and military organisations including the UN, were either late or hesitant to prevent genocides or other related human catastrophes worldwide. The NATO intervention in Kosovo, however, marked the beginning of the new era in international relations. The facet of this intervention in view of legality is the topic of this paper. The aim of this study, above all, is to analyze the Security Council actions, debates and resolutions concerning situation in Kosovo, and the level of impact that the military operation had in international law (in particular) and international relations (in general). The study uses many authentic documents issued by the United Nations Security Council itself and other material related to the theme in order to develop an argument on the points raised. Throughout, this research paper has attempted to answer numerous issues related to the topic and offer a balanced view on the all the themes examined. Several but distinct points raised focus on relevant core subjects, discuss the challenges and opportunities of the humanitarian intervention and offer recommendations regarding the future of such operation for the well being of the humanity.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Treaty-Based Settlement of Terrorism-Related Disputes in the Era of Active United Nations Security Council Involvement

markdownabstract__Abstract__ The United Nations Security Council has become a crucial actor in international counterterrorism by not only spurring the taking of preventive and suppressive measures against terrorist individuals and groups, but also by taking actions against states that are said to stand in the way. The Security Council's actions against such states invariably arise from accusations by other states, such as accusations of refusal to extradite suspects of terrorism or responsibility for supporting terrorists. Meanwhile, most such issues of dispute are covered under international treaties relating to terrorism, which provide for political (negotiation) and judicial (arbitration and adjudication) mechanisms of dispute settlement. The Security Council's actions against states in connection with terrorism, therefore, involve (explicit or implicit) factual and legal determinations that affect the legal positions of the disputing states under the applicable international treaties relating to terrorism. The point of departure of this paper is that, in this respect, the Security Council effectively becomes an alternative to the treaty-based dispute-settlement mechanisms. The article centrally contends that the Security Council effectively acts as a more attractive alternative to treaty-based dispute-settlement mechanisms for pursuing terrorism-related (legal) disputes between states, without providing a meaningful platform of disputation that is based on equality of the parties. And the Security Council's relative attractiveness, arising from the discursive and legal superiority its decisions enjoy and the relative convenience and expediency with which those decisions are delivered, entails the rendering of resort to treaty-based dispute-settlement mechanisms of little legal consequence. The point of concern the article aims to highlight is the lack of platform of disputation some states are faced with, trapped between a hostile Security Council that makes determinations and decisions of legal consequence and an unhelpful treaty-based dispute-settlement mechanism.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon Declines to Review UN Security Council Action: Retreating from Tadic's Legacy in the Ayyash Jurisdiction and Legality Decisions

The question whether an international tribunal created by the United Nations Security Council has the power to review its own legality has recently been answered in the negative by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in Ayyash, directly contradicting the much celebrated Tadic decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This paper critically analyses the reasoning of the trial and appeals chambers of the STL as well as that of President Baragwanath in his partially dissenting opinion. The authors question the conclusion that an international tribunal - created via a Chapter VII resolution - has no duty to verify whether it was lawfully established before it exercises its primary jurisdiction. Such an approach goes against existing authorities, moves away from the general trend of exercising judicial scrutiny over Security Council action, and creates an impression that the STL shies away from demonstrating its impartiality and independence as well as its compliance with the highest standards of international justice. The authors argue that it would have been more judicially sound to affirm the inherent power of the STL to rule on whether it was lawfully established (or not). They submit that President Baragwanath’s approach - although not perfect - offers the more persuasive and nuanced legal reasoning to the issue at hand. Lastly, the practical and legal consequences of an international tribunal finding that their creation was illegal are considered.

Libya: A Multilateral Constitutional Moment?

The Libya intervention of 2011 marked the first time that the UN Security Council invoked the “responsibility to protect” principle (RtoP) to authorize use of force by UN member states. In this comment the author argues that the Security Council’s invocation of RtoP in the midst of the Libyan crisis significantly deepens the broader, ongoing transformation in the international law system’s approach to sovereignty and civilian protection. This transformation away from the traditional Westphalian notion of sovereignty has been unfolding for decades, but the Libyan case represents a further normative shift from sovereignty as a right to sovereignty as a responsibility. This significant normative moment demonstrates how far international law has traveled and also where it has not yet traveled. The Libyan case was propelled by a mass movement in Libya, in the region, and ultimately in the international community, which mobilized Security Council action, relying on RtoP, to protect civilians in the face of brutality. In response to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s threat to slaughter his own people amid the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the Security Council authorized, inter alia, a limited military intervention to protect Libyan civilians, invoking RtoP. The assumption under RtoP is that individual states have primary responsibility for civilian protection and that, as a backstop, the international community has subsidiary responsibility for civilian protection by preventing and rapidly responding to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Military intervention pursuant to RtoP is, against that background, an option of last resort, when the other, more modest measures preferred as initial steps have failed (as discussed further in part II). Significantly, in the Libyan case, it was the Libyan people — as represented by an opposition movement (including numerous defecting government officials) that was demanding a more representative government — who called for Security Council intervention to mobilize an effective civilian-protection effort.

“The Legitimacy to Legitimise”: The Security Council Action in Libya under Resolution 1973 (2011)

Abstract The power of the Security Council to adopt military measures for the maintenance of international peace and security has never been implemented as originally envisaged by the text of the UN Charter. The Council never acquired armed forces permanently at its disposal and under its command and control and it adopted the practice of authorisation of force leaving coalitions of willing States or regional organisations to implement it by conducting an operation under their command and resources with minimum control by the Council. The mandate of the operation in an enabling resolution is in principle a safeguard against abuse but its interpretation lies primarily (but not exclusively) with the participating States. The SC action in Libya intended to protect civilians (humanitarian intervention). Moreover, it revealed the real dimensions of humanitarian intervention and the vagaries of responsibility to protect: a suspension of the substance of Article 2(4).

Evaluating UN Sanctions

Nothing provokes a debate like UN sanctions; there seems to be an instant polarizing quality to the topic. In the post-Cold War era, have become a key security council tool in responding to international peace and security situations. Sanctions are applied not just to stop hostilities, but to improve governance, protect natural resources, promote democracy, and decry abhorrent practices such as the use of child soldiers or the incitement to violence and hatred. The sanctions decade of the 1990s witnessed an 86-fold increase in the number of UN regimes employed, making the security council's most important and most used coercive tool.1 Twenty-three mandatory regimes have been created since 1990; 12 are currently active. The council is very likely, indeed encouraged, to reach for as an alternate to force in dealing with an international crises.Increased use, however, does not necessarily translate into increased success or effectiveness. For many analysts, UN are ineffective and generate too many complications and unintended consequences. The sheer number and long duration of regimes threaten to overwhelm the UN system's ability to monitor or manage them. With the advent of targeted sanctions, the full weight of the council, once reserved for states, is now aimed at individuals who do not necessarily have recourse to judicial remedy. And the jury is out on the degree to which any of these regimes are ultimately able to achieve their goals. These factors are all cited as evidence by those who argue that the heyday of is over, or that it should be.The vastly expanded UN experience in using as an international peace and security tool, and the resulting divergence of opinions on their utility, prompted the director of the Centre for International Relations at Queen's University, Charles Pentland, and the Canada Research Chair in international relations and security studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, Jane Boulden, to host two international workshops on the subject of UN sanctions. The first workshop, held in 2007, focused on the humanitarian impacts of sanctions. The second workshop, held in 2008, took a step back from the literature to explore what was new about UN and what could be learned from the considerable experience now under the UN's belt.The overall goal was twofold: first, to establish the current state of play in UN in the wake of the council's consistent, frequent, and increasingly innovative use of sanctions; and second, to consider how to evaluate that experience as we look ahead to future UN security council action. This issue of International Journal, dedicated to UN sanctions, tackles these two broad areas in a series of articles penned by international experts who participated in the workshops.In many ways the council's apparent wholesale embrace of as a tool mirrors its experience with peace operations. As with peace operations, the council's post-Cold War willingness, even desire, to address a wide range of international peace and security issues resulted in a wealth of new experiences and a concomitant, if often inadvertent, innovative bent. And as with peace operations, the council's efforts generated a whole host of unanticipated outcomes and unintended consequences, prompting new rounds of adjustment and retrenchment, lessons learned and applied.The result is a complex picture in which the council has developed a range of tools to address a spectrum of international peace and security issues. Indeed, rather than a single tool, can now more properly be seen as a whole drawer in the security council toolbox, in which a wide range of tools are available for use in a variety of situations against a variety of targets, including nonstate actors as well as states. This is in sharp contrast to the Cold War and the early post-Cold War period when the council mainly used as a blunt-force mechanism against a state as a whole. …

Security Council's Targeted Sanctions against Presumed Terrorists: The Need to Comply with Human Rights Standards

A serious lacuna in international relations is the absence of a possibility for individuals to challenge decisions of international organizations. However, the right to legal remedy is a fundamental human right, and it is generally recognized that human rights bind international organizations. Thus, the question is raised as to what reforms the Security Council procedure requires in light of targeted sanctions, i.e. the placing of individuals on a list of measures to be implemented by states or the EU/EC. The author argues that there should be due process standards for listing decisions themselves as well as an effective remedy against such decisions. The inspection panels installed by the World Bank are presented as an example that meets such standards and could inspire a review procedure for Security Council actions affecting individuals by targeted actions. Finally, it is contended that, despite the possible critique, it is not only a matter of expediency but a legal duty to render UN listing and de-listing procedures consistent with due process requirements.

Russian-Iranian Relations in the Ahmadinejad Era

Russia and Iran share a common hostility toward the United States. There have, however, been important differences between Moscow and Tehran - especially over issues. Relations seemed to improve, though, with Vladimir Putin's October 2007 visit to Tehran and Russia's shipment to Iran of the enriched uranium needed to start up the Bushehr power plant. Important differences, however, remain between the two countries that serve to limit the extent to which they can cooperate. In October 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to Tehran and met both with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah 'Ali Khamene'i. Their meetings were soon followed by the commencement in mid-December 2007 of the previously agreed to but delayed Russian delivery to Iran of 82 tons of enriched uranium needed to start operating the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr. The delivery of this material was completed at the end of January 2008. There were also reports of increased Russian weapons sales to Iran, and of Moscow and Tehran working together to form a natural gas cartel similar to the OPEC oil cartel. In one sense, this increased cooperation between Putin and Ahmadinejad is not surprising. Both, after all, see the United States as their principal antagonist. This being the case, it seems only natural that Moscow and Tehran would work together against it. In another sense, however, the increased Russian-Iranian cooperation since the October 2007 Putin visit to Tehran is surprising. Moscow and Tehran have typically had prickly relations both before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Despite their common antipathy toward the US, disagreement over several issues has continued to plague Russian- Iranian relations after Ahmadinejad's election as President of Iran in 2005. Did the Putin visit to Tehran in October 2007 usher in a new era of Russian-Iranian relations in which their previous differences would either be resolved or subordinated to the pursuit of their common interest in opposing American foreign policy? Or will Russian-Iranian differences continue to limit the extent to which Moscow and Tehran cooperate with each other? I will address these questions by first examining the differences between Putin and Ahmadinejad prior to Putin's October 2007 visit to Tehran and then examining the ways in which Russian-Iranian ties have - and have not - improved since that time. The main Russian-Iranian disagreements that have occurred under Putin and Ahmadinejad have been over United Nations Security Council (UNSC) action over the Iranian issue, completion of the Bushehr reactor, how Iran will obtain commercial grade enriched uranium, differences concerning a possible alliance between the two countries, what use will be made of Russia's Gabala radar station in Azerbaijan, and over natural gas, oil, and the delimitation of the Caspian Sea. UNSC ACTIONS Ever since the revelation that Iran was conducting secret activities that it had not previously reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Russia (along with China) has acted to shield Tehran from harsher measures that the US has proposed be taken against it by the UNSC. Up until early 2006, Moscow did this through working to keep the Iranian nuclear under the purview of the IAEA (which assesses whether signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty are in compliance with it, but which cannot impose sanctions on them for not being so) and through not allowing the IAEA Board of Governors to refer it to the Security Council (which can impose sanctions). On February 4, 2006, though, Russia - along with most other IAEA Board Governors of members - did vote to refer the Iranian dossier to the UNSC. Following this, the five UNSC permanent members plus Germany (the Six) offered a package of inducements for Iran to suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities as well as cooperate with the IAEA. …

Human Rights, Israel, and the Political Realities of Occupation

Various political realities influence the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and, more generally, the vitality of the international law of occupation. The law of occupation—though ill-suited to modern international relations and ill-equipped for prolonged occupation—has been almost universally invoked as applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). At the same time, international human rights law is increasingly viewed as applicable to occupation. This creates a dilemma for Israel because international humanitarian law and international human rights law contain conflicting prescriptions and policy goals with respect to the administration of occupied territory. In many instances, occupants seek United Nations Security Council action in order to reconcile this tension and to secure legal and political cover for their actions. By acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter; the Security Council can create a select legal patchwork applicable to a particular occupation. This use of Chapter VII resolutions by the Security Council to create international law by fiat is an important trend in modern occupation. Yet geopolitics determines access to—and the content of—such resolutions, and the sensitive political context of the OPT currently makes this avenue unavailable to Israel. For the same reason, opponents of the Israeli occupation are unable to secure Security Council action to clarify and enforce Israeli legal obligations in the OPT. This Article considers these issues from the perspectives of both Israel and Palestinians in order to examine why the relative gain and loss in each case is not immediately clear. This Article also discusses how the legality of Israeli conduct in the OPT may be gauged in light of the conflicting international legal obligations imposed by human rights law and the law of occupation. A broader exploration of the impact of these phenomena reveals that these political realities serve to increase the influence of the Security Council while further undercutting the utility and relevance of the international law of occupation.

Hegemonic Federalism: The Democratic Implications of the UN Security Council's "Legislative" Phase

Several recent UN Security Council antiterrorism resolutions amount to legislation for the international community. The Security Council's new approach raises real predicaments for those states that, in their domestic system of government, are democracies. Not least, the Council risks disturbing the carefully balanced features of liberal democracy, including the very separation of powers on which functioning democracies are built. The article that follows explores this contention, with a particular focus on the implications of Security Council action for Canadian democracy. It concludes that the Security Council's legislative phase creates a new species of international/domestic legal interface, perhaps best described as "hegemonic federalism" – that is, a system in which the Security Council asserts plenary lawproject authority over the Canadian federal executive, which in turn responds with direct implementation of the international resolution or strongly encourages (and in majority Parliaments likely ensures) compliance by Parliament.

In search of symbiosis: the Security Council in the humanitarian domain

AbstractWhile the Security Council's incursion into the protection of individuals or groups could appear necessary – or even praiseworthy – it should be viewed with caution. The author argue that the search for perfect complementarity between the powers of the Security Council and humanitarian action should not overlook the political nature of the Council, the omissions and inconsistencies in its decisions regarding grave offences against human dignity and the effects of coercive action – including armed force – on the provision of neutral and impartial assistance to the victims of an armed conflict.