The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 2006 M06 8
Preventing humanitarian atrocities is becoming as important for the United Nations as dealing with inter-state war. In this book, Ramesh Thakur examines the transformation in UN operations, analysing its changing role and structure. He asks why, when and how force may be used and argues that the growing gulf between legality and legitimacy is evidence of an eroded sense of international community. He considers the tension between the US, with its capacity to use force and project power, and the UN, as the centre of the international law enforcement system. He asserts the central importance of the rule of law and of a rules-based order focused on the UN as the foundation of a civilised system of international relations. This book will be of interest to students of the UN and international organisations in politics, law and international relations departments, as well as policymakers in the UN and other NGOs.

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
40
Section 2
46
Section 3
48
Section 4
48
Section 5
71
Section 6
93
Section 7
101
Section 8
113
Section 20
209
Section 21
219
Section 22
222
Section 23
229
Section 24
235
Section 25
244
Section 26
257
Section 27
260

Section 9
134
Section 10
142
Section 11
151
Section 12
134
Section 13
151
Section 14
159
Section 15
160
Section 16
162
Section 17
164
Section 18
181
Section 19
203
Section 28
264
Section 29
274
Section 30
281
Section 31
264
Section 32
268
Section 33
274
Section 34
281
Section 35
291
Section 36
299
Section 37
320

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Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 210 - The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council...
Page 32 - Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Page 268 - A. large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation; or B. large scale 'ethnic cleansing', actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.
Page 227 - Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
Page 265 - Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of nonintervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.
Page 233 - What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international...
Page 268 - Military intervention for human protection purposes is an exceptional and extraordinary measure. To be warranted, there must be serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur, of the following kind: A.
Page 265 - M. Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996), esp.

About the author (2006)

Ramesh Thakur is Senior Vice-Rector at the United Nations University and Assistant Secretary-General for the United Nations. He has written and edited over twenty books, the most recent being International Commissions and the Power of Ideas (2005) and Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (2005).

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