The present role of the UN and the adaptation of the UN Charter - The examples of Somalia and the terror attack in N.Y. in 2001

Abstract: Created in the aftermath of the Second World War, the main task of the UN is the maintenance of international peace and security. Although the UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, has remained almost the same, the world has changed. In order to adapt the Charter to new upcoming problems two main possibilities exist. The Charter can either be changed itself, following the procedure set forth in its articles 108 and 109, or the adaptation can take place through practice. Since 1945 there have only been three formal amendments made to the Charter. This is probably due to the fact that any such amendment requires a two-third majority, including all the permanent members of the Security Council. Hence, the adaptation of the Charter to new problems often takes place through practice. One of the elaborated instruments the UN controls in order to obtain international peace is the collective enforcement system, set forth in Chapter VII. To make Chapter VII applicable, the Security Council must determine the existence of either a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression as set forth in article 39. In most of the cases references are made to the concept of a threat to the peace. The aim of this paper is to show two situations when the Security Council has extended the interpretation of a threat to international peace in recent practice. This has been done in order to adapt the Charter as well as the organisation to new challenges. The interstate conflicts, that article 39 was initially addressed to, are rare. Instead many intrastate conflicts have arisen. One of them is the conflict in Somalia during the early 1990s. The enrolment of the UN in such intrastate conflicts is however not without criticism. The most recent finding of a threat to international peace, made by the Security Council, is the terror act in the U.S. in 2001. Its finding of a threat to international peace made the entire Chapter VII applicable. When also recognising the right of individual as well as collective self-defence, the Security Council considered the U.S. strike back in Afghanistan as legal in the aspect of international law. The moral aspects of the extended interpretation of any threat to international peace are not meant to be analysed in this abstract.