Threat to the peace? Are gross violations of human rights a threat to the peace in the meaning of Article 39, Charter of the United Nations?

Abstract: Human rights are paving its way on the international arena. The international recognition that certain rights needs to be protected has grown. One of the ways this can be seen is that today, gross violations of human rights are considered to be a threat to international peace and security in the meaning of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations. A threat to the peace in the meaning of the Article was originally intended to be a military threat&semic that is one state posing a military threat against another state. Through the practice of the Security Council, which has the full discretion to determine a situation as a threat to the peace, a new era has started since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Council was in many situations deadlocked due to the tensions between the two superpowers of that time, the United States and the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Council only determined three cases with human rights violations as a threat to the peace. These three cases were the imposition of economic sanctions against Rhodesia and South Africa to protest against their racist regimes, and the civil war in the Congo in the early sixties, and its implications on the population. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the dramatic change in the political climate in the world and in the Security Council of the United Nations, a number of cases have been declared as a threat to the peace. The repression of civilians in northern Iraq in the early 1990's was determined a threat to the peace. This was also the case with the civil war in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Zaire, Burundi, Liberia and Angola In these cases, the situation in the country, the suffering of the civilian population, caused by civil war, was one of the reasons the Council gave when authorizing different enforcement measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. In Haiti and Albania, the situation for the population and the violations of human rights was mentioned when the situation was considered a threat to the peace. What is unique about these situations is that, in the traditional sense, there is no threat to international peace and security. The conflicts in question do not threaten the international community as a whole. It is the fact that the importance of human rights are becoming internationally recognized, and the mere violation of these rights might be considered enough to internationalize a conflict, and thus constitutes a threat to international peace and security. There needs to be a violation of a certain right in order for the situation to constitute a threat. There must be a 'massive 'or 'large scale' violation of a 'fundamental' right. It is very hard to narrow down this definition more. In sum, gross violations of human rights are considered a threat to the peace in the meaning of Article 39 of the UN Charter. This can be deduced from the practice of the Security Council in the recent years.