New Briefing Examines the Promotion of IHL at the UN Security Council

12 November 2020

Titled Room for Manoeuvre? Promoting International Humanitarian Law and Accountability While at the United Nations Security Council: A Reflection on the Role of Elected Members, our new Briefing assesses the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s (UNSC) recent engagement with international humanitarian law (IHL) and accountability.

Researched and written by our former researcher Emilie Max, the Briefing results from traditional legal research and informal interviews with about 30 experts – scholars, diplomats as well as representatives of the UN, NGOs and other relevant international organizations.

A Much-Needed Analysis

‘By providing an in-depth and timely analysis as to how the UNSC has recently dealt with IHL, this research should become a reference not only for legal and humanitarian advisers to permanent missions to the UN in New York but also to any stakeholder interested in the implementation of IHL’ she adds.

Much of the prevailing discourse on the UNSC's dynamics tends to focus on the organ’s five permanent members – China, Russia, the United States, France and the United Kingdom – to the exclusion of the other elected members; the so-called ‘E10’. This Briefing notably spotlights the role of those members in the hope of encouraging their future meaningful and principled involvement in favour of humanitarian concerns and international law.

After some preliminary remarks, the Briefing lays out the institutional framework relevant to the functioning of the UNSC and the specificities associated with non-permanent membership.

Moving from the abstract to the concrete, it then assesses the UNSC’s recent practice on IHL and accountability in relation to the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, the PoC agenda, other relevant thematic agenda items (Children and Armed Conflict and Women, Peace and Security, respectively), as well as counterterrorism measures and sanctions regimes. The issue of accountability is examined transversally, and lessons learned are systematically drawn from each of the above-mentioned sections.

The publication highlights that recent positive developments in the field of IHL are often attributed to the initiative and engagement of elected members – who are bridging divides between permanent members, conducting negotiations as inclusively as possible and consulting with other interested stakeholders. It also points to the fact that securing a UNSC’s outcome can also imply significant compromises (on substance) to the detriment of elements on accountability, consistency in wording and/or the unity of certain agenda items,

‘Under the current political circumstances, bridging the gap between UNSC rhetoric and action thus remains, more than ever, a challenge. Future and prospective elected members interested should be encouraged in promoting humanitarian concerns and a rules-based international order where violations are met with consequences. Their commitment (and corresponding positioning) need to rest on a carefully elaborated policy cognizant of potential opportunities and associated risks – both for their own reputations and for the integrity of the legal frameworks at hand. This is necessary to ensure a principled, coherent and consistent approach when colliding with high-stakes realpolitik’ stresses Emilie Max.

The publication offers a set of guiding questions, framed in very general terms, to ensure and develop a principled IHL engagement in the formulation of policies at the UNSC.

Launch