Assessment for the Law in Global Context Module

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Assessment for the Law in Global Context Module
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Assessment for the Law in Global Context Module
The purpose of peace enforcement operations, as the term is used here, is to bring about or
ensure compliance with some aspect of an existing mandate or agreement among the parties.
These operations are in a grey area between peace-keeping, linked to Chapter VI of the Charter,
and enforcement, from Chapter VII, because they share characteristics from both types of
operations.1
The UN peace enforcement operations have the following characteristics any
discussion of the UN’s international peace and security mechanisms is, of course, related to the
concept of collective security. This thesis is very deliberately focused on the concept and
experience of the use of force to compel compliance. It does not therefore, deal with the broader
issue of collective security.2
Similarly, the questions associated with the UN’s involvement in
"internal" conflicts are not directly addressing nor does the thesis address the ethics of the use of
force by the international community, or the pros and cons of the various objectives, such as the
delivery of humanitarian aid, for which the use of force is authorised.
The end of the cold war brought about a new era for the United Nations. The end of the
animosity between the United States and the Soviet Union and their willingness to use the United
Nations in the way in which it was first envisaged created a new belief in and desire to use the
full range of mechanisms available in the United Nations Charter for dealing with international
peace and security.3
The resulting explosion in UN activity - in both quantity and scope -
generated a parallel explosion in academic literature on the subject. Some distinct though
inevitably overlapping themes emerged in the literature as UN activity increased. Reflecting the
numerical increase in UN operations a large body of work emerged which is best characterized
as a comparative case study approach.4 Work in this area documents the new UN experiences,
taking a historical approach, comparing them with cold war UN operations or using them to
predict or call for future trends.
Strong bodies of case study work also exist in relation to each operation. Even when the fact of
inherent decisions about the boundaries of the cases involved is accepted, there is no certainty

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David Schweigman (2001) The Authority of the Security Council Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter: Legal Limits
and the Role of the International Court of Justice. Publisher. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 71-86
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Erika De Wet (2004) The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council Studies in international law.
Publisher. Hart Publishing. 113-128
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Andrej Zwitter (2010) Human Security, Law and the Prevention of Terrorism. Publisher. Taylor & Francis. 97-108
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that any two observers will formulate identical hypotheses or regard the same hypothesis as
relevant and sufficient in a given case.5
Inevitably, therefore, the choice of a case study approach
as well as the case studies themselves is a reflection of some basic assumption on the part of the
researcher. These assumptions and the basic analytical framework used in this thesis are
described above.6
In addition, the Congo case is the only example of this kind of action during the cold war and
makes the point that the idea of using force in this way is not a post-cold war creation.7 As such
it also provides a good counter case to the post-cold war examples of the Somalia and Bosnia
operations. Although these operations had different objectives all three had mandates involving
an authorization of the use of force to compel compliance with certain goals established by the
Security Council. The three operations also involved major sustained multinational military
operations.8
This is a critical criterion since one of the purposes of this paper is to examine the
experience of the actual use of force, as opposed, for example, to the threat to use force.
On 3 1 July 1 994, the Security Council invoked Chapter W and authorized the creation of a
multinational force and the use of "al1 necessary means" to bring about the transition from the
illegal military regime to the democratically elected government in Haiti.
9 Under US leadership a
large military mission was prepared, known as the Multinational Force. Because force was not
used, even though it was authorized, this experience is not considered here since the focus is on
the actual experience of using force.
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Since the end of the Cold War the UN Security Council has displayed a hitherto unknown
activism in using its enforcement powers to maintain internat