Innovating to Restrain the Use of the Veto in the United Nations Security Council
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CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 52 (2020)
INNOVATING TO RESTRAIN THE USE
OF THE VETO IN THE UNITED
NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL
By Christian Wenaweser & Sina Alavi'
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS. ............................................65
1. INNOVATION ONE: A CODE OF CONDUCT REGARDING SECURITY
COUNCIL ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE, CRIMES AGAINST
HUMANITY OR WAR CRIMES................................66
11. INNOVATION TWO: GENERAL ASSEMBLY ACTION WHEN THE VETO
IS (MIS)USED .............................................69
CONCLUSION ..................................................71
The veto power originates in article 27(3) of the United Nations
Charter, which establishes that all substantive decisions of the Security
Council must be made with the concurring votes of the permanent
members.2 Already controversial at the time of the 1945 San Francisco
Conference,3 the veto today often negatively impacts on the work and
functioning of the Security Council. The proliferation of the use of the
veto in recent times has prevented the Security Council from exercising
its functions with respect to some of the gravest threats to international
peace and security - often in clear contravention of the purposes and
principles of the UN Charter. Even the mere threat of the veto has
prevented the Security Council from addressing situations that squarely
1. Ambassador Christian Wenaweser is the Permanent Representative of
Liechtenstein to the United Nations, a position he has held since 2002.
Between 2008 and 2011 he also served as President of the Assembly of
States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
(ICC). In that role, he presided over the first Review Conference of the
ICC in 2010, which adopted amendments to the Rome Statute on the
Crime of Aggression and on extending the use of certain weapons as war
crimes in non-international conflicts.
Sina Alavi is a Senior Legal and Political Adviser at the Permanent
Mission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations. Sina holds a J.D. with a
concentration in public international law from the University of
California, Hastings College of the Law and an LL.M. in European Union
law from the Universit6 Panth6on-Assas (Paris II).
2. U.N. Charter art. 27, para. 3.
3. See UN History: Getting to an Agreement, U.N. FOUND.,
https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/un-history-getting-to-an-agreement/
[https://perma.cc/FV9B-7M6C].
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Innovating to Restrain the Use of the Veto in the United Nations Security Council
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