Introduction

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Security Council of the United Nations has intensified its work in a way unimaginable in the long period of bipolar stalemate that had begun only a few years after the founding of the United Nations and lasted for some forty years. Lifted up by a wave of post-Cold War enthusiasm, the Council both greatly increased its efforts in its ‘traditional’ area of responsibility – the maintenance of inter-state peace and security – and expanded its mandate to new fields and issues, among them the fight against global terrorism, democratisation and the protection of human rights. In the meantime, the enthusiasm of the 1990s with its perhaps exaggerated hopes subsided, but the new powers claimed by the Council in the last fifteen years have not been called into question. On the contrary, and somewhat astonishingly, these powers have been generally accepted by the members of the international community, and are awaiting new situations in which the Council will use them.

As a consequence of the sharply growing activities of the Council, a discussion has arisen regarding the scope, and possible sources, of the Council's international legal obligations. Is the Council, when discharging its responsibility under the UN Charter, bound by rules of international law, and if so, by which rules exactly? In particular, the issue of the Council's human rights commitments has attracted a great deal of interest.