From Covenant to Charter: A Legacy Squandered?

The “Covenant” embodied the idea of a contract for peace in 1919. The “Charter” of 1945 appeared more boldly to embody a world constitution for peace. This article analyses the United Nations and its predecessor organisation, the League of Nations, to demon-strate how each organisation was primarily a product of the conflict that preceded it and how each captured the post-war status quo. Despite this shared backward-looking aspect, both treaties were sufficiently broad to accommodate significant constitution-al developments with the potential to shape the collective security systems to meet changing geopolitical conditions. Members of the League failed to seize this opportu-nity but the promise of an improved collective security system, moreover one based on fundamental laws, offered by the drafters of the Charter, is found to be problematic. The transference of competence from member states to organisation that marked the transition from League to UN, which, when combined with the legalisation of hierar-chy by the Charter, have meant that the UN order, despite appearing to be more obvi-ously constitutionalised, was potentially less able to achieve peace through law than its predecessor

Peacekeeping, private security and international human rights law: a review of UN policies

The un is used to ‘outsourcing’ or ‘contracting out’ its peacekeeping functions but, traditionally, this has been to states willing to contribute troops to an operation under overall un command and control. This model itself has created tensions between contributing states and the un. Given these conditions, and the fact that international law is traditionally seen as primarily applicable to states, it seems even more legally problematic that the un has, in recent years, started to outsource certain peacekeeping functions to the private sector. Inevitably, issues of applicable international laws, lines of responsibility and mechanisms for accountability, are less clear. In recent years the un has addressed this new practice by adopting a series of guidelines and polices on armed security contractors. The aim of this paper is to analyse these current un policies in the light of their compatibility with international law, particularly international human rights law