Il ruolo del Consiglio di sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite nell’attuazione delle sue decisioni

Under Article 41 of the United Nations Charter, the function of measures not involving the use of armed force is «to be employed to give effect to» the Security Council’s «decisions». Such a wording of the provision is usually interpreted by scholars as indicative of the fundamentally coercive purpose of those collective measures, which would be conceived to be applied against States or other recalcitrant entities in order to alter their behaviour. In the commentaries on Article 41, besides, there is a tendency to take for granted that the addressees of the «decisions» mentioned therein, to which the measures not involving the use of force should «give effect», are precisely the same States or other recalcitrant entities, identified by the Council as responsible of a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression. The addressees being thus presumed, however, it remains controversial under which provision of the Charter the Council could take those «decisions» and the content of the latter.
The aim of this monographic volume is to demonstrate who the true addressees are, and which provision constitutes the legal basis, of the «decisions» mentioned in Article 41, as well as the actual meaning of the wording «to give effect to [the Security Council’s] decisions». To this end, a rereading of Chapter VII of the Charter is proposed, notably a reconstruction of the actual logical-functional relation between Article 39 and Articles 41 and 42, also in the light of the «drafting history» of such provisions and of their implementation in the Security Council’s practice.