On 4 December 1986, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 41/128 which contained the Declaration on the Right to Development. The Declaration was a further attempt by the United Nations to develop a normative regime to deal with one of the most pressing issues of our day – underdevelopment. It was a logical culmination of a movement that started with the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and continued through the period of the anti-colonial struggle. Once the right to self-determination was no longer challengeable as a political entitlement, attention shifted to its socio-economic corollary. In 1969, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Social Progress and Development. The different UN Development Decades were also meant to address the problems of underdevelopment and the ever-increasing gulf between developed and developing countries. In 1974, a major attempt was launched by the UN General Assembly to change certain basic aspects of international law in the hope that this would lead to a new international economic order. Those efforts are yet to be substantially rewarded.

Multilateral treaties play an increasingly important role in the structure and process of present-day international law. They have proved to be a flexible, ‘multi-purpose’ instrument for finding a common denominator to the interests of a growing number of States and co-ordinating the international effort for dealing with global problems facing mankind. There is a growing awareness that the traditional bilateralist approach is inadequate for the solution of problems such as the maintenance of international peace and security, ensuring world-wide respect for human rights, democratizing international economic relations, preserving the human environment, etc. These problems generate ‘community interests’ on a global and regional level and require co-ordinated multilateral efforts for their solution.

The Charter of the United Nations deals with the maintenance of international peace and security in Chapters VI (‘peaceful settlement of disputes’) and VII (‘actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression’). These provisions are based on the principle of collective security: in the case of aggression the international community will come to the aid of the attacked and terminate the aggression. With the exception perhaps of the Korean war, this system has never worked: the stand-by agreements between the United Nations and Member States, which are mentioned in Article 43 of the Charter, never came into being.

Of the more than 140 major cases of armed violence recorded since World War II, which have claimed more victims than that war itself, only relatively few have been ended through the mediation of the United Nations. Moreover, there is no single case in which the United Nations were absolutely instrumental in the prevention of an armed conflict, though in some cases aggression may have been averted in the face of international pressure. This is a disappointing state of affairs for an organisation whose task, according to the Preamble of its Charter, is to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. But even if we disregard the lofty wording of the Preamble, the Charter itself in Article 1 places the maintenance of international peace and security first among the aims of the organisation.

In the 1987 Annual Report on the work of the United Nations the Secretary-General, Pérez de Cuéllar, wrote that for the solution of almost every regional conflict in which the UN is involved the need for a UN peace-keeping operation can be envisaged. He referred in particular to the settlement of the Namibia situation, regarding which the ten year old plan (contained in Resolution 435 of the Security Council) provides for the stationing of military and civilian units which are to carry out peace-keeping tasks during the transitional stage of independence. He claimed that other cases would require new and innovative forms of peace-keeping by the UN. In September 1987 he wrote that during the preceding year several conflicts had extended to the sea. This raised the question to what extent the UN had a role with regard to keeping the peace at sea and ensuring the safety of merchant vessels as part of their aim to bring an end to conflict. Pérez de Cuéllar pointed out that any peace-keeping operation at sea could be distinguished from peace-keeping on land in a number of respects, though the basic principles would be largely the same.

The UN's ‘classical’ peace-keeping operations fall somewhere between Chapters VI and VII of the Charter, and therefore do not coincide with the 1945 concept of UN 'action'. Therefore such operations should be juridically assessed as a practice which has developed with its own characteristics. However, a number of legal principles may be derived from this long-standing practice, which may be considered as falling under customary law, even if the United Nations has not yet reached the stage of adopting a codification of such principles.

In his paper (see supra) Suy dealt with questions regarding the legal conditions for the establishment of UN peace-keeping forces, such as: which UN organ has the competence to take the basic, fundamental decision?; are there any legal restrictions as to the composition of the force?; should there be a preliminary formal confirmation by the Security Council of the existence of a ‘threat to international peace and security’?; what are the legal limits of the force's actions?; and is the consent of all the parties concerned a formal requirement?

It may be observed that there exist no general, written rules or principles for UN peace-keeping operations. A codification on the basis of existing practice has not as yet come about. At the moment we only have at our disposal the text of the draft guidelines for UN peace-keeping operations (13 Articles) which were drawn up within the framework of the Special Committee on Peace-keeping Operations of the UN General Assembly. The latest version already dates back to 1977. The reason why no substantial progress has since been made is political disagreement in the Special Committee, especially with regard to the fundamental question of the distribution of powers between the Security Council and the Secretary-General concerning the direction of a UN peace-keeping force. Therefore, alternative provisions are to be found in the present text. So, Article 1, paragraph 1, reads: ‘[The Security Council has the authority over the establishment, direction and control of peace-keeping operations]’, and Article 6: ‘The Secretary-General, under the authority of the Security Council, [shall direct the implementation of peace-keeping operations] [shall direct peace-keeping operations] [is in charge of the implementation of peace-keeping operations, receiving guidance from a subsidiary body of the Security Council], within the mandate entrusted to him by the United Nations Charter, contributing with all means at his disposal to giving effect to relevant decisions of the Security Council.’