revistaieee7

Alfonso Iglesias Velasco and Anass Gouyez Ben Allal
The role of the United Nations...
maintain international peace and security free of discrimination. That is to say, that this
commitment applies to the members of the UN as a whole and not merely to the states
parties of one treaty or another. The guarantees offered by the Security Council serve
to urge the states parties of the NPT to continue to comply with the discriminatory regime
of this treaty that preserves a state of affairs whereby it is exclusively the permanent
members of the Security Council that possess of nuclear weapons, without calling on the
latter to provide any guarantees towards total disarmament. Furthermore, in the event of
the threat or use of nuclear weapons by one of these states, the Security Council will not
be in a position to take the measures set out in this resolution, since the state in question
will use its right to veto and paralyse activity within the Council.
In the same line of reasoning, the Council adopted Resolution 1540 (2004) in
2004. 29 Therein, the UN body affirms in its first paragraph that the ‘proliferation of
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as their means of delivery, constitutes
a threat to international peace and security’. It also recalls the responsibility and
legitimacy of the Security Council regarding the adoption of enforcement measures
in order to maintain international security. This resolution requires all states to exert
control over weapons of mass destruction and the means to transport these (means
of delivery), as well as preventing non-state actors from acquiring or using them. In
this case, the primary body for the maintenance of peace widened its sphere of activity,
including the fight against ‘international terrorism’ and ‘nuclear terrorism’ among
its competences. These new ambiguous concepts will allow the Security Council to
exercise greater control over states, as well as mandating new practices and conduct,
without reaching an agreement concerning the circumstances that would constitute
international terrorism or nuclear terrorism. In order to be in a position to do this, the
Council, asserted its role of control and guardianship in this area by creating a subsidiary
body called the ‘Non-proliferation Committee’, whose function was to examine
the compliance of states with the aforementioned Resolution 1540. 30
The remit of this subsidiary body may be extended to include the supervision of
the adherence of all obligations falling under the nuclear non-proliferation regime
by means of control of the measures implemented by states as part of their national
legislation in order to reinforce the regime. To begin with, this committee was created
for a specific two-year term; however, Resolution 1673 (2006) of the Security Council
prolonged its mandate until 2008, 31 and subsequently continued to extend its mandate
until its Resolution 1977 (2011) did this until 5 April 2025. 32
Despite the reticence of many of the members of the Security Council, in November
29 Resolution 1540 (2004) of the Security Council of United Nations, of 28 April 2004.
30 In operative paragraph 4 of Resolution 1540, the Security Council decided to create this committee,
pursuant to rule 28 of its rules of procedure. See http://www.un.org.
31 Resolution 1673 (2006) of the Security Council, of 27 April 2006, paragraph 4.
32 Resolution 1977 (2011) of the Security Council, of 20 April 2011, paragraphs 2 and 3.
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