revistaieee7

Alfonso Iglesias Velasco and Anass Gouyez Ben Allal
The role of the United Nations...
liferation and disarmament.
The convening of this debate showed once more that there has been a significant
shift in the way the Security Council has shouldered its responsibilities in the field of
disarmament in recent years.
For example, in April 2009, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, gave
a speech in Prague in which he already committed himself to work towards an ultimate
goal, that of a world without nuclear weapons. Obama considered the existence
of thousands of nuclear weapons to be the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War and
stated that, paradoxically, while the threat of a global nuclear war had diminished, the
risk of a localised attack had increased.
This is how the nuclear powers with seats in the Security Council have managed to
consolidate these powers through this UN body as the only states in the world with
the legal and legitimate authority to examine, coordinate and give effect to the efforts
they deem appropriate to nuclear non- proliferation, thus diminishing the importance
of international treaties in this regard and ignoring the disarmament objective provided
for in the NPT.
Its initiatives demonstrate the capacity and the potential of the Security Council
and its members to increase control in this area, as they issue decisions that are binding
for the entire international community –practically all countries of the world are
members of the UN, and as such agree to comply with Security Council decisions-, 36
thus widening the scope of the obligations laid down in the treaties and multilateral
agreements, including those states which are not parties thereto. 37
In this sense, the resolutions of the Security Council have primarily been adopted to
bolster the privilege afforded to its permanent members by the NPT, since it recognises
the legitimacy of their possession of nuclear weapons and at the same time banning the
remaining states from acquiring them. In practice, these resolutions really guarantee the
members of the Council the right to control and supervise the other countries.
The Security Council resolutions were criticised by various states, above all by the
Non-Aligned, as they considered these matters to be general ones and that they should
be dealt with within the United Nations General Assembly or in the Conference on
Disarmament, and not within the Security Council. Moreover, some countries have
decried the fact that the initiative to adopt these resolutions came primarily from the
United States and its allies, with the aim of having more room for manoeuvre and
control in the area of non-proliferation.
Furthermore, some states have expressed their disagreement with the existence of pro-
36 Article 25 of the Charter of the United Nations.
37 STOIBER, Carlton. ‘The United Nations Security Council and Nuclear Law’ in OECD, International
Nuclear Law: History, Evolution and Outlook, Paris, 2010, p. 112 and ff.
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