Revised and updated, The Law and Practice of the United Nations provides an analysis of the main legal issues surrounding the United Nations' practice, including a thorough discussion of Chapter VII of the Charter and its interpretation.

Law and Practice of the United Nations: Documents and Commentary combines primary materials with expert commentary demonstrating the interaction between law and practice in the UN organization, as well as the possibilities and limitations of multilateral institutions in general. Each chapter begins with a short introductory essay describing how the documents that ensue illustrate a set of legal, institutional, and political issues relevant to the practice of diplomacy and the development of public international law through the United Nations. Each chapter also includes questions to guide discussion of the primary materials, and a brief bibliography to facilitate further research on the subject. This second edition addresses the most challenging issues confronting the United Nations and the global community today, from terrorism to climate change, from poverty to nuclear proliferation. New features include hypothetical fact scenarios to test the understanding of concepts in each chapter. This edition contains expanded author commentary, while maintaining the focus on primary materials. Such materials enable a realistic presentation of the work of international diplomacy: the negotiation, interpretation and application of such texts are an important part of what actually takes place at the United Nations and other international organizations. This work is ideal for courses on the United Nations or International Organizations, taught in both law and international relations programs.

The Law and Practice of the United Nations examines the law of the United Nations through an analysis of the Organization’s practice from its inception until the present, in particular to the transformations the UN has undergone since the end of the Cold War. Special consideration is given to Chapter VII of the UN Charter and its interpretation, the United Nations’ membership and organs’ competences, along with the peaceful settlement of disputes, and coercive action for the maintenance of international peace and security. In addition, this important new edition explores such areas as general and smart sanctions, peacekeeping, authorizations of the Security Council, territorial administrations, self-determination, human rights, financing of the Organization, acts adoptable by the UN organs, and a review of their legality. Offering a fully revised and updated analysis of the main legal issues surrounding the United Nations’ practice, The Law and Practice of the United Nations will be of interest to all those involved with legal issues surrounding the United Nations, the analysis of said issues, and their impacts on international practice

This fully up-dated, third revised edition of Conforti's thought-provoking and challenging textbook, The Law and Practice of the United Nations, provides a comprehensive legal analysis of problems concerning membership, the structure of UN organs, their functions and their acts, taking into consideration the text of the Charter, its historical origins, and, particularly, the practice of the organs. Its main focus is on the practice of the Security Council. In particular the action of the Security Council under Chapter VII has been taken into account. The legal literature on Chapter VII - a literature which has grown enormously in recent times - has also been considered. The fact that the legal aspects of the action or the inaction of the Security Council have been discussed to an unusually large extent by ordinary people at the time of the war against Iraq and even later is worth noting. The importance of the role of the United Nations, and the content of the rules governing it, has become a leitmotiv of all debates on international politics. Consequently, the opinion often held in the past, according to which it was useless to deal with the legal aspects of the United Nations activity, can be considered as obsolete.

In an increasingly complex world, it is more crucial than ever to have a full picture of how international peacekeeping can be a force for good, but can also have potentially negative impacts on host communities. After thirteen years of presence in Haiti, the highly controversial United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti has now withdrawn. The UN's legacy in Haiti is not all negative, but it does include sexual scandals, the divisive use of force to 'clean up' difficult neighbourhoods as well as a cholera epidemic, brought inadvertently by Nepalese peacekeepers that killed more than 8,000 Haitians and infected more than 600,000. This book presents a unique multi-disciplinary analysis of the legacy of the mission for Haiti. It presents an innovative account of contemporary international peacekeeping law and practice, arguing for a new model of accountability, going beyond the outdated immunity mechanisms to foreground human rights.