The Rise and Fall of the Security Council's Authorization to Use Force

This article investigates the evolution of the UN Security Council’s authorization to use force, focusing on its transformation from a central instrument of collective security in the 1990s to its relative marginalization in recent years. Initially intended as a substitute for the enforcement measures provided under Article 42 of the UN Charter, Security Council’s authorizations developed as a legal mechanism to delegate the use of force to individual States or groups of States. However, the practice has exposed structural tensions between centralized control and decentralized execution. Through a doctrinal and practice-based analysis, the article explores the legal qualification of authorizations, their typologies and objectives, and the instruments designed to ensure UN Security Council’s oversight –namely, mandates, temporal limitations, and reporting obligations. The article suggests that the Security Council’s authorization mechanism, while still recognized as a legal exception to the prohibition of the use of force, has undergone a process of erosion, reflecting broader challenges to both collective security and the international rules governing the use of force.