With an eye on future U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning Gaza, Dan Becker discusses a possible mechanism in the U.N. Charter to force the U.S. to abstain from voting.
In the United Nations Charter, the very sentence that establishes the Security Council’s permanent-five veto power ends — surprisingly — in these nine words: “. . . a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.”
Let’s allow the phrase to sink in for a moment before acknowledging that there is indeed a host of conditions, requirements, litmus tests and hoops to jump through before the phrase can be invoked and applied to a resolution.
But at the same time, it’s also crucial and a bit remarkable to remember that the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — are not exempt. They must abstain as well.
So there it is, this little-known mechanism hiding in plain sight in Article 27 (3). It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the U.N. Charter. It gets no respect. (more...)
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