Security Council

About the committee

The Security Council is charged with maintaining international peace and security. While other organs of the UN can only make recommendations, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member states are obliged to carry out. The Security Council is made up of 15 members, consisting of five permanent seats and ten temporary seats. The permanent five, made up of the People’s Republic of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, each hold veto power, allowing them to block the adoption of any Security Council resolution.

Topics

Topic A: The question of peacekeeping reform

UN peacekeeping represents a versatile and innovative tool for defusing conflict and maintaining international peace and security. Yet failure to deal effectively with humanitarian disasters, as well as military overstretch, rising costs, allegations of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and confusion over mandate, have led to a crisis in confidence and calls for reform. With the release of the Brahimi Report in 2000, alongside various other recommendations, the UN has been focused on creating a more effective and efficient peacekeeping force. While some steps towards reform are being gradually implemented, including work to strengthen prevention and peacebuilding capacities, create intelligence gathering mechanisms and the establishment of clear, credible mandates, larger options are less frequently addressed. Such measures are generally more contentious and involve reforming peacekeeping to encompass more military components: private partnerships, rapid reaction forces, intervention, and most controversially, a UN standing army. The Security Council, tasked with the power to take collective action, holds the authority to entertain explorative debate of this kind.


Topic B: Hypothetical

It is the year 2030 and the Kurdish people have unilaterally announced their independence from Turkey, a move the powerful state declares to be illegitimate under international law. After months of increased tension and violence without concession or settlement, and a growing fear that the actions of the Turkish Kurds will serve as a powder keg for other secessionist movements in Iraq, Iran and Syria, Turkey dispatches emergency troops, vowing to resolve the situation and restore stability to the region.

However, with reports from human rights organisations that Turkey's actions constitute an 'indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force', mounting instances of targeted ethnic violence and attacks, allegations of the disregard of humanitarian law, and the risk to regional and international security, the situation now sits before an emergency session of the Security Council. Should the new Kurdish state be recognised as legal and legitimate? Does Turkey's incursion constitute an act of aggression, or is it a matter of internal politics and unrest? Where does the responsibility of the international community lie in responding to the situation?

What happens next is up to you.