Tension in high international institutions, in the midst of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In addition to insisting on the call for a ceasefire, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has invoked for the first time in his mandate (which began in 2017) the article 99 of the UN Charterto which Israel has responded by calling Guterres “danger to world peace“. “Your request constitutes support for the Hamas terrorist organization and support for the murder of the elderly, the kidnapping of babies and the rape of women,” said Israel’s Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen.

But what exactly does invoking this article mean? The UN Charter is the international treaty with which the organization was founded at the end of World War II. The UN Charter was signed on June 26, 1945 by the original 51 members (although Poland signed a couple of months later), and is composed of a preamble and 111 articles, divided into chapters. Article 99 is provided for in Chapter XV, which details the functions of the general secretariat of the United Nationscurrently held by António Guterres.

Specifically, Article 99 grants the Secretary General the power to “call the attention of the Security Council to any matter that in his opinion could endanger the maintenance of peace and international security.” Guterres’s appeal to this article comes after repeated failures by the 15-member Security Council to pass a resolution calling for an immediate truce between the Hamas organization and the Israeli military forces.

Article 99 is the most important of the five that make up the functions of the secretary general in matters of peace and security. According to the Secretary General of the UN between 1953 and 1961, the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, this article gives the UN secretary general explicit political responsibilityceasing to be a “purely administrative official.”

How many times has Article 99 been invoked?

It is not very common to refer to this article of the UN Charter. During Guterres’ mandate, which has now lasted six years, Article 99 had never been invoked. The Secretary General of the UN between 1982 and 1991 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar highlights the importance of Article 99 as the “most important advance” of the Nations United States, although he criticized how this clause had been “overestimated”, having referred to it only “half a dozen times”. “In my opinion, article 99 is more important for what it implies and presupposes by specifically encouraging the Secretary General to draw the attention of the Security Council to any matter that in his opinion may jeopardize the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The truth is say a specific number In reference to the times this article has been used, it is not simple, because it depends on whether it is referred to in a very strict or more lax manner. On many occasions, a Secretary General has raised an issue before the Security Council without directly citing article 99while in others it is simpler because the article is directly invoked in the secretary general’s request, according to ‘The Procedure of the UN Security Council’, from the University of Oxford.

Perhaps the first time that the power provided for in this clause of the letter was appealed was carried out by the Norwegian Trygve Lie (UN Secretary General between 1946 and 1952) regarding the conflict on the Korean Peninsula (1950). His words were as follows: “The current situation It is serious and constitutes a threat to international peace. The Security Council is, in my opinion, the competent body to address it. “I consider it a clear duty of the Security Council to take the necessary measures to restore peace in that area.”

Indeed, Article 99 is not invoked as such, but the power granted in the UN Charter is used. Something similar happened shortly afterwards, with Hammarskjöld, in July 1960, when he requested an urgent meeting of the Council on the situation in the Congo, as recorded in the ‘Security Council Report’.

Nor did he explicitly invoke article 99, although he did use the terms included in the Charter: “I have to draw the attention of the Security Council to a matter that, in my opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.” On that occasion, the Council ended up authorizing the deployment of a UN military operation to help the Government of the Belgian Congo, which later gained its independence.

In general terms, these are the UN secretaries general who, in one way or another, would have invoked this article to address an international conflict:

  • Trygve Lie (1946-1952) – Conflict on the Korean Peninsula (1950)
  • Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-1961) – The Belgian Congo Crisis (1960)
  • Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-1961) – The situation in Tunisia (1961)
  • U Thant (1961-1971) – The Indo-Pakistani War (1971)
  • Kurt Waldheim (1972-1981) – Invasion of Cyprus (1974)
  • Kurt Waldheim (1972-1981) – Civil War in Lebanon (1976)
  • Kurt Waldheim (1972-1981) – The Tehran Hostage Crisis (1979)
  • Kurt Waldheim (1972-1981) – The Iran-Iraq War (1980)
  • Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-1991) – The worsening of the conflict in Lebanon (1987)
  • Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-1991) – The worsening of the war between Iran and Iraq (1989)

Neither Boutros Boutros-Ghali, neither Kofi Annan nor Ban Ki-moon have directly or indirectly called for Article 99. In the case of the first, the number of initiatives related to the conflicts arising from the dissolution of Yugoslavia is notable, although it never expressly requested the Security Council to address these issues.

Kofi Annanfor his part, assured that he had never considered it “necessary” to invoke this article, although he did ask the Council to evaluate the situation in the Middle East, where the “number of dead and injuredparticularly among innocent civilians, has reached levels that can be described, without exaggeration, as frightening“. On this occasion, he mentioned the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which in 2002 was at a critical point: after the Second Intifada, the Easter attack (2002) took place, an attack carried out by Hamas in which 30 civilians in a hotel in the city of Netanya (Israel), to which the Israeli army responds with reoccupation of parts of the West Bankincluding the city of Ramallah, where the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and Yasir Arafat’s headquarters are located.