Responsibilities and Obligations: Understanding the Legal Consequences of the UN Security Council's failure to uphold its Responsibility to Protect

The legal nature of the Security Council’s responsibility to maintain international peace and security and, by extension, its responsibility to protect, has been left relatively unexplored in academic literature. This paper seeks to re-examine the legal nature of the Security Council’s primary responsibility, in order to determine whether the Council itself is under an obligation to act in response to threats to the peace and atrocities that fall within the scope of the responsibility to protect. By doing so, the paper sheds light on what a ‘failure’ of the Security Council‘s responsibilities might look like, and therefore whether there are any legal consequences to inaction. With reference to the construction and drafting of Article 39 of the UN Charter, this paper argues that the responsibility of the Security Council includes a legal obligation on the Council, at the very least, not to ignore situations that fall within the maintenance of peace and security.