ABSTRACT
After having discussed the interpretation of the UN Charter and the role of the main organs of the United Nations, we can now turn to the main functions of the organization in the field of the maintenance of peace and security. For the sake of convenience, these functions can be classified into three broad categories of activities: The first category concerns the polit ical role of UN organs in the peaceful settlement of disputes, a matter mainly addressed in Chapter VI of the Charter entitled ‘Pacific settlement of disputes’. The judicial role of the International Court of Justice, which is also one of the six principal organs of the UN (albeit an independent one which is not integrated into the structure of the other UN organs), and the general methods of international dispute settlement have already been discussed in Chapter 18 above.1 The second category encompasses enforcement action which can be taken under Chapter VII dealing with ‘Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression’.2 The third category, finally, deals with the peculiar institu tion of UN ‘peacekeeping’ operations which have no explicit legal basis in the Charter, but have developed in practice and are often described as being based upon ‘Chapter VI and a half’.3
