ABSTRACT
Humanitarian concerns are rarely at the top of the action agendas of major capitals. They are, however, anything but new to the Council. They are listed among the third of the four sets of purposes for the United Nations laid out in Article 1 of the Charter. The stirring opening words of the Preamble – “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind” – invoked the humanitarian imperative that had spurred the creation of the world body as an alternative to the carnage and horrors of unrestricted warfare. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan put it, “unless the Security Council can unite around the aim of confronting massive human rights violations and crimes against humanity . . . then we will betray the very ideals that inspired the founding of the United Nations.”1
