Equality before the law

Equality before the law is at the core of both General Assembly and Security Council rule of law activities to support development and the promotion of international standards, particularly in post-conflict societies. At the national level, it is a cross-cutting theme that includes gender equality, self-determination and numerous other elements that fall outside the immediate scope of current discussion around Security Council. Equality before the law is therefore the impartial seizure of a threat to the international peace and the imposition of equally applicable international standards upon all states by the Council. One of principal obstacles to equality before the law at Council is its treatment of nuclear capacities of states, which varies widely. The eight known nuclear-weapon states and Israel, which maintains ambiguity over its possession or lack thereof, and remaining states parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that has been singled out by the Council in multiple rounds of sanctions.