ABSTRACT
Chapter VII of the United Nations (UN) Charter does not specifi cally deal with international terrorism. Rather, the Security Council’s Chapter VII powers aim exclusively to protect international peace and security – which terrorism may well endanger. It follows that the Security Council can counter terrorism by means of Chapter VII coercive instruments only if it determines that terrorist acts amount to one of the three situations provided for in Article 39 of the Charter: a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression.2 Indeed, the Council made Article 39 determinations in connection with situations differently related to terrorist acts.3 In particular, the Council generally determined that such situations gave rise
to a threat to the peace. Especially with its most recent counter-terrorism resolutions, the Council has defi nitely strengthened its post-Cold War tendency broadly to interpret the Article 39 notion of threat to the peace. This short chapter attempts some brief considerations on such practice. To do so, I will fi rst recall the main developments in the Security Council’s Article 39 practice in counter-terrorism. I will then make some remarks on this practice from the viewpoint of the Charter’s relevant provisions.
