| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE'S military intervention in Libya, like similar actions by Western community nations (in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Kosovo), which have questioned the principles and rules of modern international law, above all the principle of state sovereignty, does not appear to have received proper, qualified legal evaluation as yet.
Apart from being out of tune with the mandate under United Nations Security Council resolution 1973, the anti-Libyan military action by NATO countries was also not in keeping with Article 42 of the UN Charter, on which rests the contemporary application of the doctrine about coercive measures involving the use of armed force. The decision on the use of force was sanctioned by the Security Council, but the character of its "unlimited" use was fixed by a group of leading Western powers, with participation from NATO's military structures. Modern practice provides for the Security Council to delegate limited powers to use military force.1 In the case of Libya, the provision of a mandate allowing limited use of force in the form of establishing a no-fly zone over Libyan territory to prevent the Qaddafi regime's use of deadly force against its own people was not accompanied by any UN participation in the form of auxiliary functions of peacekeeping nature (surveillance, monitoring) - as it was for example in the peace settlement under the Dayton Accords, or with the "parallel strategy" in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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