479 Júlia Gifra Durall United Nations peacekeeping operations under Chapter VII: Exception or widespread practice ? is contemplated in this broad perspective of what constitutes a threat to peace and explains genocide or any other crime against humanity being qualified as threats to peace and triggering Security Council authorization for the use of force for protection purposes. This prominence accorded to humanitarian questions and their relationship with the use of force is not a new phenomenon in the ambit of contemporary international law, as to a certain extent it goes back to the origins of modern international law, which generally reflects the demands for humanity and the notion of aid and intervention10. In fact, interventions for the protection of civilians, whose lives were endangered through armed conflicts11 are, one might say, the forerunner to so-called humanitarian interventions, and this includes their evolution, culminating in the Responsibility to Protect report12. Having said that: while it may not be a new idea, it is nevertheless true that the transfer of humanitarian concerns to the realm of the Security Council has involved a peacekeeping strategy less frontier-oriented and more focused on people. The measures adopted by the Security Council are many and varied: from sanctions and the setting up of ad hoc penal tribunals, to, among others, the incorporation of humanitarian mandates under United Nations peacekeeping operations, which have been authorized on many occasions to use force under the auspices of Chapter VII of the Charter. 2. United Nations peacekeeping operations United Nations peacekeeping operations are not expressly contemplated under the Charter, despite their internationally recognized practice which has been on the increase especially since the nineties. This formal absence of regulation has nevertheless been one of its main advantages, given that it has permitted its deployment in many and varied circumstances. However at the same time this very atypical situation has also been one of its main defects, and on closer analysis is seen to be characterized by a certain insecurity both legally and conceptually. Revue d’Afers Internationals, December 2006 - January 2007, CIDOB, pp. 59-77. 10 PETIT DE GABRIEL, E., Las exigencias de humanidad en el derecho international tradicional (1789 – 1939). El marco normativo y doctrinal de la intervención de humanidad y de la asistencia humanitaria, Madrid, Ed. Tecnos, 2003, pp. 1-261. 11 These refer to humanitarian intervention; for a synthetic vision of this evolution, see BETTATI, M., “Un droit d’ingérence?”, RGDIP, Volume 95, nº 3, 1991, p. 641 y ss. 12 Report on The Responsibility to Protect, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), 2001, pp. 1-111.
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