Ms Bernie Maguire:

Articles 24 and 25 of the UN Charter unequivocally set out the primacy of the UN Security Council with regard to all matters relating to international peace and security. In practice, peace support operations are only ever deployed on the basis of mandates from the Security Council. While the General Assembly can make recommendations to member states, resolutions of the General Assembly cannot compel action. Only once in history has the General Assembly invoked a resolution and that was the "uniting for peace" resolution. This happened in 1956, when it established the first UN emergency force in the Middle East. However, the context in which the General Assembly made its recommendation was unique. The peacekeeping operation had, at that time, the consent, and this is very important, of the parties involved, namely, Egypt, France, Israel and the UK. The recommendation was in line with the priorities of four permanent members of the Security Council. There was a particular circumstance, therefore, at a particular moment in time, with everybody on board and that particular General Assembly worked. I am not sure those conditions prevail today.