There has been a renewed interest in the debates on the use of force. This
resurgence in academic and policy circles can be attributed to the new wave
of military interventions after the initial hiatus of the Global War on Terror
period. The recent cases of the use of force are once again raising pertinent
legal questions regarding the responsibility for the maintenance of international
peace and security which is vested in the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) by the United Nations (UN) Charter. This authority,
exemplified by the UNSC control of the use of force has been challenged by
unilateral recourse to force by States, coalitions of States and regional organisations.
The African Union (AU) has developed regional legal frameworks
which may contest some established legal norms on the use of force, including
the primary responsibility of the UNSC to authorise the use of force for
the maintenance of international peace and security. In this article, I delineate
these norm contestations and identify specific modes of such contestations in
UNSC-AU relationship within the frameworks of their respective constitutive
treaties. I draw on the idea of norm localisation and subsidiarity to
understand the African Union’s approach to its relationship with the UNSC,
the ways in which these norm contestations impact that relationship and how
the contestations affect the norm on the use of force.
