Ascesa e declino del ruolo di health keeper del Consiglio di sicurezza

This paper focuses on the role of the UN Security Council in tackling public health threats. A preliminary analysis addresses the different limitations to which the discretion of the Security Council in determining the occurrence of a threat to the peace is subjected. On this basis, the contribution aims at ascertaining whether Security Council’s resolutions 2177 (2014) on Ebola and 2532 (2020) on Covid-19 were intra vires, and thus binding for the UN Member States. Finally, the paper highlights the political nature of the Council’s decision to include or not a sanitary event on its agenda and, if so, on whether to address it under Chapter VI or Chapter VII of the UN Charter.