But the repeated UN intervention and non-intervention under Chapter VII throughout the 1990's seems to have established UN Security Council acting under Chapter VII to be a part of the international human rights regime.
4. Impact of UN humanitarian interventions or non-interventions in the post-Cold War period
In the case of humanitarian intervention by UN as in many other cases, ideas were used to "codify existing practices rather than to initiate new forms of order. Ideas have not made possible alternatives that did not previously exist; they legitimated political practices that were already facts on the ground."16 This was actually what happened in the Kosovo case. Nobody would have been so awestricken, had the NATO intervened with Security Council Resolution. Which means: people had come to accept sometime between 1990 and 1999 that the UN Security Council has the legitimacy to authorize humanitarian interventions in sovereign states. That gross violation of human fights, including genocide, is something that allows the "international community" to intervene, provided that the Great Powers, alias P-5, can produce a resolution.
This is not at all clear from UN Charter, chapter VII. Chapter VII only authorizes the Security Council to take action against "threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" (Art. 39). It does not directly mention human rights issues. Unless we interpret violation of human rights as "threat to peace," it does not directly follow from the statement of the Charter that the Security Council can intervene. But all the Security Council Resolutions concerning humanitarian intervention is formulated to be under Chapter VII. This was necessary because otherwise, it would not be in accordance with Art. 2-7 of the Charter, which recognizes the sovereignty of the domestic jurisdiction of any state.
In fact one must consider that during the 1990s, norms concerning the authorities of the United Nations Security Council has changed, that it now possesses right to determine acts of severe violation of human rights, alongside with threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression, and take actions against it accordingly. These actions may include traditional measures like economic sanctions and blockade, it may also include setting up International Criminal Tribunals in cases of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Both in case of Resolution 827 (1993) setting up ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), and Resolution 955 (1994) setting up ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), the resolutions have expressly stated that the Security Council is acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.
Regardless of how a particular set of beliefs comes to influence politics, use of those ideas over time implies changes in existing rules and norms. In general, when institutions intervene, the impact of ideas may be prolonged for decades or even generations. In this sense, ideas can have an impact even when no one genuinely believes in them as principled or causal statements.17
As Goldstein and Keohane assert, UN humanitarian intervention is already an established norm. We take it for granted that UN Security Council can authorize economic sanctions. After trying the post-conflict peace building by the "international community" in Bosnia, UN is back in its place in Kosovo.
