Article 5

This chapter covers Art 5 of the UN Charter, which provides for the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership of member States against which enforcement or preventative action has been taken by the Security Council. Suspension is one of the ‘membership sanctions’ available to the United Nations and is thus regulated as part of Chapter II of the Charter (‘Membership’). Article 5 enables the UN to discipline a member State, so as to ensure that it does not prevent the Organization from discharging its function. In the view of the drafters, the Organization had to be able to exercise its powers against a State which posed a threat to or had breached international peace and security or committed an act of aggression without ‘procedural manoeuvring’ from that State. Article 5 was intended to ensure this; it thus serves a very specific, instrumental function but is not intended to permit the punishment of a member for past violation of Charter obligations. While Art 5 gives rise to some intricate problems of interpretation, it has played a limited role in practice.