The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the UN system and is the primary organ charged with ensuring international peace and security. Its powers as outlined in the UN Charter include authorizing military action, establishing peacekeeping operations, recommending the admission of new members to the UN General Assembly, approving any changes to the Charter, and enacting international sanctions. Chapter VII of the UN Charter gives the Security Council the power to identify threats to international peace and security and to authorize responses, including the use of force. Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII are binding on UN members and are therefore a source of international law. The Security Council is the only UN body with the authority to issue resolutions that are binding on its member states.
Like the United Nations as a whole, the Security Council was created after World War II in 1945 in the hope of preventing future wars and maintaining world peace, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I. It held its first session on 17 January 1946 but was largely paralyzed in the following decades by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (and their allies). Nevertheless, it authorized military interventions in the Korean War, the Congo Crisis, and peacekeeping missions in Cyprus, West New Guinea, and the Sinai Peninsula. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, UN peacekeeping efforts increased dramatically in scale, with the Security Council authorizing major military and peacekeeping missions in Kuwait, Namibia, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
