Читать книгу Environmental crimes in a transnational context. Topical issues of international environmental disputes as a risk of threat to the world legal order - Giorgi Matiashvili - Страница 8

The basis for the preservation of the world and the planet’s ecosystem is the international legal system provided for in the UN Charter. The UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security in all aspects. In carrying out this task, the Security Council acts on behalf of all UN member states. The UN has the right “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace”. The realism laid down in the UN Charter lies in the fact that the composition of the Security Council, authorized to take such measures, up to forced ones, includes five great powers – permanent members of the council, which, subject to their consent, are able to ensure the fulfillment of the peacekeeping tasks assigned to the UN.

At the same time, the UN has a democratic system of annual discussion of all world problems in the main body – the General Assembly, where all member states participate in the adoption of recommendatory decisions with the right to vote on the basis of the principle of their sovereign equality. This system of UN, although it seems to require constant updating, is on the whole the most advanced stage in the development of modern international law.

In accordance with the principles of the UN Charter, states have developed and put into effect many treaties that determine the current state of international relations. Such important treaties include agreements between Russia (USSR) and the United States on the reduction of strategic armament, the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, treaties on the prohibition of nuclear-weapon tests, agreements on the non-deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space, the Antarctic Treaty, agreements on nuclear-weapon-free zones in various regions of the world, treaties on NATO, the CIS\ (The CIS countries are the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) established in December 1991. The CIS unites: the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, the Republic of Uzbekistan and Ukraine) \,the European Community, agreements on regional integration associations, the OSCE Final Act, Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations, Statutes of the UN Specialized Agencies, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982, agreements on the protection of the environment and natural resources and so on.

The listed and many other agreements and declarations, as well as decisions of the UN and its international organizations, customs, recognized as legal norms, and decisions of international judicial bodies, form a general system of international law, within framework of which international relations are carried out today in all spheres of humankind existence.