General Assembly resolution with special reference to Definition of Aggression

Abstract

In the 1950 Korean War and the 1956 Suez Canal Affairs, the General Assembly played an active peace-keeping role as a predominant political body of the UN since the failure of the Security Council to discharge its primordial responsibility assigned to it by Article 24 of the Charter brought about a shift in the centre of gravity of the United Nations. Many Member States pinned their hopes on the function and role of the General Assembly to maintain and restore international peace and security. However, there is not any supranational authority of a UN organ to exercise power in a decentralized society. The UN political organs are in no sense judicial or impartial third party adjudicators; nor have they any formal law-creating role in the parliamentary sense. Technically speaking an Assembly resolution may be said to have a mere recommendatory and exhortatory character; this is not always correct. Some international scholars and Member States have noticed the emergence of a quasi-lawmaking role of the General Assembly, or have considered certain resolutions of the Assembly to be legally binding such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over National Wealth and Resources, the Friendly Relations Declaration, and the Declaration on the Sea-Bed, Ocean Floor and the Subsoil. The Resolution 3314 (XXIX) on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974 may count among the latter category of the binding legal force of the Assembly resolutions.