UN General Assembly
2000

many different forms. The relatively clear-cut format of a United Nations response to inter-State armed conflicts — monitoring a truce and keeping the peace after an agreed cessation of hostilities — seems, for internal armed conflicts, inadequate or inapplicable. The Charter does not prescribe how this Organization should proceed in cases of internal armed conflicts, except for the wise admonition in Article 2, paragraph 7, which says, “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State.” In view of the varieties, complexities and intricacies of internal armed conflicts, this Organization appears to be without the necessary structure, the knowledge, expertise, experience and resources — and often, it would seem — without the necessary collective will. To suggest that the United Nations should intervene in internal armed conflicts across the board — a suggestion made, on occasion, by persons of obvious goodwill but with little knowledge of local circumstances — is wishful thinking of the most simplistic kind, and incorrect in the extreme.