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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > United Nations & UN agencies
This book traces the trajectory and different meanings of the concept of peacebuilding in the United Nations since the early 1990s. It analyses how that concept gained life in a particular context and the implications of this process for the Organisation's support to societies affected by armed conflict in general and for peace operations in particular. Departing from tenets about the influence of ideas in world politics and engaging with the critique of the liberal peace scholarship, the book provides a theoretically informed narrative of how peacebuilding acquired different meanings while remaining largely motivated, justified, legitimated and informed by a proactive and top-down agenda of promoting liberal democratic institutions, norms and values as a remedy to the challenges faced by societies affected by armed conflict. The book will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners in peacebuilding and post-conflict development.
Since emerging in 2006 from a ten-year Maoist insurgency, the 'People's War', Nepal has struggled with the difficult transition from war to peace, from autocracy to democracy, and from an exclusionary and centralized state to a more inclusive and federal one. The present volume, drawing on both international and Nepali scholars and leading practitioners, analyzes the context, dynamics and key players shaping Nepal's ongoing peace process. While the peace process is largely domestically driven, it has been accompanied by wide-ranging international involvement, including initiatives in peacemaking by NGOs, the United Nations and India, which, throughout the process, wielded considerable political influence; significant investments by international donors; and the deployment of a Security Council-mandated UN field mission. This book shines a light on the limits, opportunities and challenges of international efforts to assist Nepal in its quest for peace and stability and offers valuable lessons for similar endeavors elsewhere.
This book traces the history of UNESCO from its foundational idealism to its current stature as the preeminent international organization for science, education, and culture, building a well rounded understanding of this important organization. The book: * provides an overview of the organization and its institutional architecture in the context of its humanistic idealism * details the subsequent challenges UNESCO faced through cold war and power politics, global dependence and interdependence, and the rise of identity and culture in global politics * analyses the functioning of UNESCO administration, finance, and its various constituencies including the secretariat, member-states, and civil society * explores the major controversies and issues underlying the initiatives in education, sciences, culture and communication * examines the current agenda and future challenges through three major issues in UNESCO: Education or All, digital divide issues, and norms on cultural diversity * assesses the role of UNESCO in making norms in complex world of multiple actors and intersecting issue-areas. Reflecting on UNESCO's vision, its everyday practices, and future challenges; this work is an essential resource for students and scholars of international relations and international organizations.
How is the United States able to control the IMF with only 17 per cent of the votes? How are the rules of the global economy made? This book shows how a combination of formal and informal rules explains how international organizations really work. Randall W. Stone argues that formal rules apply in ordinary times, while informal power allows leading states to exert control when the stakes are high. International organizations are therefore best understood as equilibrium outcomes that balance the power and interests of the leading state and the member countries. Presenting a new model of institutional design and comparing the IMF, WTO, and EU, Stone argues that institutional variations reflect the distribution of power and interests. He shows that US interests influence the size, terms, and enforcement of IMF programs, and new data, archival documents, and interviews reveal the shortcomings of IMF programs in Mexico, Russia, Korea, Indonesia, and Argentina.
The idea that states and the international community have a responsibility to protect populations at risk has framed internationalist debates about conflict prevention, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and territorial administration since 2001. This book situates the responsibility to protect concept in a broad historical and jurisprudential context, demonstrating that the appeal to protection as the basis for de facto authority has emerged at times of civil war or revolution - the Protestant revolutions of early modern Europe, the bourgeois and communist revolutions of the following centuries and the revolution that is decolonisation. This analysis, from Hobbes to the UN, of the resulting attempts to ground authority on the capacity to guarantee security and protection is essential reading for all those seeking to understand, engage with, limit or critique the expansive practices of international executive action authorised by the responsibility to protect concept.
In the past decade the Rule of Law developments in the world have become contentious; its idea, concept, and global implementation have met growing resistance, which may soon shift the global balance of power, prompting international crisis. This book offers insights into the globally relevant Rule-of-Law ramifications for human rights, consitutional law, and philosophy of law in the time of such considerable challenges to it. From this legal perspective, the contributors analyze the questions of independence of judiciary, liberal education, freedom of mass media; populism, and corruption. They discuss global civic education, enhanced social inclusion, violence prevention, restorative justice and other methods of civic participation that can create larger opportunities for freedom in a UN world and help overcome increased ideological division between global North and South.
This timely book examines the responsibility of international organizations for complicity in human rights and humanitarian law violations. It comprehensively addresses a lacuna in current scholarship through an analysis of the mandates and modus operandi of UN peace operations, offering workable normative solutions and striking a balance between the UN s duty not to contribute to international law violations and its need to discharge mandated tasks in a highly volatile environment. Building on existing scholarship on State responsibility for aid or assistance, this incisive book is the first to focus on how the complicity of international organizations in human rights and humanitarian law violations can be established. Through a re-examination of classic legal notions such as due diligence and effective control, and their application to the problem of UN responsibility for complicity, Dr. Magdalena Pacholska provides a pertinent analysis of the complex issues surrounding the UN's legal exposure for its activities in the field of peace and security. Legal advisers working for the UN and other international organizations, national Ministries of Defence, and courts with jurisdiction in this area, will find this book's insights both valuable and useful in practice. It will also be of interest to scholars and employees of NGOs with a focus on international humanitarian law and the accountability of international organizations.
The mandate of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is close to many of the core issues now confronting developing and transition economy countries, and this book offers the first concise and accessible guide to this important organization. As the only UN organization to have been transformed from a UN secretariat entity to an independently governed UN agency, UNIDO has also an agency which has had to make drastic changes of focus and business practice in order to adjust to a changing environment. This book charts the complex origins and developments of the organization, and moves on to examine the current mandate of the agency, including trade capacity building, poverty reduction and Green Industry Initiative. It also examines the significant partnerships it has formed with other UN based systems such as UNCTAD and the ITC to achieve these goals. In the era of rapid globalization, UNIDO faces growing challenges. In the second part of this work, Browne seeks to review these challenges, and UNIDO's recent reforms under its current management, and looks suggest how the organization can help to meet some of the key global development challenges in the increasingly competitive environment of development cooperation and private sector initiative. This work will be a useful resource for all those with an interest in international organizations, international relations, development and trade, and international political economy.
Edited by Shirley V. Scott and Charlotte Ku, this forward-looking book examines the scope and options for the United Nations Security Council to respond to climate insecurity. A cross-disciplinary team of experts addresses the range of political and legal considerations involved, including, the scope for adapting existing Council tools to address the challenge of climate change, the legality and legitimacy of doing so, the attitude of the P5 and EU, and Council action to date. Specific tools considered include establishing an international court or tribunal, targeted sanctions, peace missions, and ?legislation?. The starting assumption is that, given the futures projected by climate scientists and the responsibility of the Council for international peace and security, the Council will almost inevitably take its place as a key player in climate governance. Contributors therefore focus on the question of just how the Council will be able to most constructively contribute to effective climate governance and how it can begin to prepare for such a role. This book will be of great value to scholars investigating the governance of climate change. For activists and government officials the book provides high quality research that can be drawn upon to give background to debate, and inform future policy.
This book examines the engagement between the United Nations' human rights machinery and the respective governments since Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) joined the United Nations. Sri Lanka has a long and rich history of engagement with international human rights instruments. However, despite its active membership in the UN, the country's post-colonial trials and tribulations are emblematic of the limited influence the international organisation has exerted on this country in the Global South. Assessing the impact of this international engagement on the country's human rights infrastructure and situation, the book outlines Sri Lanka's colonial and post-colonial development. It then considers the development of a domestic human rights infrastructure in the country. It also examines and analyzes Sri Lanka's engagement with the UN's treaty-based and charter-based human rights bodies, before offering conclusions concerning the impact of said engagement. The book offers an innovative approach to gauging the impact of international human rights engagement, while also taking into account the colonial and post-colonial imperatives that have partly dictated governmental behaviour. By doing so, the book seeks to combine and analyse international human rights law, post-colonial critique, studies on biopower, and critical approaches to international law. It will be a useful resource not only for scholars of international law, but also for practitioners and activists working in this area.
The contributors to this book describe, discuss, and evaluate the normative reframing brought about by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty), taking you on a journey through its genesis and negotiation history to the shape of the emerging global nuclear order. Adopted by the United Nations on 7 July 2017, the Ban Treaty came into effect on 22 January 2021. For advocates and supporters, weapons that were always immoral are now also illegal. To critics, it represents a profound threat to the stability of the existing global nuclear order with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as the normative anchor. As the most significant leap in nuclear disarmament in fifty years and a rare case study of successful state-civil society partnership in multilateral diplomacy, the Ban Treaty challenges the established order. The book's contributors are leading experts on the Ban Treaty, including senior scholars, policymakers and civil society activists. A vital guide to the Ban Treaty for students of nuclear disarmament, arms control and diplomacy as well as for policymakers in those fields.
The contributors to this book describe, discuss, and evaluate the normative reframing brought about by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty), taking you on a journey through its genesis and negotiation history to the shape of the emerging global nuclear order. Adopted by the United Nations on 7 July 2017, the Ban Treaty came into effect on 22 January 2021. For advocates and supporters, weapons that were always immoral are now also illegal. To critics, it represents a profound threat to the stability of the existing global nuclear order with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as the normative anchor. As the most significant leap in nuclear disarmament in fifty years and a rare case study of successful state-civil society partnership in multilateral diplomacy, the Ban Treaty challenges the established order. The book's contributors are leading experts on the Ban Treaty, including senior scholars, policymakers and civil society activists. A vital guide to the Ban Treaty for students of nuclear disarmament, arms control and diplomacy as well as for policymakers in those fields.
This history of colonial legacies in UN peacekeeping operations from 1945-1971 reveals how United Nations peacekeeping staff reconfigured the functions of global governance and sites of diplomatic power in the post-war world. Despite peacekeeping operations being criticised for their colonial underpinnings, our understanding of the ways in which colonial actors and ideas influenced peacekeeping practices on the ground has been limited and imprecise. In this multi-archival history, Margot Tudor investigates the UN's formative armed missions and uncovers the officials that orchestrated a reinvention of colonial-era hierarchies for Global South populations on the front lines of post-colonial statehood. She demonstrates how these officials exploited their field-based access to perpetuate racial prejudices, plot political interference, and foster protracted inter-communal divisions in post-colonial conflict contexts. Bringing together histories of humanitarianism, decolonisation, and the Cold War, Blue Helmet Bureaucrats sheds new light on the mechanisms through which sovereignty was negotiated and re-negotiated after 1945.
Addressing the problem of reconciling China's voting record in the UN on human rights and repressive policy at home, this book argues that domestic factors determine the way the Chinese government acts on wider human rights issues. China has a very active voting record in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on human rights resolutions and is active internationally on such rights, something at odds with its increasing repression of human rights at home. Using rational choice's emphasis on actors acting to advance their preferences, the author argues that it is the perceived domestic threat to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that determines the way the Chinese government acts on the human rights issues explored in this book. The author documents the pattern of this relationship through an in-depth examination of China's voting in the UNGA on human rights issues, and statements made by Chinese delegates in the UN on human rights issues. This book will appeal to students of China, human rights, international relations, and international organizations, and for both state and non-state actors seeking to advance policy changes regarding China and human rights. In addition, the findings have policy implications for INGOs and states seeking to influence China's policies.
What factors are conductive to the peaceful settlement of international and civil conflicts? This book looks for guidelines in contemporary theories of conflict resolution, and the practical experience of the UN, diplomats and mediators. It presents case studies of peacefully settled conflicts and tests proposition about peacemaking through a comparative analysis of over 80 peaceful and armed conflicts in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. This book asks what we can learn from this to improve future management of disputes. By the author of Nuclear Weapons: Who's in Charge.
From the beginnings of the Cold War to efforts to control Saddam Hussein's weapons program, this indispensable guide to the history and workings of the UN system shows how this widely misunderstood organization has helped to make the world a safer place and what its future prospects are likely to be. Rising from the ashes of World War II, the UN's birth was announced on October 24, 1945. Its military arm began in 1948 with the deployment of just 36 soldiers, tasked with supervising a fragile cease-fire in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since then it has undertaken more than 50 peacekeeping missions and concluded 500 multilateral conventions on human rights, arms control, environment, terrorism, and many other subjects. The United Nations System examines the continuing controversy that surrounds this organization. Whereas conservatives accuse the UN of wavering in the face of gross violations of its own resolutions by Saddam Hussein, many liberals have lambasted it for failing to take decisive action against genocide in the Balkans and in Rwanda. Highly readable and packed with useful facts and illustrations, this book is essential reading for those who wish to make up their own minds. Features the original texts of key UN documents such as the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Details the chronology of the UN system and the changes that have occurred since its founding in 1945
The United Nations: Reality and Ideal examines the structure, operation and history of the United Nations. It explains the historical roots of the UN system and its legal and organizational structures and sets out what the organization and its partners do in relation to major global events and issues. This revised and updated edition gives extended attention to peace-maintenance, human rights and economic and social development and examines the special position of the United States.
This book unfolds an exploratory journey intended to scrutinise the suitability of entanglements and relations as a mode of thinking and seeing peacebuilding events. Through a reflection upon the UN's limited results in the endeavour towards securing lasting peace in war-torn scenarios, Torrent critically engages with three relevant debates in contemporary peacebuilding literature, including the inclusion of 'the locals', the achievement of organisational system-wide coherence and the increasingly questioned agential condition of peacebuilding actors. Inattentive to the relational vulnerability of involved stakeholders, it is suggested that the UN seeks to secure a totalising modern distory, defined in the book as a story that undoes other stories. Whilst affirming the entangled ontogenesis of actors and processes in the conflict-affected configuration, Entangled Peace also delves into a cautionary argument about what the author refers to as entanglement fetishism, namely the celebratory, normative, deterministic and exclusionary projection of a relational world. Inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, Entangled Peace is an invitation to speculate over the peacebuilding milieu, and by extension the broader theatre of the real, as radical openness, in which events emanate from the collision of an infinite multiplicity of possible worlds.
After years of paralysis, the 1990s saw an explosion in the number of United Nations field operations around the world. In terms of scope and level of ambition, these interventions went beyond the tried and tested principles of classical UN peacekeeping. Indeed, in some cases - such as Cambodia, Kosovo and East Timor - the UN presence assumed the form of quasi-protectorates designed to steer war-torn and deeply divided societies towards lasting peace. This book examines the UN's performance and assesses the wider impact of 'new interventionism' on international order and the study of international relations. Featuring eight case studies of major UN interventions and an introductory chapter outlining the most important theoretical and political features of the international system which have led to the increased interventionary practices of the UN, this book will appeal to students and researchers in international relations and international organizations.
This new edition of a textbook first published in 2000 provides a comprehensive account of the law of treaties from the viewpoint of two experienced practitioners. It draws on the combined experience of Anthony Aust, the original author, and Jeremy Hill, until recently Legal Counsellor in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, London. The book provides a wealth of examples of the problems experienced with treaties on a daily basis. The authors explore numerous precedents from treaties and other related documents, such as non-legally binding instruments. Using clear and accessible language, the authors cover the full extent of treaty law, with both practitioners and students in mind. Modern Treaty Law and Practice is essential reading for officials in governments and international organisations, lawyers practising in international law, and teachers and students of law, political science, international relations and diplomacy who have an interest in treaties.
The United Nations and peacekeeping, 1988-95 presents innovative explanations on how after the Cold War UN peacekeeping operations became the dominant response to conflicts around the globe. This study offers a vivid description of these changes through the analysis of the evolution in the concept and practice of United Nations peacekeeping operations from 1988 to 1995. The research is anchored primarily in United Nations documents, which were produced following the diplomatic discussions that took place in the General Assembly, the Security Council and the UN Secretariat on the subject of peacekeeping in general and in the cases of Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia in particular. These large and complex operations were the testing ground for the new roles of peacekeeping in democratisation, humanitarian aid, resettlement of refugees, demobilisation of armed forces, economic development and advancement of good government. -- .
This book provides a critical history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. The women whose voices this book presents helped shape UN conventions, declarations, and policies with relevance to the international human rights of women throughout the world today. From the founding of the UN up until the Latin American feminist movements that pushed for gender equality in the UN Charter, and the Security Council Resolutions on the role of women in peace and conflict, the volume reflects on how women delegates from different parts of the world have negotiated and disagreed on human rights issues related to gender within the UN throughout time. In doing so it sheds new light on how these hidden historical narratives enrich theoretical studies in international relations and global agency today. In view of contemporary feminist and postmodern critiques of the origin of human rights, uncovering women's history of the United Nations from both Southern and Western perspectives allows us to consider questions of feminism and agency in international relations afresh. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners of law, diplomacy, history, and development studies, and brought together by a theoretical commentary by the Editors, Women and the UN will appeal to anyone whose research covers human rights, gender equality, international development, or the history of civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036708, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This book examines a particular type of donor behavior - known as country earmarking of contributions - which occurs within the voluntary financing system of the United Nations. The research demonstrates that already during the period of the Millennium Development Goals a large share of the voluntary multilateral funding decisions was influenced by the commercial priorities of the OECD/DAC donor countries. The theoretical contribution focuses on disentangling the mix of policy advantages that can be pursued through linking of donors' commercial priorities with multi-bilateral development programs. The book considers its empirical findings within the current framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the associated aid financing architecture. It demonstrates that, despite many negative associations of commercial aid giving, it is difficult to make an indisputably negative judgment on the practice of commercial earmarking in the specific context of the specialized UN agencies. The author argues that whether commercial earmarking proves to be a curse or a blessing for the multilateral development institutions will very much depend on the availability of parallel, flexible funding, and the creation of adequate political and operational space for supranational norm-keepers. Synthesizing the existing knowledge concerning the supply-side of multi-bi aid, this book provides an accessible, entry-level overview of the topic that will appeal to students and scholars of global governance and international organizations.
The book investigates migration safety, which is a central policy concern the United Nations and within public discourse in light of the recent global refugee crisis. Presenting a fresh angle within wider hostilities and ambivalences regarding migration polices worldwide, this book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration may look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing relating contemporary forms of governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and human geographers working on Migration studies as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.
First published in 1997. 1997 marked the fifth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - the celebrated 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro which represented the high-water mark of intergovernmental action for sustainable development. Whilst some were tempted to dismiss the Conference as a gesture of concern by the participating governments, the list of resolutions which arose from the Summit is formidable, and the key text to emerge from the conference process, Agenda 21, had proven to be crucial to efforts to disseminate and implement the principles of globally sustainable development. The Way Forward outlines the successes and failures of those first five years. Calling on a list of eminent experts, it provides an unparalleled analysis of the agreements that were reached, and the stakeholders who were charged with implementing them. It reviews the progress that was made at the intergovernmental, national and grassroots levels, and offers a cogent summary of the major issues that needed to be addressed for the future. Lucid, compact and authoritative, this is the essential guide to 'Rio plus five'. |
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