A comprehensive analysis of contemporary indigenous rights

This book provides a detailed analysis of South Africa's actions on the UN Human Rights Council, examining the country's positions on civil and political rights, economic rights and development, social groups whose rights are frequently violated, and abuses in specific countries. The most detailed and comprehensive study of any country's record on the UN Human Rights Council to date, this book demonstrates that despite occasional support for human rights, South Africa's overall record ranged from opposing to failing to support human rights. This is compounded by an anti-Western or 'anti-imperial' edge to South Africa's positions on the UNHRC. Using South Africa as a study case of a liberal country consistently behaving illiberally, this book therefore challenges the widespread belief in international relations theory, typically found in liberal and constructivist thought, that there is an alignment of domestic political society and foreign policy values. Addressing ongoing debates since the presidency of Nelson Mandela about the place of human rights in South Africa's foreign policy, South Africa and the UN Human Rights Council will be useful to students and scholars of international relations, human rights, international law, and African politics.

The UN Military Staff Committee is a misunderstood organ, and never really worked as it was initially envisaged. This book charts its historic development as a means to explain the continuous debate about the reactivation of the Military Staff Committee and, more generally, the unsatisfied need for the Security Council to have a military advisory body so that it does not only depend on the Secretariat to make its decisions on military and security affairs. The author takes a clear stand for the establishment of a military committee with real weight in the decision-making process of the Security Council related to peace operations. The Security Council remains the only international body making decisions in peace and security, authorizing military deployment without advice from a collective body of military experts and advisers. Recreating such a body is the missing part of all UN reform structures undertaken in past years. As the number of UN troops deployed increases, this book will be an important read for all students and scholars of international organisations, security studies and international relations.

International organizations (IOs) that focus on refugees are finding themselves spread increasingly thin. As the scale of displacement reaches historic levels-protracted refugee situations now average 26 years-organizations are staying for years on end, often working well beyond their original mandates. In some cases, IOs may even act as a substitute for the state. This book considers the conditions under which surrogacy occurs and what it means for the organization's influence on the state. It looks specifically at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a surrogate state in protracted refugee situations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Drawing on international relations literature and empirical studies of UNHCR, Miller asks how and when UNHCR takes on surrogacy, and what effect this has on its ability to influence how a host state treats refugees. The book develops a framework for understanding IOs at the domestic level and presents a counterintuitive finding: IO surrogacy actually leads to less influence on the state. In other words, where UNHCR behaves like a state, it is less able to influence a host state's refugee policies. UNHCR provides an excellent example of an IO working on multiple levels, making this book of great interest to practitioners and policymakers working on refugee-related issues, and scholars of forced migration, international relations, international organizations, and UNHCR.

This book highlights how temporary international civil servants play a crucial role in initiating processes of legal and institutional change in the United Nations system. These individuals are the "missing" creative elements needed to fully understand the emergence and initial spread of UN ideas such as human development, sovereignty as responsibility, and multifunctional peacekeeping. The book: Shows that that temporary UN officials are an actor category which is empirically crucial, yet usually neglected in analytical studies of the UN system. Focussing on these particular individual actors therefore allows for a better understanding of complex UN decision-making. Demonstrates how these civil servants matter, looking at what their agency is based on. Offering a new and distinctive model, Bode seeks to move towards a comprehensive conceptualisation of individual agency, which is currently conspicuous for its absence in many theoretical approaches that address policy change Uses three key case studies of international civil servants (Francis Deng, Mahbub ul Haq and Marrack Goulding) to explore the possibilities of this specific group of UN individuals to act as agents of change and thereby test the prevailing notion that international bureaucrats can only act as agents of the status quo. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations and the United Nations.

This book reviews the formative years of the United Nations (UN) under its first Secretary-General Trygve Lie. This welcome appraisal shows how the foundations for an expanded secretary-general role were laid during this period, and that Lie's contribution was greater than has later been acknowledged. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints and the individuals involved thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today. Addressing important wider questions of IGO creation, governance and autonomy, this is an incisive account of how the UN moved from paper to practice under Lie.

Mark D. Alleyne explains why the UN has run a propaganda program, why it has been defensive about it, and the role that project plays in international relations. Through the use of critical theory, the book makes a fascinating connection between a range of seemingly unconnected international phenomena, such as the Olympic Games, the celebration of Human Rights Day, UN peacekeeping, Hollywood movies, the campaign to free Nelson Mandela, and soccer’s World Cup. Alleyne’s incisive analysis is the needed tool for understanding how modern international relations is as much about the manipulation of symbols and ideas as about war.

Since the 1950s, European integration has included ever more countries with ever-softening borders between them. In its apparent reversal of integration and its recreation of borders, Brexit intensifies deep-seated tensions, both institutional and territorial, within and between the constitutional orders of the United Kingdom and Ireland. In this book, leading scholars from the UK and Ireland assess the pressures exerted by Brexit, from legal, historical, and political perspectives. This book explores the territorial pressures within the UK constitution, connecting them to the status of Northern Ireland before exploring how analogous territorial pressures might be addressed in a united Ireland. The book also critically analyses the Brexit process within the UK, drawing on Irish comparative examples, to assess unresolved tensions between popular mandate, legislative democracy, and executive responsibility. Through practical application, this book explores how constitutions function under the most intense political pressures.

This book reveals why the UN is more successful than unilateral great powers in protecting civilians from violence, and focuses on the discourse, development and consequences of UN peacekeeping. Analysing statistics of state fragility and fatalities of violence, it reveals that the UN has managed to save tens of thousands of lives with its peacekeeping: a surprising statistic given the media consensus about the UN's powerlessness and inefficiency. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis of resolutions from the UN Security Council, 1993-2019, the book offers data that describe the character and development of UN approach to the protection of civilians from violence. It then links the data to the statistics of conflict fatalities and state fragility to reveal, by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when, where, how and why the UN has been successful at protecting civilians. Two reasons for the UN's success are highlighted in the book as being statistically most significant. First, the organization offers local ownership to peaceful solutions by considering conflicting parties as the primary agents of protection. Second, the UN approach is much less power-oriented than unilateral approaches by the great powers: protection for the UN does not mean deterrence or destruction, but rather, support for local protectors of civilians. However, strong great power influence on such operations tends to weaken UN's ability to save lives. This book will be of much interest to students of humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, human rights and International Relations in general.

This book concerns the United Nations' peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa's 55 states and the African Union's three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.

The book reinterprets the role of the UN during the Congo crisis from 1960 to 1964, presenting a multidimensional view of the organisation. Through an examination of the Anglo-American relationship, the book reveals how the UN helped position this event as a lightning rod in debates about how decolonisation interacted with the Cold War. By examining the ways in which the various dimensions of the UN came into play in Anglo-American considerations of how to handle the Congo crisis, the book reveals how the Congo debate reverberated in wider ideological struggles about how decolonisation evolved and what the role of the UN would be in managing this process. The UN became a central battle ground for ideas and visions of world order; as the newly-independent African and Asian states sought to redress the inequalities created by colonialism, the US and UK sought to maintain the status quo, while the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjoeld tried to reconcile these two contrasting views. -- .

Africa has been the source of some of the international community's most devastating failures and important successes in conflict management. The purpose of this book is to examine the issues and experiences associated with the increased level of activity between the United Nations and regional organizations in their efforts to address conflict in Africa. Using nine case studies and an overview of recent changes at the institutional level this book assesses what these experiences tell us about the United Nations, about African regional organizations, and about conflict management processes.

First published in 1993. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, in June 1992, was a unique event in the annals of international affairs. The 'Earth Summit' brought more heads of state and government together than any previous meeting, and five separate agreements were signed by most of the participating governments. It was billed as the world's greatest opportunity to resolve pressing problems of continuing poverty and environmental destruction and to set the world on a path of sustainable development. Thirty thousand people descended upon the city, and the Summit received a blaze of publicity around the world. Yet despite the vast efforts devoted to it, and the unprecedented press coverage which it received, to many the Earth Summit is still a mystery. The outcome has been labelled as everything from a disastrous fiasco to an outstanding success. Which was it; indeed, what was it? What came out of it? What was actually agreed, and what does it mean for the future of environment and development issues? This book presents a major summary and analysis of UNCED. It explains the background to the conference, its major achievements and disappointments, and the legacy which it has left. Individual chapters examine in detail each of the five main agreements signed at Rio, providing a short description of the negotiating background, analysis of the final text, and the likely implications. This title will be of great interest to students of environmental studies.

The book reconciles the conflicts and legal ambiguities between African Union and ECOWAS law on the use of force on the one hand, and the UN Charter and international law on the other hand. In view of questions relating to African Union and UN relationship in the maintenance of international peace and security in Africa in recent years, the book examines the legal issues involved and how they can be resolved. By explaining the legal theory underpinning the validity of the AU-ECOWAS laws, the work provides a legal basis for the adoption of the AU-ECOWAS laws as the frameworks for the implementation of the R2P in Africa.

"The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015?income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all. The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005. The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector. This report lays out the recommendations of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Environmental Sustainability. It identifies key environmental challenges, such as degradation of land, watersheds and marine fisheries, deforestation, pollution, and climate change. The Task Force proposes specific interventions and policy changes required to improve environmental management at the country, regional and international level. These bold yet practical approaches will help countries make progress towards environmental sustainability by 2015."

The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015?income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all. The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005. The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector. This report lays out the recommendations of the UN Millennium Project Task Force 5 Working Group on TB. The Working Group's recommendations include expanding access to DOTS programs, implementing efforts against HIV-related TB and multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB, engaging all primary care providers and communities in high quality TB care, and developing new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. These bold yet practical approaches will enable countries in every region of the world to halve the prevalence of TB by 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015 income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all. The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005. The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector. In this report the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation outlines the bold yet practical actions that are needed to increase access to water and sanitation. The report underscores the need to focus on the global sanitation crisis, which contributes to the death of 3900 children each day, improve domestic water supply, and invest in integrated development and management of water resources, all of which are necessary for countries to reduce poverty and hunger, improve health, advance gender equality and ensure environmental sustainability. Implementing the recommendations of this report will allow all countries to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015

Examining the involvement of religious NGOs (RNGOs) at the UN, this book explores whether they polarize political debates at the UN or facilitate agreement on policy issues. The number of RNGOs engaging with the United Nations (UN) has grown considerably in recent years: RNGOs maintain relations with various UN agencies, member-state missions, and other NGOs, and participate in UN conferences and events. This volume includes both a quantitative overview of RNGOs at the UN and qualitative analyses of specific policy issues such as international development, climate change, business and human rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, international criminal justice, defamation of religions, and intercultural dialogue and cooperation. The contributions explore the factors that explain the RNGOs' normative positions and actions and scrutinise the assumption that religions introduce non-negotiable principles into political debate and decision-making that inevitably lead to conflict and division. Presenting original research on RNGOs and issues of global public policy, this volume will be relevant to both researchers and policy-makers in the fields of religion and international relations, the United Nations, and non-state actors and global governance.

In a growing number of instances after the cold war, the United Nations and other international actors have sought to rebuild or establish new political institutions in states or territories recovering from violent conflict. From Afghanistan, Iraq, and the western Balkans to less prominent wars in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and the South Pacific, the international community's response involves extensive intrusions into the domestic affairs of sovereign states. Extending beyond the narrow mandates of traditional peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations, these interventions aspire to reconstitute local power within a democratic framework. Democratic Peacebuilding examines the evolution of international peacebuilding during this tumultuous period, identifying the factors that limit the progress of international actors to institutionalize democratic authority and the rule of law in war-shattered societies.
Based on extensive field research, the book gives particular attention to Afghanistan's Bonn Agreement process (2001-2005) and Post-Bonn period (2006-2009), in which the country's multiple, competing forms of authority (e.g. religious leaders, tribal elders, militia commanders, and technocrats) challenged efforts to create "modern" forms of political authority rooted in democratic norms and the rule of law. Despite the significant risks involved, Democratic Peacebuilding argues that the institutionalization of democratic legal authority can create the conditions and framework necessary to mediate competing domestic interests and to address the root causes of a conflict peacefully. At the same time, one overlooked problem of international peacebuilding stems from the divergent conceptions, between international officials and the local population, of authority and its sources of legitimacy. By helping a conflict-affected society reconcile the inherent tensions between competing forms of authority and, over time, deepen democracy--rather than lower the metrics for progress and conditions for exit, international peacebuilders can contribute to improved conditions for governance and a reduction in intra-state political violence. This examination of the peacebuilding-democratization nexus in war-torn societies aims to generate new insights for scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners in both the study and practice of politics and international relations.

Civil society participants have voiced concerns that the environmental problems that were the subject of multilateral environmental agreements negotiated during the 1992 Rio processes are not serving to ameliorate global environmental problems. These concerns raise significant questions regarding the utility of negotiating agreements through the UN. This book elucidates the complexity of how participants engage in these negotiations through the various processes that take place under the auspices of the UN-primarily those related to climate and biological diversity. By taking an ethnographic approach and providing concrete examples of how it is that civil society participants engage in making policy, this book develops a robust sense of the implications of the current terrain of policy-making-both for the environment, and for the continued participation of non-state actors in multilateral environmental governance. Using data gathered at actual negotiations, the book develops concepts such as participation and governance beyond theory. The research uses participant observation ethnographic methods to tie the theoretical frameworks to people's actual activities as policy is generated and contested. Whereas topics associated with global environmental governance are traditionally addressed in fields such as international relations and political science, this book contributes to developing a richer understanding of the theories using a sociological framework, tying individual activities into larger social relations and shedding light on critical questions associated with transnational civil society and global politics.

Cogan examines the France-NATO problem, going back to its origins in 1945-1952, when a weak France, obsessed by the threat of Germany and jealous of the ascendancy gained by the British during the war, sought security guarantees and assistance from the United States. However, in the process, France put itself in a position of dependence under the NATO integrated command to a degree that later governments of a resurgent France felt compelled to challenge-and are still doing so today. Post-World War II France was to disappoint the hopes of such American statesmen as Dean Acheson and George Kennan, who looked to it to take the lead in Western Europe in the face of a growing Soviet threat. Dogged by the humiliation of the wartime occupation, obsessed by fear of a resurgent Germany, jealous of the British ascendancy gained during the war, and dominated by an intellectual class almost wholly given over to the prevailing antifascism (and, therefore, philo-sovietism) of the postwar, France would take 20 years to live up to its promise as the motor of Western Europe. Though it was perhaps inevitable that France, falling on the western divide of the Iron Curtain, would join the U.S. camp, it did so with a loss of sovereignty, symbolized in NATO's integrated command. This was a situation which Charles de Gaulle, after his return to power in 1958, would seek to undo. His successors have continued this quest to this day. Cogan explores the Gaullist argument that the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO are two distinct movements against a background of ever-increasing threats-or perceived threats-by the Soviet Union, culminating in the North Korean invasion of 1950. The French, desperate to emerge from a position of wartime inferiority, willingly abandoned hopes of building a defense of Europe by Europeans alone. France threw itself into the arms of the United States, partly to escape the onerous tutelage of Great Britain. In 1951, when the NATO integrated command was put in place, the French wound up with very little-not even a major subordinate command. Frustration and, ultimately, withdrawal from the NATO military structure were the results. This is a major examination of contemporary international relations and Western European defense policy for scholars and researchers alike.

This is a revised edition of a two-volume survey United Nations Legal Order. It provides students and scholars with a text that appraises the contribution made by the United Nations to contemporary international law and the law-creating process. Among the topics addressed are how international law is made by UN institutions; what contemporary international law owes its existence to the United Nations; how and whether UN bodies have served as sources of international law; and whether UN-created law can be said to have worked as an effective regulator of state conduct. Covering a wide range of UN activity, this book represents a comprehensive guide to the role of the UN in providing viable legal rules to deal with international problems.

Peace operations are the UN's flagship activity. Over the past decade, UN blue helmets have been dispatched to ever more challenging environments from the Congo to Timor to perform an expanding set of tasks. From protecting civilians in the midst of violent conflict to rebuilding state institutions after war, a new range of tasks has transformed the business of the blue helmets into an inherently knowledge-based venture. But all too often, the UN blue helmets, policemen, and other civilian officials have been "flying blind" in their efforts to stabilize countries ravaged by war. The UN realized the need to put knowledge, guidance and doctrine, and reflection on failures and successes at the center of the institution.
Building on an innovative multi-disciplinary framework, The New World of UN Peace Operations provides a first comprehensive account of learning in peacekeeping. Covering the crucial past decade of expansion in peace operations, it zooms into a dozen cases of attempted learning across four crucial domains: police assistance, judicial reform, reintegration of former combatants, and mission integration. Throughout the different cases, the book analyzes the role of key variables as enablers and stumbling blocks for learning: bureaucratic politics, the learning infrastructure, leadership as well as power and interests of member states. Building on five years of research and access to key documents and decision-makers, it presents a vivid portrait of an international bureaucracy struggling to turn itself into a learning organization. Aimed at policy-makers, diplomats, and a wide academic audience (including those working in international relations, peace research, political science, public administration, and organizational sociology), The New World of UN Peace Operations is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the evolution of modern peace operations.

An in-depth examination of the evolving peace and security activities of the United Nations Secretary-General in the context of developments in international politics. The constraints and opportunities which the Office has experienced under Perez de Cuellar and Boutros-Ghali in the transition to the post-Cold War world and the controversy which has surrounded the Office reflects the volatility and uncertainty of the UN in a changing environment. It is argued that the Secretary-General's activities in the 1990s reflect a development of the international civil service beyond the classical model.

In this book, author Otto Spijkers describes how moral values determined the founding of the United Nations Organization in 1945, and the evolution of its purposes, principles, and policies since then. A detailed examination of the proceedings of the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco demonstrates that the drafting of the UN Charter was significantly influenced by global moral values, i.e. globally-shared beliefs distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad, and the current from a preferable state-of-the-world. A common desire - to eradicate war, poverty, inhuman treatment, and to halt the exploitation of peoples - has led to an affirmation of the values of peace and security, social progress and development, human dignity, and the self-determination of all peoples. All these values ended up in the UN Charter. The book further analyzes how the UN, and especially its General Assembly, has continued to influence the maturing of global morality through contributions to the values debate, and to the translation of these values into the language of international law, including the law on the use of force, sustainable development, human rights, and the right to self-determination. (Series: School of Human Rights Research - Vol. 47)