"The United Nations Democracy Agenda" is a critical, conceptual-historical analysis of democracy at the United Nations, detailed in four "visions" of democracy: civilization, elections, governance, and developmental democracy. "I know it when I see it" were the famous words of US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart on defining obscenity. It is with the same conviction and (un)certainty with which liberal peacebuilders and democracy promoters have used democracy to achieve both the immediate goals of peacekeeping and the broader, global mission of the United Nations. Today, democracy may have gained an international dimension, yet its success as an organizational practice depends on how democracy has been defined. Drawing on political theory and democratization scholarship, "The United Nations Democracy Agenda" questions the meaning of this "well-known" idea. The book analyzes the way in which the UN, through its Secretary-General, relevant agencies, and organizational practices, have thought about, conceptualized, and used democracy. "The United Nations Democracy Agenda" shows that while the idea of democracy's "civilizing" nature has played a prominent part in its use by the UN, an early focus on sovereignty and self-determination delayed the emergence of the democracy agenda until the 1990s. Today, a comprehensive democracy agenda incorporates not only elections but a broad range of liberal democratic institutions. Despite this, the democracy agenda is at an impasse, both practically and philosophically. "The United Nations Democracy Agenda" questions whether an extension of the UN democracy agenda to include "developmental democracy" is feasible.

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.

This book provides a concise guide to international disability law. It analyses the case law of the CRPD Committee and other international human rights treaty bodies, and provides commentaries on more than 50 leading cases. The author elaborates on the obligations of States Parties under the CRPD and other international treaties, while also spelling out the rights of persons with disabilities, and the different mechanisms that exist at both domestic and international levels for ensuring that those rights are respected, protected and promoted. The author also delineates the traditional differentiation between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. He demonstrates, through analysis of the evolving case law, how the gap between these two sets of rights is gradually closing. The result is a powerful tool for political decisionmakers, academics, legal practitioners, law students, persons with disabilities and their representative organisations, human rights activists and general readers.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the first international agreement setting out freedoms, rights and entitlements for all humanity to claim. It emphasises the inextricable relationship between fundamental freedoms and social justice, and their connection with peace and security. The General Assembly of the United Nations proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping the UDHR constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

This edited volume provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of UN peacekeeping and the use of force, to inform a better understanding of the complex and interconnected issues at stake for the UN community. Peacekeeping is traditionally viewed as a largely passive military activity, governed by the principles of impartiality, consent, and the minimum use of force. Today, most large UN Peacekeeping Operations are only authorized to use force in defence of their mandates and to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence. Recently, with the deployment of the Force Intervention Brigade in the DRC, the UN has gone beyond peacekeeping and into the realm of peace-enforcement. These developments have brought to the fore questions regarding the use of force in the context of peacekeeping. The key questions addressed in this book examine not only the utility of force, but also the dilemmas and constraints inherent to the purposive use of force at a strategic, operational and tactical level. Should UN peacekeepers exercise military initiative? Is UN peacekeeping capable of undertaking offensive military operations? If so, then under what circumstances should peacekeepers use force? How should force be wielded? And against whom? With chapters written by experts in the field, this comprehensive volume will be of great use and interest to postgraduate students, academics and experts in international security, the UN, peacekeeping and diplomacy.

Europe Un-Imagined examines one of the world's first and only trans nationally produced television channels, Association relative a la television europeenne (ARTE). ARTE calls itself the "European culture channel" and was launched in 1991 with a French-German intergovernmental mandate to produce television and other media that promoted pan-European community and culture. Damien Stankiewicz's ground-breaking ethnographic study of the various contexts of media production work at ARTE (the newsroom, the editing studio, the screening room), reveals how ideas about French, German, and European culture coalesce and circulate at the channel. He argues that the reproduction of nationalism often goes unacknowledged and unremarked upon, and questions whether something like a European "imagination" can be produced. Stankiewicz describes the challenges that ARTE staff face, including rapidly changing media technologies and audiences, unreflective national stereotyping, and unwieldy bureaucratic infrastructure, which ultimately limit the channel's abilities to cultivate a transnational, "European" public. Europe Un-Imagined challenges its readers to find new ways of thinking about how people belong in the world beyond the problematic logics of national categorization.

The UN Security Council formally acknowledged an obligation to promote justice and the rule of law in 2003. This volume examines the extent to which the Council has honoured this commitment when exercising its powers under the UN Charter to maintain international peace and security. It discusses both how the concept of the rule of law regulates, or influences, Security Council activity and how the Council has in turn shaped the notion of the rule of law. It explores in particular how this relationship has affected the Security Council's three most prominent tools for the maintenance of international peace and security: peacekeeping, sanctions and force. In doing so, this volume identifies strategies for better promotion of the rule of law by the Security Council. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of international law, international relations, international development and peacekeeping.

When the Soviet Union pulled its forces out of Afghanistan, the American media had a simple explanation: Soviet troops had been hounded out of the mountains by U.S.-armed guerrillas--the skies cleared of Soviet aircraft by Stinger missiles--until the Kremlin was forced to cry uncle. But Diego Cordovez and Selig S. Harrison shatter this image. Out of Afghanistan shows that the Red Army was securely entrenched when the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw: American weaponry and Afghan bravery raised the costs for Moscow, but it was six years of skillful diplomacy that gave the Russians a way out.

Cordovez and Harrison provide the definitive account of the Soviet blunders that led up to the invasion and the bitter struggles over the withdrawal that raged in the Soviet and Afghan Communist parties and the Reagan Administration. The authors are particularly well-suited to their task: Cordovez was the United Nations mediator who negotiated the Soviet pullout, and Harrison is a leading South Asia expert with four decades of experience in covering Afghanistan. Their story of the U.N. negotiations is interwoven with a gripping chronicle of the war years, complete with palace shootouts in Kabul, turf warfare between rival Soviet intelligence agencies, and the CIA role in building up Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla leaders at the expense of Afghan moderates. Cordovez opens up his diaries to take us behind the scenes in his negotiations, and Harrison draws on interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and other key actors. The result is a book full of surprises. For example, the authors demonstrate that the Soviets intervened not out of a desire to drive to the Indian Ocean, but out of a fear of a U.S.-supported Afghan Tito. Rebuffs by hardline "bleeders" in the Reagan Administration undermined efforts by Yuri Andropov to secure a settlement before his death in 1983. Even more startling, Gorbachev resumed the search for a negotiated withdrawal more than a year before the first American-supplied Stinger missiles were deployed in the war.

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was one of the pivotal events of recent history. Out of Afghanistan destroys many of the myths surrounding the Afghan war and will have a profound impact on the emerging debate over how and why the Cold War ended.

This volume comprehensively evaluates the current state and future reform prospects of the UN Security Council, providing the most accessible and rigorous treatment of the subject of reform to date. Apart from a couple of critical eyes in the academic community, few have asked the pertinent questions that this volume seeks to address: Will the enlargement of the Council constitute a reform? Could the inclusion of countries such as India, Germany, Japan, and Brazil markedly improve the Council's agency? In response, this book focuses on: The Role and Agency of the UN Security Council The History of the Reform Debate An Expanded Council Working Method Reforms Enhancing Agency As the future of the UN Security Council continues to be the focus of fierce debate, this book will be essential reading for students of international relations, international organizations and international security studies alike.

The Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime represents a major step forward in the internationally co-operative fight against transnational organized crime. This book offers a comprehensive, article by article legal commentary on the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its two Protocols on Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants. The Convention was adopted by the General Assembly in 2001, and came into force in 2003 with over 75 State Parties. The Convention defines offences, and lays down rules as to the co-operation of State Parties in various procedures aimed at preventing and detecting those offences, such as mutual legal assistance, extradition, law-enforcement cooperation, technical assistance and training, and the seizure of assets obtained by their commission. This commentary analyses the nature of transnational organized crime, in particular the aspects which the Convention articles address, and examines how it has been implemented since it came into force.

Despite the key importance of accountability for the legitimacy of humanitarian action, inadequate academic attention has been given to how the concept of accountability is evolving within the specific branches of the humanitarian enterprise. Up to now, there exists no comprehensive account of what we label the 'technologies of accountability', the effects of their interaction, or the question of how the current turn to decision-making software and biometrics as both the means and ends of accountability may contribute to reshaping humanitarian governance. UNHCR and the Struggle for Accountability explores the UNHCR's quest for accountability by viewing the UNHCR's accountability obligations through the web of institutional relationships within which the agency is placed (beneficiaries, host governments, implementing partners, donors, the Executive Committee and UNGA). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach in order to illuminate the various layers and relationships that constitute accountability and also to reflect on what constitutes good enough accountability. This book contributes to the discussion regarding how we construct knowledge about concepts in humanitarian studies and is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and professionals in the areas of anthropology, history, international relations, international law, science, technology studies and socio-legal studies.

This book analyses the exercise of authority by the UN Security Council and its subsidiary organs over individuals. The UN Security Council was created in 1945 as an outcome of World War II under the predominant assumption that it exercises its authority against states. Under this assumption, the UN Security Council and those individuals were 'distanced' by the presence of member states that intermediate between the Security Council's international commands and those individuals that are subject to member states' domestic law. However, in practice, the UN Security Council's exercise of authority has incrementally removed the presence of state intermediaries and reduced the Security Council's distance to individuals. This book demonstrates that this phenomenon has increased the relevance of domestic law in developing the international normative frameworks governing the UN Security Council and its subsidiary organs in safeguarding the rights, obligations, and interests of those affected individuals. This book presents how the UN Security Council's exercise of authority has been received at the domestic level, and what would be the international implications of the Security Council's extensive encounter with the actors who primarily reside in a domestic legal order.

Both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) are now about to close. Bachmann and Fatic look back at the achievements and shortcomings of both tribunals from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by sociology, political science, history, and philosophy of law and based upon on two key notions: the concepts of legitimacy and efficiency. The first asks to what extent the input (creation) of, the ICTY and the ICTR can be regarded as legitimate in light of the legal and public debate in the early 1990s. The second confronts the output (the procedures and decisions) of the ICTY and the ICTR with the tasks both tribunals were assigned by the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, and by key organs (the president and the chief prosecutors). The authors investigate to what extent the ICTY and the ICTR have delivered the expected results, whether they have been able to contribute to 'the maintenance of peace', 'stabilization' of the conflict regions, or even managed to provide 'reconciliation' to Rwanda. Furthermore, the book is concerned with how many criminals, over whom the ICTY and the ICTR wield jurisdiction, have actually been prosecuted and at what cost. Offering the first balanced and in depth analysis of the International Criminal Tribunals, the volume provides an important insight into what lessons have been learned, and how a deeper understanding of the successes and failures can benefit the international legal community in the future.

This book seeks to explore how the UN has generated, warehoused, disseminated, structured, packaged, expanded, transferred and leveraged its vast resources of accumulated information and experience throughout the decades and, particularly, since the start of the 21st century with the introduction of more connective information and communications technology. It examines the overarching objectives that have guided such activity and divides UN knowledge management into three distinct, but often overlapping and intertwining, categories: knowledge for social and organizational learning; knowledge for norm setting; and knowledge for creation of products and services. Svenson brings together these multiple aspects of UN knowledge management to present a holistic view of how the organization utilizes its global intelligence to educate, advocate and serve member countries' development. Instead of looking at the UN as an international bureaucracy or as a peacekeeping, policymaking, humanitarian or development entity, this work studies the UN as a generator and purveyor of information, learning and experience in all of these areas. This book will be key reading for all students and scholars of international organizations.

Originally published in 1996. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is one of the most effective multilateral environmental agreements currently in existence. Established to control the production and consumption of CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals, the Protocol is an important example of an agreement which places restrictions on international trade in the interests of the global environmental - a feature which may become common in future treaties. This report examines the development, effectiveness and future of the trade provisions of the ozone regime, concluding that they have contributed significantly to its success in attracting signatories and in limiting ozone depletion. Issues considered include the compatibility of the trade provisions and the GATT, trade restrictions and developing countries, and the new problems of non-compliance and illegal trade in CFCs.

The institutional procedures for the UN's decision-making on issues of global peace and security, first and foremost the Security Council (SC), were conceived with the objective of enabling a swift but internationally coordinated response to irregular situations of crises. Today, however, the UN is constantly involved in situations of conflict and has expanded its range of activities.

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.

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.

The United Nations and Human Security analyzes the changing peace and security challenges faced by the UN in an evolving international environment that is no longer solely characterized by states and inter-state security. The authors, who comprise both scholars and UN practitioners, cover a wide range of pressing current issues--including refugees, international tribunals, the promotion of democracy, ethics, regional organizations, humanitarian intervention, conflict prevention, and peacekeeping--that form a cutting-edge and controversial security agenda.

This publication features a collection of contemporary papers that examine both the efficacy and morality of foreign intervention into a country's affairs.;When is a war not a war? Under what circumstances is humanitarian intervention by the international community justified? In what circumstances can a state legitimately put at risk the lives of members of its armed forces? These are some of the questions raised through the essays contained in this book.;The authors consider the main ethical and political arguments surrounding the subject of intervention, and between them, cover a wide range of areas, coming to focus on international institutions and international law, domestic and political viewpoints, humanitarian consideratons, the applicability of the just war theory, and the role of public opinion and the media.

In this fully illustrated introduction, Dr Carter Malkasian provides a concise overview of the so-called "Forgotten War" in Korea. From 1950 to 1953, the most powerful countries in the world engaged in a major conventional war in Korea. Yet ironically this conflict has come to be known as the USA's "Forgotten War." Esteemed historian Dr Carter Malkasian explains how this conflict in a small peninsula in East Asia had a tremendous impact on the entire international system and the balance of power between the two superpowers, America and Russia. In this illustrated history, he examines how the West demonstrated its resolve to thwart Communist aggression and the armed forces of China, the Soviet Union and the United States came into direct combat for the only time during the Cold War. Updated and revised for the new edition, with specially commissioned color maps and new images throughout, this is a detailed introduction to a significant turning point in the Cold War.

This book provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the United Nations intervention in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1947. In his structured and exhaustive analysis, the author presents a long term perspective on the UN intervention in the conflict and explains its evolution during the last sixty years. He draws on a wealth of quantitative data to provide a complete picture of resolutions addressed to the Arab-Israeli conflict by the General Assembly and the Security Council, the mediation activity, and the UN peace missions in the area. Through his analysis, Di Mauro addresses such questions as: Why did the United Nations have different involvement and efforts of interventions in the conflict? How did the role of the UN change during the dispute, and why did it change? Is there still a role for the UN in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process? Offering a contribution to both to the studies of UN intervention in conflict resolution and, more broadly, to the UN role in the international system, The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict will be of great interest to International Relation scholars and students, but also appreciable by historians, political scientists, methodologists and all the social scientists interested in the Palestine question and the United Nations.

Only 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the Western-dominated global order is fading and our hopes that liberal democracy would spread and bring world peace are evaporating. While the West is increasingly preoccupied with its internal problems, threats to global peace have fundamentally changed: wars among nation-states and their alliances, once the dominant scourge of humankind, have almost disappeared and are replaced by a triple threat from intra-state armed conflicts, the failing of nation-states and the rise of belligerent non-state actors. The global peace we felt within our reach in 1991, is escaping us. On Building Peace seeks the answers that the UN Charter can no longer provide. Once meant as a guarantor for peace, the Charter was never designed to deal with intra-state conflicts and today its core principles are eroded. The book makes two rather simple, but possibly unpopular suggestions for preserving future peace: first, we must rescue the nation-state, not despite but because of globalization, and second, we must not further undermine the United Nations, but expand its Charter for dealing collectively with this triple threat. The struggle for survival in a world of limited resources and environmental degradation will deepen intra-state conflicts. We must prevent slipping back into a new round of Cold War-type confrontations and focus on finding collective solutions for building peace. For the sake of billions of people of future generations, we cannot get this wrong.

The United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) was established in 1975 and abolished in 1992. It was an early effort by the UN to address the overlapping issues of national sovereignty, corporate responsibility and global governance. These issues have since multiplied and deepened with globalization. This book recounts the UNCTC experience and its lessons for international organizations. This book is not only an insider perspective by two former staff but also a collective memoir of the UNCTC as an international organization that attempted with varying success to defuse the clash between corporates and states that erupted in the turbulent 1970s. This personal account of the UNCTC is a mixture of history, analysis, reflections, and critical commentaries, told in different voices that penetrate the bland persona of international civil service. In this retelling, the authors seek to address misconceptions amongst the more general literature and to seek to provide accounts of both its positive and negative features. The UNCTC experience recounted in this book holds valuable lessons for international organization and will be of interest to student, scholars and practitioners alike.

This edited volume offers a thorough review of peacekeeping theory and reality in contemporary contexts, and aligns the two to help inform practice. Recent UN peacekeeping operations have challenged the traditional peacekeeping principles of consent, impartiality and the minimum use of force. The pace and scope of these changes have now reached a tipping point, as the new mandates are fundamentally challenging the continued validity of the UN peacekeeping's core principles and identity. In response the volume analyses the growing gap between these actual practices and existing UN peacekeeping doctrine, exploring how it undermines the effectiveness of UN operations, and endangers lives, arguing that a common doctrine is a critical starting point for effective multi-national operations. In order to determine the degree to which this general principle applies to the current state of UN peacekeeping, this book: Provides a review of conceptual and doctrinal developments in UN peacekeeping operations through a historical perspective Examines the debate related to peace operations doctrine and concepts among key Member States Focuses on the actual practice of peacekeeping by conducting case studies of several UN peacekeeping missions in order to identify gaps between practice and doctrine Critically analyses gaps between emerging peacekeeping practice and existing doctrine Recommends that the UN moves beyond the peacekeeping principles and doctrine of the past Combining empirical case-based studies on UN peace operations, with studies on the views and policies of key UN Security Council members that generate these mandates, and views of key contributors of UN peacekeepers, this volume will be of great use to policy-makers; UN officials and peace operations practitioners; and academics working on peace and conflict/security studies, international organizations and conflict management.