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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > United Nations & UN agencies
What prompts the United Nations Security Council to engage forcefully in some crises at high risk for genocide and ethnic cleansing but not others? In All Necessary Measures, Carrie Booth Walling identifies several systematic patterns in the stories that council members tell about conflicts and the policy solutions that result from them. Drawing on qualitative comparative case studies spanning two decades, including situations where the council has intervened to stop mass killing (Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Sierra Leone) as well as situations where it has not (Rwanda, Kosovo, and Sudan), Walling posits that the arguments council members make about the cause and character of conflict as well as the source of sovereign authority in target states have the potential to enable or constrain the use of military force in defense of human rights. At a moment when constructivist scholars in international relations are pushing beyond empirical claims for the value of norms and toward critical analysis of such norms, All Necessary Measures establishes discourse's real-world explanatory power. From her comparative chronology, Walling demonstrates that humanitarian intervention becomes possible when the majority of Security Council members come to a shared understanding of the conflict, perpetrators, and victims-and probable when the Council understands state sovereignty as complementary to human rights norms. By illuminating the relationship between national interests and the core values of Security Council members and how it influences decision-making, All Necessary Measures suggests when and where the Security Council is likely to intervene in the future.
Migrants fleeing economic hardship or violence are entitled to a range of protections and rights under domestic and international law, yet they are often denied such protections in practice. In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, migrant acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaining politically and socially invisible. These unwritten expectations, which Jeffrey D. Pugh calls the "invisibility bargain", produce a precarious status in which migrants' visible differences or overt political demands on the state may be met with hostile backlash from the host society. In this context, governance networks of state and non-state actors form an institutional web that can provide indirect access to rights, resources, and protection, but simultaneously help migrants avoid negative backlash against visible political activism. The Invisibility Bargain seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in receiving societies and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Specifically, the book examines Ecuador, the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America, and assesses how it achieved migrant human security gains despite weak state presence in peripheral areas. Pugh deploys evidence from 15 months of fieldwork spanning ten years in Ecuador, including 170 interviews, an original survey of Colombian migrants in six provinces, network analysis, and discourse analysis of hundreds of presidential speeches and news media articles. He argues that localities with more dense networks composed of more diverse actors tend to produce greater human security for migrants and their neighbors. The book challenges the conventional understanding of migration and security, providing a new approach to the negotiation of authority between state and society. By examining the informal pathways to human security, Pugh dismantles the false dichotomy between international and national politics, and exposes the micro politics of institutional innovation.
This is the first scholarly examination of climate change litigation in the Asia Pacific region. Bringing legal academics and lawyers from the Global South and Global North together, this book provides rich insights into how litigation can galvanize climate action in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and China. Written in clear and accessible language, the fourteen chapters in this book shed light on the important question of how litigation may unfold as a potential regulatory pathway towards decarbonization in the world's most populous region.
Do we need the United Nations? Where would the contemporary world be without its largest intergovernmental organization? And where could it be had the UN s member states and staff performed better? These fundamental questions are explored by the leading analyst of UN history and politics, Thomas G. Weiss, in this hard-hitting, authoritative book. While counterfactuals are often dismissed as academic contrivances, they can serve to focus the mind; and here, Weiss uses them to ably demonstrate the pluses and minuses of multilateral cooperation. He is not shy about UN achievements and failures drawn from its ideas and operations in its three substantive pillars of activities: international peace and security; human rights and humanitarian action; and sustainable development. But, he argues, the inward-looking and populist movements in electoral politics worldwide make robust multilateralism more not less compelling. The selection of Antonio Guterres as the ninth UN secretary-general should rekindle critical thinking about the potential for international cooperation. There is a desperate need to reinvigorate and update rather than jettison the United Nations in responding to threats from climate change to pandemics, from proliferation to terrorism. Weiss tells you why and how.
How do international organizations in the United Nations system put together their budgets? What is the role of complex principals - most notably member states - and the complex agents in the bureaucracies of international organizations in budgeting processes? And what does a focus on budgeting tell us about the changing nature of the system of international organizations? This book provides answers to these questions through a detailed examination of budgeting in the UN system. The analysis draws on both quantitative and qualitative observations for a total of 22 UN system organizations and detailed case studies for the United Nations, ILO, UNESCO, and WHO. The findings demonstrate the importance of three key organizational outcomes- proceduralization, routinization, and budgetary segmentation - as international organizations grapple with managing discord over priorities as a result of complex principal- agent constellations. Contrary to a common view of international bureaucracies as pathological organizations, core budget routines are mostly successfully maintained. However, principal constellations become more complex, notably through the rise of voluntary contributions and non-state donors; budgetary segmentation advances, in some cases even leading to the setting up of new international organizations; and budgeting and resource mobilization become ever more intertwined. As a consequence, the capacity of international bureaucracies to fulfil their budgeting responsibilities is stretched to the limits and beyond. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.
Released in annual editions of 6 volumes, the Annual Review of United Nations Affairs is the only thorough annual survey of major developments at the United Nations. The 2016/2017 edition includes the full text of all General Assembly, Security Council, and ECOSOC resolutions from the 71st United Nations session (Sept. 2016 to Sept. 2017), along with other key UN documents, including the annual report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization and the annual reports of the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the ICJ and international criminal tribunals, and various funds and programs of the United Nations system. This edition also includes a Preface by the series editors and five introductory commentaries written by expert contributors. These introductions offer invaluable guidance on the activities of various United Nations bodies, including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice and Tribunals, and the Secretariat. The Annual Review of United Nations Affairs series Since the publication of its first edition in 1950, the Annual Review of United Nations Affairs has stood as the authoritative resource for scholars, students, and practitioners researching the latest developments at the United Nations. From introductory articles on particular topics, prepared by experts on the relevant United Nations bodies, to the full-text presentation of reports and resolutions, ARUNA provides a comprehensive tour of each year's UN actions and debates. The expert selection of documents by Joachim Muller and Karl Sauvant and the topic-based organization of those documents make any researcher's task much easier than the vast searching and sorting required by the UN's website, and the series' topic-based organization of the materials is also useful to researchers. Beginning with the 2010/2011 edition, detailed commentaries on the various UN bodies by experts on the relevant topics were added to each annual edition, and the analysis provided in these commentaries has helped to make ARUNA a more complete resource for anyone engaged in research on the activities of the United Nations. ARUNA presents comprehensive documentation of the work of the UN on an annual basis, starting in September of each year with the beginning of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. Coverage of and commentary on the UN's key organs are provided, including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Secretariat. In addition, selected reports of intergovernmental bodies and expert groups are included. ARUNA is an important reference source for policy-makers and academic researchers alike.
In accordance with Article 102 of the Charter and the relevant General Assembly Resolutions, every treaty and international agreement registered or filed and recorded with the Secretariat since 1946 is published in the United Nations Treaty Series. At present, the collection includes about 30,000 treaties reproduced in their authentic languages, together with translations into English and French, as necessary. The Treaty Series, where treaties are published in the chronological order of registration, also provides details about their subsequent history (i.e., participation in a treaty, reservations, amendments, termination, etc.). Comprehensive Indices covering 50-volume-lots are published separately. A Standing Order service is available for the Series and out-of-print volumes are available on microfiche.
In accordance with Article 102 of the Charter and the relevant General Assembly Resolutions, every treaty and international agreement registered or filed and recorded with the Secretariat since 1946 is published in the United Nations Treaty Series. At present, the collection includes about 30,000 treaties reproduced in their authentic languages, together with translations into English and French, as necessary. The Treaty Series, where treaties are published in the chronological order of registration, also provides details about their subsequent history (i.e., participation in a treaty, reservations, amendments, termination, etc.). Comprehensive Indices covering 50-volume-lots are published separately. A Standing Order service is available for the Series and out-of-print volumes are available on microfiche.
In 2003, the United Nations adopted a common rights-based approach to development in their efforts to promote an international standard of human rights throughout the world. The approach emphasizes economic, social, and cultural rights, but plays down the role of civil and political rights in development. Intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies operate only at the invitation and sufferance of their hosts, and states retain full sovereignty and control over their territory; and the direct promotion of civil and political rights by foreign organizations has seemed beyond the ability of multilateral development agencies. But as Development and Human Rights shows, UN agencies have begun to take on a remarkable set of development priorities that, while carefully circumscribed and defined, constitute greater involvement in a state's internal affairs than anyone would have considered in the past. In this book, Joel E. Oestreich presents the first full-length study of how international agencies evaluate the rights situation in a single country, and the first study to look at both the good and the bad in a rights-based approach. It looks particularly at the human rights challenges faced in India, considering the work of five UN agencies: UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and UN Women. Over the course of the book, Oestreich summarizes how the UN navigates this difficult political terrain, and how effectively these policies are being implemented. Development and Human Rights ultimately considers how rights-based approaches fit in the traditional discourse on human rights, and the ability of these agencies to initiate meaningful change on state behavior in the rights arena.
For use as a primary text in Political Science courses on International Organization, International Institutions, Global Governance, or the United Nations. Can also be used as supplementary readings in all of these courses, plus courses in International Relations. ""United Nations Politics" takes a unique approach that focuses on the politics - that is, the persistent and mostly singular emphasis that all member states place on the pursuit of national political, economic, cultural and ideological interests - of UN affairs. " The project began as an effort to research and write a ten-year-later sequel to "The Challenge of Relevance" written by Puchala and Coate in 1989. This earlier volume was an assessment of the United Nations and its operations in the late eighties. "United Nations Politics" builds from a series of some 200 interviews conducted at the UN and in various member-state missions between 2000 and 2005. Among other things, these interviews revealed that the existing English-language literature on the UN fails to take into appropriate account the dynamics and the impacts of the internal and external political contexts within which the UN operates. This book directly addresses this shortcoming in the academic literature.
The argument of this book, that women are central to development, is presented, through the story of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) - and of its projects in the field. It is a story which describes the reality of development within the context of the development system itself.;The author, UNIFEM's founding Director, describes UNIFEM's beginnings: the search for structure, securing independent management, and riding the political and bureaucratic waves. Part II, "At work in the world", examines projects and activities that have been assisted world-wide, ranging from augmenting productivity at village level to analyzing the impact of the global market on women, and is a rare look at the longer-term effects of projects that have "come to an end".;This is the story of a campaign - based on fieldwork in three continents - which has aimed to remove the invisibility that has cloaked so much of women's work, to support and increase their economic productive capacity - and to establish women as "agents of change, not creatures of circumstance".
International security must be understood in much broader terms in the aftermath of the Cold War. This extensively revised edition retains the valuable descriptions and analyses of the United Nations' achievements and failures, while placing them in the context of the ever-broadening definition of international security and of changing attitudes toward national sovereignty and humanitarian intervention. In order to deal with the internal struggles that are now the prevalent form of conflict, it is necessary to allay the root causes of tensions within societies. Means of enforcement must be applied to prevent gross violations of human rights, including genocide. Sutterlin describes the background of innovations that recent crises have imposed on the UN. He analyzes how recent reforms have affected the UN's capacity to deal with the security problems of the new century. Peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, peace-building, and the application of sanctions all bring new challenges. In one chapter, Sutterlin focuses on the UN's experience in enforcing disarmament in Iraq. A new chapter details the impact of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction on UN policies and actions. This systematic presentation, using scholarly analysis and a practitioner's inside knowledge, provides a readable and challenging text for courses on the United Nations.
Violence against women has been a focus of transnational advocacy networks since the early 1980s, and the United Nations has, in intervening years, passed a series of resolutions to condemn, prevent, investigate, and punish this violence. Member states have committed to implementing this agenda. Yet, despite this buy-in at the global level, implementation at the domestic level remains uneven. Scholars have found that states are more likely to translate global standards into national laws when pressured by women's movements and international organizations. However, a dearth of research on the implementation - at the national and street-levels - of these international women's rights norms hampers an understanding of what happens after states pass laws. In Africa, where most states have not prioritized the prevention of violence against women, and the majority of perpetrators act with impunity, there is a major implementation gap. This gap is acute in some post-conflict countries on the continent. Thus, despite the presence of laws on various forms of violence against women in most African countries, justice remains inaccessible to most victims. In Global Norms and Local Action, Peace A. Medie studies the domestic implementation of international norms by examining how and why two post-conflict states in Africa, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, have differed in their responses to rape and domestic violence. Specifically, she looks at the roles of the United Nations and women's movements in the establishment of specialized criminal justice sector agencies, and the referral of cases for prosecution. She argues that variation in implementation in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire can be explained by the levels of international and domestic pressures that states face and by the favorability of domestic political and institutional conditions. Medie's study is based on interviews with over 300 policymakers, bureaucrats, staff at the UN and NGOs, police officers, and survivors of domestic violence and rape - an unprecedented depth of research into women's rights and gender violence norm implementation in post-conflict countries. Furthermore, through her interviews with survivors of violence, Medie explains not only how states implement anti-rape and anti-domestic violence norms, but also how women experience and are affected by these norms. She draws on this research to recommend that states adopt a holistic approach to addressing violence against women.
Getting the Climate Science Facts Right - discusses climate change science with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Addressing climate change is the most important public priority of the 21st Century. Unlike many issues, however, this issue is being driven by both science and its interface with politics. The main institution for bridging this division between science and international politics is the IPCC. As such it is the main source of the facts from which climate change policy is developed. This book describes the ways in which the IPCC arrives at these facts and so can be sure they are complete and evidence based. Seldom in history has science had such a direct relationship with politics. The negotiation of an international policy regime requires, at its outset, an agreement on the facts. In this case, the facts are scientific, complex and contentious. Governments have recognized this and have, by using the IPCC, set up institutional machinery to provide facts from a source and in a manner that they can accept. The way in which the IPCC functions is unique in that it melds the way in which science achieves consensus with the way governments do at the international level. Starting with a process to examine, review and debate scientific findings leading to a consensus about scientific fact, usually expressed as probabilities that the findings will hold over time, the IPCC then concludes by using the kind of consensus-development mechanism that the United Nations typically uses to achieve agreements leading to the formation of policy regimes. The book examines the structure of the IPCC, its composition and its procedures in order to achieve an understanding of its role and future. This book addresses how climate change science was developed; how climate change impacts have been analyzed by various scholars, agencies, and other stakeholders; what roles international, nongovernmental and governmental organizations play in addressing climate change issues. The book incorporates climate change deniers' arguments and counter arguments. It also does not shy away from some problematic results (for example the immature data interpretation of IPCC, particularly in its 2007 report). Finally, the book also presents a case study of climate change impacts, including air, water and soil pollution, in major South Asian cities.
Little is known about how far-reaching decisions in UN Security Council sanctions committees are made. Developing a novel committee governance concept and using examples drawn from sanctions imposed on Iraq, Al-Qaida, Congo, Sudan and Iran, this book shows that Council members tend to follow the will of the powerful, whereas sanctions committee members often decide according to the rules. This is surprising since both Council and committees are staffed by the same member states. Offering a fascinating account of Security Council micro-politics and decision-making processes on sanctions, this rigorous comparative and theory-driven analysis treats the Council and its sanctions committees as distinguishable entities that may differ in decision practice despite having the same members. Drawing extensively on primary documents, diplomatic cables, well-informed press coverage, reports by close observers and extensive interviews with committee members, Council diplomats and sanctions experts, it contrasts with the conventional wisdom on decision-making within these bodies, which suggests that the powerful permanent members would not accept rule-based decisions against their interests. This book will be of interest to policy practitioners and scholars working in the broad field of international organizations and international relations theory as well as those specializing in sanctions, international law, the Security Council and counter-terrorism.
This volume approaches the UN as a laboratory of religio-political value politics. Over the last two decades religion has acquired increasing influence in international politics, and religious violence and terrorism has attracted much scholarly attention. But there is another parallel development which has gone largely unnoticed, namely the increasing political impact of peaceful religious actors. With several religious actors in one place and interacting under the same conditions, the UN is as a multi-religious society writ small. The contributors to this book analyse the most influential religious actors at the UN (including The Roman Catholic Church; The Organisation of Islamic Countries; the Russian Orthodox Church). Mapping the peaceful political engagements of religious actors; who they are and how they collaborate with each other - whether on an ad hoc basis or by forming more permanent networks - throwing light at the modus operandi of religious actors at the UN; their strategies and motivations. The chapters are closely interrelated through the shared focus on the UN and common theoretical perspectives, and pursue two intertwined aspects of religious value politics, namely the whys and hows of cross-religious cooperation on the one hand, and the interaction between religious actors and states on the other. Drawing together a broad range of experts on religious actors, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of Religion and Politics, International Relations and the UN.
Antje Wiener examines the involvement of local actors in conflicts over global norms such as fundamental rights and the prohibition of torture and sexual violence. Providing accounts of local interventions made on behalf of those affected by breaches of norms, she identifies the constraints and opportunities for stakeholder participation in a fragmented global society. The book also considers cultural and institutional diversity with regard to the co-constitution of norm change. Proposing a clear framework to operationalize research on contested norms, and illustrating it through three recent cases, this book contributes to the project of global international relations by offering an agency-centred approach. It will interest scholars and advanced students of international relations, international political theory, and international law seeking a principled approach to practice that overcomes the practice-norm gap.
This book offers the first book-length explanation of the UN's politics of selective humanitarian intervention. Over the past 20 years the United Nations has imposed economic sanctions, deployed peacekeeping operations, and even conducted or authorized military intervention in Somalia, Bosnia, or Libya. Yet no such measures were taken in other similar cases such as Colombia, Myanmar, Darfur-or more recently-Syria. What factors account for the UN's selective response to humanitarian crises and what are the mechanism that drive-or block-UN intervention decisions? By combining fuzzy-set analysis of the UN's response to more than 30 humanitarian crises with in depth-case study analysis of UN (in)action in Bosnia and Darfur, as well as in the most recent crises in Cote d'Ivoire, Libya and Syria, this volume seeks to answer these questions.
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.
This book considers what is needed for fairness in the decisions of the UNFCCC. It analyses several principles of procedural fairness in order to develop practical policy measures for fair decision-making in the UNFCCC. This includes measures that determine who should have a right to participate in its decisions, how these decisions should take place and what level of equality should exist between these actors. In doing so, it proposes that procedural fairness is a fundamental feature of a multilateral response to address climate change. By showing that procedural fairness is most likely to be achieved through the inclusive process of the UNFCCC, it also shows that global efforts to address climate change should continue in this forum.
This book provides a contemporary account of the linkages between the academic field of conflict resolution and the practice of military peacekeeping, through the lens of pre-deployment training for military personnel about to embark on UN peacekeeping operations. Military personnel serving on United Nations peacekeeping operations are deployed into highly challenging post-conflict environments, where the likelihood of violence remains high. Moreover, these personnel are deployed part of a wider peace process, and are thus situated as an anchor point in a transition from war to peace. This dimension of their work therefore means that a range of skills and techniques are relied upon, which come not from traditional military training, but from other, non-traditional fields. It is into this gap where the academic field of conflict resolution has made a valuable contribution to understanding international peacekeeping. Since the 1970's, studies have sought to understand international peacekeeping as a necessary stage in conflict de-escalation, and ultimately transformation. From this, there is a history of engagement including studies which seek to understand the skills peacekeepers may need to assist them in their day to day activities, and the role that international peacekeeping plays in wider projects of conflict transformation.
Development and Human Rights examines how United Nations agencies are following a "rights based approach to development" in India. It asks two questions: how (if at all) does the implementation of a rights based approach differ from traditional development work? And what strategies do development agencies follow to overcome local opposition to this politically controversial strategy? Integrating human rights into the development process means that development agencies can be vitally important instruments in rights protection and promotion, which has been overlooked in almost all existing literature on human rights. This book, then, presents the first full-length study of how these agencies evaluate the rights situation in a single country, and the first study to look at both the good and the bad in a rights based approach. It begins with a description of what a rights based approach is, and an examination of the human rights challenges faced in India. It then focuses on the work of five agencies: UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and UN Women. Chapters then summarize how the UN navigates this difficult political terrain, and how effectively these policies are being implemented. It also considers how rights based approaches fit in the traditional discourse on human rights, and what it says about the ability of these agencies to initiate meaningful change on state behavior in the rights arena.
What makes a state? This question has attracted more and more attention in recent years with Catalan's illegal vote for independence from Spain and Palestine's ongoing search for international recognition. And while Scotland chose to remain with the United Kingdom, discussions of independence have only continued as the ramifications of the later Brexit vote begin to set in. As James Ker-Lindsay and Mikulas Fabry show in this new addition to the What Everyone Needs to Know (R) series, the road to statehood does not run smooth. Declaring independence is only the first step; gaining both local and global acceptance is necessary before a state can become truly independent. The prospect of losing territory is usually not welcomed by the parent state, and any such threat to an existing culture and its economy is often met with resistance-armed or otherwise. Beyond this immediate conflict, the international community often refuses to accept new states without proof of defined territory, a settled population, and effective government, which frequently translates to a democratic one with demonstrated respect for human rights. Covering the legal, political, and practical issues of secession and state creation, Ker-Lindsay and Fabry provide an essential guide to this timely topic.
This is the first historical biography in English to be published on Egyptian scholar-diplomat, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the most intellectually accomplished of the nine UN secretaries-general. The first African and first Arab to occupy the post, Boutros-Ghali held the office in the momentous five post-Cold War years (1992-1996), massively expanding UN peacekeeping and leading intellectual debates on development, democratisation, and human rights. He had earlier been a key architect of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty as Egypt's minister of state for foreign affairs, a major figure in Third World diplomacy, and a Professor of International Law and International Relations. This accessible biography sets Boutros-Ghali's career within the political, social, and cultural contexts from which he emerged. Please note: T&F does not sell or distribute the print version in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Throughout UNESCO's 75 years of existence, never before has the Courier, UNESCO's flagship magazine, published an anthology, in book form, with such scope and scale. These two volumes bring together some of the great thinkers and pioneering minds of recent times who have led important discussions on society's pressing challenges. UNESCO Courier: Transforming Ideas will lead you through an exciting, magical and thought-provoking adventure into UNESCO's past, present and future. |
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