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 Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the "neutrality trap" snaps shut. This book discusses the political and moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the wider implications for the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.

United Nations Peacekeeping in Africa provides an exploration of United Nations military intervention in Africa, from its beginnings in the Congo in 1960 to the new operations of the twenty-first century. The scene is set by an examination of the theoretical bases both of United Nations peacekeeping and of Africa's post-independence politics and international relations. The peacekeeping project in Africa is then described on a region by region basis - Central Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, the Horn and Trans-Saharan Africa - with comparisons and contrasts within and between each part of Africa highlighted throughout. A number of key questions are considered: how have developments in the broader international system affected conflicts in Africa? what are the internal and external forces which have caused African states to 'fail' and 'collapse'? how have external powers 'used' UN Peacekeeping in pursuit of their own political agendas? what determines success and failure in African peacekeeping? are there African solutions to African problems which could supplant UN involvement? As well as providing an account of UN involvement, the book is concerned to explore the long historical origins of the African conflicts with which the UN has been engaged. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, United Nations Peacekeeping in Africa provides an invaluable examination of the complex issues surrounding UN interventions in Africa.

The American public has become increasingly disenchanted with the United Nations. Some responsible sources in this country are already advocating withdrawal from U.N. agencies and perhaps even from the entire system.

This book, by the former Director of Research at UNITAR, the U.N.'s "think tank," examines the record of the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance sheet which confirms that the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance shet whcih confirms that the U.N. often operates in a way that undermines respect for individual human rights and hampers conflict resolution. At the same time, he does not shrink from showing that the fault frequently lies with the United States itself. He shows how the U.S. helped form the U.N. with unrealistic views of what it could do, how for a decade or more the U.S. was able to use the U.N. essentially as a tool and adjunct to its foreign policy, and how Washington failed to predict and plan for the inevitable shift in power at the U.N. led by the newly emergent Third World nations. Franck warns of the American penchant for treating international relations as a series of unrelated encounters instead of an ongoing, institutionalized system in which the tactics and outcome of one crisis inevitably affect the way the next context is played out.

Taday the U.S. and its allies are often the butt of antagonisms that the U.N. system seems to encourage and exaggerate. Nevertheless Franck shows that even now the U.S. position in the U.N. is far from hopeless, and he provides a blueprint for a strategy of "playing hard ball," which is far more realistic than abandoning the world organization.

About the Author:

Thomas M. Franck is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Studies at the New York University Law School. His previous books include Word Politics and Secrecy and Foreign Policy.

This book provides a comprehensive and analytical overview of human rights law in Africa. It examines the institutions, norms, and processes for human rights realization provided for under the United Nations system, the African Union, and sub-regional economic communitites in Africa, and explores their relationship with the national legal systems of African states.

Since the establishment of the African Union in 2001, there has been a proliferation of regional institutions that are relevant to human rights in Africa. These include the Pan African Parliament, the Peace and Security Council, the Economic, Social and Cultural Council and the African Peer Review Mechanism of the New Partnership for Africa's Development. This book discusses the links between these institutions. It further examines the case law stemming from Africa' most important human rights instrument, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, which entered into force on 21 October 1986. This new edition contains a new chapter on the African Children's Rights Committee as well as full coverage of new developments and instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.

Three cross-cutting themes are explored throughout the book: national implementation and enforcement of international human rights law; legal and other forms of integration; and the role of human rights in the eradication of poverty. The book also provides an introduction to the relevant human rights concepts.

The present collection of materials reproduces the text of the State responsibility articles, with commentaries thereto, as presented in the Yearbook of the International Law Commission, together with the compilation of decisions recording 154 instances in which international courts, tribunals and other bodies referred to the articles and commentaries during the period from 1973 to 1996 when the draft articles were adopted on first reading, from 1996 to their adoption on second reading in 2001, and up to 31 January 2010

Drawing from a diverse range of military, policing, academic and policymakers' experiences, this book seeks to provide solutions of how national militaries and police can work together to better support future United Nations peacekeeping operations. It addresses the growing tension between increasing non-combat related responsibilities being placed on land forces and the ability of UN peacekeeping forces to fulfil the demands of government and development tasks in fragile and conflict-affected environments. An original contribution to the debate on UN peacekeeping reforms that includes constructing an enhanced partnership for peacekeeping; building on renewed commitment to share the burden and for regional cooperation; providing peacekeepers with the necessary capabilities to protect civilians; and supporting nations in transition from conflict to stabilisation. This book offers the very latest in informed analysis and decision-making on UN peacekeeping reform.

Since 2006, more than 85,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. These disappearances remain largely unsolved: disappeared people are rarely found, and the Mexican state almost never investigates or prosecutes those responsible. Despite this, people not only continue to report disappearances, but many devote their lives to answering the question, "where are they?" Given the risks and institutional barriers, why and how do people mobilize for justice in states with rampant impunity and weak rule of law? In Bootstrap Justice, Janice Gallagher leverages over a decade of ethnographic research to explain what enables the sustained mobilization of family members of the disappeared and analyze how configurations of political power between state and criminal actors shape what is possible for them to achieve. She follows three families from before the disappearance of their loved ones through their transformations into sophisticated and strategic victim advocates and activists. Gallagher supplements these individual narratives with an analysis of the evolving political opportunities for mobilization within Mexico. By centering the perspectives of people whose lives have been upended by the disappearance of their loved ones, Bootstrap Justice offers a unique window into how citizens respond to weak and corrupt institutions. Gallagher focuses on the overlooked role of informal relationships and dynamics in shaping substantive legal and human rights outcomes and highlights how pioneering independent and creative work-arounds can compensate for state inaction. While top-down efforts, such as judicial reforms, technical assistance, and changes in political leadership are important parts of addressing impunity, policymakers and scholars alike have much to learn from the bottom-up-and by following the path that citizens themselves have worn within the labyrinth of state judicial bureaucracies.

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. Conformement a l'article 102 de la Charte et aux resolutions pertinentes de l'Assemblee generale, tous les traites et accords internationaux enregistres ou classes aupres du Secretariat depuis 1946 sont publies dans le Recueil des traites. Actuellement, la collection comprend environ 30.000 traites reproduits dans leur langue d'origine, avec des traductions en anglais et en francais, si necessaire.

Economic Sanctions are increasingly used as a legal, non-military technique of combating abusers of international peace. However it remains unclear how the success or failure of these sanctions is measured. This book examines the seldom-explored United Nations' economic sanctions deliberation process and exposes systematic problems in the measurement of the success or failure of these sanctions. Centering on the key concepts of "peace and security," the author brings the reader's attention to the discrepancies that exist in the process of decision-making, implementation, and evaluation of UN imposed economic sanctions. She engages international law and development methods to provide proof for the lack of consensus in measures of success and failure, which in turn suggests that sanction implementation on a uniform domestic front are unattainable. This thorough analysis concludes with suggestions for improving the sanctions process, only to clear the path for negating them as a whole and suggest alternative non-coercive measures for mitigating conflict situations and threats to peace and security.

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.

Accounting for approximately 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, groundwater has the potential to provide societies with tremendous social, economic and environmental benefits and opportunities. However, this natural resource is often poorly understood, and consequently undervalued, mismanaged and even abused. In spite of its overall abundance, groundwater remains vulnerable to over-exploitation and pollution, both of which can have devastating effects on the resource and its availability. In the context of growing water scarcity across many parts of the world, the enormous potential of groundwater and the need to manage it sustainably can no longer be overlooked. The 2022 edition of The United Nations World Water Development Report describes the challenges and opportunities associated with the development, management and governance of groundwater across the world.

"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.

Trade is the lifeblood of the global economy, but few would consider it a social good. Instead, our views on trade have polarized between two extremes: 'free trade' ideologues who regard trade as an end in itself, and 'protectionists' who view it as a destructive force to be contained. But there is another way to trade - one with the interests of people, not profit, at its heart. In this visionary work Christian Felber, founder of the Economy for the Common Good movement, offers a dazzling new paradigm for the global trading order. Confronting the 'free trade religion' which has reigned since Adam Smith, Felber champions an alternative approach in which trade serves the wider interests of society, incorporating the key issues of our time: human rights, climate change, and the growing divide richer and poorer countries. He proposes the groundbreaking idea of an 'Ethical Trade Zone', founded on a principled approach to tariffs and trade policies, and built with international cooperation on trade, taxation and labour. Penetrating and passionate, Christian Felber shows how this brave new economic world can be built democratically from the grassroots up, and how trading for good can be made a reality.

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.

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.

This study, available for the first time in paperback, explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing raison d'etre and the wider normative context within which the organisation is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomised by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by the 'historical structural' approach, this study seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to intra-state conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-states 'peacekeeping environments', and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualisation of 'normative basis' revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalised values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development. This book is essential reading for postgraduate students of IR and international peacekeeping organisations. -- .

Security Council resolutions have undergone an important evolution over the last two decades. While continuing its traditional role of determining state-specific threats to peace and engaging accordingly in various peaceful or coercive measures, the Security Council has also adopted resolutions that have effectively imposed legal obligations on all United Nations member states. This book seeks to move away from the discussions of whether the Security Council - in the current composition and working methods - is representative, capable or productive. Rather it assesses whether legislative activity by the Security Council can be beneficial to international peace and security. The authors examine and critique the capacities of the Security Council to address thematic international threats - such as terrorism, weapons proliferations, targeting of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, piracy - as an alternative to the traditional model of addressing country-specific situations on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately, the book seeks to assess the efficacy of the Security Council as global legislator in terms of complementing the Security Council's mandate for the maintenance of international peace and security with a preventative and norm-setting capacity. The book presents views from a diverse range of Security Council stakeholders including academic scholars, political analysts, and international lawyers. This resource will be of great interest to students of international relations, international organizations and international security studies alike.

Ce rapport offre une alternative necessaire et stimulante a la paralysie face a un changement planetaire alarmant. Sa sortie intervient alors que la pandemie de COVID-19 (coronarvirus) offre simultanement un apercu de ce que pourrait contenir une "nouvelle normalite" et ouvre la possibilite a l'humanite de changer de cap. Le rapport definit egalement de nouvelles mesures du developpement humain pour nous guider, y compris un nouvel indice de developpement humain experimental ajuste aux pressions planetaires.

Information overload is something that humans have dealt with for millennia. During different historical eras, massive increases in what was available to know has motivated the creation of systems for sorting, indexing, and compiling information as well as concerns that the abundance of information might cause cultural anxiety or even drive people to madness. The digital age has renewed concerns about information overload and the detrimental effects it has on our ability to sort through the stream of online data, decide what is most important, or even to train our attention on it long enough to make sense of it. In Abundance, Pablo J. Boczkowski builds upon what we know about the historical and contemporary scholarship to develop a novel framework on the experience of living in a society that has more information available to the public than ever before, focusing on the interpretations, emotions, and practices of dealing with this abundance in everyday life. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and survey research conducted in Argentina, Abundance examines the role of cultural and structural factors that mediate between the availability of information and the actual consequences for individuals, media, politics, and society. Providing the first book-length account of information abundance in the Global South, Boczkowski concludes that the experience of information abundance is tied to an overall unsettling of society, a reconstitution of how we understand and perform our relationships with others, and a twin depreciation of facts and appreciation of fictions.

Over a relatively short period of time, Beijing moved from dismissing the UN to embracing it. How are we to make sense of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) embrace of the UN, and what does its engagement mean in larger terms? This study focuses directly on Beijing's involvement in one of the most contentious areas of UN activity - human protection - contentious because the norm of human protection tips the balance away from the UN's Westphalian state-based profile, towards the provision of greater protection for the security of individuals and their individual liberties. The argument that follows shows that, as an ever-more crucial actor within the United Nations, Beijing's rhetoric and some of its practices are playing an increasingly important role in determining how this norm is articulated and interpreted. In some cases, the PRC is also influencing how these ideas of human protection are implemented. At stake in the questions this book tackles is both how we understand the PRC as a participant in shaping global order, and the future of some of the core norms which constitute that order.

"Crucial lessons for the immediate future"-Noam Chomsky At a time when the international community is imposing sanctions and discussing no-fly zones, A Different Kind of War delivers a frightening parallel and a heart-rending accounting of suffering in Iraq among locals who bore the brunt of the 13-year sanctions from 1990 until 2003. H. C. von Sponeck, the former "UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq," explores the UN's sanction policies against Iraq, their consequences, and the domestic conditions during this period. His extensive research is based on previously unpublished internal UN documents and discussions with UN decision makers (such as General Secretary Kofi Annan), Iraqi officials and politicians (including Saddam Hussein), and ordinary Iraqis. The author's findings question who really benefited from the program, what role the UN Security Council and its various member states played, and whether there were then and are today alternatives to the UN's Iraq policies. Chapter 1. The Oil for Food Programme: An Adequate Humanitarian Exemption? Chapter 2. The UN Compensation Commission: Benefit for Some, Deprivation for Others Chapter 3. The No-Fly Zones: Zones of Protection and Zones of Confrontation? Chapter 4. The United Nations Special Commission and the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq: Two Units of the Same Organisation? Chapter 5. The Government of Iraq, its People and their Rights Chapter 6. The UN Sanctions Structure: Confrontation, Fragmentation, Conclusions What customers are saying: 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent expose Reviewed in the United States Verified Purchase excellent expose from someone who knew all the details how the US government uses sanctions to wage war 5.0 out of 5 stars Great book Reviewed in the United Kingdom Verified Purchase This is an excellent book, so well written and the amount of detailed research that has gone in is amazing to say the least - hard work to write I'm sure but so easy to read - it flows beautifly. I left Iraq as a child a few months after the first Gulf war - it has been emotionally challenging to read this at times at the same time it is written in such a logical way as to keep the reader engaged.

Human rights activists Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi provide a broad political history of the emergence and development of the human rights movement in the 20th century through the crucible of the United Nations, focusing on the hopes and expectations, concrete power struggles, national rivalries, and bureaucratic politics that molded the international system of human rights law. The book emphasizes the period before and after the creation of the UN, when human rights ideas and proposals were shaped and transformed by the hard-edged realities of power politics and bureaucratic imperatives. It also analyzes the expansion of the human rights framework in response to demands for equitable development after decolonization and organized efforts by women, minorities, and other disadvantaged groups to secure international recognition of their rights.