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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > United Nations & UN agencies
Using an interdisciplinary focus, this book combines the research disciplines of philosophy, business management and sustainability to aid and advance both scholarly and practitioner understanding of sustainability management and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As businesses and society continue to transition towards further sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, the key challenge faced is in rethinking the philosophy of management and business ethics to achieve this change in deep and lasting ways. Jacob Dahl Rendtorff explores the philosophical foundations of business ethics, economics and sustainability through four key themes: From CSR and business ethics to sustainable development goals (SDGs) Philosophy of management and ethical economy of sustainability Foundations of philosophy of management, ethics and sustainability Responsible management of sustainability. In reflecting on the works of philosophers and scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricoeur, Thomas Piketty and Peter Koslowski within the context of sustainability, globalization, anthropocene ethics and corporate social responsibility, the book presents a key understanding of the vital philosophical foundations for creating progressive business models in a more sustainable society.
Until 1919, European wars were settled without post-war trials, and individuals were not punishable under international law. After World War One, European jurists at the Paris Peace Conference developed new concepts of international justice to deal with violations of the laws of war. Though these were not implemented for political reasons, later jurists applied these ideas to other problems, writing new laws and proposing various types of courts to maintain the post-World War One political order. They also aimed to enhance internal state security, address states' failures to respect minority rights, or rectify irregularities in war crimes trials after World War Two. The Birth of the New Justice shows that legal organizations were not merely interested in ensuring that the guilty were punished or that international peace was assured. They hoped to instill particular moral values, represent the interests of certain social groups, and even pursue national agendas. When jurists had to scale back their projects, it was not only because state governments opposed them. It was also because they lacked political connections and did not build public support for their ideas. In some cases, they decided that compromises were better than nothing. Rather than arguing that new legal projects were spearheaded by state governments motivated by "liberal legalism," Mark Lewis shows that legal organizations had a broad range of ideological motives - liberal, conservative, utopian, humanitarian, nationalist, and particularist. The International Law Association, the International Association of Penal Law, the World Jewish Congress, and the International Committee of the Red Cross transformed the concept of international violation to deal with new political and moral problems. They repeatedly altered the purpose of an international criminal court, sometimes dropping it altogether when national courts seemed more pragmatic.
Are international courts effective tools for international governance? Do they fulfill the expectations that led to their creation and empowerment? Why do some courts appear to be more effective than others, and do so such appearances reflect reality? Could their results have been produced by other mechanisms? This book evaluates the effectiveness of international courts and tribunals by comparing their stated goals to the actual outcomes they achieve. Using a theoretical model borrowed from social science, the book assesses their effectiveness by analysing key empirical data. Its first part is dedicated to theory and methodology, laying out the effectiveness model, explaining its different components, its promise and limits, and discussing the measurement challenges it faces. The second part analyses the role that indicators such as jurisdiction, judicial independence, legitimacy, and compliance play in achieving effectiveness. Part three applies the effectiveness model to the International Court of Justice, the WTO dispute settlement mechanisms (panels and Appellate Body), the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Court of Justice, reflecting the diversity of the field of international adjudication. Given the recent proliferation of international courts and tribunals, this book makes an important contribution towards understanding and measuring the value that these institutions provide.
United Nations peacekeeping has undergone radical transformation in the new millennium. Where it once was limited in scope and based firmly on consent of all parties, contemporary operations are now charged with penalizing spoilers of peace and protecting civilians from peril. Despite its more aggressive posture, practitioners and academics continue to affirm the vital importance of impartiality whilst stating that it no longer means what it once did. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping explores this transformation and its implications, in what is the first conceptual and empirical study of impartiality in UN peacekeeping. The book challenges dominant scholarly approaches that conceive of norms as linear and static, conceptualizing impartiality as a 'composite' norm, one that is not free-standing but an aggregate of other principles-each of which can change and is open to contestation. Drawing on a large body of primary evidence, it uses the composite norm to trace the evolution of impartiality, and to illuminate the macro-level politics surrounding its institutionalization at the UN, as well as the micro-level politics surrounding its implementation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, site of the largest and costliest peacekeeping mission in UN history. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping reveals that, despite a veneer of consensus, impartiality is in fact highly contested. As the collection of principles it refers to has expanded to include human rights and civilian protection, deep disagreements have arisen over what keeping peace impartially actually means. Beyond the semantics, the book shows how this contestation, together with the varying expectations and incentives created by the norm, has resulted in perverse and unintended consequences that have politicized peacekeeping and, in some cases, effectively converted UN forces into one warring party among many. Taking Sides in Peacekeeping assesses the implications of this radical transformation for the future of peacekeeping and for the UN's role as guarantor of international peace and security.
This is the official Record of the Report of the Committee on the Rights of the Child
Fragmentation is one of the major debates within international law, but no detailed case studies have been made to show the problems that it creates, and how they can be addressed. This book asks whether the growing number of international judicial bodies render decisions that are largely consistent with one another, which factors influence this (in)consistency, and what this tells us about the development of international law by international courts and tribunals. It answers these questions by focusing on three areas of law: genocide, immunities, and the use of force, as in each of these areas different international judicial entities have dealt with cases stemming from the same situation and set of facts. The work focuses on four main courts: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which often interpret, apply, and develop the same legal principles, despite their different mandates and functions. It argues that judicial fragmentation is damaging to the international legal system, as coherent and compatible pronouncements on the law by international courts are vital to retaining the confidence of the international community. Ultimately, the book makes a plea for the importance of judicial integration for the stability and reliability of the international legal system.
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.
'The genius of Graciela Chichilnisky is recognized by economists and with this book she has focused that talent to the dire problem facing mankind. To survive we must do more than stave off a further rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to reverse it if the planet is to be viable. Professor Chichilnisky's achievement along with her co-author Peter Bal is to show us the way to rescue our future.'Professor Edmund Phelps2006 Nobel Laureate in EconomicsDirector, Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University'In the world of economic theory, Graciela Chichilnisky is an A-list star.'The Washington Post'The team of Chichilnisky and Bal has exceptional skill in explaining complex topics with great clarity making it easy for non-scientists interested in climate change to read. They address the science of climate change, the complex international negotiations needed to reach a compromise between developing nations and the developed ones, and importantly the urgent need to find a way of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and utilizing and sequestering it in a commercially profitable manner. The last topic has been almost completely ignored by the media.'Theodore Roosevelt IVManaging Director & Chairman of Barclays Cleantech InitiativeBARCLAYSThe Kyoto Protocol capped the emissions of the main emitters, the industrialized countries, one by one. It also created an innovative financial mechanism, the Carbon Market and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing nations to receive carbon credits when they reduce their emissions below their baselines. The carbon market, an economic system that created a price for carbon for the first time, is now used in four continents, is promoted by the World Bank, and is recommended even by leading oil and gas companies. However, one critical problem for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is the continuing impasse between the rich and the poor nations.Who should reduce emissions - the rich or the poor countries?
The United Nations Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights. The Council's mandate and founding principles demonstrate that one of the main aims, at its creation, was for the Council to overcome the Commission's flaws. Despite the need to avoid repeating its predecessor's failings, the Council's form, nature and many of its roles and functions are strikingly similar to those of the Commission. This book examines the creation and formative years of the United Nations Human Rights Council and assesses the extent to which the Council has fulfilled its mandate. International law and theories of international relations are used to examine the Council and its functions. Council sessions, procedures and mechanisms are analysed in-depth, with particular consideration given to whether the Council has become politicised to the same extent as the Commission. Whilst remaining aware of the key differences in their functions, Rosa Freedman compares the work of the Council to that of treaty-based human rights bodies. The author draws on observations from her attendance at Council proceedings in order to offer a unique account of how the body works in practice. The United Nations Human Rights Council will be of great interest to students and scholars of human rights law and international relations, as well as lawyers, NGOs and relevant government agencies.
This volume examines the attitudes of political, military and non-state actors towards the United Nations Emergency Peace Service, and explores issues that might affect support for the establishment of UNEPS in both theory and practice. This book explores the United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) proposal, which is a civil society-led idea to establish a permanent UN peacekeeping service to overcome some of the shortcomings facing UN peace operations as well as to operationalise the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect civilians from atrocity crimes. As with previous proposals for a standing UN army or peacekeeping capacity, the UNEPS proposal has received limited support from governments partly because of concerns about its feasibility and the perception that such a service would erode state sovereignty. The book argues that interest in, and support for, the UNEPS proposal is determined by the extent to which the norms embedded in the UNEPS proposal are consistent with actors' views on the world.Another factor influencing the support the proposal enjoys is the extent to which it is perceived as realistic, achievable and capable of contributing to the workings of the UN and regional peacekeeping systems in areas that are seen to be deficient. The book makes a case for localising the UNEPS proposal so that it honours and incorporates the normative and problem-solving preferences of respondents and other actors. Because of the diversity of responses, this book does not commit to any concrete suggestions for reforming the UNEPS proposal; however, it does suggest that UNEPS' architects might consider developing a less ambitious proposal as a first step to creating a rapidly deployable service with the mandate to prevent atrocity crimes. It examines various alternatives towards this end. The book concludes that because the UNEPS proposal is intricately linked to the UN, trust in the world organisation is an essential ingredient in generating support for the idea. It argues that a central way of achieving this is to ensure that the values and priorities of a wide range of stakeholders are seen to be represented in the Organisation's structure and workings.This book will be of much interest to students of peace operations, the Responsibility to Protect, the UN, International Relations and security studie in general.
Where do strong conservative parties come from? While there is a growing scholarly awareness about the importance of such parties for democratic stability, much less is known about their origins. In this groundbreaking book, James Loxton takes up this question by examining new conservative parties formed in Latin America between 1978 and 2010. The most successful cases, he finds, shared a surprising characteristic: they had deep roots in former dictatorships. Through a comparative analysis of failed and successful cases in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala, Loxton argues that this was not a coincidence. The successes inherited a range of resources from outgoing authoritarian regimes that, paradoxically, gave them an advantage in democratic competition. He also highlights the role of intense counterrevolutionary struggle as a source of party cohesion. In addition to making an empirical contribution to the study of the Latin American right and a theoretical contribution to the study of party-building, Loxton advances our understanding of the worldwide phenomenon of "authoritarian successor parties"-parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy. A major work, Conservative Party-Building in Latin America will reshape our understanding of politics in contemporary Latin America and the realities of democratic transitions everywhere.
In this detailed, candid and illuminating memoir, Ambassador Shola Omoregie sheds light on a personal journey from childhood in Nigeria, through professional transition in the Nigerian Foreign Service to his eventual elevation as a top United Nations Official.
During his momentous time as Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan played a decisive role in launching the Millennium Development Goals, establishing the International Criminal Court, and articulating the Responsibility to Protect as a guiding principle for international action. In 2001--just after the attacks of 9/11--he and the UN jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world. These and other crucial events including the crises over Kosovo and East Timor, and the war in Iraq--are encapsulated in this book of Kofi Annan s key speeches throughout his term of office. These highlights have been carefully selected, edited, and introduced to give a broad view of Annan s most pressing concerns and the eloquence with which he addressed them. Covering subjects from development, health, and climate change to the prevention of genocide and the ideal of diversity, these statements show how deeply involved the UN was in the most important issues of the era. In them, Annan poignantly addresses not just political leaders and diplomats, but the individuals he considers emblematic of the dilemmas the world faces the young girl born in Afghanistan on the day Annan accepted the Nobel Peace Prize; the child soldier in Sierra Leone; and every one of the 23 members of what he calls the UN family killed by a truck bomb in Iraq. Separate chapters on Africa and the Middle East reveal Annan s special concern with some of the world s biggest challenges, ongoing in an era of crises in Syria, Egypt, and beyond.Since leaving the UN, Kofi Annan has established his own Foundation in Geneva and serves as Chairman of the the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Elders and the Africa Progress Panel. He received the very first MacArthur Award for International Justice; mediated a political settlement to end the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008; served as Joint Special Envoy of the UN and the Arab League for Syria (2012); and published a widely reviewed book, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace. These and other activities have confirmed his role as an influential global actor beyond his time at the UN. This book reminds us how his ideas and priorities were incubated and, indeed, proclaimed. His words on war, peace, humanity, and man s inhumanity to man still resonate in many ways and offer many pointers for maintaining and developing the UN as a vital instrument for humanity in the coming decades. "
This book proposes a new approach to studying the effectiveness of peace operations. It asks not whether peace operations work or why, but how: when a peace operation achieves its goals, what causal processes are at work? By discovering how peace operations work, this new approach offers five distinctive contributions. First, it studies peace operations through a local lens, examining their interactions with actors in host societies rather than their genesis in the politics and institutions of the international realm. In doing so, it highlights the centrality of local compliance and cooperation to a peace operation's effectiveness. Second, the book structures a framework for explaining how peace operations can shape the behaviour of local actors in order to obtain greater cooperation. That framework distinguishes three dimensions of a peace operation's power-coercion, inducement, and legitimacy-and illuminates their effects. The third contribution is to highlight the contribution of local legitimacy to a peace operation's effectiveness and identify the means by which an operation can be locally legitimized. Fourth, the new power-legitimacy framework is applied to study two peace operations in depth: the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), and the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). Finally, the book concludes by examining the implications of this new approach for practice and identifying a set of policy reforms to help peace operations work better. The book argues that peace operations work by influencing the decisions and behaviour of diverse local actors in host societies. Peace operations work better-that is, achieve more of their objectives at lower cost-when they receive high quality local cooperation. It concludes that peace operations are more likely to attain such cooperation when they are perceived locally to be legitimate.
When international courts are given sweeping powers, why would they ever refuse to use them? The book explains how and when courts employ strategies for institutional survival and resilience: forbearance and audacity, which help them adjust their sovereignty costs to pre-empt and mitigate backlash and political pushback. By systematically analysing almost 2,300 judgements from the European Court of Human Rights from 1967–2016, Ezgi Yildiz traces how these strategies shaped the norm against torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. With expert interviews and a nuanced combination of social science and legal methods, Yildiz innovatively demonstrates what the norm entails, and when and how its contents changed over time. Exploring issues central to public international law and international relations, this interdisciplinary study makes a timely intervention in the debate on international courts, international norms, and legal change. This book is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Throughout the first decades of its existence, many held the view that the UN Security Council would in some senses automatically encourage the protection of human rights by maintaining international peace. However since the end of the Cold War there have been growing concerns that the Council is a force with the potential to do harm to the cause of human rights, even to the extent of violating the rights of individuals. The chapters of this volume take a closer look at these two sides of the Security Council's involvement in human rights; both its efforts to promote and enforce human rights, and its actions that, with the intention of maintaining and restoring international peace, also have the potential to jeopardize human rights. This book represents a collection of individual views and appraisals of how the Council has dealt with human rights issues in the post-Cold War period, particularly in the cases of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq and the targeted sanctions directed against the Taliban and supporters of the Al Qaida network. Written by experts in the field of international law, they are both positive and negative, critical and analytical. Together they offer a selection of different perspectives and evaluate the contribution of the Security Council to the promotion of human rights, highlighting possible avenue for improvement.
The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture (OPCAT)
establishes an independent international monitoring committee (SPT)
which itself will visit states and places where persons are
deprived of their liberty. It also requires states to set up
independent national bodies to visit places of detention. This
book, drawing upon events held and interviews with governments,
civil society, members of UN treaty bodies, national visiting
bodies and others, identifies key factors that have shaped the
operation of these visiting bodies since OPCAT came into force in
2006. It looks in detail at the background to the adoption of the
Protocol, as well as how the international committee, the SPT, has
carried out its mandate in its first few years. It examines the
range of places of detention that could be visited by these bodies,
and the expectations placed on the national visiting bodies
themselves.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) was established in 1993 and is due to complete its trials by
2011. Easily the most credible and prodigious of the international
tribunals established in this period, the ICTY is by far the most
important source of case law on international criminal law. This is
reflected in the citations it receives by other courts and by
learned commentators. Long after its dissolution, the ICTY will
most likely serve as an important frame of reference for the
International Criminal Court and other courts dealing with
international crimes, including national courts.
Over the past one hundred years, the conceptual and legal aspects
of collective security have been the subject of much debate. Rapid
developments within the United Nations, its precursor the League of
Nations, and regional security institutions, as well as the
interaction between them, mean this debate has not so far succeeded
in capturing the essence and implications of collective security.
This book continues the three-volume series edited by Sir Arthur
Watts and published in 1999 and 2000. It contains the final product
of the International Law Commission (ILC)'s work over the decade
1999-2008. The ILC's work is frequently cited by international and
national courts, by governments, practitioners, and academic
authors.
This book aims to give a contribution to a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the cross-cutting issues on energy, environment and health research topics in the current world scenario, where nations all over the world are struggling to accomplish the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to ensure sustainable patterns for all. This interdisciplinary implies a commitment between all fields of science, working together to provide knowledge that could result in the promotion of quality of life. At the present, it is evident that not all people benefit from sustainable policies and practices and the communication between health, energy, environmental and social problems is undeniable. A call for different views could be a pathway attracting universities, stakeholders, organizations and civil society to deeply discuss how one solution does not fit all societies. Few publications are coherently handling this matter. This book is expected to fill this gap and to develop an interest in a larger audience working in general sustainable development and cross-cutting issues. This book is produced by the European School of Sustainability Science and Research (ESSSR). It gives special emphasis to state-of-the-art descriptions of approaches, methods, initiatives and projects from universities, stakeholders, organizations and civil society across the world, regarding cross-cutting issues in energy, environment and health research.
The face of international politics has changed significantly in the 21st century: it has become increasingly female. Whether that includes women in multilateral meetings, global conferences and embassies, or women at the UN and one of its many agencies in the field, it is apparent that women are accessing leadership positions in a variety of areas. This book investigates the development of gender equality at the United Nations by analyzing women in leadership roles. This introduction of empirical feminism to the study of international organizations applies what is known about women's participation and representation in comparative politics and gender studies to the United Nations System. It traces women's access to leadership roles, and explains where and why a range of hurdles prevent women from participating in the work of the UN. In doing so, it offers insights into recruitment and human resources practices and their politics, and into leadership by bureaucratic actors.
These Recommendations have been developed by the United Nations Economic and Social Council's Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods in light of technical progress, the advent of new substances and materials, the exigencies of modern transport systems and, above all, the requirement to ensure the safety of people, property and the environment. They are addressed to governments and international organizations concerned with the regulation of the transport of dangerous goods. They do not apply to the bulk transport of dangerous goods in sea-going or inland navigation bulk carriers or tank-vessels, which is subject to special international or national regulations.
Proliferation of WMD technologies is by no means a new concern for
the international community. Indeed, since the signing of the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, tremendous energies have
been expended upon diplomatic efforts to create a web of treaties
and international organizations regulating the production and
stockpiling of WMD sensitive materials within states, as well as
their spread through the increasingly globalized channels of
international trade to other states and non-state actors.
The recent spate of threats to cultural heritage, including in Iraq, Mali, Nepal, Syria, and Yemen, has led to increased focus on the sources of international cultural heritage law. This edited volume shows that international cultural heritage law is not a discrete and contained body of law, but one whose component parts are drawn from diverse fields of public international law. It shows how cultural heritage law has been shaped by its interaction with other areas of international law, and how it has contributed to international law in turn. In this volume, scholars and practitioners explore some of the primary points of intersection between international cultural heritage law and public international law. Chapters explore instersections with the law of armed conflict, international and transnational criminal law, international human rights, the international movement, regulation, and restitution of cultural artefacts, and the UN system. The result is a cohesive collection that not only explores many facets of the intersections of cultural heritage law and public international law, but also examines how the regimes operate together and how the relationship between them largely facilitates, but also sometimes hinders, the development of international law governing the protection of cultural heritage. |
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