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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > United Nations & UN agencies
The United Nations Charter establishes six "principal organs". Five of these are expressly authorized or permitted to deal with human rights. The single exception is the Security Council, but the Council has increasingly concerned itself with human rights inside sovereign states. This book recounts how this trend has developed in the Security Council, reluctantly at first, but since 1989 with some enthusiasm and responsibilty. Some Third World countries are uneasy at this development, fearing that the Security Council, dominated by a single super power, will interfere in the internal affairs of states without the agreement of the government concerned.
The International Law Reports is the only publication in the world wholly devoted to the regular and systematic reporting in English of decisions of international courts and arbitrators as well as judgments of national courts. Volume 161 reports on, amongst others, the 2014 Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the Accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights, the 2008 Order and 2011 Judgment of the International Court of Justice in the Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v. Russian Federation) and related cases before the European Court of Human Rights, and the 2014 judgment of European Court of Human Rights in Hassan v. United Kingdom.
After three decades of remarkable progress, improvements in the welfare of children and other vulnerable groups in many parts of the world began to falter in the 1980s. This study draws on UNICEF work and experience of recent years to illustrate the extent of the current crisis and point to ways to alleviate the effects caused by economic adjustment. Volume 1 developed a strategy for protecting vulnerable populations during adjustment. The strategy, "Adjustment with a Human Face", combines the promotion of economic growth, protection of the vulnerable, and macro-economic adjustment. This volume, volume 2, examines in closer detail the experiences of the ten countries used as the basis for this strategy. The successes of governments in protecting vulnerable groups in South Korea, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Peru are appraised and contrasted with the failures in Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica, and the Philippines. Sri Lanka and Chile are also considered. The book should be of interest to students of welfare and economic development, and officials and politicians who face the problems of adjustment.
The Conflict over the Conflict chronicles one of the most divisive and toxic issues on today's college and university campuses: Israel/Palestine. Some pro-Palestinian students call supporters of Israel's right to exist racist, and disrupt their events. Some pro-Israel students label pro-Palestinian students terrorists, and the Jews among them traitors. Lawsuits are filed. Legislation is proposed. Faculty members are blacklisted and receive death threats. Academic freedom is compromised and the entire academic enterprise is threatened. How did we get here and what can be done? In this passionate book, Kenneth S. Stern examines attempts from each side to censor the other at a time when some say students, rather than being challenged to wrestle with difficult issues and ideas, are being quarantined from them. He uniquely frames the examination: our ability to think rationally is inhibited when our identity is fiercely connected to an issue of perceived social justice or injustice, and our proclivity to see in-groups and out-groups - us versus them - is obvious. According to Stern, the campus is the best place to mine this conflict and our intense views about it to help future generations do what they are supposed to do: think. The Conflict over the Conflict shows how this is possible.
When multinational corporations cause mass harms to lives, livelihoods, and the environment in developing countries, it is nearly impossible for victims to find a court that can and will issue an enforceable judgment. In this work, Professor Maya Steinitz presents a detailed rationale for the creation of an International Court of Civil Justice (ICCJ) to hear such transnational mass tort cases. The world's legal systems were not designed to solve these kinds of complex transnational disputes, and the absence of mechanisms to ensure coordination means that victims try, but fail, to find justice in country after country, court after court. The Case for an International Court of Civil Justice explains how an ICCJ would provide victims with access to justice and corporate defendants with a non-corrupt forum and an end to the cost and uncertainty of unending litigation - more efficiently resolving the most complicated types of civil litigation.
Natural resource extraction, once promoted by international lenders and governing elites as a promising development strategy, is beginning to hit a wall. After decades of landscape gutting and community resistance, mine developers and their allies are facing new challenges. The outcomes of the anti-mining pushback have varied, as increasing payments, episodic repression, and international pressures have deflected some opposition. But operational space has been narrowing in the extractive sector, as evidenced by the growing adoption of mining bans, moratoria, suspensions, and standoffs. This book tells the story of how that happened. In Breaking Ground, Rose J. Spalding examines mining conflict in new extraction zones and reactivated territories-places where "mining as destiny" is a contested idea. Spalding's innovative approach to the mining story traces the construction of mine-friendly rules in up-and-coming mining zones, as late-comers gear up to compete with mining giants. Spalding also excavates the tale of mining containment in countries that have turned away from the extraction model. By challenging deterministic assumptions about the "commodities consensus" in Latin America, Breaking Ground expands the analysis of resource governance to include divergent trajectories, tracing movement not just toward but also away from extractivism. Spalding explores how people living in targeted communities frame their concerns about the impacts of mining and organize to protect local voice and the environment. Then she unpacks the emerging array of policy responses, including those that encompass national level mining rejection. Breaking Ground takes up a timeless set of questions about the interconnection between politics and the environment, now re-examined with a fresh set of eyes.
This is the United Nations definitive report on the state of the world economy, providing global and regional economic outlook for 2020 and 2021. Produced by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the five United Nations regional commissions, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, with contributions from the UN World Tourism Organization and other intergovernmental agencies
Since the re-democratization of much of Latin America in the 1980s and a regional wave of anti-austerity protests in the 1990s, social movement studies has become an important part of sociological, political, and anthropological scholarship on the region. The subdiscipline has framed debates about formal and informal politics, spatial and relational processes, as well as economic changes in Latin America. While there is an abundant literature on particular movements in different countries across the region, there is limited coverage of the approaches, debates, and theoretical understandings of social movement studies applied to Latin America. In The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements, Federico M. Rossi presents a survey of the broad range of theoretical perspectives on social movements in Latin America. Bringing together a wide variety of viewpoints, the Handbook includes five sections: theoretical approaches to social movements, as applied to Latin America; processes and dynamics of social movements; major social movements in the region; ideational and strategic dimensions of social movements; and the relationship between political institutions and social movements. Covering key social movements and social dynamics in Latin America from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements is an indispensable reference for any scholar interested in social movements, protest, contentious politics, and Latin American studies.
The 2011 crisis in Libya represents the first case in which the international community invoked 'the Responsibility to Protect' principle, adopted in 2005 by UN member states, to justify coercive measures including sanctions and the use of military force. In this study, Karin Wester meticulously reconstructs and analyzes the evolution of the Libyan crisis, the international community's response, and the manner in which the 'Responsibility to Protect' was applied. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources including in-depth interviews with politicians and diplomats, this comprehensive account of the 2011 intervention in Libya redresses popular narratives asserting that the intervention was driven primarily by western (neo-colonial) interests or by a desire for regime change. Instead, Wester reveals how the 'Responsibility to Protect' principle was realized to a considerable extent, but also how it provided a highly fragile basis for military enforcement action. Incorporating perspectives from international law, political science and history, this is a compelling and thought-provoking examination of the real-world application of a principle that is deeply rooted in history but presents daunting challenges in implementation.
This book provides the first analytic account of the United Nations relief operation in Bangladesh. Written by a United Nations staff member involved in the operation, it reflects his direct access to archives and thus offers a doubly valuable description of the inner workings of an international organization. The unusually large relief program in Bangladesh has been described as "a rare example of international cooperation that has enlarged the scope of constructive United Nations action." Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (UNPBC) was established in December 2005 to develop outlines of best practice in post-conflict reconstruction, and to secure the political and material resources necessary to assist states in transition from conflict to peacetime. Currently, the organization is involved in reconstruction and peacebuilding activities in six countries. Yet, a 2010 review by permanent representatives to the United Nations found that the hopes of the UN peacebuilding architecture "despite committed and dedicated efforts...ha[d] yet to be realized." Two of these hopes relate to gender and power, specifically that peacebuilding efforts integrate a "gender perspective" and that the Commission consult with civil society, NGOs, and women's organizations. This book is the first to offer an extensive and dedicated analysis of the activities of the UN Peacebuilding Commission with regard to both gender politics, broadly conceived, and the gendered dynamics of civil society participation in peacebuilding activities. Laura J. Shepherd draws upon original fieldwork that she conducted at the UN to argue that the gendered and spatial politics of peacebuilding not only feminizes civil society organizations, but also perpetuates hierarchies that privilege the international over the domestic realms. The book argues that the dominant representations of women, gender, and civil society in UN peacebuilding discourse produce spatial hierarchies that paradoxically undermine the contemporary emphasis on "bottom-up" governance of peacebuilding activities.
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A text in the Yale University Press Series on Basic Documents in World Politics This volume contains the full text of the United Nations Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice, as well as related historical documents. They are accompanied by ten original essays on the Charter and its legacy by distinguished scholars and former high-level UN officials. The commentaries illuminate the early and ongoing roles of the United Nations in responding to international crises, debates about the UN's architecture and its reform, and its role in global governance, climate change, peacekeeping, and development. A concise and accessible introduction to the UN for students, this collection also offers important new scholarship that will be of interest to experts.
The International Labour Organization was created in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War, to reflect the belief that universal and lasting peace can be accomplished only if it is based on social justice. As the oldest organisation in the UN system, approaching its 100th anniversary in 2019, the ILO faces unprecedented strains and challenges. Since before the financial crisis, the global economy has tested the limits of a regulatory regime which was conceived in 1919. The organisation's founders only entrusted it with balancing social progress with the constraints of an interconnected open economy, but gambled almost entirely on tools of persuasion to ensure that this would happen. Whether that gamble is still capable of paying-off is the subject of this book, by a former ILO insider with an unrivalled knowledge of its work. The book forms part of a broader inquiry into the relevance of founding institutional principles to today's context, and strives to show that the bet made on persuasion may yet pay off. In part, the text argues that there may be little alternative anyway, showing that the pathways to more binding solutions are fraught with difficulty. It also shows the ILO's considerable future potential for promoting effective, universal regulations by extending its tools of persuasion in as yet insufficiently explored directions. Starting with an examination of how the organisation's institutional context differs from 93 years ago, the author goes on to evaluate the prospects of numerous proposals put forward today, including the trade/labour linkage, but going beyond this. As a case study in how strategic choices can be made under legal, social and institutional constraints, the book should be valuable not only to those with an interest in the ILO, but to anyone who studies international organisation, labour law, law and society or political economy.
Ideas and concepts have been a driving force in human progress, and they may be the most important legacy of the United Nations. UN ideas have set past, present, and future international agendas in many global economic and social arenas and have also led to initiatives and actions that have improved the quality of human life. This capstone volume draws upon findings of the other 14 books in the acclaimed United Nations Intellectual History Project Series. The authors not only assess the development and implementation of UN ideas regarding sustainable economic development and human security, but also apply lessons learned to suggest ways in which the United Nations can play a fuller role in confronting the challenges of human survival with dignity in the 21st century.
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The French Revolution is analyzed not only as a complex interplay of leading personalities or political decisions, but also as a great reordering of the economic bases of the old regime.
In order for transparency measures to fight corruption, they must be paired with enforcement. Levels of corruption vary greatly around the world, with certain regions suffering from it more than others. Why is it pervasive in some countries, how does it weaken critical regulations, and why is it so hard to root out? In The Eye and the Whip, Paul Lagunes applies field experiments to analyze corruption in three countries: Mexico, Peru, and the United States of America. He begins by stressing that vulnerabilities to corruption exist where government officials hold power over both the provision of goods and the imposition of costs. Vulnerabilities turn to actual threats when officials calculate that the benefits of abusing their power are greater than the penalties associated with getting caught. Therefore, controlling corruption requires increasing the probability of detecting malfeasance through enhanced monitoring - what Lagunes calls "the eye" - and then applying the appropriate penalty in response to wrongdoing-what he calls "the whip." However, in the places where he conducts extensive fieldwork, which include a city in central Mexico, urban districts in Peru, and two boroughs in New York City, the common policy response to corruption typically emphasizes only the first of the two mechanisms. From bribes extracted for public works contracts to property tax evasion, corruption in these and other areas will persist as long as the authorities are unwilling to impose serious penalties after becoming aware of the problem. After examining how corrupt transactions unfold and why corruption appears immune to transparency, Lagunes leverages local collaborations to test a series of approaches that help promote accountability. Offering rigorous, evidence-based recommendations for improving public administration, The Eye and the Whip will be essential reading for anyone searching for effective tools to battle this age-old scourge.
Globalization, the dominant economic force of this era, is a phenomenon that invites misrepresentation and exaggeration. One of its results has been to introduce several false premises into this country's policy debates. So says William Watson, whose new book draws on economics and history to pose interesting challenges to modes of thinking that have become habitual in late twentieth-century Canadian life. Watson begins by pointing out that globalization is not new: Canadians have some 400 years' experience of being dependent on economic events in other countries. He goes on to show that deepening economic integration does not bind governments as tightly as much popular commentary suggests, but rather leaves room for considerable diversity in national economic and social policies. Although Canadians remain free to choose what size government they want, Watson argues that their decision to invest so much of their national identity in a larger-than-American state has been harmful to the country in ways that only now are becoming clear. This vigorously argued book offers much new insight and corrects many current misperceptions about Canadian affairs. Readers will welcome its lively mix of historical and contemporary perspectives.
This edited volume documents the intellectual influence of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) through its flagship publication, the World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) on its 70th Anniversary. First published in 1948, as World Economic Report, WESS is the oldest continuous post-World War II publication recording and analysing the performance of the global economy and social development trends. It offers relevant policy recommendations and highlights how well the United Nation's (UN) annual report has tracked global economic and social conditions, and how its analyses influenced and were influenced by the prevailing development discourse during the past seven decades. It also critically reflects on its policy recommendations and their influence on actual policy-making and the shaping of the world economy. The World Economy through the Lens of the United Nations reflects on this report, amongst others, to provide valuable insights on global economic challenges and their differential impacts on different groups of countries requiring global policy coordination as well as context specific policy responses. It demonstrates that UN reports have often been ahead of the curve and played a critical role in policy debate, especially in the area of international policy coordination and coherence for balanced global development, and offers rich and path-breaking analyses of contemporary problems of growth, development, trade and stabilization.
The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations.
The Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations presents an innovative, authoritative, and accessible examination and critique of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. Since the late 1940s, but particularly since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping has been a central part of the core activities of the United Nations and a major process in global security governance and the management of international relations in general. The volume will present a chronological analysis, designed to provide a comprehensive perspective that highlights the evolution of UN peacekeeping and offers a detailed picture of how the decisions of UN bureaucrats and national governments on the set-up and design of particular UN missions were, and remain, influenced by the impact of preceding operations. The volume will bring together leading scholars and senior practitioners in order to provide overviews and analyses of all 65 peacekeeping operations that have been carried out by the United Nations since 1948. As with all Oxford Handbooks, the volume will be agenda-setting in importance, providing the authoritative point of reference for all those working throughout international relations and beyond.
This classic work describes the foundation of the United Nations, the workings of the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat, and the many committees. In this fifth edition, the author explores the dramatic changes that have taken place in recent years.
Using more than 600 UN documents that analyse the discussions in the UN Security Council, General Assembly and Secretariat, The United Nations and peacekeeping, 1988-95 presents innovative explanations on how after the Cold War UN peacekeeping operations became the dominant response to conflicts around the globe. This study offers a vivid description of these changes through the analysis of the evolution in the concept and practice of United Nations peacekeeping operations from 1988 to 1995. The research is anchored primarily in United Nations documents, which were produced following the diplomatic discussions that took place in the General Assembly, the Security Council and the UN Secretariat on the subject of peacekeeping in general and in the cases of Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia in particular. These large and complex operations were the testing ground for the new roles of peacekeeping in democratisation, humanitarian aid, resettlement of refugees, demobilisation of armed forces, economic development and advancement of good government. -- . |
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