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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > International institutions > United Nations & UN agencies
Are transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment beneficial or harmful to societies around the world? Since the birth of the United Nations more than 60 years ago, these questions have been major issues of interest and involvement for UN institutions. What have been the key ideas generated by the UN about TNCs and their relations with nation-states? How have these ideas evolved and what has been their impact? This book examines the history of UN engagement with TNCs, including the creation of the UN Commission and Centre on Transnational Corporations in 1974, the failed efforts of these bodies to craft a code of conduct to temper the revealed abuses of TNCs, and, with the advent of globalization in the 1980s, the evolution of a more cooperative relationship between TNCs and developing countries, resulting in the 1999 Global Compact.
The Procedure of the UN Security Council is the definitive book of its kind and has been widely used by UN practitioners and scholars for nearly 40 years. This comprehensively revised edition contains over 450 pages of new material documenting the extensive and rapid innovations in the Council's procedures of the past two decades. A one-stop handbook and guide, with meticulous referencing, this book has served diplomats, UN staff and scholars alike in providing unique insight into the inside workings of the world's preeminent body for the maintenance of international peace and security. Thoroughly grounded in the history and politics of the Council, it brings to life the ways the Council has responded through its working methods to a changing world. The book explains the Council's role in its wider UN Charter context and examines its relations with other UN organs and with its own subsidiary bodies. This includes the remarkable expansion in UN peacekeeping, peacebuilding and political missions, sanctions and counter-terrorism bodies, and international legal tribunals. It contains detailed analysis of voting and decision-taking by the Council, as well as the place, format, and conduct of meetings. It also seeks to illuminate the personalities behind the Council's work - ranging from the diplomats who sit on the Council itself to the UN Secretary-General, and those outside the Council affected by its decisions. It concludes with reflections on the improvements that have made to the Council's procedures over many decades, and the scope for further reform.
Trades of money for political influence persist at every level of government. Not surprisingly, governments themselves trade money for political support on the international stage. Strange, however, is the tale of this book. For, in this study, legitimacy stands as the central political commodity at stake. The book investigates the ways governments trade money for favors at the United Nations Security Council - the body endowed with the international legal authority to legitimize the use of armed force to maintain or restore peace. With a wealth of quantitative data, the book shows that powerful countries, such as the United States, Japan, and Germany, extend financial favors to the elected members of the Security Council through direct foreign aid and through international organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In return, developing countries serving on the Security Council must deliver their political support ... or face the consequences.
Toppling Qaddafi is a carefully researched, highly readable look at the role of the United States and NATO in Libya's war of liberation and its lessons for future military interventions. Based on extensive interviews within the US government, this book recounts the story of how the United States and its European allies went to war against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, why they won the war, and what the implications for NATO, Europe, and Libya will be. This was a war that few saw coming, and many worried would go badly awry, but in the end the Qaddafi regime fell and a new era in Libya's history dawned. Whether this is the kind of intervention that can be repeated, however, remains an open question - as does Libya's future and that of its neighbors.
Throughout what publisher Henry Luce dubbed the "American century," the United States has wrestled with two central questions. Should it pursue its security unilaterally or in cooperation with others? If the latter, how can its interests be best protected against opportunism by untrustworthy partners? In a major attempt to explain security relations from an institutionalist approach, David A. Lake shows how the answers to these questions have differed after World War I, during the Cold War, and today. In the debate over whether to join the League of Nations, the United States reaffirmed its historic policy of unilateralism. After World War II, however, it broke decisively with tradition and embraced a new policy of cooperation with partners in Europe and Asia. Today, the United States is pursuing a new strategy of cooperation, forming ad hoc coalitions and evincing an unprecedented willingness to shape but then work within the prevailing international consensus on the appropriate goals and means of foreign policy. In interpreting these three defining moments of American foreign policy, Lake draws on theories of relational contracting and poses a general theory of security relationships. He arrays the variety of possible security relationships on a continuum from anarchy to hierarchy, and explains actual relations as a function of three key variables: the benefits from pooling security resources and efforts with others, the expected costs of opportunistic behavior by partners, and governance costs. Lake systematically applies this theory to each of the "defining moments" of twentieth-century American foreign policy and develops its broader implications for the study of international relations.
The immunity or exemption enjoyed by States from legal proceedings before foreign national courts is a crucial area of international law. On the basis of an exhaustive analysis of judicial decisions, international treaties, national legislation, government statements, deliberations in international organisations as well as scholarly opinion, Xiaodong Yang traces the historical development of the relevant doctrine and practice, critically analyses the rationale for restrictive immunity and closely inspects such important exceptions to immunity as commercial transactions, contracts of employment, tortious liability, separate entities, the enforcement of judgments, waiver of immunity and the interplay between State immunity and human rights. The book draws a full picture of the law of State immunity as it currently stands and endeavours to provide useful information and guidance for practitioners, academics and students alike.
Since emerging in 2006 from a ten-year Maoist insurgency, the People's War, Nepal has struggled with the difficult transition from war to peace, from autocracy to democracy, and from an exclusionary and centralized state to a more inclusive and federal one. The present volume, drawing on both international and Nepali scholars and leading practitioners, analyzes the context, dynamics, and key players shaping Nepal's ongoing peace process. While the peace process is largely domestically driven, it has been accompanied by wide-ranging international involvement, including initiatives in peacemaking by NGOs, the United Nations, and India, which, throughout the process, wielded considerable political influence; significant investments by international donors; and the deployment of a Security Council-mandated UN field mission. This book shines a light on the limits, opportunities, and challenges of international efforts to assist Nepal in its quest for peace and stability and offers valuable lessons for similar endeavors elsewhere."
The world's first independent black republic, Haiti was forged in the fire of history's only successful slave revolution. Yet more than two hundred years later, the full promise of that revolution - a free country and a free people - remains unfulfilled. Home for more than a decade to one of the world's largest UN peacekeeping forces, Haiti's tumultuous political culture - buffeted by coups and armed political partisans - combined with economic inequality and environmental degradation to create immense difficulties even before the devastating 2010 earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. This grim tale, however, is not the whole story. In this moving and detailed history, Michael Deibert, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on hundreds of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates and gang leaders, as well as ordinary Haitians, Deibert's book provides a vivid, complex and challenging analysis of Haiti's recent history.
Through an analysis of UN operations including international territorial administration, refugee camps, peacekeeping, the implementation of sanctions and the provision of humanitarian aid, Guglielmo Verdirame shows that the powers exercised by the UN carry a serious risk of human rights abuse. The International Law Commission has codified and developed the law of institutional responsibility, but, while indispensable, these principles and rules cannot on their own ensure compliance and accountability. The 'liberty deficit' of the UN and of other international organisations, thus remains an urgent legal and political problem. Some solutions may be available; indeed, recent state and institutional practice offers interesting examples in this respect. But at a fundamental level we need to ask ourselves whether, judged on the basis of the principle of liberty, the power shift from states to international organisations is always beneficial.
How is the United States able to control the IMF with only 17 per cent of the votes? How are the rules of the global economy made? This book shows how a combination of formal and informal rules explains how international organizations really work. Randall W. Stone argues that formal rules apply in ordinary times, while informal power allows leading states to exert control when the stakes are high. International organizations are therefore best understood as equilibrium outcomes that balance the power and interests of the leading state and the member countries. Presenting a new model of institutional design and comparing the IMF, WTO, and EU, Stone argues that institutional variations reflect the distribution of power and interests. He shows that US interests influence the size, terms, and enforcement of IMF programs, and new data, archival documents, and interviews reveal the shortcomings of IMF programs in Mexico, Russia, Korea, Indonesia, and Argentina.
The idea that states and the international community have a responsibility to protect populations at risk has framed internationalist debates about conflict prevention, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and territorial administration since 2001. This book situates the responsibility to protect concept in a broad historical and jurisprudential context, demonstrating that the appeal to protection as the basis for de facto authority has emerged at times of civil war or revolution - the Protestant revolutions of early modern Europe, the bourgeois and communist revolutions of the following centuries and the revolution that is decolonisation. This analysis, from Hobbes to the UN, of the resulting attempts to ground authority on the capacity to guarantee security and protection is essential reading for all those seeking to understand, engage with, limit or critique the expansive practices of international executive action authorised by the responsibility to protect concept.
The very concept of human rights implies governmental accountability. To ensure that governments are indeed held accountable for their treatment of citizens and others the United Nations has established a wide range of mechanisms to monitor compliance, and to seek to prevent as well as respond to violations. The panoply of implementation measures that the UN has taken since 1945 has resulted in a diverse and complex set of institutional arrangements, the effectiveness of which varies widely. Indeed, there is much doubt as to the effectiveness of much of the UN's human rights efforts but also about what direction it should take. Inevitable instances of politicization and the hostile, or at best ambivalent, attitude of most governments, has at times endangered the fragile progress made on the more technical fronts. At the same time, technical efforts cannot dispense with the complex politics of actualizing the promise of human rights at and through the UN. In addition to significant actual and potential problems of duplication, overlapping and inconsistent approaches, there are major problems of under-funding and insufficient expertise. The complexity of these arrangements and the difficulty in evaluating their impact makes a comprehensive guide of the type provided here all the more indispensable. These essays critically examine the functions, procedures, and performance of each of the major UN organs dealing with human rights, including the Security Council and the International Court of Justice as well as the more specialized bodies monitoring the implementation of human rights treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the considerable efforts at reforming the UN's human rights machinery, as illustrated most notably by the creation of the Human Rights Council to replace the Commission on Human Rights. The book also looks at the relationship between the various bodies and the potential for major reforms and restructuring.
The United Nations Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative that encourages businesses to support ten universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anti-corruption. It is the world's largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative with more than 7,500 business and non-business participants in over 130 countries. This book reviews the first ten years of the Compact's existence (2000-2010) by presenting exclusively commissioned chapters from well-known scholars, practitioners from the business world and civil society, and Global Compact staff. They reflect on what the Global Compact has achieved, what trends it may have to respond to, and what challenges are ahead. The book contains not only up-to-date reflections but also debates recent changes to the structure of the Compact, including the Communication on Progress policy, the role of Global Compact Local Networks, and the role of emerging specialized initiatives.
Decisions of international courts and arbitrators, as well as judgments of national courts, are fundamental elements of modern public international law. The International Law Reports is the only publication in the world wholly devoted to the regular and systematic reporting in English of such decisions. It is therefore an absolutely essential work of reference. Volume 201 contains the 2019 judgement on preliminary objections of International Court of Justice in Certain Iranian Assets (Iran v. United States), 2020 judgement of Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Lhaka Honhat v. Argentina case, and 2021 judgement of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in General Dynamics UK Ltd v. Libya.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) struggled to apprehend and try high-profile defendants like the Serbian leader Slobodan Milo evi, and often received more criticism than praise. This volume argues that the underappreciated court has in fact made a substantial contribution to Bosnia and Herzegovina s transition to democracy. Based on more than three years of field research and several hundred interviews, this study brings together multiple research methods, including surveys, ethnography, and archival materials, to show the court s impact on five segments of Bosnian society, emphasizing the role of the social setting in translating international law in domestic contexts. Much of the early rhetoric about the transformative potential of international criminal law helped foster unrealistic expectations that institutions like the ICTY could not meet, but judged by more realistic standards, international law is seen to play a modest yet important role in postwar transitions. The findings of this study have implications for the study of international courts around the world and the role law plays in contributing to social change.
Born in 1945, the United Nations came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume collects some of the finest scholars and practitioners writing about the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states. This is a landmark book-a close and informed study of the UN in the region that taught the organization how to do its many jobs.
This is the first major exploration of the United Nations Security
Council's part in addressing the problem of war, both civil and
international, since 1945. Both during and after the Cold War the
Council has acted in a limited and selective manner, and its work
has sometimes resulted in failure. It has not been--and was never
equipped to be--the center of a comprehensive system of collective
security. However, it remains the body charged with primary
responsibility for international peace and security. It offers
unique opportunities for international consultation and military
collaboration, and for developing legal and normative frameworks.
It has played a part in the reduction in the incidence of
international war in the period since 1945.
The end of the Cold War appeared to revitalise the Security Council and offered the prospect of restoring the United Nations to its central role in the maintenance of international peace and security. Between the Gulf War of 1990 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the UN Secretariat found itself in the midst of an unprecedented period of activity involving authorised and unauthorised actions leading to the use of force. In this 2010 book Ralph Zacklin examines the tensions that developed between the Secretariat and member states, particularly the five permanent members of the Security Council, concerning the process and content of the Council's actions in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Iraq War as the Secretariat strove to give effect to the fundamental principles of the Charter.
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.
This reference work provides information on all known military operations carried out under United Nations command as part of the Korean War, from June 1950 through 22 July 1954. Following an introductory history of the Korean War and a precise chronology of all Korean War operations, entries are arranged by operation name in five sections: primarily ground operations, primarily air operations, primarily sea operations, specialized operations, and covert and clandestine operations. For each operation, information includes dates, objectives, units involved, place within the greater strategy of the war, and outcome.
The United Nations Security Council has increasingly resorted to sanctions as part of its efforts to prevent and resolve conflict. In this 2007 book, Farrall traces the evolution of the Security Council's sanctions powers and charts the contours of the UN sanctions system. He also evaluates the extent to which the Security Council's increasing commitment to strengthening the rule of law extends to its sanctions practice. The book identifies shortcomings in respect of key rule of law principles and advances pragmatic policy-reform proposals designed to ensure that UN sanctions promote, strengthen and reinforce the rule of law. In its appendices United Nations Sanctions and the Rule of Law contains summaries of all 25 UN sanctions regimes established to date by the Security Council. It forms an invaluable source of reference for diplomats, policymakers, scholars and advocates.
The concept of UN peacekeeping has had to evolve and change to meet the challenges of contemporary sources of conflict; consequently, peacekeeping operations have grown rapidly in number and complexity. This book examines a number of issues associated with contemporary multinational peace operations, and seeks to provide insights into the problems that arise in establishing and deploying such forces to meet the challenges of current conflicts. The focus of the book is three case studies (Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo), involving a comparative analysis of the traditional peacekeeping in Lebanon, the more robust peace enforcement mission in Somalia, and the international administration undertaken on behalf of the international community in Kosovo. The book analyses the lessons that may be learned from these operations in terms of mandates, command and control, use of force and the relevance of international humanitarian and human rights law to such operations.
This book considers the varied roles played by the United Nations in cases where threats to peace are created by civil strife in modernizing societies. These struggles for internal supremacy are viewed by the superpowers and other states as parts of larger racial, anti-colonial, or ideological contests. Through a careful analysis of selected cases-Algeria, Angola, the Congo, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Lebanon, Laos, Yemen, and Vietnam-the author clarifies the legal and political factors limiting the United Nations' effectiveness in containing violence and promoting peaceful change. Originally published in 1967. 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 international community's practice of administering territories in post-conflict environments has raised important legal questions. Using Kosovo as a case study, Bernhard Knoll analyses the identity of the administrating UN organ, the ways in which the territories under consideration have acquired partial subjectivity in international law and the nature of legal obligations in the fiduciary exercise of transitional administration developed within the League of Nations' Mandate and the UN Trusteeship systems. Knoll discusses Kosovo's internal political and constitutional order and notes the absence of some of the characteristics normally found in liberal democracies, before proposing that the UN consolidates accountability guidelines related to the protection of human rights and the development of democratic standards should it engage in the transitional administration of territory. |
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