• Responsibility to Protect

    WORLDVIEWS

    The UN’s Emphasis on Prevention Could Use Lessons From the Case of Guinea

    by  • June 18, 2018 • Africa, Gender-Based Violence, Responsibility to Protect, Secretary-General, Security Council, WORLDVIEWS • 

    Historically neglected, gender-based violence is now becoming broadly recognized as a legitimate and urgent agenda item among the United Nations member nations, notably in the UN’s most powerful forum, the Security Council. But the future of the agenda is uncertain, as priorities remain unclear and inadequate methods for preventing sexual violence against women keep...

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    TOPIC: WOMEN

    Building a Case for Prosecuting the Genocide of Yazidi Women

    by  • August 1, 2017 • Gender-Based Violence, Middle East, Responsibility to Protect, Security Council, Terrorism, Women • 

    As the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq crumbles, assessments begin to emerge of the damage left in its wake by its cultural nihilism and harsh sectarian absolutism designed to remake an Arab society. The human costs have been high in Iraq — in deaths, maiming, displacement and the enslavement of girls and women....

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    BOOKS

    The Rules of War Need a Major Overhaul

    by  • December 3, 2016 • BOOKS, Human Rights, Peace and Security, Responsibility to Protect, Security Council • 

    Donetsk People's Republic fighters in Ukraine

    Evidence is piling up: the global security framework that emerged from the ashes of World War II is no longer capable of pursuing international peace. The arrangement, conceived by the major powers that won the war, has expanded into a grab bag of rules and institutions that the crises of our own era have...

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    To End Deep Inequalities, Say Doyle and Stiglitz, Create a Ninth Development Goal

    by  • May 7, 2014 • Development, Millennium Goals, Poverty, Responsibility to Protect • 

    A girl holds an umbrella near the port in Guinea-Bissau's capital Bissau

    Two leading international policy experts at Columbia University are calling for more action from individual governments to address inequalities within their borders, in effect adding a bold new goal to the eight measurements of progress reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. Their proposal comes as debate swirls around what the United Nations needs to...

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    Deep Flaws in UN Response to Sri Lanka Include R2P Failure

    by  • December 20, 2012 • Asia, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, Responsibility to Protect, Secretary-General • 1 Comment

    Tamil Tiger cadres loading up in Sri Lanka

    The United Nation’s internal report on its role during the final stages of the prolonged civil war in Sri Lanka was unusually critical of the Secretariat and highlighted major shortcomings in the UN’s response to the fighting. The report, which was leaked to the BBC days before its official release on Nov. 15, forced...

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    WORLDVIEWS

    Protecting Civilians: How It Works

    by  • December 10, 2012 • Responsibility to Protect, WORLDVIEWS • 4 Comments

    A girl in Freetown, Sierra Leone

    CANBERRA, Australia — A steady rise has been occurring in the last two centuries in the proportion of civilians killed in armed conflict, either from direct violence or conflict-related hunger and disease. The international community has responded to the calls to protect innocent victims by developing two parallel principles, the protection of civilians and...

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    The Responsibility to Protect Gets a Checkup

    by  • January 21, 2012 • Peace and Security, Responsibility to Protect, Security Council • 6 Comments

    When the carnage of the 1990s wound down, with more than a million people dead in massacres and brutal ethnic or political wars in and around Rwanda, the Balkans and elsewhere, nations that had failed to act to stop such tragedies began seeking ways to prevent future catastrophes. From this terrible decade, the long-postponed...

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