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WORLDVIEWS

WORLDVIEWS

The UN Secretary-General’s Disappointing Peace-Building Proposal

December 11, 2017 
by Graciana del Castillo
Since the end of the Cold War, a diverse group of countries at low levels of development emerged from intrastate conflicts and embarked on a complex transition to peace, stability and prosperity. All aspects of such transitions are closely interrelated and reinforce each other. Simultaneous security, political, social and economic activities compete for scarce …

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WORLDVIEWS

The Problem of Peacekeeping Sex Abuse Is Not Going Away

December 4, 2017 
by Adriana Erthal Abdenur
There is no denying that sexual exploitation and abuse has acquired greater urgency within the context of United Nations peace operations. Although the UN launched its zero tolerance policy in 2003, a recent report tallied some two thousand accusations between 2005 and 2017 in peacekeeping settings, which underscores how harmful ineffective policies and specific …

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WORLDVIEWS

After 50 Years of UN Sanctions, Is the System Broken?

December 1, 2017 
by Enrico Carisch and Loraine Rickard-Martin
With only few of the current United Nations sanctions cases accomplishing their political objectives, it is not unreasonable to wonder why the system seems broken. As the 50th anniversary of the first use of this important political tool is duly noted, the short answer is that nothing is wrong with sanctions. The problem is with …

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WORLDVIEWS

Modernizing the Role of Human Rights in the UN Security Council

November 28, 2017 
by Bertrand Ramcharan
The Security Council is the most authoritative organ of the United Nations, and supporters of the Council naturally expect it to exercise that authority when gross violations of human rights shock the conscience of humanity. During the Cold War, such actions were rarely done, except partly in relation to situations in southern Africa. Since …

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WORLDVIEWS

António Guterres, Please Reform the UN’s Human Rights Tools

November 20, 2017 
by Vincent Ploton
When recently asked what keeps him up at night, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, gave a straight answer: bureaucracy as well as “fragmented structures, byzantine procedures, endless red tape.” Such flaws also apply to UN human-rights mechanisms, and Guterres should ensure that his UN-wide reform agenda prioritizes strengthening such tools, which can be …

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WORLDVIEWS

Long Overdue: A New Boss at the UN Pension Fund and a Reformed Board

November 15, 2017 
by Loraine Rickard-Martin
An important change was made to the United Nations pension fund last month, when Secretary-General António Guterres announced he was appointing Sudhir Rajkumar of India to succeed Carol Boykin as his representative for investments of the $61.5 billion fund. Guterres needs to make another major change, however, to address serious problems at the joint …

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WORLDVIEWS

How Companies and Their Investors Pay Lip Service to UN Sanctions

November 5, 2017 
by Enrico Carisch
If an investment, shareholding, credit or other financing tool benefits an enterprise or an individual that is  somehow violating a United Nations arms embargo or is committing atrocities, terrorist acts or proliferating weapons of mass destructions, is such an involvement contravening sanctions regimes and therefore breaking international law? Checking past and current UN Security …

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WORLDVIEWS

As UN Climate Talks Convene, the Earth Veers Toward Catastrophe

November 2, 2017 
by Franz Baumann
Two years ago, the governments of the world unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a remarkable blueprint of the world’s most pressing long-term predicaments that the United Nations is good at lifting into the global conscience. Cataloguing 17 goals and 169 targets, the agenda contains an inventory of the remedial activities that …

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WORLDVIEWS

Four Easy Steps to Reform the UN Human Rights Council

October 15, 2017 
by Bertrand G. Ramcharan
Problems encircling the United Nations Human Rights Council are verging toward a major crisis. The same crisis had engulfed its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, leading the secretary-general at the time, Kofi Annan, to call to replace it with the Council. But the same problems affecting the former Commission now affect its successor, …

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WORLDVIEWS

Keeping a Close Eye on the UN’s Use of Unarmed Drones

October 10, 2017 
by Giovanna Kuele
In 2007, for the first time in history, United Nations forces operated an unmanned aerial vehicle — a small prototype for a short period by the UN mission in Haiti. In 2013, the UN officially launched drones (formally known as unmanned aerial systems, or UAS) for surveillance in a peacekeeping mission. Despite the controversies …

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WORLDVIEWS

Guterres’s UN Reform Agenda? It Couldn’t Be Vaguer

September 26, 2017 
by Bertrand G. Ramcharan
Secretary-General António Guterres, encouraged by the United States, has embarked on new reforms, so it is appropriate to scrutinize their policy content. Are they meaningful or are they hollow? With all due respect to the secretary-general of the United Nations, these are for the most part hollow reforms. They have the scent of snake …

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WORLDVIEWS

New Wine in Old Bottles: Germany and Conflict Prevention at the UN

September 15, 2017 
by Aurelie Domisse
BERLIN — Just as Germany’s run for a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2019-20 term is gathering steam, its government has published a new white paper, titled “Preventing Crises, Managing Conflicts, Building Peace.” In this release, Germany promises to become more active in the mostly civilian aspects of conflict …

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WORLDVIEWS

Has Anyone Seen the UN Secretary-General’s Human Rights Agenda?

August 22, 2017 
by Bertrand G. Ramcharan
Secretary-General António Guterres has set about modernizing some sectors of the United Nations and made impassioned statements about the need to protect human rights. But beyond rhetoric, so far there has been no indication of his modernizing the human-rights sector. We have seen this before. Dag Hammarskjold, a previous secretary-general, undoubtedly believed in human …

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