The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a ...hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body.
This book fundamentally reinterprets the history of international human rights in the post-1945 era by documenting how pivotal the Global South was for their breakthrough. In stark contrast to other ...contemporary human rights historians who have focused almost exclusively on the 1940s and the 1970s - heavily privileging Western agency - Steven L. B. Jensen convincingly argues that it was in the 1960s that universal human rights had their breakthrough. This is a ground-breaking work that places race and religion at the center of these developments and focuses on a core group of states who led the human rights breakthrough, namely Jamaica, Liberia, Ghana, and the Philippines. They transformed the norms upon which the international community today is built. Their efforts in the 1960s post-colonial moment laid the foundation - in profound and surprising ways - for the so-called human rights revolution in the 1970s, when Western activists and states began to embrace human rights.
This Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly resumed its Emergency Special Session on Ukraine, amidst a turbulent week that witnessed US President Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv, Russian ...withdrawal from the New START Treaty, and Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi’s visit to Moscow, amongst other things. On Thursday, the Assembly adopted resolution ES-11/6 (draft here) with 141 votes in favor, seven against, 32 abstentions and 13 countries not voting. If the Russian aggression last year was a watershed moment for the United Nations, then the organ to watch these days is the General Assembly, and not the Security Council.
Abstract Background Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. The World Health Organisation (WHO) collects mortality data coded using the International Statistical ...Classification of Diseases (ICD) code. Methods We analysed IHD deaths world-wide between 1995 and 2009 and used the UN population database to calculate age-specific and directly and indirectly age-standardised IHD mortality rates by country and region. Results IHD is the single largest cause of death worldwide, causing 7,249,000 deaths in 2008, 12.7% of total global mortality. There is more than 20-fold variation in IHD mortality rates between countries. Highest IHD mortality rates are in Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries; lowest rates in high income countries. For the working-age population, IHD mortality rates are markedly higher in low-and-middle income countries than in high income countries. Over the last 25 years, age-standardised IHD mortality has fallen by more than half in high income countries, but the trend is flat or increasing in some low-and-middle income countries. Low-and-middle income countries now account for more than 80% of global IHD deaths. Conclusions The global burden of IHD deaths has shifted to low-and-middle income countries as lifestyles approach those of high income countries. In high income countries, population ageing maintains IHD as the leading cause of death. Nevertheless, the progressive decline in age-standardised IHD mortality in high income countries shows that increasing IHD mortality is not inevitable. The 20-fold mortality difference between countries, and the temporal trends, may hold vital clues for handling IHD epidemic which is migratory, and still burgeoning.
This systematic analysis of State complicity in international law focuses on the rules of State responsibility. Combining a theoretical perspective on complicity based on the concept of the ...international rule of law with a thorough analysis of international practice, Helmut Philipp Aust establishes what forms of support for wrongful conduct entail responsibility of complicit States and sheds light on the consequences of complicity in terms of reparation and implementation. Furthermore, he highlights how international law provides for varying degrees of responsibility in cases of complicity, depending on whether peremptory norms have been violated or special subject areas such as the law of collective security are involved. The book shows that the concept of State complicity is firmly grounded in international law, and that the international rule of law may serve as a conceptual paradigm for today's international legal order.
Land of blue helmets Makdisi, Karim; Prashad, Vijay
2017., 20161025, 2016, 2016-10-18
eBook
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.
In recent times, the Blue Berets have become markers of peace and security around the globe. Yet, the iconoclastic symbol of both the Blue Beret and the Blue Helmet continue to engage the ...international political imagination in ways that downplay the inconsistent effects of peacekeeping missions on the security of local people. In this book, Paul Higate and Marsha Henry develop critical perspectives on UN and NATO peacekeeping, arguing that these forms of international intervention are framed by the exercise of power. Their analysis of peacekeeping, based on fieldwork conducted in Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo, suggests that peacekeeping reconfigures former conflict zones in ways that shape perceptions of security. This reconfiguration of space is enacted by peacekeeping personnel who 'perform' security through their daily professional and personal practices, sometimes with unanticipated effects. Insecure Spaces' interdisciplinary analysis sheds great light on the contradictory mix of security and insecurity that peace operations create.
The United Nations human rights system has in recent years been divided on the question as to whether coercive care interventions, including coercive psychiatric care, can ever be justified under UN ...human rights standards. Some within the UN human rights community hold that coercive care can comply with human rights standards, provided that the coercive intervention is a necessary and proportionate means to achieve certain approved aims, and that appropriate legal safeguards are in place. Others have held that coercive care is never justified. Disagreement over this issue has produced an impasse in the UN human rights system. We survey the impasse with particular attention to the legal arguments that inform the divergent positions. In doing so we introduce a distinction among a variety of different ‘abolitionist’ positions regarding coercive care, and draw a distinction between ‘non-consensual’ and ‘coercive’ treatment. We conclude with three proposals for moving beyond the current impasse.
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