International Relations Commons^™

The Darfur Name Game: Use Of Realpolitik By The United Nations In Decision-Making And Intervention, Angela Overton

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Violence has plagued the westernmost region of Sudan, known as Darfur, since 2003. The conflict contains elements of political and ethnic divisiveness, desertification, and resource scarcity. The violence there continues to date. Many have declared genocide in Darfur while others maintain that the conflict is instead a crime against humanity. The labeling of the conflict is critical because this process determines the interventions available. This paper focuses on the decision-making process of the United Nations and its Security Council to determine if the labeling of the conflict impacted the discourse and intervention decisions by those bodies. Discourse analysis results indicate …

Leaving A Legacy, Walter Lotze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing conflict in Somalia, and the complexities that come with finding lasting solutions to a conflict that has raged for decades now, continue to perplex the international community. While a range of previously tried and tested approaches to conflict management are being applied, it is becoming apparent that the international toolkit for responding to conflict situations of such complexity is extremely limited. Indeed, as one international conference after another on Somalia takes place, compacts are signed and funding windows established, old frameworks are abandoned and new ones are forged, and roadmap after roadmap pave the way for further engagement, …

Promoting Gender And Building Peace: Evolving Norms And International Practices, Renata Avelar Giannini

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The United Nations (UN) has incorporated a strong gender perspective into its peacekeeping operations (PKO) based on a renewed focus on women's rights and participation in peace processes. These efforts are part of a complex organizational learning process in which women's central role in peace processes and the increasing efforts to respond to conflict-related sexual violence have become a central component of the organization' s strategy to build a lasting peace. The underlying logic is that it is only after an equitable society is founded and when the other half of the population's voice has been included in the political …

The Ethics Of ‘Responsibility While Protecting’: Brazil, The Responsibility To Protect, And Guidelines For Humanitarian Intervention, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine has received considerable blowback. Various states, most notably some of the ‘BRICS’ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), claimed that NATO exceeded its mandate given to it by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 (by allegedly focusing on regime change rather than on the protection of civilians), was inappropriate in its target selection, violated the arms embargo by transferring arms to rebels, and generally caused too much harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.1 It was also suggested that the UK, US, and …

Syrians Crushed Between Humanitarianism And Realism, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announcing early this year that the war in Syria may have claimed as many as 60,000 lives, two op-eds published late in 2012 usefully exemplify two contrasting frames that have thus far dominated international responses to the conflict—namely, the humanitarian frame and the geopolitical frame. Yet despite the apparent contrasts between these two frameworks, both reflect a similar contempt for the Syrian people and their right to self-determination. The humanitarian framing of the conflict emphasizes the scale of human suffering and the need to alleviate it, while the geopolitical frame accentuates political interests …

Syria: Not Libya, But Let’S Treat It Like It Is Anyway, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The articles by Condoleezza Rice and Simon Adams advance a series of disquieting possibilities for the future of Syria if the US and other states fail to act. While I am sympathetic to the urgency with which both writers advance their claims, there is much strained and stretched logic—as well as outright naiveté—in both authors' arguments, especially Rice's.

Politics As Usual At The Un: Implementing Pillar Three Of Rtop, Eric A. Heinze

Human Rights & Human Welfare

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's most recent report on RtoP seeks to evaluate the various ways that Pillar Three of RtoP can be implemented. As anyone familiar with RtoP is aware, the commitment is understood to have three separate but interrelated pillars. The first pillar says that states have the primary responsibility to protect their own citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Pillar Two says that the international community should assist states in fulfilling this responsibility, while Pillar Three says that if the state fails in its primary responsibility to protect its citizens from these crimes, …

“The Rtop And Responsibility While Protecting: The Secretary-General’S Timely And Decisive Report On Timely And Decisive Responses”, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United Nations Secretary-General's report on pillar three of the responsibility to protect (RtoP), "Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response," is the most interesting, timely, and decisive of his four reports thus far on the RtoP. To start with, the subject matter of pillar three – the international community's potentially coercive responses to humanitarian crises, including humanitarian intervention – is the most controversial part of the RtoP doctrine and the area that has attracted the most criticism from skeptics. Previous reports, such as Implementing the Responsibility to Protect(2009), gave pillar three, and humanitarian intervention in particular, fairly short shrift, …

Strategies & Decisiveness: What Is Implied By A “Timely And Decisive Response” For Rtop Situations, H. M. Roff

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Reflecting upon United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's recent report concerning the third pillar of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), on the "timely and decisive response," two items become clear to me. First is that the third pillar is inherently coercive in nature, even though the report and many RtoP pundits stress that it entails more than merely sanctioning the use of force. Second is that this is unsurprising if we recall that the purpose of RtoP is to ensure the protection of particular human rights (rights against: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing) and that having a …

October Roundtable: Un Secretary-General Report On “Responsibility To Protect: Timely And Decisive Response”, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response” Ban Ki-moon, July 2012.

Responsibility To Regulate: How The ‘Responsibility To Protect’ Expands State Power, Philip Cunliffe

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Like most UN reports, particularly those concerned with the doctrine of the "responsibility to protect" (RtoP), the latest report of the UN Secretary-General is filled with plenty of pious guff mixed in with the platitudes that engulf UN diplomacy. But buried within the blathering are also some disturbing prescriptions for how the UN envisages rolling out RtoP around the world. I want to draw attention to three specific points in order to consider what these tell us about RtoP as a political model. First, I will look at the treatment of media and speech in the report; second, how the …

Sanctions Dataset Codebook For Arasp (Autocratic Regimes And Sanctions Project), Clara Portela, Christian Von Soest

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This is the codebook containing definitions of terms used in the Sanction Dataset. The dataset is composed of the entire universe of sanctions regimes imposed by the UN, US and EU in the period from 1990 to 2010, including those sanctions regimes that were in place by 1990, targeting a country, its leadership and entities associated with it. Episodes which are still on-going are also recorded.

Libya: A Multilateral Constitutional Moment?, Catherine Powell

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Libya intervention of 2011 marked the first time that the UN Security Council invoked the “responsibility to protect” principle (RtoP) to authorize use of force by UN member states. In this comment the author argues that the Security Council’s invocation of RtoP in the midst of the Libyan crisis significantly deepens the broader, ongoing transformation in the international law system’s approach to sovereignty and civilian protection. This transformation away from the traditional Westphalian notion of sovereignty has been unfolding for decades, but the Libyan case represents a further normative shift from sovereignty as a right to sovereignty as a …

An Examination Of The Varying Role Of The United Nations In The Civil Wars Of Rwanda And El Salvador, Vanessa Jaramillo-Cano

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this work is to examine the efforts of the United Nations in the Post-Cold War era with special emphasis on peacekeeping missions. A comparative study of recent United Nations peacekeeping operations will be completed to identify the variables that encourage or discourage international (UN) involvement in cases of civil conflict. For the purpose of this work, civil conflict will be narrowly defined as a domestic conflict with two major armed groups (ie: civil wars). Two countries will be studied to explore the nature of the respective conflicts, the transitional methods used by the peacekeeping mission to return …

March Roundtable: Responding To Syria, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Save Us from the Liberal Hawks” by David Rieff. Foreign Policy, February 13, 2012.

The United Nations And Gender-Mainstreaming; International Conferences On Women And The Development Of Gender Mainstreaming Policies In Caribbean States, Camasita Campo

Dissertations and Theses

"International conferences, especially UN-sponsored summits, are popular venues for political coalition around various issues of global concerns, mobilizing large audiences consisting of state representatives, NGO groups and other interested parties. Many small states participate at leading international summits. Some of these states for many obvious reasons are preoccupied with economic survival. Their limited resources are expended on economic priorities and little or none is left for the implementation of social development programs. As a result, these small states are constrained from defining contours of social development, without the cooperation of the international community. They must therefore depend on external actors …

An Examination Of The Varying Role Of The United Nations In The Civil Wars Of Rwanda And El Salvador, Vanessa Jaramillo-Cano

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The purpose of this work is to examine the efforts of the United Nations in the Post-Cold War era with special emphasis on peacekeeping missions. A comparative study of recent United Nations peacekeeping operations will be completed to identify the variables that encourage or discourage international (UN) involvement in cases of civil conflict. For the purpose of this work, civil conflict will be narrowly defined as a domestic conflict with two major armed groups (ie: civil wars). Two countries will be studied to explore the nature of the respective conflicts, the transitional methods used by the peacekeeping mission to return …

Lina Acalugaritei And Karen Mingst On From Human Trafficking To Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery. Edited By Alison Brysk & Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick. Philadelphia, Pa: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 280pp., Lina Acalugaritei, Karen Mingst

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

From Human Trafficking to Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery. Edited by Alison Brysk & Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 280pp.

International Organization And Poverty Alleviation, William F. Felice, Diana Fuguitt

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The World Trade Organization and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Sarah Joseph, David Kinley & Jeff Waincymer. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. 2009.

and

Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights. By Desmond McNeill & Asunción St. Clair. New York, NY: Routledge. 2009.

and

Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform. By Catherine Weaver. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2008.

November Roundtable: The Palestine Bid For Statehood At The Un, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Statehood versus “Facts on the Ground””. By Richard Falk. Aljazeera, September 20, 2011.

The Sum Of The Parts, Therese O'Donnell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From one perspective the Middle East lends itself as a macabre mise-en-scene where the triumph of realpolitik over the legitimacies of international law can be continually re-staged. To be sure, at least two sovereign states seem to go their own way, even in the face of rampant and valid international criticism—the end of a construction freeze on illegal settlements and failures to condemn clearly illustrate this point. However, two can play at that game. The US veto of the October 2003 draft Security Council resolution declaring as illegal Israel’s construction of its security fence, beyond the 1949 Green Line and …

The Un Security Council On Syria: Radical Change Or Continuity?, Thomas Pegram

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The Presidential Statement issued by the UN Security Council on August 3 condemning the widespread violation of human rights by Syrian authorities was hailed by some as signaling the collapse of the pro-Syrian "defiance coalition."

This "defiance coalition," comprised of the so-called "BRICs" (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) along with Lebanon, did indeed relent, begrudgingly, to growing international pressure for action on Syria. However, whether a statement containing little actionable content signals the crumbling of defiance rather than a diplomatic maneuver as calculations are recalibrated in light of developments is another matter.

The Us Veto Over Palestine's Un Membership, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

While the United Nations is in debate over Palestinians’ request for UN membership, the US has already announced their decision to veto. But the over two thirds of Americans who are neither Jewish nor Evangelical should consider saying yes. It may not solve every problem but it could increase the prospects for successful negotiations between Palestine and Israel.

September Roundtable: "The Syrian Spring" And Human Rights, Introduction, Raslan Ibrahim

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The UN Security Council's Pro-Syrian 'Defiance Coalition' Crumbles”. By Raghida Dergham. Huffington Post, August 2011.

White Noise, White Heat, Therese O'Donnell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

If, as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously uttered, "A week is a long time in politics," then the Six weeks since Raghida Dergham's article could be a lifetime and the last six months of the "Arab Spring" an aeon.

The Moral International Sphere As A New "Civic Virtue", Claudia Heiss

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Liberal political theory, the predominant paradigm at least since the 1970s, rules out as oppressive the imposition of any substantive notion of a "good way of life" and proposes instead a neutral conception where each individual should have the right to pursue his or her own preferred project of life. This opposition of an ancient "virtue" and a modern "freedom" seems challenged by current debates about morality and the responsibility to protect innocent civilians from massive crimes. The moral outrage of the international community may be interpreted as a signal of a perhaps minimal notion of civic virtue, which translates …

August Roundtable: Re-Thinking State Failure And Human Rights, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Think Again, Failed States ”. By James Traub. Foreign Policy. July/August 2011.

“Failed States Are Everyone’S Problem”, Devin Joshi

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This article raises interesting issues but cannot answer its own puzzles because it fails to define what constitutes a threat or danger to US national security. As an American citizen, the security of the Central African Republic is in my personal interest. The CAR is a country where it has been reported that one out of every sixteen mothers dies during childbirth. That is a serious problem! Who is to say it is not in Americans’ interest to prevent state failure there? If the US government is not interested in Central Africans' security, obviously, there is a disconnect between the …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

April Roundtable: Responsibility To Protect And Human Rights Protection In The Ivory Coast, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

Article under review: “The Case for Intervention in the Ivory Coast” by Corinne Dufka. Foreign Policy. March 25 2011.