text:
_The_

_United Nations_

_and Changing_

_World Politics_
SEVENTH EDITION

THE
UNITED NATIONS
 _and_ CHANGING
WORLD POLITICS

**THOMAS G. WEISS**

_The CUNY Graduate Center_

**DAVID P. FORSYTHE**

_University of Nebraska_

**ROGER A. COATE**

_Georgia College_

**KELLY-KATE PEASE**

_Webster University_

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weiss, Thomas George.

The United Nations and changing world politics / Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, Roger A. Coate, Kelly-Kate Pease.—Seventh edition

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8133-4848-3 (e-book) 1. United Nations. 2. World politics—1989– I. Forsythe, David P., 1941– II. Coate, Roger A. III. Pease, Kelly-Kate. IV. Title.

JZ4984.5.W45 2014

341.23'1—dc23

2013005320

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
_Contents_

_Tables and Illustrations_

_Preface_

_Foreword to the Seventh Edition, Michael W. Doyle_

_Acronyms_

**Introduction**

The Legal Foundations of Sovereignty

State Sovereignty

Changing _Raisons d'État_

The United Nations: Actor or Institutional Framework?

UN Politics

Notes

**PART ONE**

INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY

* * *

**1** **The Theory of UN Collective Security**

Collective Security

The United Nations and Security: Some Basics

Regional Arrangements

Straying from the Ideal

Notes

**2** **UN Security Efforts During the Cold War**

The Early Years: Palestine, Korea, Suez, the Congo

Understanding Peacekeeping

"Chapter Six and a Half" on Hold, 1978–1988

Economic Sanctions

Notes

**3** **UN Security Operations After the Cold War, 1988–1998**

The First UN Military Operations After the End of the Cold War, 1988–1993

The Rebirth of Peacekeeping

Moving Toward the Next Generation

Moving Toward Enforcement

Nonforcible Sanctions in the Post–Cold War Era: Humanitarian Dilemmas

Operational Quandaries: Cambodia, the Former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti

Conclusion

Notes

**4** **Evolving Security Operations: Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, and Syria**

Using Military Force for Human Protection Purposes

Implications for the UN's Security Efforts

The Crisis in the Balkans

Turmoil in Timor-Leste (East Timor)

Reestablishing Stability in Sierra Leone

Lebanon—Again

Darfur, Sudan

Côte d'Ivoire

Libya

Syria

Conclusion: Whither the Responsibility to Protect?

Notes

**5** **The Challenges of the Twenty-First Century**

After September 11, What's New?

Political Challenges

The Challenges of Reform

The 2005 World Summit

Strengthening the Secretariat

Strengthening the Role of Women

Explaining Change

Notes

**PART TWO**

HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS

* * *

**6** **The United Nations, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Affairs**

The Theory

Understanding Rights

Basic Norms in the UN Era

Core Norms Beyond the Charter

Supplementing the Core

Notes

**7** **The United Nations and Applying Human Rights Standards**

Security Council

General Assembly

International Criminal Court

Office of the Secretary-General

High Commissioner for Human Rights

Commission on Human Rights, 1946–2006

Human Rights Council, 2006–Present

Supplemental Human Rights Bodies

Human Rights and Development

Emergency Assistance

Notes

**8** **Change, the United Nations, and Human Rights**

More on _Raisons d'État_

State Coalitions

Nonstate Actors

Theories of Change

Notes

**PART THREE**

SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

* * *

**9** **Theories of Development at the United Nations**

The Politics of Changing Theories

Notes

**10** **Sustainable Development as Process: UN Organizations and Norms**

Understanding the Organizational Chart: Coordination, Again

Particular Contributions to Sustainable Development

The World Bank, IMF, and WTO

Norm Creation and Coherence: A History of Ideas

The UN's Sustainable Human Development Model

Notes

**11** **The UN and Development in a Globalizing World**

Globalization

The MDG Strategy

Implementing the MDGs

A Global Partnership for Development

Explaining Change

Notes

**Conclusion: Learning from Change**

Measuring Change

Learning Lessons?

Articulation and Aggregation of Interests

Rule Making

Applying Rules

Some Final Thoughts

Notes

_Appendix A: The United Nations System_

_Appendix B: Concise List of Internet Sites Relevant to the United Nations_

_Appendix C: Charter of the United Nations_

_Appendix D: United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights_

_About the Book and Authors_

_Index_
_Tables and Illustrations_

_Tables_

2.1 UN Peacekeeping Operations During the Cold War and During the Initial Thaw

3.1 UN Peace and Security Operations, 1988–Present

4.1 UN Peace and Security Operations, 1999–Present

4.2 UN Peace and Security Operations: Completed as of December 2012

6.1 UN Human Rights Conventions

7.1 Controversial Human Freedom Index, 1991

7.2 Human Development Index, 2011

7.3 Top Financial Contributors to the International Committee of the Red Cross, 2011

9.1 UN Development Milestones with a Strong Economic Flavor, 1943–1980

9.2 UN Development Milestones with a Strong Ecological Flavor, 1948–1982

10.1 Chronology of Selected Development-Related Conferences, 1990–2005

11.1 Millennium Development Goals and Targets

_Figures_

7.1 UN Human Rights Organizational Structure

_Photographs_

I.1 A view of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan as seen from the southwest. The headquarters site covers approximately sixteen acres, from 42nd to 48th Streets between First Avenue and the East River.

1.1 Edward R. Stettinius Jr., chairman of the U.S. delegation, signs the UN Charter in San Francisco on June 26, 1945. President Harry S. Truman stands by.

2.1 Prisoners guarded by a South Korean soldier wait to be taken to a POW camp near Inchon in October 1950.

2.2 Congolese refugees uprooted from their homes by fighting in Katanga Province wait for water at a refugee camp in September 1961.

2.3 Brian E. Urquhart, undersecretary-general for special political affairs, answers questions in June 1985 about his mission to the Middle East to free soldiers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.

3.1 Medical personnel from the multinational forces carry an Iraqi refugee into a camp near Safwan, Iraq, in March 1991.

3.2 Participants in a UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia de-mining course learn to cope with trip wires near Siem Reap Town, Cambodia, 1993.

3.3 UN Protection Force soldiers in Stari Vitez, Yugoslavia.

3.4 Somalian children receiving food in 1992.

3.5 Members of the Jordanian battalion of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti rescue children from an orphanage destroyed by Hurricane Ike.

4.1 Secretary-General Kofi Annan holds the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in December 2000 to the United Nations and to him, as the organization's secretary-general.

4.2 Ana Vaz, a Formed Police Unit officer of the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste from Portugal, speaks to a Rapid Intervention Unit officer of the Timor-Leste police about protecting the trucks distributing food to internally displaced persons with the help of the International Organization for Migration and the World Food Programme.

4.3 United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon troops observe Section 83 near the Blue Line on the border between Lebanon and Israel.

4.4 Chinese engineers working for the United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur unload their equipment kits upon arrival in Nyala, Sudan.

5.1 President George W. Bush and Secretary-General Kofi Annan at Ground Zero in New York City.

5.2 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the staff members of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

6.1 Eleanor Roosevelt holds a Universal Declaration of Human Rights poster.

6.2 The Palais des Nations, UN Office at Geneva.

7.1 Haitians take to the streets of Port-au-Prince to celebrate Jean-Bertrand Aristide's election in 1990.

7.2 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon unveils the artistic new ceiling of a conference room of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

7.3 Despite the best efforts of Operation Lifeline Sudan, millions of displaced people endured famine in the country even in areas that did not directly experience military clashes.

8.1 The Peace Palace, seat of the International Court of Justice.

8.2 Navanethem Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, addresses a plenary meeting of the General Assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights, on the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

8.3 The rubble of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad following a suicide bomber attack on August 19, 2003, which killed twenty-two, including the secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

8.4 At the Killing Fields memorial near Phnom Penh, shelves filled with skulls testify to Cambodia's tragic past.

9.1 Housewives cut and sew traditional farmers' cotton shirts to be sold in local markets and the women's cooperative shop in Mung Mo, Thailand.

9.2 A slum in São Paulo, Brazil, illustrates the shortage of adequate housing as rural settlements are abandoned by people moving to the cities.

9.3 UNICEF gives the Zarghuna Girls School educational supplies, provides teachers' training, and assists in repairing the infrastructure.

9.4 With UNDP and ILO support, the Rural Artisan Training Centre in Dakar, Senegal, instructs rural artisans, such as this potter.

10.1 A female work crew builds a road in Lesotho, 1969.

10.2 Brazilian president Collor de Mello acknowledges the applause of world leaders after he formally closes the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992.

10.3 Scene at the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum held in Huairou, China, as part of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing, September 4–15, 1995.

10.4 Refugees returning to Cambodia in 1992 under the oversight of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia were offered different forms of UNHCR assistance, including a house plot and house kit.

10.5 A visiting foreign official inspects a solar cooker at a research facility in Gansu Province in China. The Natural Energy Research Institute focuses on new forms of energy-producing products.

10.6 A water pump powered by solar energy in Thies, Senegal.

11.1 Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, president of the sixty-third session of the General Assembly, joined by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, addresses a high-level event of world leaders, private sector representatives, and civil society partners to discuss specific ways to energize collaboration to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

C.1 A group photo of the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the sixtieth session of the General Assembly (2005 World Summit).
_Preface_

_The United Nations and Changing World Politics_ explores the role of the UN and its associated family of organizations and specialized agencies in contemporary global governance. The UN is seemingly always in transition, which is central to understanding world politics and also why this book is in its seventh edition. The three substantive sections of this text—international peace and security, human rights and humanitarian affairs, and sustainable human development—continue to be at the center of our own approaches to international organization and law. How the UN, with its 193 member states, responds to the related challenges, both old and new, is the substance of this book.

The United Nations has many shortcomings that involve politics entrenched in state rivalries between the haves and have-nots, competing power centers, and bureaucratic infighting to control agendas and resources. We have endeavored to capture the UN's essence as a political organization caught in the struggle to make public policy through the exercise of power. We stress how representatives of member states and other actors, such as international civil servants and nongovernmental organizations, seek to use UN symbols and procedures to shape policy. Policymaking always involves power, understood as a synonym for influence. We also observe how UN structures and processes constrain the exercise of power. Hard power involves coercion through manipulation of economic resources and military force. Soft power involves persuasion and pressure through words and symbolic acts. The central question, for those interested in the United Nations, is who seeks what policy objective, using what power, and with what outcome? What occurs at the UN, to paraphrase Harold Lasswell's classic 1936 formulation of politics, is about _Who Gets What, When, How._

The United Nations is about global governance without a world government, or attempts to collectively manage transnational problems in the absence of the "normal" attributes of government. These attributes include a true legislature, a single executive branch, an integrated court system, and, above all, a legitimate monopoly on the exercise of force. Our primary objective is to get students to understand the UN as part of the fabric of world politics and its presumed centrality in managing complicated problems involving war, reconstruction, protection and promotion of human dignity, development, and environmental protection. We construct a balance sheet of achievements and shortcomings, and we address the UN's role relative to regional organizations, unilateral undertakings, and ad hoc arrangements.

We also wanted to capture the essence of public international law as an institution that exerts real influence on real political struggles. We emphasize that, like all public law, the international version is not a technical subject independent of politics but rather part and parcel of world politics. International law is formulated through a political process, frequently revolving around a variety of UN forums. Consequently, public international law interacts with world politics, sometimes shaping it greatly and sometimes only slightly or not at all.

We also stress the importance of history. The present and the future have a history. When seemingly new issues arise, there is always a background to the issue that affects its management or disposition. When U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell spoke at the UN Security Council in early 2003 about whether Iraq had complied with previous council resolutions demanding disarmament, many commentators referred back to the council of 1962. Then, U.S. permanent representative Adlai Stevenson dramatically confronted the Soviet Union over the issue of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In 2003 the United States did not have the same kind of compelling evidence—the "smoking gun"—of denied weapons activity presented some forty years earlier. Still, UN history was part of the drama for Powell's presentation. History does not necessarily determine the future—path dependency is an overused image—but history often affects the future in that it provides insights and lessons and frequently circumscribes policy options and prescriptions. The history of such issues as using military force, coordinating humanitarian assistance, and promoting sustainable development affects new policy decisions. Knowing this history is essential for understanding UN politics. We want readers to learn the political and legal history of the UN so that present and future choices can be analyzed and debated against that background.

We have endeavored to design this book so that it can be used in at least two ways. First, we want it to serve as a core text in college courses on international organization and the United Nations, and we also are immodest enough to believe that many graduate students and even diplomats could learn a great deal from these pages. Second, we want it to be useful as supplemental reading in other courses, such as international relations and international law. Thus, the essentials of politics at the UN in three central arenas (security, human rights, and sustainable human development) provide the spine for this book because of their intrinsic importance in world politics and because the United Nations has had significant normative and operational impacts in all three. We have brought our collective experiences and judgment to bear on analyses of these issues. If we can get students to better understand the United Nations as a political organization affected by international law, with its own history; if we can accurately portray the UN as greatly affected by basic changes in its political milieu; and if we can provide insights about what the UN has done and how these efforts might be improved in the future, we will have succeeded.

**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**

This text builds on six previous editions, which would not have been as insightful without the contributions of others. Four outside reviewers read the original manuscript of the first edition in 1993. Craig Murphy of Wellesley College and Lawrence Finkelstein, then at Northern Illinois University, are both recognized scholars of international organization and world politics; they provided comments through the cooperation of the International Organization Section of the International Studies Association (ISA). Two other readers, unknown to us, were provided by Westview Press. A discussion group focused on this manuscript at the annual meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) in Montreal in June 1993. Another ISA panel focused on the book at the 2002 conference in New Orleans. Thus this book is in many ways a product of the ISA and ACUNS.

We would like to express our special gratitude to those staff members of our respective academic institutions who—with good humor and professionalism—assisted in the preparation of the various versions of the manuscript over time. We thank Danielle Zach, Janet Reilly, and Elisa Athonvarangkul at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York for their essential contributions. Without the help of Susan Costa, Mary Lhowe, Melissa Phillips, Fred Fullerton, and Laura Sadovnikoff at Brown University's Watson Institute, the earliest editions would have been considerably slower in appearing and certainly less well presented. Another word of appreciation goes to those younger researchers who have helped at one stage or another in framing arguments, checking facts and endnotes, and prodding their mentors: Peter Breil, Christopher Brodhead, Cindy Collins, Paula L'Ecuyer, Jean Garrison, Mutuma Ruteere, Barbara Ann Rieffer, Lekesha Harris, Peter Söderholm, Corinne Jiminez, and Caitlin Creech.

We are delighted that Michael Doyle agreed to grace these pages with an original foreword. From his current position at Columbia University, he brings to the classroom and research a distinguished and almost unparalleled reputation as an international relations theorist who also has not shied away from applied research on the ground about peacekeeping and a stint as a UN assistant secretary-general.

Finally, we also are honored to acknowledge those colleagues and friends who contributed their insights in forewords to previous editions. Inis L. Claude, in his foreword to the second edition, captured the prominence the UN enjoyed in the immediate post–Cold War era and foreshadowed the challenges faced by the UN in the wake of disintegrating states. In the third edition, Leon Gordenker cautioned that no single theory can capture the complexities of the UN policies and processes and prodded us to consider what encourages the UN to influence global life and what holds it back. In the fourth, James O. C. Jonas noted that the role of the Secretariat and the secretary-general is too often downplayed and needs further elucidation if we are to understand how and why the UN behaves as it does. Richard Jolly set the pessimistic tone of the 2005 World Summit in the fifth edition's foreword, noting that the decade-long effort to reform the UN was systematically undermined by the neoconservative administration of George W. Bush; coupled with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 without Security Council authorization, the UN suffered a critical leadership deficit. The foreword of the sixth edition, by Ramesh Thakur, highlighted the political changes in important states, including the United States, and stressed that, on balance, the world is a better and safer place because of the UN. Because of space constraints, we are no longer able to present the full texts of these previous forewords; however, they are available on the publisher's website at www.westviewpress.com.

Although only the authors are responsible for the final version, we acknowledge with gratitude the time and effort that others have put into improving our work.

_Thomas G. Weiss_

_David P. Forsythe_

_Roger A. Coate_

_Kelly-Kate Pease_

_December 2012_
_Foreword to the Seventh Edition_

**MICHAEL W. DOYLE**

_Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science, Columbia University; former special adviser and assistant secretary-general for Policy Planning of the United Nations; and current chair of the Advisory Board of the UN Democracy Fund_

Just what is the United Nations in the world political system? To the very naïve—and the very paranoid—it looks a little like a world government. U.S. citizens might see the secretary-general as president. The Security Council, composed of five great-power, permanent-member states and ten elected states, is the Senate. The General Assembly, composed of all member states, is the House of Representatives. The International Court of Justice is a Supreme Court. The World Bank is a development ministry or Treasury Department and the International Monetary Fund a sort of Federal Reserve. In the Secretariat, the Department of Political Affairs resembles a State Department or foreign ministry, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations is a Defense Department.

But as students of the seventh edition of this highly readable and remarkably well informed landmark text will soon discover, these organizational chart–driven analogies are deeply flawed. The UN is not a state; it is an organization of states. It subscribes to some important shared principles—peace, human rights, humanitarian assistance, and development—but the UN Charter is not, unlike the U.S. Constitution, designed to be a "more perfect union." The Constitution begins "We the People"; the UN Charter, "We the Peoples." And the UN is, when working well, at least "We the Governments."

The Security Council is actually the chief executive power, but it also has quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. It directs and makes legally binding decisions for issues of peace and security, and it sanctions (that is, punishes) states and individuals. The secretary-general is (only) the "chief administrative officer." The U.S. president appoints (with the advice and consent of the Senate) cabinet and other officials down to the deputy assistant secretary level in the departments. All are of his or her party or chosen to fulfill a political platform. The secretary-general chooses only his or her Executive Office at his full discretion. Even then the advisers must be balanced among nationalities. Heads of departments are "claimed" by the great powers. Imagine if Texas got to decide who would be secretary of defense or New York, treasury secretary. And the World Bank and the IMF may be part of the organizational chart, but they have only nominal connections to the rest of the UN proper, headquartered in New York.

One useful way to understand the United Nations, the one adopted by this volume, is to perceive _three_ "United Nations," interacting together in a changing world system. The first is the UN as an organization of states, meeting together to make international agreements and decisions in the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council. The second UN is the Secretariat of officials, at whose head is the secretary-general, who, when successful, can rise to the stature of world's chief diplomat. The third is the UN as convening center of the world's many nongovernmental organizations, global civil society, who struggle to articulate and represent the nonofficial global public interest.

This book concentrates on the first two, without denying the importance of the third. It traces the effects of the Cold War, which divided states along East-West lines. Then, with decolonization, it traces the effects of the end of the Cold War and the rise of China and India and other states of the developing South; North-South divisions between the industrial countries; and differentiating countries of the developing regions of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. It examines the evolution of the Secretariat, its growth and development as an international civil service attempting to "Deliver as One."

The book focuses on the three large responsibilities assigned to the UN system: international peace and security, human rights and humanitarian protection, and sustainable development.

To continue the threefold set of distinctions, in each of these responsibilities the UN takes on operational tasks, convenes meetings to engage in interstate diplomatic bargaining, and establishes new norms for action. The operational UN includes more than a hundred thousand peacekeepers authorized by the Security Council with some managed directly by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and thousands of humanitarian officials assisting refugees, vaccinating children, and investigating global environmental issues. The convening and conferencing UN serves as a negotiating forum for and repository for international treaties, sets budgets and allocates dues among the member states, and offers a "bully pulpit" and diplomatic cocktail party for world leaders each September in the General Assembly. The normative UN articulates the evolving values of the international community. The General Assembly first endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Since then, national self-determination has been endorsed and racial discrimination denounced. Sustainable and human development were defined, and the "Responsibility to Protect" was acknowledged.

The UN in a changing world politics is where all three of these systems come together. The United Nations of states, the Secretariat, and NGOs affects peace and security, human rights and development, and it does so by engaging in operational activities, diplomatic bargaining, and new norm setting.

As I write, in the summer of 2012, the UN system is confronted with how to make the new norm of Responsibility to Protect operationally effective and diplomatically sustainable. The norm envisages expanding the UN role in international peace and security to cover protection of civilian populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. The first responsibility, as articulated in an influential NGO report chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohammed Sahnoun and refined at the General Assembly in 2005, is domestic. Governments should protect their own populations. But if governments fail to do so, the responsibility devolves to the Security Council. In 2011, the Security Council stepped forward and authorized the protection of the Libyan population from the ravages threatened by Libya's head of state, Muammar Gaddafi. NATO accepted the charge. Protected by NATO forces, Libyan rebels toppled Gaddafi's regime and executed him. But, concerned that NATO had exceeded its mandate in Libya, Russia and China suffered "buyer's remorse" when it came to managing the 2012 crisis in Syria, where (so far) sanctions have been ruled out. The Syrian crisis is much more complicated than the "people versus Gaddafi" divide in Libya. In Syria, deep and wide divisions split the population. But what is noticeable is the questioning of the new Responsibility to Protect norm and the credibility it should be given. Readers of this volume will know how the crises have played out; their successful management or failure will determine whether the UN acquired a powerful new tool and vital new mandate, or experienced one more "bridge too far."

So, too, in the summer of 2012, the UN community is gearing up to renew, revise, or transcend the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs, crystallized in the summer of 2001 by an interagency team that included the UN Secretariat, UNDP, the World Bank, IMF, UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF, WHO, and the OECD, were a new attempt to define development with a human face. Drawing on the broad principles endorsed by all the UN's member states in the Millennium Declaration of 2000, these officials defined eight goals, eighteen targets, and forty-eight indicators designed to inspire governmental and private effort to address extreme poverty in its many dimensions and to better coordinate the often competing goals of the many UN agencies, funds, and programs. In 2015, their reckoning comes due. The international community needs to decide whether to renew the challenge, change the terms, or reconceive the effort (perhaps at regional levels alone).

One cannot yet tell how either of these two key innovations will play out. The UN has in the past achieved remarkable success in establishing new norms and then helping to make them operational; decolonization comes most immediately to mind. But others—nuclear nonproliferation and universal and total disarmament among them—have not fared so well. The important point is that the struggle to reshape the international order finds a place in the UN and is likely to continue to do so.
_Acronyms_

AMIS | African Union Mission in Sudan

---|---

ASEAN | Association of Southeast Asian Nations

AU | African Union

CAT | Committee Against Torture

CEB | United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination

CEDAW | Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

CERD | Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

CHR | Commission on Human Rights

CIS | Commonwealth of Independent States

CRC | Committee on the Rights of the Child

CSCE | Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe

CSD | Commission on Sustainable Development

DESA | United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs

DPA | Department of Political Affairs

DPKO | Department of Peacekeeping Operations

DSB | Dispute Settlement Body

EC | European Community

ECA | Economic Commission for Africa

ECAFE | Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East

ECE | Economic Commission for Europe

EC-ESA | Economic and Social Affairs Executive Committee

ECHA | Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs

ECLAC | Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

ECOMOG | Military Observer Group of the Economic Community of West African States

ECOSOC | Economic and Social Council

ECOWAS | Economic Community of West African States

EPTA | Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance

ERC | emergency relief coordinator

ESCAP | Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

ESCWA | Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

EU | European Union

FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization

FMLN | Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front)

G7 | Group of Seven

G8 | Group of Eight

G77 | Group of 77

GATT | General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GCC | Gulf Cooperation Council

GDP | gross domestic product

GEF | Global Environment Facility

GEI | Green Economic Initiative

HABITAT | UN Center for Human Settlements

HIPC | Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative

HIV/AIDS | human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

HLP | High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change

HRC | Human Rights Council

IAEA | International Atomic Energy Agency

IASC | Inter-Agency Standing Committee

IBP | International Biological Programme

IBRD | International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

ICC | International Criminal Court

ICISS | International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

ICJ | International Court of Justice

ICRC | International Committee of the Red Cross

ICSU | International Council of Scientific Unions

ICT | information and communications technology

IDA | International Development Association

IDP | internally displaced person

IFI | international financial institution

IFOR | Implementation Force (in the former Yugoslavia)

IGBP | International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme

IGO | intergovernmental organization

IHL | international humanitarian law

ILO | International Labour Organization

IMF | International Monetary Fund

IMO | International Maritime Organization

INTERFET | International Force in East Timor

IOC | International Oceanographic Commission

IPCC | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ISAF | International Security Assistance Force

ITO | International Trade Organization

ITU | International Telecommunications Union

ITUC | International Trade Union Confederation

IUCN | International Union for the Conservation of Nature and National Resources

KLA | Kosovo Liberation Army

LDCs | least developed countries

LLDCs | landlocked developing countries

MCA | Millennium Challenge Account

MDA | Magen David Adom (Israeli aid society)

MDG | Millennium Development Goal

MDGR | Millennium Development Goal Report

MINURCAT | United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad

MINUSTAH | United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti

MNF | Multinational Force

MONUC | United Nations Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

MSC | Military Staff Committee

NAM | Non-Aligned Movement

NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGLS | Non-Governmental Liaison Service

NGO | nongovernmental organization

NIEO | New International Economic Order

NSA | nonstate actor

NTB | nontariff barrier

OAS | Organization of American States

OAU | Organization of African Unity

OCHA | Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ODA | overseas development assistance

ODC | Overseas Development Council

OECD | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OEF | Operation Enduring Freedom

OHCHR | Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

ONUB | United Nations Operation in Burundi

ONUC | United Nations Operation in the Congo

ONUCA | United Nations Observer Group in Central America

ONUSAL | United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador

ONUVEH | United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Haiti

ONUVEN | United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Nicaragua

OPEC | Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

OSCE | Organization on Security and Co-operation in Europe

P-5 | permanent five members of the Security Council

PBC | Peacebuilding Commission

PEPFAR | President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

PLO | Palestine Liberation Organization

PMC | Permanent Mandates Commission

PVO | private voluntary organization

RUF | Revolutionary United Front

SAARC | South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

SADCC | Southern African Development Coordination Conference

SARS | severe acute respiratory syndrome

SCOPE | Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment

SIDS | small island developing states

SMG | Senior Management Group

SUNFED | Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development

SWAPO | South-West Africa People's Organization

TDB | Trade and Development Board

TNC | transnational corporation

TRIMS | trade-related investment measures

TRIPS | Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

UDHR | Universal Declaration of Human Rights

UDI | unilateral declaration of independence

UNAMA | United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan

UNAMET | United Nations Mission in East Timor

UNAMID | United Nations/African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur

UNAMIR | United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda

UNAMSIL | United Nations Mission for Sierra Leone

UNAVEM | United Nations Angola Verification Mission

UNCDF | United Nations Capital Development Fund

UNCED | United Nations Conference on Environment and Development

UNCHE | United Nations Conference on the Human Environment

UNCHS | United Nations Center for Human Settlements (HABITAT)

UNCTAD | United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNDG | United Nations Development Group

UNDOF | United Nations Disengagement Observer Force

UNDP | United Nations Development Programme

UNDRO | United Nations Disaster Relief Office

UNEF | United Nations Emergency Force

UNEP | United Nations Environment Programme

UNESCO | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNFPA | United Nations Population Fund

UNFICYP | United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus

UNGOMAP | United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan

UNHCR | United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF | United Nations Children's Fund

UNIFEM | United Nations Development Fund for Women

UNIFIL | United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

UNIIMOG | United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group

UNITA | National Union for the Total Independence of Angola

UNITAF | Unified Task Force (in Somalia)

UNMEE | United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea

UNMIH | United Nations Mission in Haiti

UNMIK | United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo

UNMIL | United Nations Mission in Liberia

UNMIS | United Nations Mission in the Sudan

UNMISET | United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor

UNMIT | United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste

UNMOGIP | United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan

UNMOVIC | United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission

UNOCI | United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire

UNOMSIL | United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone

UNOSOM | United Nations Operation in Somalia

UNPROFOR | United Nations Protection Force (in the former Yugoslavia)

UNSMIH | United Nations Support Mission in Haiti

UNTAC | United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia

UNTAET | United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor

UNTAG | United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia

UNTSO | United Nations Truce Supervision Organization

UPU | Universal Postal Union

USSR | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

VOLAG | volunteer agency

WACAP | World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty

WCRP | World Climate Research Programme

WFP | World Food Programme

WHO | World Health Organization

WMD | weapon of mass destruction

WMO | World Meteorological Organization

WTO | World Trade Organization
_Introduction_

_The most casual observer of the international scene can see that the problem of world order has not been solved._

**—Inis L. Claude Jr., _Swords into Plowshares_**

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS an era of bold transition. When the century began, global multilateral relations and international organizations were in their infancy. Experiments with international unions, conference diplomacy, and the expansion of multilateral relations beyond Europe remained fledgling. As the decades unfolded, so did universal multilateralism, albeit on the European state-system model. First, the League of Nations was created to meet the challenges posed by the increasing lethality of warfare and the associated evolving norm of the illegality of aggressive war. Although this first great experiment failed, it laid the foundation for its successor, the United Nations. When the second great European war of the century became a global conflict, national governmental leaders once again began to search for a way to prevent global conflicts. Under the leadership of officials from the United States and Great Britain, the Declaration on United Nations was signed on January 1, 1942. It began with twenty-six countries allied to fight fascism but was based on international cooperation that would lead to the second great experiment in universal international organization when the formal UN Charter was signed in 1945. This time, however, the collective security agreement was seen as part of a more comprehensive global arrangement in which the guarantees of collective security were linked to a series of international institutions aimed at promoting and fostering the social and economic conditions necessary for peace to prevail.

The UN system was born plural and decentralized and was never intended to approximate a centralized unitary system that would have resembled a government. It also was born from pragmatism. A great war against fascism and irrationalism was being fought and won; the price of a third great war was viewed as too great. This realization seemed even more striking when the nuclear era began in Hiroshima barely six weeks after the ink dried on the Charter in San Francisco. The founders saw the UN as the harnessing of state power for the management of pressing problems: in the words of one analyst, "Its wartime architects bequeathed us this system as a realist necessity vital in times of trial, not as a liberal accessory to be discarded when the going gets rough." This was hardly wide-eyed idealism or utopianism run amok.

Even the UN's socioeconomic agencies were seen not as part of altruism but as an indirect attack on war as well as a means of promoting economic prosperity at home and abroad. Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed strongly that the origins of World War II lay in the economic and social misery of the 1920s. Those conditions gave rise to aggressive fascism in Europe. So even as World War II continued, the U.S.-led United Nations alliance began putting in place a broad UN cooperation system that included the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration (1943), Food and Agricultural Organization (1943), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank (1944), International Monetary Fund (1944), and other economic and social agencies.

The primary purpose of the UN was to maintain international peace and security; its history is filled with the trials and tribulations of collective security since World War II. UN officials managed more than twenty thousand troops in the old Belgian Congo in the 1960s (later Zaire and more recently once again the Congo). Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died while coping with that crisis, which almost caused the collapse of the world organization. UN diplomatic and military personnel were deeply involved in Middle Eastern politics since the late 1940s in Palestine but especially in the 1956 Suez crisis and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

At times the United Nations was placed on the back burner. For much of the 1970s and even more frequently in the 1980s, major states bypassed the world organization on international security issues. Some developing countries continued to look on the UN as more central to world politics, but both the United States and the Soviet Union mostly favored action outside it. Circles of opinion in Washington, both public and private, were particularly harsh in their criticisms of the organization in the 1980s. The first administration of Ronald Reagan, and related think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, manifested a deep distrust of multilateralism. One Reagan official, Charles Lichenstein, assigned to the UN, spoke publicly of "waving . . . a fond farewell as [the UN] sailed into the sunset." Several U.S. allies also shied away from an organization whose "automatic" voting majorities had shifted over the decades from being controlled by the United States to being dominated by developing countries. They, like the United States, appeared at times to despair of an organization whose resolutions were not followed by commitment to action. That the world organization, at least as embodied in the rules and procedures of the Security Council, was not supposed to act unless there existed a concert of the major powers—the Permanent 5 (or P-5: United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Soviet Union)—became lost in the critique of those who normatively wished otherwise.

A marked change came over the organization in the wake of the collapse of European communism from 1985 to 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev, then the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, called on the world organization in a September 1987 article in the Soviet newspaper _Pravda_ to play a more central role in world politics as a cornerstone of global security. More boldly than any previous leader of a superpower, Gorbachev embraced the UN and its collective security mechanism as a cornerstone of Soviet security policy. The Reagan administration, the most unilateralist in modern American political history up to that point, responded cautiously. By the end of the George H. W. Bush administration in 1993, the United States had used the UN to a great extent in dealing with such major issues as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, although earlier it had bypassed the UN on other matters, such as the invasion of Panama in 1989. By the mid-1990s, the UN was back on the front pages and in the headlines of newspapers around the world—and on CNN and the BBC as well.

Many developing states of what is now called the Global South were cautious as the Soviet Union (and subsequently Russia) and the United States—"two elephants," to paraphrase a popularly used image during that period—and their three Security Council permanent-member counterparts danced the dance of consensus, which led to an unprecedented use of the Security Council as a global security mechanism. In the years immediately after the Cold War, UN peacekeeping and enforcement activities underwent a tremendous surge. From 1988 to 1993, more UN military operations—over twenty new operations—were launched than during the entire first four decades of the world organization. Great euphoria reigned in pro-internationalist circles in the United States, just as great concern reigned in many smaller member states.

The roller-coaster ride continued as the UN's peacekeeping and peace enforcement profile once again changed. The scope of the Security Council's business slowed after 1993. In the next five years, sixteen peacekeeping operations were authorized, although seven were offshoots of previous missions. Of the remaining new operations, only the third UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III) was of significant size (with 6,500 troops) and duration. Both the total number of UN blue helmets and the peacekeeping budget fell by two-thirds from 1994 to 1998, reflecting disillusionment with the results from controversial involvement in Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans.

In 1999, change set in again, effectively more than doubling the number of personnel involved in UN security operations. Major new missions were launched in Sierra Leone (6,260 military troops and observers), East Timor (9,150 troops and observers), and Kosovo (approximately 4,500 UN and partner organization personnel and civilian police). But the numbers of operations and personnel tell only part of the story. The missions in Kosovo, East Timor, and another new operation, the UN Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), represented a qualitatively different kind of exceedingly complex and multidimensional operation. The missions were tasked with creating viable political and social institutions, rebuilding basic social and economic infrastructures, strengthening the rule of law as well as protecting human rights, and demobilizing former combatants and reintegrating them into society. Greatly expanding on earlier multidimensional operations, especially in El Salvador and Cambodia, the new efforts aimed at reconstituting viable states, an ambitious effort that critics referred to as "neocolonialism" but that one observer has dubbed "peace-maintenance." Still others referred to "nation building" or "state building," while some military establishments talked of "postcombat reconstruction."

This intense involvement in postconflict situations took a new form following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan led to a new type of UN involvement, a so-called light footprint by the UN so that Afghans played a prominent role rather than foreigners. In Iraq in 2003, the UN made almost no footprint for a time. After the government of Saddam Hussein was removed, the Security Council, despite not approving the U.S.-led invasion, approved the administrative control by the United States and a small coalition of states, the most important of which was the United Kingdom. Later the council approved a scheme for the development of post-Saddam Iraq, but in reality the fate of Iraq largely rested with the United States.

Sometimes the administration of George W. Bush surpassed the vitriol of the Reagan administration in its criticism of the United Nations and willingness to resort to unilateralism. The new U.S. national security strategy, unveiled by the president in September 2002, colored future discussions about using force. Many regarded the new doctrine, with its emphasis on preventive intervention, as a threat to the principle of nonintervention and international society more generally.

Yet the Bush administration pursued a variety of other unilateral measures in other spheres, from "unsigning" the statute on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to opting out of the antiballistic missile treaty to treating with disdain efforts to mitigate climate change through the Kyoto Protocol. The administration seemed oblivious to what Joseph Nye calls the "paradox of American power": the inability of the world's strongest state to secure some of its major goals alone. Bush's rampant unilateralism prompted a former Reagan official, conservative economist Clyde Prestowitz, to label the United States a "rogue nation."

Unless Washington is prepared to bend on occasion, governments are unlikely to sign on when their help is needed for U.S. priorities. In a poker game, a player should not want to win every hand, because then the other players will drop out. As well as pursuing elections, weapons inspections, and a host of other tasks in Iraq, other obvious examples where U.S. interests would be fostered more through cooperation than going it alone. These interests include: fighting terrorism (intelligence sharing and anti–money laundering efforts); confronting the global specter of infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and SARS); the monitoring of human rights; supporting criminal tribunals; and addressing ongoing global economic and financial woes. Humanitarian intervention is a quintessentially multilateral task because of the desirability of both collective approval and cost sharing. Ironically, as John Ikenberry notes in echoing Nye, "There are limits on American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era." And the unipolar moment is long past with the rise of emerging economies.

As occurred in Reagan's second term, there was some increased pragmatism in George W. Bush's second term, including occasionally a more positive evaluation of multilateralism. That administration, having rejected the offer of help from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with Afghanistan in 2001, sought a greater NATO role there several years later; indeed, it lamented that some NATO partners were not pulling their weight, a criticism that became quite public in 2008. Having tried to kill the ICC, the Bush administration later did not veto a Security Council resolution asking the ICC prosecutor to investigate relevant crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan. The administration took a multilateral approach to the issue of North Korea and nuclear weapons, albeit one largely outside the United Nations. And the UN's peace operations budget ballooned to some $8 billion by early 2009. The financial and economic meltdown that began in 2008 was the occasion to begin multilateral conversations, but initiatives remained primarily national and uncoordinated.

The first term of President Barack Obama was characterized by renewed U.S. interest in multilateralism, particularly as it related to the promotion and protection of human rights and for managing the conflict generated by the Arab Spring. At the same time, the Obama administration has not led at the UN on other issues such as climate change and international criminal prosecutions. His reelection in 2012 means the United States will likely remain engaged at the UN, albeit on a selective basis. UN paralysis on the civil war in Syria may lead the United States and other Western states to bypass the UN in order to take direct action.

In the peacekeeping arena, the character of UN operations has been changing. Fewer than 20 percent of the UN missions launched since 1988 have been in response to interstate conflict, the type for which the UN founders had originally planned. The majority of UN operations have been in response to intrastate conflict. Security Council responses to domestic armed conflicts in the post–Cold War era fundamentally called into question antiquated notions of the inviolability and absolute character of state sovereignty as well as the sanctity of the notion of noninterference in the internal affairs of states. After all, once human rights became codified in international law, the state's treatment of its citizens was no longer a matter of purely domestic jurisdiction shielded by state sovereignty.

World politics has been in constant change, leading to ups and downs in UN responses to major issues. These fluctuations mostly depend on the policies of member states. Overall, the UN continues to be centrally involved in many if not most important problems and crises, although on some issues, whether human rights in the Darfur region of Sudan or ecological protection via the Kyoto Protocol, states like China, Russia, the United States, and India may not be supportive of an important role for the United Nations.

Despite all the problems and challenges, perhaps things are not getting worse but getting better. Recent studies have challenged the conventional wisdom that the world is more violent than it used to be. The last decade has averaged 55,000 war-related deaths a year, whereas the 1990s averaged approximately 100,000 annual deaths, and the Cold War averaged 180,000 a year between 1950 and 1989. The subtitle for the _Human Security Report 2009–2010_ is _The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War_ , and it puts forward some encouraging data concerning the reduced risks of war. This puzzling reality seemingly results from the demise of colonialism and the Cold War, along with increasing levels of economic interdependence, the number of democracies, and evolving norms. The story of the UN is not always heartwarming, and assessing what might have happened had the UN acted or not is impossible to discern. What is possible to do is to trace how and why the UN was created and how it has adapted in a constantly changing political, economic, and social environment.

**THE LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY**

When the Peace of Westphalia essentially ended European religious wars in 1648, powerful political circles accepted that the world should be divided into territorial states. Before that time, dynastic empires, city-states, feudalistic orders, clans and tribes, churches, and a variety of other arrangements organized persons into groupings for personal identity and problem solving. From about the middle of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, the territorial state emerged, first in Europe and then elsewhere, as the basic unit of social organization that supposedly commanded primary loyalty and was responsible for order, and eventually for justice and prosperity, within a state's territorial boundaries. European rulers found the institution of the state useful and perpetuated its image; then politically aware persons outside the West adopted the notion of the state to resist domination by European states.

Nevertheless, other groupings persisted. In nineteenth-century Europe, Napoleon sought to substitute a French empire for several states, and European imperialism thrived and colonialism persisted in Africa until the 1970s. Despite these exceptions and the persistence of clan, ethnic, and religious identities, most of those exercising power increasingly promoted the perception that the basic political-legal unit of world affairs was the state: an administrative apparatus with a supposed monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a specific geographical area, with a stable (nonnomadic) population. Frequently, the territorial state is referred to as the "nation-state." This label is not totally false, but it can be misleading because nations and states are not the same. A nation is a people (a group of persons professing solidarity on the basis of language, religion, history, or some other bonding element) linked to a state. Legally speaking, where there is a state, there is a nation, but there may be several peoples within a state. For example, in Switzerland (officially the Helvetian Confederation), by legal definition there is the Swiss nation, but in social reality there are four peoples linked to that state: the Swiss-Germans, the Swiss-French, the Swiss-Italians, and the Swiss-Romanisch. The confusing notion of a multinational state also has arisen alongside a divided nation (East and West Germany between 1945 and 1989, and North and South Korea today) and states with irredentist claims (Serbia). The members of the United Nations are territorial states (with the exception of the Vatican), but this only begs the question of who is a national people entitled to a state. Many persons in existing states, from Belgium to Sri Lanka, have not settled this issue.

**STATE SOVEREIGNTY**

The emergence of the territorial state was accompanied by the notion that the state was sovereign. Accordingly, the sovereignty of all other social groupings was legally subordinated to the state's sovereignty. Political and legal theorists argued that sovereignty resided in territorial states' rulers, who had ultimate authority to make policy within a state's borders. Those who negotiated the two treaties making up the Peace of Westphalia wanted to stop the religious wars that had brought so much destruction to Europe. They specified that whoever ruled a certain territory could determine the religion of that territory. Europeans further developed the ideas about state sovereignty. Jean Bodin, a sixteenth-century French jurist, thought the notion of sovereignty a useful argument on behalf of the monarchs of new states who were trying to suppress the power of feudal officials contesting the power of the emerging monarchs.

State sovereignty was thus an idea that arose in a particular place at a particular time yet came to be widely accepted as European political influence spread around the world. The argument was about legal rights, but it was intended to affect power. All states were said to be sovereign equals, regardless of their actual "power"—meaning capability to influence outcomes. They had the right to control policy within their jurisdictions even if they did not have the power to do it. Framed in the language of the abstract state, sovereignty enhanced the power of those persons making up the government that represented the state.

Sovereignty arose as an idea designed to produce order, legitimate existing power arrangements, and stop violence between and within states over religious questions. But did state sovereignty become, on balance, an idea that guaranteed international disorder? Was it necessary to think of relations between and among states as anarchical—not in the sense of chaos but in the sense of interactions among equal sovereigns recognizing no higher rules and organizations?

The original versions of state sovereignty, coming as they did out of a Europe that was nominally Christian, emphasized external limits on monarchs by virtue of the "higher" norms of natural law. These monarchs were the highest secular authorities, but they still were inferior to an external set of rules, at least from the viewpoint of political and religious theorists. But as Europe became more and more secular—which is to say, as the Catholic Church in Rome gave up its pretenses at territorial empire and increasingly emphasized the spiritual domain, at least in church dogma—the presumed restraints of natural law theory fell away. Thus the notion of state sovereignty came to represent supreme secular authority.

Political duplicity was part of all of this. The more powerful states, while agreeing that all states were equally sovereign, repeatedly violated the national jurisdiction of the weaker states—what Stephen Krasner has dubbed "organized hypocrisy." State sovereignty, originally designed to produce order and to buttress central authority within the state, led to negative external consequences, the main one being that central authority over global society and interstate relations was undermined. All territorial states came to be seen as equal in the sense of having ultimate authority to prescribe what "should be" in their jurisdictions. No outside rules and organizations were held to be superior to the state. Only those rules consented to, and only those organizations voluntarily accepted, could exist in interstate relations with the logic of the Westphalian system of world politics. Thus states were legally free to make war, violate human rights, neglect the welfare of citizens, and damage the ecology. Nevertheless, state sovereignty is not a physical fact, like energy or a doorknob. It becomes a social fact when it is widely accepted and becomes part of the dominant psychology. This process of "socially constructing" the notion of sovereignty means that it has evolved to mean different things in different eras. At one time, sovereignty meant a state had the ultimate and absolute right to govern, even if that meant practicing slavery or systematically persecuting a minority. Today, such state behavior invites at least international opprobrium and sometimes intervention.

Who should govern and by what means are the kinds of questions raised at the UN. For example, by 1992 the state had disintegrated in the geographical area known as Somalia, which is to say that the governing system for the territory did not function. With no effective government to represent the state, should the UN be the organization ultimately responsible for ending disorder and starvation and helping to reestablish the state? If disputes within a state—such as was the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina and between Bosnia and Herzegovina and a smaller Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)—lead to mass murder, mass migration, and mass misery, should the UN be ultimately responsible? Or, as was the controversial case in Kosovo, should another multilateral organization—to wit, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—override claims to sovereignty by Serbia if the Security Council is paralyzed? If it does decide to act, should the UN delegate its authority to others to determine the means of protecting civilians, even if it involves supporting opposition forces intent on overthrowing a brutal dictator, as in Libya in 2011? If states fail to take proper action in relation to major violations of international criminal law (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing), should the International Criminal Court have the right to prosecute and convict the individuals responsible?

Governments act in the name of states to determine how to manage certain transnational problems. On occasion they have agreed to let an international organization have the ultimate say as to what should be done. For example, more than forty states in the Council of Europe have created the European Convention on Human Rights. Under this treaty, the European Court of Human Rights has the ultimate say as to the correct interpretation of the convention, and the court regularly issues judgments to states concerning the legality of their policies. If one starts, as do European governments, with the notion that their states are sovereign, then these states have used their sovereignty to create international bodies that restrict the authority of the state. Among these states, the protection of human rights on a transnational basis is valued more highly than complete state independence. States have used their freedom to make policies that reduce their freedom. Initial sovereignty, linked to territory, has been used to restrict that sovereignty by an international body acting primarily on the basis of nonterritorial considerations.

This European situation is atypical of interstate relations, which are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. A few other examples of what is called supranational authority in world politics are apparent. Although much noise arises in the United States about the right of the dispute panels of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to dictate policy to states, this authority is modest. States ultimately decide whether to apply sanctions for violations of WTO rules. Power, especially economic power, influences the efficacy of sanctions authorized under such rules. So when the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) rules that U.S. policy violates WTO strictures, sometimes the United States changes its policy, sometimes it does not, and sometimes Washington engages in protracted negotiations with other states that make it difficult to decide whether the United States is complying with the DSB ruling. In any case, the purportedly most powerful state has agreed to abide by rules agreed by an international organization.

Most states, and none more than those that have achieved formal independence since the 1950s, value state sovereignty more than supranational cooperation to improve security, protect human rights, or pursue sustainable development. For many, it is a matter of protection against large bully or "rogue" states. Indeed, older states also highly value state sovereignty. Edward Luck has pointed to American exceptionalism and traditional skepticism about inroads on its authority within the UN that is every bit as ferocious as any Third World state. Or as Richard Haass puts it, "Americans have traditionally guarded their sovereignty with more than a little ferocity." Jack Goldsmith, an official in George W. Bush's Justice Department, and afterward a member of the Harvard Law School faculty, regards most international law and organization, including the concept of war crimes, with great skepticism, seeing them as limits on what a president thinks is needed to protect American homeland security. China, too, argues that only the state, not outside parties, can determine what is best for the Chinese people, whether in the realm of security, human rights, or sustainable human development. In short, international cooperation exists but falls short of being supranational and of giving an international organization the capacity to override independent state decisions.

Nevertheless, as the peoples and states of the world become more interconnected and interdependent, materially and morally, demands increase for more effective international management even at the expense of state sovereignty. Because interdependence involves sensitive relations, some issues that were formerly considered domestic or inconsequential have come to be redefined as international or significant because of the strength of transnational concern—of either a material or a moral nature. Still, even in the context of interdependence, most states are reluctant to transfer supranational authority to an international organization, including the UN. While the Security Council appears to exercise supranational authority, it is state representatives who most often make the key decisions. The Security Council determined that human rights repression in Iraq in 1991 threatened international peace and security, that the breakdown of order within Somalia in 1992 was a proper area for UN enforcement action, and that the humanitarian situation in Bosnia from 1992 was such that all states and other actors were entitled to use "all measures necessary" to provide humanitarian assistance. Situations similar to these used to be considered within the domestic jurisdiction of states. But the situations inside Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia—and more recently in Rwanda, Haiti, Albania, Kosovo, East Timor, and Libya—came to be redefined as proper international concerns, subject to action by the United Nations and other external actors. In these cases the principle of state sovereignty yielded to a transnational demand for the effective treatment of pressing humanitarian problems.

Indeed, the responsibility to protect civilians has emerged as a mainstream concern. Hence the demand is growing for better global governance, not in the sense of a unified world government but in the sense of effective transnational management of pressing problems—in this case, of humanitarian disasters. Yet in all the cases mentioned above, state authorities remained the most important, even if meeting in the Security Council or other international bodies. Even in these cases, the dominant pattern showed little desire by major states to let an independent UN official like the secretary-general make the key decisions about use of force or other important responses. Legally speaking, the Security Council or NATO may have taken a decision to use force or levy sanctions over matters essentially inside a state, but in political reality it was certain member states making that decision and backing it with resources.

In many parts of the world, existing states are under pressure from within because a variety of groups—usually loosely called "ethnic," although they often are based on religious, linguistic, or other cultural characteristics—demand some form of sovereignty and self-determination. Many demands cause problems, but conflict is particularly pronounced when self-determination takes the form of a demand for a people's right to construct a new state. In these cases, the idea of accepting the territorial state as the basic unit of world politics is not at issue, at least in principle. What is at issue, and unfortunately fought over frequently, is which states and nations should be recognized.

State legitimacy may be questioned by armed elements or neighbors, as Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 aptly demonstrated. It also may be irrelevant to, for example, the managers of transnational corporations who have a global vision, doing what is best for their firms without much thought about state boundaries. They are bolstered by the globalization of finance capital and the meshing of the perspectives of corporate executives, regardless of nationality. Yet, state sovereignty persists in the perceptions of most political elites. It is reaffirmed in principle at each annual meeting of the UN General Assembly. But state sovereignty, linked to the power and independence of those who govern in the name of the state, is not the only value in world politics. Other values can challenge state sovereignty and include enhanced security, human rights, and sustainable human development.

World politics consists, in large part, of managing the contradictions between conceptions of state sovereignty, on the one hand, and the desire for improved security, human rights, and sustainable human development, on the other. These contradictions are not the only ones in world politics, and managing them is not the only pressing need, but they constitute a fault line that permeates much debate at the United Nations. Sovereignty versus other considerations is one of the leading issues—if not the leading issue—in changing world politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some time ago Lawrence Finkelstein observed that "although the picture is blurred and in many places hard to decipher, there has been movement away from the decentralized system of respect for sovereignty and toward a more centralized system of decision that in some respects approaches being international governance." Most of the time, the UN is very much part of this trend while remaining far short of a global government.

**CHANGING _RAISONS D'ÉTAT_**

Those who rule in the name of the state, basing their views on the principle of state sovereignty, have claimed the right to determine what norms and actions are needed in the "national interest," which is perhaps better captured by what French speakers call _raisons d'état_ (reasons of state). Whether those who rule are primarily concerned about the interests of the nation, meaning the people, or the interests of the state, meaning the government of the state, or their own interests is fair to ask. Nomenclature aside, individuals acting in the name of a state display a variety of interests. State interests may, because of necessity, come down on the side of state power and independence. From a self-interested point of view, this may be rational. If we assume an anarchical international society without effective governing arrangements, it may seem rational to protect the independent power of the state. That power can then be used to secure "good things" for those who rule. Indeed, members of the English school of international relations would argue that the state is the only accountable entity.

Whether states—at least some of them, some of the time—may be coming to see their interests in fundamentally different ways, is a provocative thought. The belief that democratic states have a long-run interest in multilateralism was christened "good international citizenship" by Gareth Evans, Australia's foreign minister in the 1990s. A similarly broad vision often underpins Canada's human security agenda. No single national government, for example, is able unilaterally to solve the problem of the thinning ozone layer. In regard to this issue, states can secure their long-term interests in a healthy environment only through multilateral action. Such situations can lead to the adoption of shared norms, such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol, or to concrete action by an international organization such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The result can create important legal and organizational restrictions on states.

States remain sovereign as an abstract principle, at least in the eyes of those who rule. But the operational application of sovereignty is another matter. Perceptions of _raisons d'état_ cause state actors to sometimes subordinate state authority and independence to multilateral norms and procedures, especially when it is in the perceived national interest to do so. In order to manage problems, state officials may increasingly agree to important principles, rules, and decision-making procedures, giving authority to a cluster of different actors.

The notion of an international "regime" has become academic jargon for describing this reality. An international regime is a set of shared principles, norms, rules, and procedures for "governing," or managing, an issue. The norms (principles and rules) can be legal, diplomatic, informal, or even tacit. The procedures frequently include nongovernmental (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) as well as states. World politics is frequently characterized by a network of different actors, all focusing on the same problem. Not infrequently, several parts of the UN system are involved in problem solving.

Take, for example, the problem of forced migration and the international refugee regime. The norms of managing refugee problems derive from international law and from UN General Assembly resolutions as well as from daily practice. The various actors involved in trying to apply these norms in concrete situations are states, NGOs such as the American Refugee Committee, and different parts of the UN system such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). States have determined that it is in their interest to coordinate policies to manage refugee problems, and they have constructed norms and organizations to pursue this goal. At the same time, the most numerous victims displaced by wars are internally displaced persons (IDPs), who vastly outnumber refugees but for whom states have not yet agreed to a convention or established a dedicated UN agency. This is partly because IDPs remain inside states, thus presenting clear challenges to state authority and control when outside actors seek to help them.

This application of _raisons d'état_ may stem from moral or practical concerns—or most likely from some combination of the two. In the case of Cuban refugees, for instance, U.S. officials may want the UN to help because they are human beings victimized by what U.S. officials see as the abuses of communism, and because the United States wanted to keep Fidel Castro (and now his brother Raúl) from, as some American pundits crudely put it, "dumping mental patients and other undesirables on U.S. shores." Both viewpoints lead to use of the UNHCR to screen and interview Cuban immigrants to determine if individuals have a well-founded fear of persecution or mental health problems or a criminal background.

Many governments of states appear to be "learning" a new concept of _raisons d'état_ —one that is conducive to an expansion in the authority, resources, and tasks of the United Nations. Given the impact of communications and other technologies, state actors may be in the process of learning that their own interests would be better served by greater international cooperation. Many state leaders learned from World War I that there was a need for the League of Nations to institute a cooling-off period so that states would not rush heedlessly into hugely destructive wars. State actors learned from World War II that a stronger world organization was needed, one with a security council that had the authority to make binding decisions when the major powers agreed to oppose calculated aggression and cope with other threats to peace. Some state leaders subsequently learned and promoted the notion that peacekeeping was needed to respond to security crises during the Cold War so that armed disputes could be managed without triggering another world war. Similarly, even the most powerful states have learned that they cannot "go it alone" in securing their broad security interests.

State actors progressively adjusted their policies on security affairs, based on perceptions of interests, in ways that increased the importance of international organizations. The process was not a zero-sum game in which the state lost and the United Nations won. Rather, states won in the sense of obtaining greater barriers against armed attacks on them, and the UN won in the sense of being given more authority and tasks than the League of Nations once had.

For about a century leading up to 1919, traditional international law considered resorting to war to be within the sovereign competence of states. If state officials perceived that their interests justified force, it was used. But increasingly state authorities, not ivory-tower academics or pacifists, have agreed that changing patterns of warfare require international attempts to avoid or constrain force. Interest in peace and security has been combined with an interest in state authority, power, and independence. The result is international norms and organizations that continue to depend on state authority and power even as those norms and organizations try to restrain illegal uses or threats of force.

State actors originally thought that their best interests were served by absolute sovereignty and complete freedom in the choice of policy. Many if not most learned that this was a dangerous and frequently destructive situation. From the viewpoint of their own interests, limiting the recourse to and the process of force was highly desirable. That led to the part of international law called _jus ad bellum_ (law regulating recourse to war) and also _jus in bello_ (law regulating the process of war). International laws and organizations were developed to contribute to state welfare even as they limited state freedom.

Central questions now are the following: How far are state actors willing to go in this process of international cooperation? How far can they be nudged by IGOs, NGOs, and public opinion? Are state actors willing to do more than create modern versions of the League of Nations, an international organization without the authority and resources to play a decisive role in world politics? Are they willing to cede significant authority and resources, as in the European Union, so that international organizations can act somewhat apart from state control in ways that make a difference across borders? Can the UN be more than a debating society and a set of passive procedures?

**THE UNITED NATIONS: ACTOR OR INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK?**

Many journalists and not a few other observers use phrases like "the UN failed" (to stop ethnic cleansing in the Balkans) or "the UN was successful" (in checking Iraqi aggression against Kuwait). This phraseology obscures a complex reality. The UN is also a broad and complex system of policymaking and administration in which some decisions are made by individuals who are not instructed by states. The secretary-general and the international civil service constitute the second UN. On occasion, NGOs and independent experts and commissions as well as increasingly the private sector are active and sometimes influential in their interactions with the intergovernmental system; they could even be considered a third UN. Indeed, an increasing number of observers such as Kerstin Martens find this area a fruitful research agenda, and both scholars and practitioners are increasingly preoccupied with nonstate involvement in world politics. NGOs sometimes play a prominent role on the world stage and constitute one of the central elements of global civil society.

This book is essentially concerned with the nuts and bolts of the first and the second United Nations, the world organization as an arena for state decision making and as a group of officials working for those who pay their salaries. If we return to the first UN, made up of states, we note that when it is said that the Security Council decided to authorize force in Somalia or the Balkans, in reality representatives of fifteen states made the decision, acting as the Security Council according to the UN Charter. This first UN may have been influenced by reports from the secretary-general and his staff, and this second UN in theory and often in practice is independent from state control and is responsible only to the Charter. Nevertheless, state representatives decide. Moreover, to the extent that UN decisions involve force or economic resources, or considerable diplomatic pressure, these elements of UN action are, in effect, borrowed from member states. Moreover, in the context of the Security Council the concert of major powers—the P-5—is required. This is the way it was intended by the institution's founders, and it is embodied in the Charter. The General Assembly and other official UN bodies are also made up of states, which make most of the important decisions taken in the name of the United Nations, however much they may be influenced, pressured, or educated by independent UN personnel or NGOs.

But authority—and influence flowing from it—may be delegated by intergovernmental bodies to independent UN personnel. And the Charter confers some independent authority on the secretary-general, who may address the Security Council and makes an annual report on the UN's work to the General Assembly, focusing attention on certain problems and solutions. Moreover, certain UN organs are made up of persons who are not state officials. UN agencies have independent secretariats. Within the broad system, UN personnel may come to exercise some influence as independent actors not controlled by states. Their authority is not supranational, but their influence may be significant. Hence, they cannot tell states how to act, but they may be able to induce states to behave in certain ways.

The United Nations is primarily an institutional framework through which member states may pursue or channel their foreign policies. The UN Charter is the closest thing there is to a global constitution. When state actors comply with the Charter and use UN procedures, their policies acquire the legitimacy that stems from adherence to international law. They also acquire the legitimacy that stems from collective political approval. Normally, policies that are seen as legal and collectively approved are more likely than not to be successful. The weight of collective political approval may induce recalcitrant political authorities to accept a UN policy or program. It is better to have UN approval than otherwise. Indeed, the importance of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations is often missed in thinking too statically about the nature of international law. "To the extent international lawyers or others acknowledge that IOs [international organizations] have an impact on what is regarded as 'real' international law—usually defined narrowly to embrace only norms governing states in their relations," writes José Alvarez, "we continue to pour an increasingly rich normative output into old bottles labeled 'treaty,' 'custom,' (or much more rarely) 'general principles.'"

The question of legitimacy in world politics is a complicated matter. In Iraq in 2003, as in Kosovo in 1999, or for that matter in Grenada in 1982, the United States used military force in another state without Security Council approval. It sought to create legitimacy for its action by obtaining collective support. Regarding Kosovo, for example, legitimacy was enhanced because the nineteen liberal democracies, representing all of NATO's member states at the time, responded to gross violations of human rights by unanimously approving the use of force. Legitimacy in the first use of force is a subjective matter. What may not be fully legal in international law may still be legitimate in moral or political terms, which in fact was the characterization by an independent group of human rights experts who studied the case. Hence, the safest ground on which to rest military action is prior approval by the Security Council, but in exceptional circumstances ignoring UN Charter Article 42—hence, acting "illegally" according to the law of the UN constitution—may be justified.

A view of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan as seen from the southwest. The headquarters site covers approximately sixteen acres, from 42nd to 48th Streets between First Avenue and the East River. (UN Photo 165054/L)

In the pages that follow we speak mostly of decisions at the United Nations. We write of politics at or through the UN. We are careful to distinguish the first UN, which is a framework through which states act, from the second UN as actor. At times "the UN" is phraseology that refers to important behavior by independent persons representing the world organization, such as the secretary-general. The third UN is obvious in much of the discussion as well, but mainly as either a lobbying force for changes in policy by the first two UNs or a subcontractor for development and humanitarian actions.

One of the more interesting questions in the twenty-first century is whether the growing demand for UN management of transnational problems will lead to greater or reduced willingness by member states to confer authority on the world organization's personnel and to transfer the resources necessary to resolve problems effectively. The options and processes are complex. The global economic and financial crisis that began in late 2008 and the severity of armed conflict demand a coordinated, effective, multilateral response. With what Paul Collier termed the "bottom billion"—who are at immediate risk from war, violence, poverty, disease, and bad governance—multilateral agencies need resources, talent, and even the authority to respond. Moreover, state decisions outside the United Nations affect what "the UN" is allowed to do, or how UN procedures and symbols are employed. The willingness of states to commit forces and/or resources is necessary before the Security Council can proceed to authorize force or a peacekeeping operation.

As a generalization, political factors outside the UN are primary, and factors inside the UN are secondary. The end of the Cold War, indeed the end of the Soviet Union, primarily explained the renaissance of UN security activities that began in the late 1980s. The Security Council did not end the Cold War. Rather, the end of the Cold War allowed the Security Council to act with renewed consensus, commitment, and vigor.

Once allowed to act, UN personnel and organs may independently influence states and other actors. What was once a secondary factor, dependent on state approval, may come to be a primary factor in the ongoing process to make and implement policy. Once member states decided to create an environmental program, UNEP came to exert some relatively independent influence—both in cleaning up the Mediterranean Sea and in coordinating scientific evidence about the need to protect the ozone layer.

State decisions about power and policy constitute the primary force driving events at the UN. When important states show a convergence in policy, the UN may be allowed to act. Without that political agreement, the members of the UN system will be severely restricted in what they can accomplish. This was the case in 1945, and since then it has not been altered in any fundamental way. As such, one prominent group of scholars noted that "the UN is simultaneously in crisis and in demand."

**UN POLITICS**

In the exercise of power needed to make and implement policy through the United Nations, states naturally seek allies. Academic and diplomatic observers usually put forward alternative generalizations about different political alliances, coalitions, or blocs within the United Nations. The countries of the West—that is, the Western industrialized democracies that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), sometimes joined by Israel—frequently have been grouped as the First World. The "developing countries," basically all of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, have been examined under the rubric of the Third World, the Global South, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), or the Group of 77 (or G77, for the original constellation of 77 states, which has now grown to some 130 members). The "socialist countries," when the Soviet Union and its bloc existed, were also called the East and the Second World. The West and the East, in a curious bit of mathematical geography, were added together to constitute the North, or the developed countries, in juxtaposition to the Global South, or the developing countries.

Although these distinctions roughly correspond to the bulk of voting patterns during the Cold War, they have become less useful over time. Not only has the bloc of European socialist states and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, but also some of this terminology was in fact never accurate: Cuba was hardly non-aligned, and the socialist countries were not nearly as economically developed as the West, with some at levels comparable to the Third World.

The end of the Cold War allowed scholars, and especially diplomats, to begin to look more objectively at various kinds of coalitions within the United Nations, although many of the labels and leftover habits remain from the former era. For example, it is now quite common to point out that developing countries consist of a series of crosscutting alignments reflecting the heterogeneous character of their economies and ideologies. In the past, it was the convention to speak of the Third World as if it were homogeneous, with little hesitation in grouping Singapore's and Chad's economies or Costa Rica's and North Korea's ideologies.

Only on a few issues—such as emphasizing the importance of the General Assembly, in which each state has one vote—do developing countries show truly common interests. In such instances, and in some other international forums, the North-South divide continues to be salient. This was true, for example, in negotiations over a new Human Rights Council in 2006, as a classic North-South divide could be observed on many questions. Frequently, however, developing countries subdivide according to the issue before the UN: between radicals and moderates, between Islamic and non-Islamic, between those in the region and outside, between maritime and landlocked, between those achieving significant economic growth and otherwise. Even within the Western group there have always been numerous differences, which have come more to the fore with the abrupt disappearance of East-West tensions. Divisions among and within all groups over the pursuit of war against Iraq in 2003 were a clear example of this phenomenon.

Given the changing nature of world politics and ongoing learning processes that can shape views toward state sovereignty and _raisons d'état_ , new alignments and coalitions should be anticipated. Indeed, as world politics changes, so does the United Nations. In 1991 the General Assembly, whose majority of developing countries normally reflects concern for traditional notions of state sovereignty, voted by consensus to condemn the military coup in (briefly) democratic Haiti. Subsequently, many of these same countries supported the imposition of economic sanctions—first at the regional level through the Organization of American States and afterward through the UN—and eventually military enforcement action authorized by the Security Council to restore the elected government. The nature of government as democratic or authoritarian, a subject that had mostly been considered a domestic affair protected by the principle of state sovereignty, came to be seen by all states as a legitimate subject for diplomatic action through the UN.

In the following pages we inquire more systematically into changing world politics, and what it portends for the United Nations as the world organization gropes with the twenty-first century's most pressing challenges of insecurity, abuses of human rights, and lack of sustainable human development. These three issues encompass the central challenges to improving the human condition and hence the central tests for international organization.

Part 1 of this book introduces the evolving efforts of the United Nations to combat threats to international peace and security. Because it is impossible to understand the nature of international cooperation without a grasp of the Charter's provisions for pacific settlement of disputes, enforcement, and regional arrangements, we first cover the theory of collective security in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 deals with UN security efforts during the Cold War and then turns to economic sanctions and the creation of the peacekeeping function. Although not mentioned in the Charter, peacekeeping is a distinctive contribution of the UN and has been its main activity in the security field for decades. In Chapter 3, "UN Security Operations After the Cold War, 1988–1998," and in Chapter 4, "Evolving Security Operations: Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, and Syria," we explain the renaissance in UN activities, including peacekeeping, enforcement, and a series of other actions in virtually all of the world's most troubled regions. Chapter 5, "The Challenges of the Twenty-First Century," discusses current political dynamics and proposed changes in the UN to make it better able to address security challenges in the current century, including terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Part 2 introduces UN efforts to protect human rights and humanitarian values in conflicts. Chapter 6 briefly traces the origins of international action on human rights, indicating what the UN contributed to principles on human rights. Chapter 7 focuses on UN activity to help implement the human rights principles that member states have formally accepted or that constitute emerging norms, including the responsibility to protect. Finally, there is a balance sheet in Chapter 8 on UN developments in the field of human rights, exploring some of the dynamics that drive events and what they portend for the future.

Part 3 introduces efforts by the United Nations to build sustainable human development. Chapter 9 examines the evolution of international attempts to build a humane capitalist world order and explores the progression of various theoretical frameworks for promoting development. Chapter 10 focuses on UN institutions and activity to build sustainable human security and presents some information about how the UN is structured for economic and environmental policymaking. In Chapter 11, we explore the role of the United Nations in promoting development and human security in the context of the forces and tensions of globalization. Our concluding chapter is about "Learning from Change."

**NOTES**

. Dan Plesch, "How the United Nations Beat Hitler and Prepared the Peace," _Global Society_ 22, no. 1 (2008): 137–158; and Dan Plesch, _America, Hitler and the UN: How the Allies Won World War II and Forged a Peace_ (London: Tauris, 2011).

. Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welsh, and Dominik Zaum, eds., _The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice Since 1946_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

. Quoted in Robert Gregg, _About Face? The United States and the United Nations_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 68.

. David M. Malone, _The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

. For an overview, see David M. Malone, ed., _The UN Security Council: From Cold War to the 21st Century_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2004).

. Jarat Chopra, _Peace-Maintenance: The Evolution of International Political Authority_ (London: Routledge, 1999).

. _The National Security Strategy of the United States of America_ , September 2002, <http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002>.

. Joseph S. Nye Jr., "U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq," _Foreign Affairs_ 82, no. 4 (2003): 60–73.

. Clyde Prestowitz, _Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions_ (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

. Andrew Cottey, "Beyond Humanitarian Intervention: The New Politics of Peacekeeping and Intervention," _Contemporary Politics_ 14, no. 4 (2008): 429–446.

. G. John Ikenberry, "Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order," _Foreign Affairs_ 83, no. 2 (2004): 154.

. Steven Pinker, _The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined_ (New York: Viking, 2011); and Joshua S. Goldstein, _Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide_ (New York: Dutton, 2011).

. Joshua S. Goldstein, "Think Again: War," _Foreign Policy_ (September/October 2011); and Jon Western and Joshua S. Goldstein, "Humanitarian Intervention Comes of Age," _Foreign Affairs_ (November/December 2011).

. Human Security Report Project, _Human Security Report 2009–2010: The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

. Stephen D. Krasner, _Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).

. Despite the notion of the sovereign equality of states, all sorts of unequal relations have existed and have even been formally approved. In this sense the unequal relations in the UN, such as the five permanent members of the Security Council possessing the veto, follow many examples of inequality—despite the centrality of sovereignty. See Jack Donnelly, "Sovereign Inequality and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society," in _American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World_ , ed. David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andy Wedeman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 81–104.

. Edward Luck, _Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization, 1919–1999_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999).

. Richard N. Haass, _The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course_ (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), 41.

. Jack Goldsmith, _The Terror Presidency_ (New York: Norton, 2008).

. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, _The Responsibility to Protect_ (Ottawa: ICISS, 2001). See also Gareth Evans, _The Responsibility to Protect_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2008); Alex Bellamy, _Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2009); Thomas G. Weiss, _Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); and Ramesh Thakur, _The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

. For a discussion, see Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur, _Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).

. For discussion on the Office of the Secretary-General, see Leon Gordenker, _The Secretary-General and the Secretariat_ , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2010); and Edward Newman, _The UN Secretary-General from the Cold War to the New Era: A Global Peace and Security Mandate?_ (London: Macmillan, 1998).

. Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes, eds., _Global Governance: Critical Perspectives_ (London: Routledge, 2002); and Gary P. Sampson, ed., _The Role of the World Trade Organization in Global Governance_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2001).

. Lawrence S. Finkelstein, ed., _Politics in the United Nations System_ (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988), 30.

. Christopher Bickerton, Philip Cunliffe, and Alexander Gourevitch, eds., _Politics Without Sovereignty: A Critique of Contemporary International Relations_ (London: Routledge, 2007).

. Nicholas J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, "Good International Citizenship: A Third Way for British Foreign Policy," _International Affairs_ 74, no. 4 (1998): 847–870.

. Lloyd Axworthy, "Human Security and Global Governance," _Global Governance_ 7, no. 1 (2001): 19–23. See further Edward Newman and Oliver P. Richmond, eds., _The United Nations and Human Security_ (New York: Palgrave, 2001); and Rob McRae and Don Hubert, eds., _Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace_ (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001).

. For an insightful and readable overview, see Stephen C. Neff, _War and the Law of Nations: A General History_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

. Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, eds., _Documents on the Laws of War_ , 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly, "The 'Third' United Nations," _Global Governance_ 15, no. 1 (2009): 123–142. This is a major theme in the capstone volume from the United Nations Intellectual History Project by Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss, _UN Ideas That Changed the World_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

. Kerstin Martens, _NGOs and the United Nations: Institutionalization, Professionalization and Adaptation_ (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2.

. During the early and middle part of the Cold War, members of the UN Secretariat from the USSR, and perhaps its allies, were widely seen as taking orders from, and reporting back to, Moscow.

. José E. Alvarez, _International Organizations as Law-Makers_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), x. See also J. Martin Rochester, _Between Peril and Promise: The Politics of International Law_ (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006).

. Independent International Commission on Kosovo, _Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. Paul Collier, _The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

. Quoted in the Princeton Project on National Security, _Forging a World of Liberty Under Law_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 7.

. Soo Yeon Kim and Bruce Russett, "The New Politics of Voting Alignments in the United Nations General Assembly," _International Organization_ 50, no. 4 (1996): 629–652. See also Evan Luard, _A History of the United Nations: The Years of Western Domination_ (London: Macmillan, 1982).

. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, eds., _The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
**PART ONE**

INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY

* * *

CHAPTER 1

* * *

_The Theory of UN Collective Security_

THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM was designed during World War II. The international community of states undertook a new experiment to control war when the Charter was signed and came into effect in 1945, thereby creating the United Nations Organization (UNO). The maintenance of international peace and security is the primary task of the UNO, or more simply the UN. Two world wars within two decades, other major affronts to human dignity, and the advent of the nuclear age produced the political will to safeguard the peace that had been won at great cost. In the inspiring words of the Charter's preamble, the UN's role was to save "succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind."

The League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN, technically did not outlaw war but did establish a set of procedures designed to constrain state actors contemplating the use of force. This approach to peace was conditioned by the judgment that the advent of World War I had been caused by emotionalism and mistaken perceptions. Time was needed for rationality to prevail. This approach clearly was inadequate to stop Adolf Hitler's premeditated aggressions, which were not only rational but also astute (for example, his anticipation of early appeasement on the part of the Western democracies). Equally deficient was the legalistic approach to peace reflected in the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of foreign policy but failed to provide enforcement measures, thus nullifying its contribution to international order. It did nothing to change the nature of world politics. It did not provide peaceful means of conflict resolution. It just made war illegal.

In San Francisco, where the United Nations Conference on International Organization drafted the Charter in spring 1945, diplomats made the threat or use of force illegal except in self-defense, or unless authorized by the Security Council. Unlike during the League period, they gave the United Nations the authority to enforce the peace through diplomatic, economic, and even military action in response to "threats to the peace . . . acts of aggression or . . . breaches of the peace." State power, or perhaps even independent UN power backed by the most important states, was to be put at the service of the Security Council to protect the peace. Even a novice of world politics is aware that the reality of the past half century has diverged dramatically from these ideals. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, about thirty-five major wars have occurred. Some of these continue today. At the same time, the United Nations remains present in many armed conflicts around the world.

Edward R. Stettinius Jr., chairman of the U.S. delegation, signs the UN Charter in San Francisco on June 26, 1945. President Harry S. Truman stands by. (UNICO Photo 2463)

**COLLECTIVE SECURITY**

The idea of collective security can be traced through a long history of proposals to deal with war and peace. The central thread remains the same: all states would join forces to prevent one of their number from using coercion to gain advantage. Under such a system, no government could conquer another or otherwise disturb the peace for fear of retribution from all other governments. An attack on one would be treated as an attack on all. The notion of self-defense, universally agreed on as a right of sovereign states, was expanded to include the international community's right to prevent war.

The apparent common sense and appealing simplicity of the logic of collective security contrasts with the difficulties in its application. Indeed, some have come to question whether collective security can be relied on with confidence to protect or restore the peace. Skeptics ask: In a world with a large number of states (193 UN member states in 2012), will states not defect from the collective enterprise, in pursuit of their own narrow national interests, and thereby undermine the collective effort? This is the old problem of the hunters and the stag. As the hunters encircle the stag, one hunter defects to chase a rabbit he will not have to share with the others. Another does the same. Soon the stag escapes through the gaps in the collective effort.

Experience with UN collective security indicates considerable "gaps." First, some states have refused to join a collective-sanctioning effort because they have already defined their friends and enemies. During the Cold War, the United States would not have joined in a UN effort at collective security against one of its NATO allies, nor would the Soviet Union have done so against its Warsaw Pact allies. In an exceptional move, the United States did oppose the British, French, and Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 and eventually helped to roll it back by diplomacy. But the United States never seriously considered UN sanctions against its allies in 1956, precisely because it wanted to maintain their cooperation in the Cold War. Under true collective security, all aggressors have to be treated the same. All threats to and breaches of the peace have to be firmly and automatically opposed. This requirement seems beyond the realm of most great powers in history, which have always had their cultural and strategic friends. A military alliance is incompatible with the logic of global collective security. In the contemporary world, then, alliances exist, and collective security does not.

Second, there is the fundamental problem of power. Since 1945 the international community of states has had major and probably insurmountable problems in applying collective security against a nuclear state, especially the United States, the USSR (now Russia), Britain, France, or China. Of course, in the case of these five permanent members—the P-5—the Security Council was constrained procedurally from intervening because the P-5 possess a veto over council decisions. By design, the Security Council was supposed to act only when there was concurrence among the P-5. Moreover, how could one justify the massive destruction that could result from trying to apply forcible collective security against such a state, even if clear-cut aggression had occurred? The nuclear problem extends to other states such as India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea. Iran may be next.

The problem of regulating powerful potential aggressors goes beyond the nuclear question. Many states control sufficient conventional forces, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, or economic resources so that collective security against them would be highly disruptive to international society. For this reason, the vast majority of states have had to content themselves with diplomatic opposition to such acts as the U.S. invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980s or the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, knowing full well that any attempt at military or economic sanctioning would be disruptive and ineffectual. The great powers are not the only ones difficult to manage. South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and other lesser powers also have considerable economic and military strength that can make them important actors depending on issues and timing.

Third, collective security can be costly to those supporting it. Sanctions cut both ways, affecting not only the aggressor but the defenders. Communist Bulgaria voted in the UN for sanctions against white-minority rule in South Africa in the 1980s but also sold arms to South Africa under the table. Bulgaria did not want to miss out on profits from the arms trade despite its formal support for economic collective security against the white-minority government in Pretoria. It was one thing for states to accept that apartheid constituted a threat to the peace. It was another for states to engage collectively against apartheid at a cost to their own narrow national interests. Similarly, UN sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and Sudan in 2005 were undermined by their major trading partners.

Fourth, the concept of collective security is based on the assumption that all victims are equally important: that the international community of states will respond in the same way to an attack on Bosnia or Armenia as to an attack on Kuwait or Germany. Even aside from the issue of standing alliances, this, too, is a high standard. Historical evidence shows that most states have differentiated between countries worth defending and otherwise. In 1991 the United States was willing to disrupt its home front by putting almost half a million military personnel into the liberation of oil-rich Kuwait, but in 1994 it dithered about taking action and failed to halt the genocide in Rwanda. As a result, decisive and forcible collective security occurred through Desert Storm in 1991. But indecisive and mostly nonforcible collective-security efforts were tried in Rwanda, as eight hundred thousand people were murdered in three months.

Collective security is a halfway house between world government and the pure state system. The process could make the state system more humane by making it more secure. Forms of collective security have worked at times. Iraqi aggression against Kuwait was rolled back in 1991 through collective force authorized by the UN, as was a military coup in Haiti after UN-sponsored economic sanctions fell short. But these tend to be the exceptional examples proving the general rule that collective security, either military or economic, is exceedingly difficult to organize and enforce. States have numerous narrow national interests that they are reluctant to see overridden in the name of peace or justice. They therefore tend to defect from inconvenient collective-security efforts. Member states of the Security Council may also genuinely disagree as to when economic and military enforcement measures are justified. Such was the case in 2002 and 2003, when the council was divided over how to enforce disarmament measures in Iraq. If agreement on international enforcement issues were easier, one might aspire to world government, not just collective security.

**THE UNITED NATIONS AND SECURITY: SOME BASICS**

In theory, successful collective security depends on three factors: consensus, commitment, and organization. "Consensus" refers to the recognition by members that a threat to international peace and security exists. Does genocide in Rwanda really threaten international peace, especially when the conflict occurs largely within the territorial borders of Rwanda itself? Similarly, does a dictator like Saddam Hussein present a gathering threat to international peace, especially when his military forces are contained and his regime isolated? What if governments are willing to use violence against their own people who are demonstrating in the street, as we saw in Libya and Syria starting in spring 2011? The answers to these questions are not clear-cut and are influenced by the politics of the day. Members of a collective security arrangement, especially the most powerful members, must agree that a threat to the peace or a breach of the peace has occurred, or they must at least stand aside (i.e., abstain) when others wish to act.

Once that obstacle has been overcome, member states must then agree about what to do about the threat. Should economic sanctions be used, military force, or a combination of both? Once a course of action has been decided on, then states must be committed to that course of action and have contingency plans if it falters. They must be willing to bear the costs and sacrifice their national interests for the collective good.

Finally, if the first two conditions can be met, then there must be organization. That is, agreed-on mechanisms, rules, and procedures must exist for carrying out a course of action. If sanctions are imposed, how will member states detect cheating, enforce sanctions, or evaluate their political and social impact? If military force is approved, which states will conduct the operations, and how will they be monitored? These kinds of policy choices are complicated and represent the kind of questions member states wrestle with at the UN. The record of the world organization in collective security is determined in large part by its ability to meet the conditions of consensus, commitment, and organization in practice.

_The Institutional Basics_

The two central bodies to directly safeguard the peace are the Security Council and the General Assembly. Chapter V of the UN Charter designates the Security Council as the organ primarily responsible for maintaining international peace and security. The Charter originally specified that the Security Council have eleven members, but in 1965 the council's membership was increased to fifteen to better reflect the expanded UN after decolonization. The most powerful states are accorded special responsibilities and privileges. The P-5 pay more of the bills, and no decision can be made on nonprocedural questions unless they concur or at least agree to abstain. The veto power ensures that no enforcement action takes place against one of the great powers of the international system in order to avoid starting a major war—the very thing that the United Nations was established to forestall. By preventing action against a permanent member, the veto saves the organization from wrecking itself in operations against its most powerful members. Enforcement actions can be undertaken only with great-power consensus, the first key element for collective security.

The remaining ten members are elected to two-year terms by the General Assembly. When electing the nonpermanent members, the assembly tries to maintain a geographical balance by including representatives of the four major regions of the world: usually three from Africa, two from Asia, three from Europe, and two from Latin America. The Security Council, whose permanent members were arguably the most powerful military states in 1945, is vested with the duty of maintaining international peace and security. Unlike in the League of Nations, all UN member states are legally required to abide by Security Council decisions.

After expanding in 1965, the Security Council altered its decision-making process. Enlargement of the council has reduced the mathematical weight that the permanent members hold in the voting. Nine affirmative votes are now needed to pass a resolution. Barring permanent member vetoes, all permanent members and one nonpermanent member could theoretically abstain from a vote without jeopardizing the passage of a resolution, although some unity among the five permanent members is practically indispensable.

The presidency of the council revolves monthly among council members and plays a critical role in setting the agenda and smoothing the way to a vote. Some disagreement during the formal voting process has been reduced by efforts to gain consensus before any vote. But this process may lead to soft or unclear resolutions or statements. The president meets with the secretary-general to identify the parties to a dispute, negotiates with the permanent members to ensure that the veto will not be used, and consults with the elected members of the Security Council and other relevant groups or actors. Accordingly, unified decision making is facilitated, and disunity in the council can be reduced. Sometimes a president decides to push a particular theme for a month—for example, protection of civilians or peacebuilding.

The General Assembly, where every member state is represented, serves as a more open forum for discussion. Duties include election of heads of other UN organs and the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), budgetary and administrative decisions, and joint control of decisions on Charter amendments and admission of new members to the organization. The assembly also elects the secretary-general upon a recommendation from the Security Council. But this vote is pro forma, with the real decision made among the P-5.

The General Assembly's role in relation to international peace and security increased for a time with the passage of the Uniting for Peace Resolution in 1950. In circumstances in which the Security Council is unable to act, the General Assembly has taken measures in accordance with the purpose and spirit of the world organization's Charter. While only the Security Council can make decisions that are binding on member states, the assembly can make recommendations relating to international peace and security. The assembly has played a role over the years in debating actions against such pariahs as South Africa and Israel. This resolution, which can be initiated either by the General Assembly or the Security Council, was first enacted in 1950 to allow the assembly to address North Korean aggression in South Korea amid Security Council inaction after its initial condemnation of aggression and approval of assistance to South Korea. The absence by the boycotting Soviet Union (protesting Taiwan's occupation of the "Chinese seat" on the council in spite of the victory by the Chinese communists under Mao Zedong) had permitted the initial call for assistance and linked the UN to the subsequent military action against North Korea and its allies. But once Moscow ended its boycott and entered the fray, the Security Council was paralyzed by the Soviet veto. The Uniting for Peace Resolution was not used again until 1956, when permanent members were involved in two crises. The General Assembly approved UN actions in the Suez crisis because effective action in the Security Council had been blocked by France and Britain; earlier that year, the assembly had censured Moscow's use of armed force in Hungary. Another use was in 1960, after the Security Council became deadlocked over the Congo operation because the Soviet Union and the United States supported different sides in the conflict.

In total the Uniting for Peace Resolution has been invoked ten times, the last being against Israel in 1997 for its policies in the occupied territories. Several NGOs such as Greenpeace and the Center for Constitutional Rights called on the General Assembly to invoke the resolution in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yet no state on the Security Council or in the General Assembly has formally called for its consideration in recent years. Given its sporadic use, the efficacy of the Uniting for Peace Resolution for enhancing the General Assembly's role in international security is subject to considerable skepticism. When the Security Council is paralyzed, the assembly can at least be a sounding board for international views, as it did in spring 2012 by the overwhelming condemnation (only twelve states voted against it) of Syria's war on its own people.

The Charter spells out other important actors in collective security: the executive head of the organization (the secretary-general) and the professional staff (the Secretariat). Selected by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, the secretary-general is the chief executive officer. Today's professional and support staff number approximately fifty-five thousand in the UN proper and an additional twenty thousand in the specialized agencies. This number excludes temporary staff in peace operations (about a hundred thousand in 2012) and the staff of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group (another fifteen thousand). These figures represent substantial growth from the five hundred employees in the UN's first year at Lake Success and the peak total of seven hundred staff employed by the League of Nations. In matters of peace and security, several departments are involved including the undersecretaries-general for political affairs, humanitarian affairs, and peacekeeping operations. Depending on the number of peace operations under way at any moment over the past two decades, somewhere between ten thousand and one hundred thousand UN soldiers, police, and other special personnel also have served under the secretary-general.

Beyond organizing and directing staff, the secretary-general plays an instrumental role in the mediation of disputes, negotiations between or among warring parties, and deployment of UN-sponsored forces. This role reaches beyond that assigned to any other international official. An important mechanism in this regard is the appointment of special and personal representatives or envoys of the secretary-general, who undertake missions in conflict areas. Article 99 of the UN Charter makes it possible for the secretary-general to "bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security," although it has only been invoked three times. If the council is unwilling to act, there is no point in diving into an empty swimming pool. Even without formally invoking Article 99, the secretary-general can still press his views behind the scenes with small and great powers. His personal judgment and readiness to run risks and take initiatives are crucial to accomplishing his duties.

The secretary-general's actions are closely scrutinized by governments. Depending on the political climate, criticism can be scathing, and it certainly affects the UN Secretariat. Secretary-General U Thant was stridently criticized by the West for pulling UN troops from the Sinai in 1967, just as Trygve Lie, the first secretary-general, and Hammarskjöld had been criticized by the Soviet bloc for their respective actions in Korea and the Congo. U Thant was also criticized by Washington for his clear opposition to the U.S. presence in Vietnam. More recently, Secretaries-General Pérez de Cuéllar, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and Kofi Annan have been criticized for their actions in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Somalia, and Iraq. The eighth occupant of the job, Ban Ki-moon, assumed office in January 2007 and has been criticized for his lack of leadership in the area of international peace and security. As with all visible policy positions, criticism goes with the territory. However, since the time of Trygve Lie and the Korean War, the secretary-general has rarely issued a harsh public judgment concerning armed conflict, since he is not effective if he loses the confidence of important states. The secretary-general walks a tightrope, needing to appear independent and not simply a pawn of any or all of the P-5 states, but at the same time, he must maintain the confidence and support of those same states. So from time to time he must speak out in a critical way, but not to the point that he becomes persona non grata.

_The Legal Basics_

The core of the UN Charter concerning security questions is Article 2, paragraph 4: all states shall refrain from the threat or use of force in their international relations. This language, rather remarkably, was written initially by the United States. At that time it had primacy of power compared to the other leading states, which were exhausted by World War II. Why then Washington would choose to apparently limit its own exercise of force by this legal language is not clear.

On the one hand, Article 2 (4) is visionary, even idealistic. States have engaged in the threat or use of force repeatedly in the history of world politics. How could it be otherwise when there are few procedures to guarantee peaceful change? That being so, it is quite remarkable that Article 2 (4) has not completely withered away under the pressures of a violent world.

On the other hand, a world without the threat or use of force continues to be the primary objective of the United Nations. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Security Council immediately labeled the action impermissible under the Charter. The same process has occurred in numerous other situations, although the language and form of international responses vary. The General Assembly opposed not only Iraq's invasion of Kuwait but also the U.S. invasions of Grenada and Panama, Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, India's invasion of East Pakistan, and so on.

Article 2 (4) is not a dead letter. After the Cold War, a state contemplating the use of force to resolve a dispute, especially if not a great power, cannot be certain that its action will not result in some type of condemnation and punishment. To be sure, the process is not automatic; UN resolutions may be softly worded, and actual sanctions can vary. The functioning of collective security frequently shows one political bias or another. Nevertheless, Article 2 (4) is alive and reasonably well as a general standard of achievement.

According to the General Assembly in the 1970s, if a state engages in the first use of force, it has probably committed aggression. That is, the first use of force will normally be regarded as aggressive and nondefensive unless the Security Council holds otherwise. Individual or collective self-defense under Article 51 remains the only clearly legal use of force. Anticipatory self-defense, in which the purported defender state uses force first, in the face of an imminent armed attack, is not completely ruled out, but it is not explicitly endorsed either. The UN Security Council never did fully and clearly evaluate the Israeli first use of force in 1967 in the face of various Arab threats. The Bush doctrine of preventive war, what the U.S. administration labeled "preemption" in its 2002 National Security Strategy, reawakened debate over the legitimate first use of force. Given the dangerous nature of the logic of striking first on the basis of a purely national judgment, especially when the alleged threat is not imminent, great controversy greeted this aspect of U.S. security policy. The Bush doctrine was the main reason that France and other countries in "old Europe" and elsewhere would not support the use of force against Iraq in March 2003. In the past, similar claims met a similar response, as when Israel claimed the right to strike first to take out an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981 and was unanimously condemned by the council. But when Israel attacked a Syrian facility in 2007, suspecting it of being part of a nuclear weapons program, the Security Council and most states were silent about how to evaluate that complex situation. The Israelis did not proclaim preemption as a principle, and many states did not want to see Syria with nuclear weapons. So most just turned a blind eye and swept the issue under the diplomatic and legal rug.

Inherent in this discussion is that force means military action. A number of developing countries wanted force to include economic coercion, but this view has not prevailed in General Assembly debates. Analytical clarity requires keeping in mind the continuum from outside military intervention to the everyday exercise of political influence to the unconscious impact of such "soft power" as culture and language. International relations frequently involve states' affecting the internal affairs of other countries, although most diplomats prefer to avoid "intervention," which implies the forceful action by outsiders, in favor of "involvement" or "intrusion" or "interference."

In addition to dealing with aggression entailing first use of force, Article 42 specifies that there can be threats to and breaches of the peace. Neither the Security Council nor the ICJ, also known as the World Court, has ever clarified the difference between "aggression" and a "breach of the peace." However, a situation can create a threat to the peace without necessarily consisting of armed attack by one state on another. In the spring of 1991, for example, the Security Council declared that the consequences of the human rights situation in Iraq constituted a threat to the peace. At that time the government of Saddam Hussein was engaged in such repression that hundreds of thousands of persons were being displaced within Iraq or were fleeing into Turkey or Iran.

Thus, not only interstate force but also other actions constituting a threat to the peace can violate the Charter. In the mid-1960s the UN authorized economic sanctions against Rhodesia. That territory had announced a unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom, denied internationally recognized human rights, and was the scene for growing violence between the white-minority government and the Patriotic Front. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) and eventually the General Assembly called the Patriotic Front a "national liberation movement." While no armed attack by one state on another took place, the Security Council said that there was no peace and that binding economic sanctions were in order. This is another example of the Security Council reaching consensus and then committing to a course of action. Sometimes in this pursuit the council will "fuzz" legal categories. After all, the council is both a political and a legal organ. To gain votes for a council resolution, vague language may be necessary.

When the Security Council finds a situation of aggression, or threat to or breach of the peace, it can impose binding sanctions. In effect, the council can make international law. Chapter VII of the Charter, containing Articles 39–51, gives far more legal authority than the council of the League of Nations ever did. During the Cold War, the Security Council imposed binding sanctions on only two targets: the Ian Smith government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the apartheid government in South Africa. Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has authorized mandatory economic sanctions on a variety of parties in Iraq, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria. It imposed a binding arms embargo on all parties fighting in the Western Balkans—to such an extent that the 1990s were labeled "the sanctions decade." It did not impose but did authorize military action for the liberation of Kuwait. Likewise, it did not require but did authorize "all necessary means" (a diplomatic euphemism for military force) for delivering humanitarian assistance in both Somalia and Bosnia. In 2011, the Security Council approved all necessary measures to protect Libyan civilians from pro-government forces. All this occurred under Chapter VII of the Charter, leading to legally binding decisions by the Security Council. These decisions were not recommendations; they were mandatory from the viewpoint of international law. In effect, countries breaking sanctions were breaking international law.

Most Security Council and General Assembly resolutions constitute recommendations, legally speaking. When dealing with peace and security issues, the council usually acts under Chapter VI, not Chapter VII. Chapter VI deals with the pacific settlement of disputes. Under this part of the Charter the council suggests to parties how they might resolve their disputes. Traditional peacekeeping, even though UN personnel may be lightly armed, takes place under Chapter VI. As we will see in some depth in the next few chapters, UN peacekeepers do not shoot their way into situations; they proceed with the consent of the parties, usually to supervise some cease-fire or other agreement. But the theory of the Charter's operation always entailed the notion that persuasion under Chapter VI should be seen against the more coercive possibilities under Chapter VII. If the parties cannot agree, upon pacific urging of the Security Council under the purview of Chapter VI, they might face sanctions under Chapter VII.

One of the great complexities facing the world organization in the twenty-first century is that although the Charter was written for states, much political instability and violence arise today either from violence within states or from violence across state boundaries by nonstate actors (NSAs). The problems in Somalia and Liberia, to name just two, arose from the absence of a functioning state and a government capable of speaking in the name of the state. In the legal vacuum, various armed factions exercise as much power as they can. In Bosnia, the problems stemmed not just from Serbian and Croatian foreign policies but from the actions of Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats who were, in effect, unrecognized or quasi-recognized rebels in an internationalized internal armed conflict. In Cambodia, four groups vied for power. In Sri Lanka, armed Tamils sought to violently carve a new state in the north of that island. Particularly after September 11, 2001, the importance of transnational NSAs, such as Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, seems obvious.

These forms of violent conflict have been dubbed the "new wars." Whether they are truly new has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Among the "new war" implications are the contemporary meanings of Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the UN from intervening in the domestic jurisdiction of a state. In the context of failed states or humanitarian crises generated by state and nonstate actors, can the UN, and presumably also member states, intervene in matters previously considered to be part of domestic jurisdiction? If the consequences of repression by the Iraqi government against Iraqis, including those who remain physically within Iraq, constitute a threat to international peace and security—as the council determined in 1991—then what is left to constitute domestic jurisdiction? If the UN and its member states are entitled to use all necessary means to provide a secure environment for humanitarian assistance inside Somalia—as the council stated in 1992—in a situation in which there were few if any consequences for other states, then domestic jurisdiction means very little. If the restoration of a deposed but duly elected government is the basis for a Chapter VII intervention in Haiti—as the council decided in 1994—then what is the difference between domestic and international affairs? If the bombing of Belgrade over its repressive actions in its former province of Kosovo is condoned, what actions can be considered purely domestic?

The Permanent Court of International Justice said in the 1920s that the dividing line between domestic and international jurisdictions was a changing one, depending on the nature of international relations. The realm of international action has been expanding. The Security Council, driven by the foreign policies of its members, is attempting to deal more with the causes of violence even if they arise from conditions within states than just with conditions between states. Legal notions follow from these political facts. Human security inside states may be as important at times to the Security Council as traditional notions of security between states.

Power matters. If the United Kingdom says that the situation in Northern Ireland is a domestic matter, this view may carry the day because of London's power and its friends, just as Russia's characterization of its war against Chechnya or China's against Xinjiang are less likely to confront open international opprobrium than would similar actions by a less powerful state. Surely some matters clearly remain a part of domestic jurisdiction. Elections to the legislature in Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, or Missouri are internal or domestic and are not going to be supervised by the United Nations—although national elections in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Angola, and Cambodia have been.

Increasingly the United Nations, especially through Security Council action, has undertaken all sorts of deeply intrusive actions pertaining to human rights and economic affairs inside states in an effort to resolve security problems. Security issues do not separate so easily from these other concerns in many contemporary conflicts. In Cambodia, in theory if not fully in practice, UN personnel were in charge of governmental ministries. In theory at least, the UN governed Cambodia on an interim basis. The limits to UN action, respecting Article 2 (7) and domestic jurisdiction, are first and foremost political. States have ratified the UN Charter, which conveys powers of auto-interpretation on the Security Council. If the Security Council determines that a situation occurring materially within the territorial jurisdiction of a state is a threat to international peace and security, then it has broad authority to act. The ability of council members to reach such a determination depends on what the international political traffic will bear, and that political process determines the meaning of this key Charter provision.

The precise boundaries of state sovereignty are elusive. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then secretary-general, argued in 1992 that the time of absolute sovereignty had passed. In _Foreign Affairs_ he wrote, "The centuries-old doctrine of absolute and exclusive sovereignty no longer stands, and was in fact never so absolute as it was conceived to be in theory. A major intellectual requirement of our time is to rethink the question of sovereignty." His successor, Kofi Annan, was even more outspoken on the subject:

State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined—not least by the forces of globalization and international cooperation. States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa. At the same time individual sovereignty—by which I mean the fundamental freedom of each individual, enshrined in the charter of the UN and subsequent international treaties—has been enhanced by a renewed and spreading consciousness of individual rights. . . . This developing international norm in favour of intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter will no doubt continue to pose profound challenges to the international community. In some quarters it will arouse distrust, skepticism, even hostility. But I believe on balance we should welcome it.

Indeed, Annan was instrumental in leading international efforts to reconceptualize sovereignty as the responsibility to protect, known by its acronym R2P. Subsequent chapters will discuss the development of R2P as a guiding international principle, but for our purposes here, R2P means responsible sovereignty. According to Ban Ki-moon, the current secretary-general, "Properly understood, R2P is an ally of sovereignty, not an adversary. Strong States protect their people, while weak ones are either unwilling or unable to do so. Protection was one of the core purposes of the formation of States and the Westphalian system. By helping States meet one of their core responsibilities, R2P seeks to strengthen sovereignty, not weaken it.

Collective security, whether to confront traditional forms of interstate aggression or to address instability occurring materially within the territory of a state, requires organization—and much of what was supposedly agreed in the Charter remains undone. Under Article 43 all states are obligated to conclude an agreement with the Military Staff Committee (MSC), a subsidiary of the Security Council, whereby military forces are made available to the UN. No state has ever concluded such an agreement, as the great powers simply could not agree among themselves. In 2004 the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (HLP), and in 2005 then Secretary-General Annan in his publication _In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ , recommended that the MSC be abolished. At the 2005 World Summit, the General Assembly recommended that the Security Council review the composition and mandate of the MSC. Hence, the body exists in theory, but in practice the council and secretary-general are left with the task of constructing military forces mostly de novo for each crisis in which a UN military presence is contemplated. It is hard to believe that large-scale UN peace operations, which after all started in 1956, remain on such shaky and ad hoc organizational ground.

The UN, thus, has been forced to resort to a "sheriff's posse" approach to responding to crises—as in Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, East Timor, and Libya. In effect, the UN delegates its Chapter VII authority to others. The legal foundation for such a delegation is strong, especially since the Chapter VII authority is broad and over fifty years of state practice demonstrates a clear pattern of tasking member states, the secretary-general, regional organizations, and international criminal courts to carry out Security Council decisions. While the authority and the competency of the council to delegate are broad, it is not allowed to delegate two kinds of powers. First, the council cannot delegate the authority to determine whether a threat to the peace or a breach of the peace has occurred. That decision must be taken by the council. Second, it cannot delegate unrestricted command and control of enforcement to others. That is, the council must maintain oversight. As we will see in later discussions of Iraq and Libya, Security Council control of delegated collective security enforcement operations has proven more problematic in practice than in theory. Nevertheless, the UN enters into a "contract" with the United States or other major powers to enforce UN policy in countering either aggression or threats to the peace. In the former Yugoslavia following the Dayton accords, NATO became the UN's agent. This is not so different from the Rhodesian situation in the 1960s and 1970s, when the Security Council authorized the British navy to enforce the mandatory embargo in Mozambican territorial waters. This approach has the advantage of efficiency, which is no small matter when lives are on the line. But it has the drawback of the loss of UN control over its own policies, entailing loss of accountability for what is done in the UN's name. Chapter VIII of the Charter lays out a theory for UN linkage with regional organizations. This subject is important enough for extended analysis, particularly in light of calls to expand regional organizations' roles in the international security arena.

**REGIONAL ARRANGEMENTS**

Is it more appropriate to deal with local conflict through multilateral organizations whose scope is regional (for instance, the European Union or NATO) or universal (for instance, the United Nations)? The preference for regional management of regional conflict was enshrined in Chapter VIII of the UN Charter at the urging of the United States, based on the insistence of its Latin American allies. The Persian Gulf War produced a strong sense that the original security provisions of the Charter, including a renewed interest in regional organizations, could sometimes be implemented. At the 2005 World Summit, the UN reiterated its commitment to Chapter VIII by strengthening the links between the world body and regional organizations.

Regional organizations, when and where they exist, are often an appropriate locus for action because instability often poses a greater threat to regional actors than those farther away. At the outset of the present Charter regime, the preference for peaceful settlement was clearly articulated. Even Article 21 of the Covenant of the League of Nations noted the validity of regional understandings as a basis for maintaining peace. Nevertheless, one of the most controversial aspects at the San Francisco conference was the relative balance between regionalism and universalism. While the creation of the Security Council, with its enforcement power, gave globalism a significant edge over regionalism, Chapter VIII, "Regional Arrangements," was also considered essential. The basic idea, called "subsidiarity," is that the organization closest to the conflict take action, if possible, before asking the universal UN to get involved. That way, the Security Council remains an option if regional efforts fall short. Chapter VIII was designed to limit Security Council deliberations to the most severe and intractable disputes.

Article 52 of Chapter VIII declares, "Nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies dealing with matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security" under the condition that "their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations." This article encourages states to use regional organizations before directing their conflicts to the Security Council and also recommends that the council make use of regional arrangements. Articles 53 and 54 define relations between the UN and regional organizations by prohibiting the latter from taking peace and security measures without Security Council authorization and by insisting that regional organizations inform the council of their activities.

The active use of the veto throughout the Cold War not only prevented the use of the Security Council but also meant that regional organizations sometimes provided the United States and the Soviet Union with convenient pretexts for containing disputes within organizations that were themselves under superpower control. Crises in Guatemala, Cuba, Panama, and the Dominican Republic were relegated to the Organization of American States, dominated by the United States. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were in the jurisdiction of the "socialist community" of the Warsaw Pact, dominated by the Soviet Union.

The supposed deficiencies of universal international organizations and the resulting apparent strengths of regional ones should be examined in light of the ambiguity of "region" as a concept, the overstretched capacities of the UN in international peace and security, and the purported better familiarity with local crises by the member states of regional organizations. The framers deliberately avoided precision in the language in Chapter VIII, thereby allowing governments the flexibility to fashion instruments to foster international peace and security. Although the commonsensical notion of region is related to geography, the ambiguity of the Charter means that a region can also be conceived of geopolitically, culturally, ideologically, and economically. Such groups could include treaty-based organizations that predate or postdate the United Nations or ad hoc mechanisms created to deal with a specific concern. In addition to including such geographic entities as the African Union or the OAS, the Charter's definition of a regional organization might also include NATO, the Islamic Conference, and the OECD. Recent research points to the emergence of such "subregional" units as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Southern African Development Coordination Conference as potentially significant. The concept of regionalism remains ambiguous and therefore contested.

A second issue concerns institutional resources. The United Nations continues to experience grave financial difficulties and lacks sufficient and qualified staff. The great powers appear reluctant to pay for substantial administrative expansion of UN conflict management. The end of East-West tensions diminished Western interests in many regional conflicts. Moreover, the war on terrorism introduced other priorities, not just in the United States but throughout the Western world. Governing elites and publics sought to divert expenditure from foreign policy to postponed domestic economic and social needs. Smaller powers traditionally active in peacekeeping are unlikely to continue to pick up more of the tab. They share the economic problems of the larger states. The 2005 World Summit failed to approve any significant additional resources for the UN, and it even stumbled over giving the secretary-general more authority for budget and management decisions. Such a change would have implied reducing the control by the General Assembly, where developing countries are the majority, in favor of the UN's central administration, where the perception is that Western donors (and especially Washington) are in control.

In this context, regional approaches to crisis management and conflict resolution seem attractive. States near a country in conflict suffer most from the destabilizing consequences of war in their area. They receive the refugees and bear the political, social, and economic consequences, willingly or unwillingly, of combatants from neighboring countries seeking sanctuary. They face the choice of pacifying and repatriating combatant and noncombatant aliens on their territory or of resisting hot pursuit by those from whom these refugees have fled. Local conflict and the consequent perceptions of regional instability dampen investment flows and retard growth. They divert public resources into defense expenditures.

States from a region at war appear to be well suited to mediating local conflicts. They understand the dynamics of the strife and of the cultures involved more intimately than outsiders do. Leaders are far more likely to have personal connections to the involved parties, and these connections may be used as a basis for mediation. Involvement by other regional powers or organizations is less likely to be perceived by the international community as illegitimate interference than would involvement by extraregional organizations. Finally, issues of local conflict are far more likely to be given full and urgent consideration in regional gatherings than in global ones, as the latter have more extensive agendas.

The apparent advantages of regional institutions may exist more in theory than in practice. In reality, most of these organizations are far less capable than the United Nations. The comparative advantage of organizations in the actual region in conflict is more than offset by such practical disadvantages as partisanship, resource shortages, and local rivalries. Apart from very unusual cases (such as NATO), regional organizations have neither sufficient military capacity nor diplomatic leverage nor adequate economic resources. Furthermore, regional organizations are also plagued by the same problems often facing the world organization—achieving consensus, commitment, and organization.

Many of the factors favoring regional organizations are questionable. Regional actors do tend to suffer most from the destructive consequences of conflict among their neighbors. At the same time, they frequently have stakes in these conflicts, are committed to one side or another, and stand to benefit by influencing the outcome. Sometimes they are even active participants. In this sense, their interests are more complex than many proponents of regional organizations suggest. Their shared interest in the public good of regional stability is often accompanied by unilateral interest in obtaining specific favorable outcomes. Despite President Barack Obama's commitment to add seventeen thousand American soldiers to the fifty thousand NATO troops in Afghanistan in 2009, the alliance was finding it difficult to sustain long-term engagements because of political pressures on domestic fronts. Continuing disputes surrounding burden sharing within the alliance led the well-regarded former U.S. secretary of defense Robert Gates to scold NATO allies for their lack of military spending and political will in the collective security operation in Libya. He warned that NATO had "a dim if not dismal future."

A favorable result for one regional power is likely to enhance its regional position at the expense of other countries, which are likely to oppose such initiatives. In the terminology of international relations theory, we have simultaneous considerations of "absolute gain" (stability) and "relative gain" (power). There is no certainty that stability will predominate. Indeed, the recent literature provides compelling arguments to the effect that cooperation and regime maintenance are particularly difficult where questions of power are prominent, as in national security. Such issues are far more likely to be prominent in regional international relations than they are at the global level.

Situating crises in their regional historical and political contexts enhances the overall argument considerably. In Africa, the paralysis and bankruptcy of the OAU—now renamed the African Union (AU)—in curbing intervention and in managing the civil war in Angola (1975–2002) reflected deep disagreement among its own members about the desirable outcome of the process of liberation. With its headquarters in Addis Ababa, the OAU appeared particularly inept in helping to end the Ethiopian civil war (1974–1991). The lack of any substantial OAU initiative also arose from the fact that other African states were deeply implicated in the conflict in pursuit of diverging national interests. Similar difficulties were evident in OAU efforts to cope with crises in Chad, Somalia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone during the Cold War. The new AU proved irrelevant to the bloodletting in the Congo (2003) and has been slow to respond to the crisis in Darfur (termed "genocide" in 2004 by Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 422–0). In an effort to institute a friendly order in Somalia in 2007–2008, the United States relied primarily on an informal ally, Ethiopia, not on the African Union, but Ethiopia withdrew in 2009, thereby leaving the country pretty much in the same failed-state condition as when it entered but with piracy in the adjoining seas even more acute. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has compiled a decidedly mixed record in trying to pacify Liberia, Sierra Leone, and recently Côte d'Ivoire. ECOWAS was one of the first voices to condemn the 2012 military coup d'état in Mali and the first to act to begin the process of brokering a deal that would bring about elections. Still, ECOWAS is forced to appeal to the UN and wealthier states for diplomatic and financial support. And it was British troops who stopped the bloodletting in Sierra Leone, rather than any African organization or the UN's troops in the country.

In South Asia, it is hard to see how any regionally based initiative could have settled the Afghan civil war, not only because of the presence of Soviet forces earlier but also because India had no interest in seeing a pro-Pakistani or Islamic fundamentalist regime in Kabul. To take a more extreme case, the capacity of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to act as a neutral mediator of the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is extremely problematic; the two principal members of the organization are the very states involved. Elsewhere on the continent, efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to resolve the Cambodian conflict were handicapped by differing conceptions of Chinese and Vietnamese threats to the region. More recently, the UN Security Council authorized the Australian-led International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) to restore peace and security on the island, an action taken with the acquiescence of the Indonesian government. In Sri Lanka, the prolonged and bloody civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers was brought to an end by a brutal governmental victory, with no effective involvement by any outsider.

In Central America, the OAS could not deal effectively with civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador during the 1980s because of the U.S. failure to abide by the essential norm of nonintervention in its pursuit of a unilateral agenda to prevent Marxist revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua. For similar reasons, the OAS could not resolve instability in Honduras after a military coup ousted an elected president in 2009; the United States refused to defer to OAS diplomacy and pursued its own agenda. The capacity of the European Community, now the EU, to come up with an effective response to the violence and instability resulting from the disintegration of Yugoslavia beginning in 1991 was constrained by deep differences of opinion between France and Germany. Furthermore, disagreements among NATO members long hampered military humanitarianism in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In short, regional organizations replicate regional power imbalances. They may be used by the more powerful to expand their influence at the expense of the weak. This problem has appeared, or is likely to appear, in regions where power imbalances are so substantial that it is not possible for weaker states in coalition to balance against the strong. Cases in point include South Africa in southern Africa, Nigeria in West Africa, India in South Asia, Indonesia in Southeast Asia, and the United States in the Americas.

A further concrete problem with regional organizations as managers of conflict is that frequently their membership is not inclusive and their coverage is partial. OAU conflict management in southern Africa was inhibited by the organization's exclusion of the region's major military and economic power: South Africa. The same might be said of ASEAN's role, given the exclusion of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In light of the vast differences in their levels of economic development, this situation is unlikely to change once these anomalous exclusions are rectified. The Arab League excludes one of the three major regional powers (Iran). The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) excludes two of three (Iraq and Iran). In a number of these instances (the OAU in southern Africa, the GCC in the Gulf, and ASEAN), the consciousness of the organization is defined in large part by its members' opposition to the threat posed by the excluded parties. The premise of these organizations has been partiality, hardly a capacity for neutral intervention and security management.

Regional organizations have traditionally demonstrated their greatest structural weaknesses in dealing with civil war, the main growth industry for international conflict managers. This shortcoming follows in part from the international legal impediments associated with the doctrine of noninterference in internal affairs. These impediments have proven even more acute for many countries in the Global South, preoccupied as they are with exerting control over their own tenuous bases of power. The reluctance to become involved in civil armed conflict reflects the sensitivity of regional powers to creating precedents that might later be used to justify intervention in their own countries. In Africa, for example, many governments are themselves threatened by the possibility of internal war, which leads to caution about fostering norms and precedents that would legitimize regional involvement in such conflicts. Developing states, which have experienced the yoke of colonialism and struggled to gain their independence, tend to jealously guard their sovereign prerogatives. Ironically, the challenge to the sovereignty of colonial powers facilitated the decolonization process, and now the states that benefitted from that challenge are among the staunchest defenders of state sovereignty. Respect for conventional definitions of sovereignty has verged on slavishness—including repression and the license to murder. This weakness is likely to play out more strongly at the regional level. For all of the above reasons, the general case for reliance on regional organizations is weak, as was very much in evidence in Zimbabwe, where the African Union stood on the sidelines in the face of Robert Mugabe's destructive repression.

Recent actions in the wake of the Arab Spring may force us to rethink these long-standing generalizations. The visible support by the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for establishing a no-fly zone in Libya were essential to mobilizing support for Security Council resolution 1973. And later in Syria, this striking change continued as the Arab League in particular was clear in condemning Bashar al-Assad. Despite the vetoes, threatened and real, from Russia and China, it also put forward a peace plan and established the joint Arab League–UN mission led by the special envoy, Kofi Annan.

The United Nations and regional organizations have resorted to creative measures to address violence and conflict. The Gulf War in 1991 and the creation of safe havens for Iraqi Kurds are clear and successful illustrations of military "subcontracting" to the Allied Coalition, as was NATO's presence in Bosnia from 1995 until December 2004, when it handed over the military reins to the EU. A more controversial and less successful example was Somalia, where a U.S.-led effort was mounted to break the back of warlord-induced famine. Moreover, three Security Council decisions in July 1994 indicated the relevance of military intervention by major powers in regions of their traditional spheres of influence: a Russian plan to deploy its troops in Georgia to end the three-year-old civil war; the French intervention in Rwanda, supposedly to cope with genocidal conflict; and the U.S. plan to spearhead a military invasion to reverse the military coup in Haiti.

Regional organizations have also turned to subcontracting. In 1994, the then Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE and OSCE) authorized troops from the Commonwealth of Independent States and other OSCE member states after a definitive agreement regarding Nagorno-Karabakh. Similarly, ECOWAS authorized a contingent of largely Nigerian troops to stabilize Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The results from these arrangements have not been consistently superior to the UN's record. Yet the evident gap between the UN's capacities and persistent demands for help could be filled by regional powers, or even hegemons, operating under the scrutiny of a wider community of states. The argument has become stronger in light of the experience in Kosovo and more especially the smooth handover in Timor-Leste from the Australian-led force to the UN one in February 2000, followed by the return of the Australians when violence renewed.

Events in Côte d'Ivoire demonstrated the ad hoc and changing efforts to manage conflict and security. While the UNSC may pass resolutions in New York, implementing them may result in lots of shifting ad hoc arrangements, given the lack of dependable resources on which the UN can rely. Here the AU's diplomacy was ultimately unsuccessful but helpful in making the final UN decisions, as was pressure by ECOWAS to act militarily. The absence of a meaningful threat to actually deploy military force in 2010–2011 to oust Laurent Gbagbo and install Alassane Ouattara in Côte d'Ivoire illustrated what happens when a viable military option is not in the international tool-kit. The eventual ouster of incumbent Ggagbo followed action by the 1,650-strong French Licorne force as the avant-garde of the UN peace operation and a half year of dawdling. The unavailability or unwillingness to apply armed force abetted Gbagbo's intransigence as Côte d'Ivoire's unspeakable disaster unfolded.

In attempting to determine a possible division of labor between global and regional organizations to meet the exigencies of particular conflicts, distinctions should be made between Europe and developing countries as well as between the use of outside military forces to keep the peace and diplomatic measures for negotiations. In Europe, UN diplomacy could well be combined with the use of NATO forces under a UN flag in regional disputes, as throughout the former Yugoslavia. Also, the EU has taken a series of steps to create its own military capacity, which leads Andrew Moravcsik, for one, to propose a division of labor between American enforcement and European peacekeeping. In developing countries, the division of labor will be different. In crises of manageable size (for example, in Guatemala in the late 1980s), the UN could deploy its troops and work closely with regional partners in diplomatic arm-twisting. In more dangerous conflicts like the ones in Somalia and the Congo, UN diplomacy could be teamed with the troops of countries willing to run risks in a coalition.

In short, the will and the capacity of regional organizations to outperform the UN in the management of conflict within their areas are in doubt, with the notable exception of Europe. The end of the Cold War did little to change this conclusion. The potential of regional organizations needs to be tempered with the reality of recent efforts.

**STRAYING FROM THE IDEAL**

Since 1945, untold numbers of wars have broken out, and tens of millions of people have perished as a result. According to the logic of the Charter, the leadership for the UN's peace and security duties rests on the shoulders of a small segment of the international community of states, notably the great powers on the Security Council. Conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union poisoned the atmosphere and prevented their working together on most security issues during the Cold War. World politics often made it impossible to act collectively, and states often chose to disobey or ignore the prohibitions and restrictions on the use of force to pursue _raisons d'état._

In place of the ideal collective-security system, the UN developed alternate means to mitigate certain conflicts: peacekeeping. We now turn to this story.

**NOTES**

. Martyn Housden, _The League of Nations and the Organization of Peace_ (New York: Pearson Longman, 2012).

. F. H. Hinsley, _Power and the Pursuit of Peace_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); S. J. Hambleben, _Plans for World Peace Through Six Centuries_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943); and F. P. Walters, _A History of the League of Nations_ , 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1952).

. Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur, _Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 55–90.

. Lynn H. Miller, _Global Order: Values and Power in International Politics_ , 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), 46–50.

. Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _The United Nations and Nuclear Orders_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2009).

. Justin Gruenberg, "An Analysis of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions: Are All Countries Treated Equally?" _Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law_ 41 (2009): 469–511.

. Chapter 12 of Inis L. Claude Jr., _Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization_ , 4th ed. (New York: Random House, 1971), remains the best single treatment of collective security. See also his _Power and International Relations_ (New York: Random House, 1962); Ernst B. Haas, "Types of Collective Security: An Examination of Operational Concepts," _American Political Science Review_ 49, no. 1 (1955): 40–62; Thomas G. Weiss, ed., _Collective Security in a Changing World_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993); and George W. Downs, ed., _Collective Security Beyond the Cold War_ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

. Robert Riggs and Jack Plano, _The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics_ , 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1994), 100.

. Edward C. Luck, _UN Security Council: Practice and Promise_ , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2012); Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welch, and Dominik Zaum, eds., _The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); and M. J. Peterson, _The UN General Assembly_ (London: Routledge, 2005).

. Johan Kaufmann, _United Nations Decision-Making_ (Rockville, Md.: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1980), 43–52. See also Sydney D. Bailey and Sam Daws, _The Procedure of the UN Security Council_ , 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and James P. Muldoon et al., _Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999).

. Thant Myint-U and Amy Scott, _The UN Secretariat: A Brief History (1945–2006)_ (New York: International Peace Academy, 2007), 126–128.

. Cyrus R. Vance and David A. Hamburg, _Pathfinders for Peace: A Report to the UN Secretary-General on the Role of Special Representatives and Personal Envoys_ (New York: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997).

. James O.C. Jonah, "Ki-moon as Key Player: The Secretary-General's Role in Peace and Security," _Harvard International Review_ (Spring 2011): 59–63.

. Edward C. Luck, "Article 2(4) on the Nonuse of Force: What Were They Thinking?" in _American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World_ , ed. David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andrew Wedeman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 51–80; Stephen C. Schlesinger, _Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2003); and Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, _FDR and the Creation of the U.N._ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997).

. For a different view, see Michael Glennon, "The UN vs. U.S. Power," _Foreign Affairs_ 82, no. 3 (2003): 16–35.

. Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, "A Duty to Prevent," _Foreign Affairs_ 83, no. 1 (2004): 136–150; and Allan Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, "The Preventive Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal," _Ethics & International Affairs_ 18, no. 1 (2004): 1–22.

. Joseph P. Nye Jr., _Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power_ (New York: Basic Books, 1990) and _The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

. Stanley Hoffmann, "The Problem of Intervention," in _Intervention in World Politics_ , ed. Hedley Bull (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 7–28.

. David Cortright and George A. Lopez, _The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990_ s (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

. Mary Kaldor, _New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Mark Duffield, _Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security_ (London: Zed Books, 2001).

. Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, _Sword & Salve: Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises_ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Stathis N. Kalyvas, "'New' and 'Old' Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?" _World Politics_ 54, no. 1 (2001): 99–118.

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, "Empowering the United Nations," _Foreign Affairs_ 72, no. 5 (1992–1993): 98–99.

. Kofi Annan, "Two Concepts of Sovereignty," _Economist_ (September 18, 1999).

. Secretary General SG/SM/11701, July 15, 2008, Department of Public Information.

. _In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ , UN document A/59/2005, March 21, 2005.

. Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, _Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006).

. Brian Urquhart, "Beyond the 'Sheriff's Posse,'" _Survival_ 32, no. 3 (1990): 196–205.

. Danesh Sarooshi, _The United Nations and the Development of Collective Security: The Delegation by the UN Security Council of Chapter VII Powers_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 32–33.

. S. Neil MacFarlane and Thomas G. Weiss, "Regional Organizations and Regional Security," _Security Studies_ 2, no. 1 (1992): 6–37; and Alexander Orakhelashvili, _Collective Security_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

. Francis O. Wilcox, "Regionalism and the United Nations," _International Organization_ 19, no. 3 (1965): 789–811; and Tom J. Farer, "The Role of Regional Collective Security Arrangements," in _Collective Security in a Changing World_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 153–189.

. William T. Tow, _Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990).

. Thom Shanker and Steven Erlanger, "Blunt U.S. Warning Reveals Deep Strains in NATO," _New York Times_ , June 10, 2011, www.nytimes.com.

. Joseph Grieco, "Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism," _International Organization_ 62, no. 3 (1988): 488–507; and John Mearsheimer, "Instability in Europe After the Cold War," _International Security_ 15, no. 1 (1990): 44.

. William G. O'Neill and Violette Cassis, _Protecting Two Million Internally Displaced: The Successes and Shortcomings of the African Union in Darfur_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution–University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement, 2005). For broader discussion, see Jane Boulden, ed., _Dealing with Conflict in Africa: The United Nations and Regional Organizations_ (London: Palgrave, 2003).

. Robert Haywood and Roberta Spivak, _Maritime Piracy_ (London: Routledge, 2012).

. Mohammed Ayoob, _The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995); and Brian Job, ed., _The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992).

. Jarat Chopra and Thomas G. Weiss, "Prospects for Containing Conflict in the Former Second World," _Security Studies_ 4, no. 3 (1995): 552–583; Lena Jonson and Clive Archer, eds., _Peacekeeping and the Role of Russia in Eurasia_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996); and Alan K. Henrikson, "The Growth of Regional Organizations and the Role of the United Nations," in _Regionalism in World Politics: Regional Organizations and World Order_ , ed. Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 122–168.

. Thomas J. Bassett and Scott Straus, "Defending Democracy in Côte d'Ivoire," _Foreign Affairs_ 90, no. 4 (2011): 130–140.

. Andrew Moravcsik, "Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain," _Foreign Affairs_ 82, no. 4 (2003): 74–89. See also Bastian Giegrich and William Wallace, "Not Such a Soft Power: The External Deployment of European Forces," _Survival_ 46, no. 2 (2004): 163–182.

. The annual publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, _Strategic Survey_ , updates these numbers and is published by Oxford University Press.
* * *

CHAPTER 2

* * *

_UN Security Efforts During the Cold War_

THE UN CHARTER'S REQUIREMENT for unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council reflected the realities of the power politics of the day and historical norms of European interstate relations. The council was created less out of naive idealism and more out of a hardheaded effort to mesh state power with international law, a traditional approach to effective enforcement. However, the underlying requirement that members would agree was not borne out with any frequency until after the Cold War. The veto held by the P-5 was not the real problem; disagreement among those with power was.

**THE EARLY YEARS: PALESTINE, KOREA, SUEZ, THE CONGO**

The onset of the Cold War ended the great-power cooperation on which the postwar order had been predicated. Nonetheless, the UN became involved in four major security crises: Palestine (1948), Korea (1950), Suez (1956), and the Congo (1962). After Israel declared its independence in 1948, war broke out between it and its four neighbors: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Soon thereafter, the Security Council ordered a cease-fire under Chapter VII and ultimately created an observer team, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), under Chapter VI to supervise it. UNTSO observer groups were deployed, unarmed, along the borders of Israel and its neighbors and operated with the consent of the parties involved. Close to six hundred observers were eventually deployed, including army units from Belgium, France, the United States, and Sweden. Troops had no enforcement mandate or capability, but their presence did deter truce violations. To exercise their mandates without relying on military might, they relied on the moral authority of the United Nations. Also, warring parties knew that their truce violations would be objectively reported to UN headquarters in New York for possible further action. Although observers wore the uniforms of their respective national armies, their first allegiance theoretically was to the world organization, symbolized by UN armbands. Later, blue helmets and berets became the trademark of UN peacekeepers. The observers were paid by their national armies and granted a stipend by the world organization. UNTSO's activities continue to be financed from the UN's regular operating budget.

UNTSO has performed a variety of important tasks. UNTSO observers set up demilitarized zones along the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Syrian borders, established Mixed Armistice Commissions along each border to investigate complaints and allegations of truce violations, and verified compliance with the General Armistice Agreements. UNTSO did, unfortunately, also contribute to a freezing of the conflict. From 1949 to 1956 and then to 1967, the main parties to the conflict were unwilling to use major force to break apart the stalemate. UNTSO was there to police the status quo. Being freed from major military violence, the parties lacked the necessary motivation to make concessions for a more genuine peace. This problem of UN peacekeeping contributing to freezing but not solving a conflict was to reappear in Cyprus and elsewhere.

The first coercive action taken in the name of the United Nations concerned the Korean peninsula and was arguably a type of collective security. World War II left Korea divided, with Soviet forces occupying the North and U.S. forces the South. The UN call for withdrawal of foreign troops and elections throughout a unified Korea was opposed by communist governments, leading to elections only in the South and the withdrawal of most U.S. troops. In 1950, forces from North Korea (the Democratic Republic of Korea), which was informally allied with the Soviet Union and China, attacked South Korea (the Republic of Korea). The United States moved to resist this attack.

At the UN, the USSR was boycotting the Security Council to protest the seating of the Chinese government in Taiwan as the permanent member instead of the Chinese communist government on the mainland. The United States knew the Security Council would not be stymied by a Soviet veto and could adopt some type of resolution on Korea. So Washington referred the Korean situation to the council. The Truman administration ordered U.S. military forces to Korea, albeit before the Security Council approved a course of action. The council passed a resolution under Chapter VII declaring that North Korea had committed a breach of the peace and recommended that UN members furnish all appropriate assistance (including military assistance) to South Korea. The USSR abandoned its boycott and returned to its council seat, thereby thwarting any additional measures. Under U.S. leadership, the General Assembly improvised, through the Uniting for Peace Resolution, to continue support for the South in the name of the United Nations.

Security Council resolutions on Korea provided international legitimacy to U.S. decisions. The Truman administration was determined to stop communist expansion in East Asia. It proceeded without a congressional declaration of war or any other specific authorizing measure, and it was prepared to proceed without UN authorization—although once this was obtained, the Truman administration emphasized UN approval in its search for support both at home and abroad. The General Assembly action deputized the United States to lead the defense of South Korea in the name of the United Nations. When the early tide of the contest turned in favor of South Korea, Truman decided to carry the war all the way to the Chinese border. This was a fateful decision: by bringing Chinese forces into the fight in major proportions, it prolonged the war until 1953, when stalemate restored the status quo ante. All important strategic and tactical decisions pertaining to Korea that carried the UN's name were made by the United States. Other states, such as Australia and Turkey, fought for the defense of South Korea, but that military effort was a U.S. operation behind the UN flag.

The defense of South Korea was not exactly a classic example of collective security if the UN Charter is the guide. A truncated Security Council clearly labeled the situation a breach of the peace and authorized the use of military force, something that would not occur again during the Cold War. Neither the council nor its Military Staff Committee really controlled the use of UN symbols. No Article 43 agreements transferring national military units to the UN were concluded. And the secretary-general, Trygve Lie of Norway, played almost no role once he declared himself against the North Korean invasion because the Soviet Union stopped treating him as the UN's head. He was eventually forced to resign (the only such resignation to date) because of his ineffectiveness. Legally correct in his public stand against aggression, he was left without the necessary political support of a major power, Moscow. Subsequent secretaries-general learned from his mistake, representing Charter values but without antagonizing the permanent members whose support was necessary for successful UN action.

The 1956 Suez Canal crisis resulted in the first use of what became known as "peacekeepers" to separate warring parties. France, Britain, and Israel had attacked Soviet-backed Egypt against the wishes of the United States, claiming a right to use force to keep the Suez Canal open after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had closed it. Britain and France used their vetoes, blocking action by the Security Council. The General Assembly resorted to the Uniting for Peace Resolution—this time for peacekeeping, not enforcement—and directed Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (of Sweden) to create a force to supervise the cease-fire between Israel and Egypt once it had been arranged. The first UN Emergency Force (UNEF I) oversaw the disengagement of forces and served as a buffer between Israel and Egypt. In this instance, the United States and Soviet Union were not so far apart. U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in the spirit of collective security by preventing traditional U.S. allies from proceeding with what he regarded as aggression. UN peacekeeping in 1956 and for a decade thereafter was hailed as a success.

The efforts by the world organization to deal with one of the most traumatic exercises in decolonization—in the former Belgian Congo (then Zaire and more recently the Democratic Republic of Congo)—illustrated the limits of peacekeeping. The ONUC (the French acronym for the United Nations Operation in the Congo) almost bankrupted the world organization and also threatened its political life. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld lost his own life in a suspicious plane crash in the region.

Prisoners guarded by a South Korean soldier wait to be taken to a POW camp near Inchon in October 1950. (UN Photo 32240)

This armed conflict was both international (caused by Belgium's intervention in its former colony) and domestic (caused by a province's secession within the new state). The nearly total absence of a government infrastructure led to a massive involvement of UN civilian administrators in addition to twenty thousand UN soldiers. After having used his Article 99 powers to get the world organization involved, the secretary-general became embroiled in a situation in which the Soviet Union, its allies, and many nonaligned countries supported the national prime minister, who was subsequently murdered while under arrest; the Western powers and the UN organization supported the president. At one point the president fired the prime minister, and the prime minister fired the president, leaving no clear central authority in place. The political vacuum created enormous problems for the United Nations as well as opportunities for action.

Congolese refugees uprooted from their homes by fighting in Katanga Province wait for water at a refugee camp in September 1961. (UN Photo 71906)

Instead of neutral peacekeepers, UN forces became an enforcement army for the central government, which the UN Secretariat created with Western support. This role was not mandated by the assembly or council, and in this process the world organization could not count on cooperation from the warring parties within the Congo. Some troop contributors resisted UN command and control; others removed their soldiers to register their objections. The Soviet Union, and later France, refused to pay assessments for the field operation. This phase of the dispute almost destroyed the UN, and the General Assembly had to suspend voting for a time to dodge the question of who was in arrears on payments and thus who could vote. The USSR went further in trying to destroy Hammarskjöld's independence by suggesting the replacement of the secretary-general with a troika (or a three-person administrative structure at the top of the organization). Four years later, the UN departed from a unified Congo, an accomplishment. Nevertheless, it had acquired an operational black eye in Africa because of its perceived partisan stance. No UN troops were sent again to Africa until the end of the Cold War (to Namibia). The UN also incurred a large budgetary deficit and developed a hesitancy to become involved in internal wars. Questions about funding lay unresolved, to arise again in later controversies.

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War ended with the creation of the second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II). The UNEF model of a lightly armed interpositional force became the blueprint for other traditional peacekeeping operations. UNEF II was composed of troops from Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Ghana, Indonesia, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Poland, and Senegal—countries representing each of the world's four major regions. The operation consisted of over seven thousand persons at its peak. UNEF II's original mandate was for six months, but the Security Council renewed it continually until 1979, when the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Egyptian peace accord was signed. UNEF II functioned as an impartial force designed to establish a demilitarized zone, supervise it, and safeguard other provisions of the truce. Small-scale force was used to stop those who tried to breach international lines. The presence of UNEF II had a calming influence on the region by ensuring that Israel and Egypt were kept apart. The success of both UNEF I and II, and the problems with the operation in the Congo, catalyzed traditional peacekeeping, the subject to which we now turn.

**UNDERSTANDING PEACEKEEPING**

The effective projection of military power under international control to enforce international decisions against aggressors was supposed to distinguish the United Nations from the League of Nations. The onset of the Cold War made this impossible on a systematic basis. A new means of peace maintenance was necessary, one that would permit the world organization to act within carefully defined limits when the major powers agreed or at least acquiesced.

UN peacekeeping proved capable of navigating the turbulent waters of the Cold War through its neutral claims and limited range of activities. Again, global politics circumscribed UN activities. Although peacekeeping is not specifically mentioned in the Charter, it became the organization's primary function in the domain of peace and security. The use of sizable troop contingents for this purpose is widely recognized as having begun during the 1956 crisis in Suez. Contemporary accounts credit Lester B. Pearson, then Canada's secretary of state for external affairs and later prime minister, with proposing to the General Assembly that Secretary-General Hammarskjöld organize an "international police force that would step in until a political settlement could be reached."

Close to five hundred thousand military, police, and civilian personnel—distinguished from national soldiers by their trademark powder-blue helmets and berets—served in UN peacekeeping forces during the Cold War, and some seven hundred lost their lives in UN service during this period. Alfred Nobel hardly intended to honor soldiers when he created the peace prize that bears his name, and no military organization had received the prize throughout its eighty-seven-year history. This changed in December 1988, when UN peacekeepers received the prestigious award. This date serves as the turning point in the following discussion to distinguish UN security activities during and after the Cold War.

_The Cold War and the Birth of Peacekeeping, 1948–1988_

The lack of any specific reference to peacekeeping in the Charter led Hammarskjöld to coin the poetic and apt expression "Chapter six and a half," which referred to stretching the original meaning of Chapter VI. And certainly peacekeeping "can rightly be called the invention of the United Nations," as then secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali claimed in _An Agenda for Peace._ The lack of a clear international constitutional basis makes a consensus definition of peacekeeping difficult, particularly because peacekeeping operations have been improvised in response to the specific requirements of individual conflicts. Despite the lack of consensus and the multiplicity of sources, former UN undersecretary-general Marrack Goulding provided a sensible definition of peacekeeping: "United Nations field operations in which international personnel, civilian and/or military, are deployed with the consent of the parties and under United Nations command to help control and resolve actual or potential international conflicts or internal conflicts which have a clear international dimension."

The first thirteen UN peacekeeping and military observer operations deployed during the Cold War are listed in Table 2.1. Five were still in the field in December 2012. From 1948 to 1988, peacekeepers typically served two functions: observing the peace (that is, monitoring and reporting on the maintenance of cease-fires) and keeping the peace (that is, providing an interpositional buffer between belligerents and establishing zones of disengagement). The forces were normally composed of troops from small or nonaligned states, with permanent members of the Security Council and other major powers making troop contributions only under exceptional circumstances. Lightly armed, these neutral troops were symbolically deployed between belligerents who had agreed to stop fighting; they rarely used force and then only in self-defense and as a last resort. Rather than being based on any military prowess, the influence of UN peacekeepers in this period resulted from the cooperation of belligerents mixed with the moral weight and diplomatic pressure of the international community of states.

Peacekeeping operations essentially defended the status quo. They helped suspend a conflict and gain time so that belligerents could be brought closer to the negotiating table. However, these operations do not by themselves guarantee the successful pursuit of negotiations. They are often easier to institute than to dismantle, as the case of over four decades of this activity in Cyprus demonstrates. The termination of peacekeeping operations creates a vacuum and may have serious consequences for the stability of a region, as happened in 1967 at the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli War following the withdrawal of UNEF I at Egypt's request.

The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) represents a classic example of international compromise during the Cold War. This operation was designed as a microcosm of geopolitics, with a NATO member and a neutral on the pro-Western Israeli side of the line of separation, and a member of the Warsaw Pact and a neutral on the pro-Soviet Syrian side. UNDOF was established on May 31, 1974, upon the conclusion of disengagement agreements between Israel and Syria that called for an Israeli withdrawal from all areas it occupied within Syria, the establishment of a buffer zone to separate the Syrian and Israeli armies, and the creation of areas of restricted armaments on either side of the buffer zone. UNDOF was charged with verifying Israel's withdrawal, establishing the buffer zones, and monitoring levels of militarization in the restricted zones.

**TABLE 2.1** UN Peacekeeping Operations During the Cold War and During the Initial Thaw

_Years Active_ | _Operation_

---|---

1948–Present | United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO, based in Jerusalem)

1949–Present | United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP)

1956–1967 | United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I, Suez Canal)

1958 | United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL)

1960–1964 | United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC)

1962–1963 | United Nations Force in New West Guinea (UNSF, in West Irian)

1963–1964 | United Nations Yemen Observation Mission (UNYOM)

1964–Present | United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP)

1965–1966 | United Nations India-Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM)

1965–1966 | Mission of the Representative of the Secretary-General in the Dominican Republic (DOMREP)

1973–1979 | Second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II, Suez Canal and later the Sinai Peninsula)

1974–Present | United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF, Golan Heights)

1978–Present | United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)

1988–1990 | United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP)

1988–1991 | United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG)

1989–1990 | United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG, in Namibia)

1989–1991 | United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM I)

1989–1992 | United Nations Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA)

UNDOF employed 1,250 armed soldiers, including 90 military observers. Troop deployment emphasized equal contributions by countries that were either politically neutral or sympathetic to the West or East. Originally, Peru, Canada, Poland, and Austria provided troops for the operation. Canadian and Peruvian forces operate along the Israeli side; Polish and Austrian troops operate in Syrian territory.

Despite the declared hostility between Israel and Syria, UNDOF has proven instrumental in maintaining peace in the Golan Heights. The size and weapons of the force clearly are inadequate to halt any serious incursions, but the two longtime foes want the force there. Thus, since 1977 no major incidents have occurred in areas under UNDOF's jurisdiction. Success is attributable to several factors: the details of the operation were thoroughly defined before its implementation, leaving little room for disagreement; Israel and Syria cooperated with UNDOF; and the Security Council supported the operation fully.

_Principles of Traditional Peacekeeping_

The man who helped give operational meaning to "peacekeeping," Brian Urquhart, has summarized the characteristics of UN operations—which can be gleaned inductively from the case of UNDOF—during the Cold War as follows: consent of the parties, continuing strong support of the Security Council, a clear and practicable mandate, nonuse of force except as a last resort and in self-defense, the willingness of troop contributors to furnish military forces, and the willingness of member states to make available requisite financing. Developing each of the characteristics serves as a bridge to our discussion of subsequent UN efforts that extend beyond traditional limitations because many of these traditional standard operating procedures would need to be set aside or seriously modified to confront the challenges of many post–Cold War peace operations.

_Consent Is Imperative Before Operations Begin._ In many ways, consent is the keystone of traditional peacekeeping, for two reasons. First, it helps to insulate the UN decision-making process against great-power dissent. For example, in Cyprus and Lebanon the Soviet Union's desire to obstruct was overcome because the parties themselves had asked for UN help.

Second, consent greatly reduces the likelihood that peacekeepers will encounter resistance while carrying out their duties. Peacekeepers are physically in no position to challenge the authority of belligerents (either states or opposition groups), and so they assume a nonconfrontational stance toward local authorities. Traditional peacekeepers do not impinge on sovereignty. In fact, it is imperative to achieve consent before operations begin.

The emphasis that traditional missions place on consent does have drawbacks, as two observers have noted: "Peacekeeping forces cannot often create conditions for their own success." For example, belligerents will normally consent to a peacekeeping mission once wartime goals have been achieved or losses have made belligerents war-weary. In instances where neither of these conditions has been met, it becomes necessary to find alternate ways to induce warring parties to achieve and maintain consent. Moreover, major powers need to pressure their clients not only to consent but also to negotiate. When political will is lacking, either wars continue unaddressed by the organization, or UN peacekeepers become inextricably tied down in conflict, neither able to bring peace to the area nor able to withdraw from it. For example, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), originally deployed in 1964 to separate warring Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities and then, given a new mandate in 1974, remains in the field because consent for deployment has not been matched by a willingness to negotiate the peace. Likewise, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), established in 1949; UNDOF, created in 1974; and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), deployed in 1978—all continue to operate because of the absence of political conditions allowing for their removal.

_Peacekeeping Operations Need Full Support from the Security Council._ Such support is necessary not only in the beginning stages of the mission, when decisions regarding budgets, troop allotments, and other strategic priorities are made, but also in its later stages, when mandates come up for renewal. The host of problems in the Congo illustrates the dangers of proceeding without the support of the major powers in the Security Council. Backing by both the United States and the Soviet Union of UNEF I in the General Assembly was the only case in which the United States and the Soviet Union abandoned the Security Council and then resorted to the General Assembly to get around a veto. A practice has developed for the Security Council to renew the mandate of missions several times—frequently semiannually for years on end—in order to keep pressure on parties who may be threatened with the possible withdrawal of peacekeepers. Full Security Council support also enhances the symbolic power of an operation.

_Participating Nations Need to Provide Troops and to Accept Risks._ Successful peacekeeping missions require the self-sustained presence of individual peacekeeping battalions, each of which is independent but also functions under UN command. Frequently they deploy in areas of heavy militarization. Mortal danger exists for peacekeepers. Governments that provide troops must be willing to accept the risks inherent in a given mission, and they also must be able to defend such expenditures and losses before their parliaments.

_Permanent Members Do Not Normally Contribute Troops Except for Logistical Support._ Providing logistical support has become a specialty of the United States, which during the Cold War essentially airlifted most start-up troops and provisions for UN operations. Keeping major powers from an active role in peacekeeping was imperative for the perceived neutrality that successful peacekeeping strives to attain. Washington and Moscow were thought to be especially tainted by the causes they supported worldwide.

The experience with exceptions to this rule has been mixed. Because of the special circumstances involved in Britain's possession of extraterritorial bases on the island of Cyprus, the United Kingdom was involved in UN operations there from the outset; that effort has been worthwhile. The experience of French peacekeepers deployed in UNIFIL in Lebanon was a source of problems because of France's perceived involvement as an ex-colonial power on the Christian side of the conflict. Consequently, French troops came under attack by local factions and were forced to withdraw from the zone of operations and to remain in the UN compound.

Brian E. Urquhart, undersecretary-general for special political affairs, answers questions in June 1985 about his mission to the Middle East to free soldiers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. (UN Photo 165579/Y. Nagata)

_A Clear and Precise Mandate Is Desirable._ The goals of the mission should be clear, obtainable, and known to all parties involved. Enunciation of the mission's objectives reduces local suspicion. Yet a certain degree of flexibility is desirable so that the peacekeepers may adapt their operating strategies to better fit changing circumstances. The goals of the operation may be expanded or reduced as the situation warrants. In fact, diplomatic vagueness may at times be necessary in Security Council voting to secure support or to keep future options open.

_Force Is Used Only in Self-Defense and as a Last Resort._ Peacekeepers derive their influence from the diplomatic support of the international community, and therefore they use force only as a last resort and in self-defense. _The Peacekeeper's Handbook_ states this wisdom: "The degree of force [used] must only be sufficient to achieve the mission on hand and to prevent, as far as possible, loss of human life and/or serious injury. Force should not be initiated, except possibly after continuous harassment when it becomes necessary to restore a situation so that the United Nations can fulfill its responsibilities."

Peacekeeping techniques differ greatly from those taught to most soldiers and officers by their national training authorities. In the past only the Scandinavian states and Canada have trained large numbers of their recruits and officers specifically for peacekeeping. Soldiers from other countries have often found themselves unprepared because the prohibition against the use of force contradicts their standard military training. Thus, the administrative, technological, and strategic structures that sustain peacekeeping have reflected the need for professional diplomatic and political expertise more than the need for professional soldiers.

**"CHAPTER SIX AND A HALF" ON HOLD, 1978–1988**

From 1948 to 1978 thirteen UN peacekeeping operations took place. In the ten years after 1978, however, no new operations materialized, even as a rash of regional conflicts involving the superpowers or their proxies sprang up around the globe.

The last operation approved before the decade-long hiatus highlights the difficulties the UN encountered during this period. UNIFIL in Lebanon was beset with problems similar to those experienced in the Congo during the 1960s, where domestic conflict and an absence of government structures had given the world organization an operational black eye. UNIFIL's difficulties illustrate the dangers inherent in operations that lack both clear mandates and the effective cooperation of belligerents and that exist amidst political chaos and great-power disagreement.

UNIFIL was established at the Security Council's request on March 19, 1978, following Israel's military incursion into southern Lebanon. Israel claimed that military raids and shelling by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) who were based in southern Lebanon threatened Israeli peace and security. Israel's response embarrassed its primary ally, the United States. Washington used its influence in the Security Council to create UNIFIL as a face-saving means for Israel to withdraw when criticism of its tactics became widespread. The operation's duties included confirming the Israeli withdrawal; establishing and maintaining an area of operations; preventing renewed fighting among the PLO, Israel, and the Israeli-backed Southern Lebanese Army; and restoring Lebanese sovereignty over southern Lebanon.

At UNIFIL's maximum strength, over seven thousand soldiers were deployed, including contingents from Canada, Fiji, France, Ghana, Iran, Ireland, Nepal, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, and Senegal. UNIFIL encountered significant problems as a result of the conflicting interests of the major parties involved in southern Lebanon. Israel refused to cede control of the South to UNIFIL, choosing instead to rely on the Southern Lebanese Army, which resisted UNIFIL's efforts to gain control in the area. The PLO demanded that it be allowed to operate freely in the South to continue its resistance against Israel. The Lebanese government insisted that UNIFIL assume control of the entire region. Consequently, UNIFIL found itself sandwiched between the PLO and the Southern Lebanese Army and routinely came under fire. In 1982, as Israel reinvaded Lebanon and marched to Beirut, UNIFIL stood by, powerless, in the face of Israel's superior firepower and the unwillingness of troop contributors or the UN membership to resist. UNIFIL's refusal to stand its ground echoed Egypt's 1967 request to withdraw UNEF I; once UN troops were pulled out, war ensued.

The lack of political will among the regional participants and troop contributors was matched by the incapacity of the Lebanese government's army and police. Yet UNIFIL became part of the local infrastructure, and its withdrawal would be disruptive.

Much of the impetus for the increased tension between East and West and for the end of new UN deployments came from the United States after the Reagan administration assumed power in 1981. Elected on a platform of anticommunism, the rebuilding of the national defense system, and fiscal conservatism, the administration was determined to roll back Soviet gains in the Third World. Neoconservatives in Washington scorned the world organization and cast it aside as a bastion of Third World nationalism and support for communism. The UN's peacekeeping operations were tarred with the same brush. The Reagan administration also refused to pay its assessed dues (including a portion of the assessment for UNIFIL, which Washington had originally insisted on). The organization was in near bankruptcy at the same time that U.S. respect for international law seemed to evaporate and unilateral action gained favor. Intervening in Grenada, bombing Libya, and supporting insurgencies in Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, and Cambodia attested to U.S. preferences in the 1980s. The Soviet Union countered these initiatives. Central America, the Horn of Africa, much of southern Africa, and parts of Asia became battlegrounds and flash points for the superpowers or their proxies.

**ECONOMIC SANCTIONS**

Short of sending international forces, a group of states may attempt to isolate an aggressor by cutting off diplomatic or economic relations with a view toward altering offensive behavior. These are coercive, albeit nonforcible, actions—the first step in Chapter VII's enforcement progression. Diplomatic and economic sanctions are significantly more emphatic than the political influence that makes up the everyday stuff of foreign policy, even if less emphatic than the dispatch of troops.

On a spectrum ranging from political influence to outside military intervention, economic sanctions are enforcement measures that fall far short of military force. For the same reasons that real collective security was not possible during the Cold War, these milder forms of enforcement were also largely underused. The exceptions were against two pariahs, Rhodesia and South Africa, whose domestic racist policies were widely condemned. As a reaction to Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) from the United Kingdom in 1965, the Security Council in 1966 ordered limited economic sanctions under Chapter VII of the Charter for the first time in UN history. Whether the trigger was due more to the UDI or to the human rights situation for Africans is debatable, but the result was that the council characterized the domestic situation as a "threat to the peace." The council toughened the stance against the white-minority government by banning all exports and imports (except for some foodstuffs, educational materials, and medicines). These sanctions became "comprehensive" in 1968.

The sanctions initially extracted costs from the government of Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith. But, ironically, they eventually helped immunize the country against outside pressure because they prompted a successful program of import substitution and the diversification of its economy. Although most members of the UN complied, some of those who counted did not. The United States, for example, openly violated sanctions after the Byrd amendment by Congress allowed trade with Rhodesia, even though the United States had voted for sanctions in the Security Council. According to U.S. judicial doctrine, if Congress uses its statutory authority to violate international law intentionally, domestic courts will defer to congressional action in U.S. jurisdiction. Many private firms as well as some other African countries also traded with Rhodesia, including the neighboring countries of Mozambique (a Portuguese colony) and the Republic of South Africa.

Although the Security Council authorized a forceful blockade to interrupt supplies of oil and the British navy did halt a few tankers, there was insufficient political will to effectively blockade the ports and coastlines of Mozambique and South Africa. Hence, the Security Council helped but can hardly be credited with the establishment of an independent Zimbabwe in 1979. The UN's use of economic sanctions in this case was more important as legal and diplomatic precedent than as effective power on the ground.

UN-imposed sanctions against South Africa reflected the judgment that racial separation (apartheid) within the country was a threat to international peace and security. Limited economic sanctions, an embargo on arms sales, boycotts against athletic teams, and selective divestment were all part of a visible campaign to isolate South Africa. These acts exerted pressure, but it is difficult to quantify their impact. Initially, South Africa's high-cost industry thrived by trying to replace missing imports (as had Rhodesia's), and it even managed to produce a variety of sophisticated arms that eventually became a major export. The transition to democracy (and the end of white rule) probably resulted more from the dynamics of the internal struggle by the black majority and the end of the Cold War than from sanctions. No doubt sanctions contributed to altering the domestic balance by demonstrating the risks and the costs of being isolated, but measuring their precise impact requires greater empirical work.

The Rhodesian and South African experiences show how the UN, through the Security Council, can link the domestic policies of states to threats to international peace and security and thereby justify Chapter VII action. Earlier, we pointed out the power of self-definition, and thus the council expanded the definition of a threat by the use of sanctions as enforcement tools for a domestic issue and thereby set an important precedent. UN sanctions are analytically distinct from bilateral economic sanctions or those imposed by treaty (for example, the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone). The UN Charter never uses the word "sanctions" in Chapter VII, but Article 41 speaks of "measures not involving the use of armed force," which "are to be employed to give effect to its decisions." The continued use of partial or comprehensive sanctions has come under increased criticism because of their impact on vulnerable populations within targeted countries, a subject to which we return at the end of Chapter 3.

**NOTES**

. Leon Gordenker, _The UN Secretary-General and the Maintenance of Peace_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); and Leland M. Goodrich, _Korea: A Study of U.S. Policy_ (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1956).

. The tradition of acronyms in English was set aside as operations in Spanish-speaking and French-speaking countries became more widespread.

. Max Harrelson, _Fires All Around the Horizon: The UN's Uphill Battle to Preserve the Peace_ (New York: Praeger, 1989), 89.

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, _An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-Keeping: Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to the Statement Adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992_ (New York: United Nations, 1992), para. 46.

. United Nations, _The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peace-Keeping_ , 2nd ed. (New York: UNDPI, 1990), 4; Alan James, _Peacekeeping in International Politics_ (London: Macmillan, 1990), 1; and Boutros-Ghali, _Agenda_ , para. 20.

. Marrack Goulding, "The Changing Role of the United Nations in Conflict Resolution and Peace-Keeping," speech given at the Singapore Institute of Policy Studies, March 13, 1991, 9. See also his "The Evolution of Peacekeeping," _International Affairs_ 69, no. 3 (1993): 451–464, and _Peacemonger_ (London: John Murray, 2002).

. Thomas G. Weiss and Jarat Chopra, _Peacekeeping: An ACUNS Teaching Text_ (Hanover, N.H.: Academic Council on the United Nations System, 1992), 1–20. The United Nations published its own volume, _The Blue Helmets_ , in 1985, which was revised in 1990 and 1996. Updates are now on the United Nations website at www.un.org. See also Rosalyn Higgins, _United Nations Peacekeeping: Documents and Commentary_ , vols. 1–4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–1981).

. John Mackinlay, _The Peacekeepers: An Assessment of Peacekeeping Operations at the Arab-Israel Interface_ (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Augustus Richard Norton and Thomas G. Weiss, _UN Peacekeepers: Soldiers with a Difference_ (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1990); William J. Durch, ed., _The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1993); Paul F. Diehl, _International Peacekeeping_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); and Adekeye Adebajo, _UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2011).

. Brian Urquhart, "Beyond the 'Sheriff's Posse,'" _Survival_ 32, no. 3 (1990): 198, and _A Life in Peace and War_ (New York: Harper and Row, 1987).

. John Mackinlay and Jarat Chopra, "Second Generation Multinational Operations," _Washington Quarterly_ 15, no. 3 (1992): 114.

. International Peace Academy, _Peacekeeper's Handbook_ (New York: Pergamon, 1984), 56.

. S. Neil MacFarlane, _Superpower Rivalry and Third World Radicalism: The Idea of National Liberation_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, _The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind_ (New York: Praeger, 1983); and Jerry F. Hough, _The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American Options_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1986).

. Bjorn Skogmo, _UNIFIL: International Peacekeeping in Lebanon_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989); and Emmanuel A. Erskine, _Mission with UNIFIL: An African Soldier's Reflections_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1989).

. Marianne Heiberg, "Peacekeepers and Local Populations: Some Comments on UNIFIL," in _The United Nations and Peacekeeping: Results, Limitations, and Prospects: The Lessons of 40 Years of Experience_ , ed. Indar Jit Rikhye and Kjell Skjelsback (London: Macmillan, 1990), 147–169.

. Jeffrey Harrod and Nico Shrijver, eds., _The UN Under Attack_ (Aldershot, U.K.: Gower, 1988).

. David P. Forsythe, _The Politics of International Law: U.S. Foreign Policy Reconsidered_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990).

. Henry Wiseman and Alistair M. Taylor, _From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: The Politics of Transition_ (New York: Pergamon, 1981); and Stephen John Stedman, _Peacemaking in Civil War: International Mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974–1980_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991).
* * *

CHAPTER 3

* * *

_UN Security Operations After the Cold War, 1988–1998_

AS THE COLD WAR WAS winding down, the United Nations underwent an important transition. The new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sought to reduce East-West tensions by reinvigorating multilateralism generally and UN peacekeeping more particularly. The USSR made payments on its UN debt of over $200 million in 1987, generating renewed international interest in the United Nations and collective security. Among other things, the UN was helpful to Gorbachev, as UN peacekeeping provided a face-saving means to withdraw from what he called the "bleeding wound of Afghanistan."

Changes in the Soviet Union's attitude toward the UN influenced the international climate and more particularly the U.S. approach to the world organization. In 1988 on the eve of leaving office, President Ronald Reagan abruptly altered his public stance and praised the work of the organization, the secretary-general, and UN peacekeepers. After helping to spearhead attacks that had led to almost a decade of UN bashing, he declared at the General Assembly that "the United Nations has the opportunity to live and breathe and work as never before" and vowed to repay U.S. debts to the organization. This orientation was continued by President George H. W. Bush, a former U.S. permanent representative to the world body. Great-power cooperation grew, allowing the Security Council to resume part of its role as a guarantor of international peace and security. The UN provided a convenient way for Paris, London, and Moscow to maintain international preeminence despite their declining economic, political, and military significance. The UN also enabled the United States to proceed as a hegemonic rather than dominant power, allowing it to act through the UN on the basis of cooperation rather than having to coerce other states into compliance. Beginning in 1988, collegiality and regular collaboration among great powers in the Security Council were politically possible.

**THE FIRST UN MILITARY OPERATIONS AFTER THE END OF THE COLD WAR, 1988–1993**

After a ten-year gap in deploying new UN security operations, five post–Cold War operations (listed at the top of Table 3.1) were launched in rapid succession: in Afghanistan and Pakistan, astride the Iran-Iraq border, and in Angola, Namibia, and Central America (for Nicaragua). These were largely traditional peacekeeping operations, but they also incorporated some improvisations characteristic of the evolution of UN peacekeeping. They mainly were extensions of the time-tested recipe. In particular, all enjoyed the consent of belligerents and relied on defensive concepts of force employed by modestly equipped UN soldiers, very few of whom came from armies of the major powers. Of the peace operations begun between 1988 and 1998 (Table 3.1), two also fall into the traditional peacekeeping category: the follow-up operation in Angola and the one in the Western Sahara. However, in Namibia and Central America, large numbers of civilians worked in tandem with soldiers. The first supervision of domestic elections as well as the collection of weapons from insurgents took place in Nicaragua. These set precedents and illustrated the UN's capacity for growth and innovation in a new era, just as improvisation and task expansion had been present earlier.

Three operations begun during this period are so different in scope and mandate that to characterize them as "peacekeeping" stretches analytical categories to the breaking point. UN operations in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, and Somalia indicated the new challenges for the world organization. The evolution of these and two subsequent operations (Rwanda and Haiti) illustrates the limits of UN military operations, which is where we conclude this chapter. Another UN operation in the Iraq-Kuwait war merits a separate discussion because its deployment followed the first UN collective security action of the post–Cold War era. However, before we analyze precisely how evolving field operations illustrate challenges for the future, we need to examine in more detail a few cases of post–Cold War cooperation that cemented great-power collaboration and made possible the movement toward bolder UN operations. These cases suggest the revival of collective security as a possible policy option.

**THE REBIRTH OF PEACEKEEPING**

The UN Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP), the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG), the first UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM I), and the UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia (UNTAG) were missions that renewed peacekeeping's visibility and perceived workability in the international arena of conflict resolution. UNGOMAP, UNIIMOG, and UNTAG are also significant because they afforded the UN the opportunity to demonstrate its usefulness in war zones, a capacity frozen from 1978 to 1988. Successes built confidence and allowed the UN to move back toward center stage, and the operations provided the space to experiment with innovations beyond the scope of previous deployments.

**TABLE 3.1** UN Peace and Security Operations, 1988–Present

_Years Active_ | _Operation_

---|---

1988–1990 | United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP)

1988–1991 | United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG)

1989–1990 | United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG, in Namibia)

1989–1991 | United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM I)

1989–1992 | United Nations Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA)

1991–1992 | United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC)

1991–1995 | United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL)

1991–1995 | United Nations Angola Verification Mission II (UNAVEM II)

1991–2003 | United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM)

1991–Present | United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO)

1992–1993 | United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)

1992–1993 | United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM I)

1992–1994 | United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ)

1992–1995 | United Nations Protection Force, former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR)

1993–1994 | United Nations Mission Uganda-Rwanda (UNOMUR)

1993–1995 | United Nations Mission in Somalia II (UNOSOM II)

1993–1996 | United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH)

1993–1996 | United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR)

1993–1997 | United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL)

1993–Present | United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG)

1994–1994 | United Nations Aouzou Strip Observer Group (UNASOG, Chad/Libya)

1994–2000 | United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT)

1995–1996 | United Nations Confidence Restoration Operation, Croatia (UNCRO)

1995–1997 | United Nations Angola Verification Mission III (UNAVEM III)

1995–1999 | United Nations Preventive Deployment Force, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (UNPREDEP)

1995–2002 | United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH)

1996–1997 | United Nations Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH)

1996–1998 | United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES)

1996–2002 | United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka (UNMOP)

1997–1997 | United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA)

1997–1997 | United Nations Transition Mission in Haiti (UNTMIH)

1997–1999 | United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA)

1997–2000 | United Nations Civilian Police Mission in Haiti (MIPONUH)

1998–1998 | United Nations Civilian Police Support Group (UNCPSG)

1998–1999 | United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL)

1998–2000 | United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (MINURCA)

These operations are examples of "observation," a diverse set of tasks that occupies the least controversial part of the peacekeeping spectrum. Traditionally, observation has meant investigation, armistice supervision, maintenance of a cease-fire, supervision of plebiscites, oversight of the cessation of fighting, and reports to headquarters. It has been expanded to include the verification of troop withdrawal, the organization and observation of elections, the voluntary surrender of weapons, and human rights verification. These operations are distinct from the other traditional task: interposition, or placing peacekeepers between belligerents along a cease-fire line.

UNGOMAP verified the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after 1988. The USSR had entered the country in 1979 to ensure a friendly Afghan government in Kabul. By the early 1980s Afghanistan had become Moscow's Vietnam. The Soviets had become inextricably tied down in an unwinnable conflict against the mujahideen, armed local groups backed by Pakistan, the United States, and a few others like Saudi Arabia. The Gorbachev administration sought a face-saving device to extricate itself. The 1988 Geneva Accords provided the means to achieve Soviet withdrawal, mutual noninterference and nonintervention pledges between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the return of refugees, and noninterference pledges from the United States and the Soviet Union. These accords had been brokered by the United Nations and the indefatigable efforts of Undersecretary-General Diego Cordovez.

The deployment of UNGOMAP was not accompanied by the political will needed to implement the international agreements concerning peace, elections, and disarmament. The symbolic size of the operation—fifty officers divided between Islamabad and Kabul—attested to its inability to independently perform tasks other than reporting on the Soviet withdrawal after the fact. The operation paved the way to a potential peace by reducing the direct East-West character of the conflict; however, the power vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal also set the stage for the rise of the Taliban, which provided sanctuary to Al Qaeda.

In 1988, the Iran-Iraq War drew to a close with over one million lives lost. The Security Council ordered a cease-fire in 1987, with the compulsory intent provided for under Chapter VII to set up UNIIMOG the following year to maintain the cease-fire astride the international border. It established cease-fire lines between Iranian and Iraqi troops, observed the maintenance of the cease-fire, and investigated complaints to defuse minor truce violations before they escalated into peace-threatening situations. Composed of only 350 unarmed observers from some twenty-five states, UNIIMOG nonetheless played a useful role in preserving the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq, two countries whose mutual antagonism continued after hostilities ceased. In its first five months alone, UNIIMOG investigated some two thousand complaints of truce infractions.

In 1988, Angola, Cuba, and South Africa signed a trilateral agreement that provided for the simultaneous withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and of South African troops and administrators from Namibia. This diplomatic breakthrough was monitored successfully by the first United Nations Angola Verification Mission, which led the way for the UN-sponsored peace process that brought Namibian independence on March 21, 1990, from South Africa's illegal colonial rule. The second UNAVEM was problematic because civil war returned despite UN-supervised elections at the end of 1992; the difficulties faced by this group are discussed with other problematic operations later in this chapter.

UNTAG was established to facilitate and monitor South Africa's withdrawal from Namibia, to set up free and fair elections, and to determine the future government and constitution of Namibia. This was one of the last major decolonization efforts under UN auspices. UNTAG was tasked with monitoring and facilitating the departure of South Africa's army and the withdrawal and confinement of fighters of the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) to base camps in Angola. It also monitored the southwest African police force controlled by South Africa to prevent meddling in the election, oversaw the repeal of discriminatory laws that threatened the fairness of the election, helped ensure the respect for amnesty for political prisoners, and provided for the return of all Namibian refugees. UNTAG also registered voters and facilitated information about the election process.

At its maximum deployment, nearly 8,000 persons were involved in UNTAG: about 4,500 military personnel, 2,000 civilian personnel, and 1,000 police officers. It was the first sizable operation in Africa since the contested one in the Congo almost three decades earlier, which we have characterized as the UN's "black eye." In spite of initial difficulties, the belligerents, in particular South Africa, were committed to making the operation work. UNTAG is generally considered a success, and Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar viewed it as one of his singular accomplishments. Virtually the entire population was registered to vote. SWAPO won forty-one of seventy-two seats in the Constitutional Constituents Assembly and was duly empowered to lead the formation of the Namibian government. On March 21, 1990—ahead of schedule and under budget—Pérez de Cuéllar swore in Sam Nujoma as president of Namibia.

UNTAG provides a helpful analytical hinge between the old and new types of UN peace operations. It went smoothly because traditional rules were followed, especially consent and minimal use of force. At the same time, it undertook several new tasks related to civil administration, elections, human rights monitoring, and police activities. They foreshadowed new UN tasks that would more routinely intrude into the affairs of sovereign states.

**MOVING TOWARD THE NEXT GENERATION**

The work of the United Nations in Central America during the late 1980s and early 1990s provides a transition in our discussion of the progressive movement toward a new generation of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations. World politics was changing, and so were the possibilities for UN action. Governments removed political obstacles that had previously blocked or impeded UN activities. The UN's efforts in Central America were similar, although not entirely comparable, to the Afghanistan operation in that the world organization was helping a superpower move beyond an unwinnable confrontation in its own backyard.

An analysis of the United Nations Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA), the United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Nicaragua (ONUVEN), and the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) illustrates the complex transition that UN peace and security functions began to undergo. These also set the stage for analysis of the UN-sponsored Chapter VII enforcement action against Iraq. ONUSAL in particular shows the independent nature of UN action when states give the world organization some political room to maneuver. All of this was made possible not only by the rise of Gorbachev in the Soviet Union but also by the replacement of Reagan with President George H. W. Bush.

In the late 1980s, the conclusion of the so-called Esquipulas II agreements between the countries of Central America—Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—began the peace process that ended a decade of civil war and instability in the region. The cornerstone of the agreements involved setting up free and fair elections in Nicaragua. In addition to calling for elections, they prohibited aid to rebel groups and the use of a state's territory for guerrilla operations in another. ONUCA (1989–1992) was established to ensure that these provisions were respected. Although ONUCA was officially an "observer" mission, duties were far-reaching. They included verifying that all forms of military assistance to insurgent forces had ceased and preventing states from sponsoring such activity for infiltration into neighboring countries. ONUCA observers made spot checks and random investigations of areas prone to guerrilla activity along the borders of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Although the signatories to Esquipulas II were expected to cooperate with ONUCA, the participation of the Nicaraguan resistance movement, the Contras, was not ensured until after the electoral defeat of the Sandinista government in February 1990. ONUCA military observers operated in a tense, potentially dangerous situation in which armed attacks were possible.

ONUCA's mandate expanded after the Nicaraguan election to include demobilizing the Contras. Bases were set up inside the borders of Nicaragua, where many rebel soldiers came and handed over some of their weapons and military equipment to ONUCA soldiers, who destroyed them and helped to advance demilitarization. In spite of the continued existence of arms among disgruntled partisans of both the Contra and the Sandinista causes, this was the first instance of UN involvement in demilitarization through the physical collection and destruction of armaments. This task is important for conflict resolution in areas where heavily armed regular as well as irregular forces need to be drastically reduced before any meaningful consultative process can occur. The collection of arms has been integrated into numerous subsequent UN peacekeeping operations and has been made even more rigorous. The importance of such a task was recognized by the United Kingdom as part of its efforts to end direct rule over Northern Ireland in 1999–2000.

ONUVEN was created to ensure the fairness of elections in Nicaragua and is the first example of UN observation of elections inside a recognized state, an extraordinary intrusion according to conventional notions of domestic jurisdiction. It operated in tandem with ONUCA's soldiers, but ONUVEN consisted of some 120 civilian observers who monitored the election process, from start to finish, to ensure that it was free and fair. They verified that political parties were equitably represented in the Supreme Electoral Council; that there was political, organizational, and operational freedom for all political parties; that all political parties had equal access to state television and radio broadcasts; and that the electoral rolls were drawn up fairly. It also reported any perceived unfairness to the Supreme Electoral Council, made recommendations about possible remedial action, and reported to the secretary-general.

One unusual development was the extent to which the UN operations were linked with supporting efforts from regional and nongovernmental organizations. The UN and the Organization of American States—in particular, the secretaries-general of the UN and the OAS—cooperated closely in diplomacy and in civilian observation. During the Nicaraguan elections, a host of nongovernmental groups, such as former U.S. president Jimmy Carter's Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, provided additional outside observers as part of a large international network.

The operation began in August 1989 and ended in February 1990 with the surprising electoral defeat of the Sandinista government. ONUVEN's success—which was fortified by its links to the OAS and private groups—enhanced the prospects of UN election-monitoring teams working within the boundaries of states. This practice has gained wider international acceptance even when no armed conflict has taken place. For instance, from June 1990 to January 1991, the United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Haiti (ONUVEH) performed tasks similar to the missions in Nicaragua, which set the stage for subsequent UN action when the duly elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown. ONUVEN's civilian composition changed the content of peacekeeping's definition by blurring the distinction between civilian and military operations and between security and human rights.

In El Salvador, ONUSAL was an essential element in helping to move beyond a decade of brutal civil war in which over seventy-five thousand people had been killed and serious human rights abuses had taken place. The government and rebel sides, and their foreign backers, came to a stalemate. This created the conditions for successful and creative UN mediation. Negotiations under the good offices of the UN secretary-general led to a detailed agreement on January 1, 1992, which was actually initialed a few hours after Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had completed his second five-year term.

An essential component of moving beyond the war was the use of UN civilian and military personnel in what, by historical standards, would have been seen as unacceptable outside interference in purely domestic affairs. Ongoing human rights abuses were to be prevented through an elaborate observation and monitoring system that began before an official cease-fire. Previous violations by both the army and the government as well as by the armed opposition, the FMLN, were to be investigated by a truth commission. The highly controversial findings—including the documentation of a former president's approval of a dissident archbishop's assassination and the incrimination of a sitting defense minister in other murders—served to clear the air. A second commission was also established to identify those military personnel who had committed major human rights violations.

In addition, ONUSAL personnel collected and destroyed weapons and helped oversee the creation of a new national army staff college, where students included former members of the armed opposition in addition to new recruits and members of the national army. Some of the early UN involvement on the ground in El Salvador took place even before the cease-fire was signed, thus putting UN observers at some risk.

**MOVING TOWARD ENFORCEMENT**

The creative adaptations by the UN's member states and civil servants are as important as the grand visions and long-term plans for international organizations. Political changes and crises occur, and then governments and the United Nations react. Precedents are created that circumscribe what is possible later. UN actions in the Persian Gulf beginning in 1990 set important precedents relating to collective security, humanitarian actions, and sanctions.

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi armed forces swept past the border of neighboring Kuwait and quickly gained control of the tiny, oil-rich country. The invasion met with uniform condemnation in the United Nations, including the Security Council's first unequivocal statement about a breach of the peace since 1950 and the Korean War. From early August until the end of the year, the Security Council passed twelve resolutions directed at securing Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. The council invoked Chapter VII, Articles 39–41, to lay the guidelines for the first post–Cold War enforcement action. Resolutions 661 of August 6 and 665 of August 25 called on member states to establish economic sanctions against Iraq and to use force to police them. Resolution 678 of November 29 authorized member states to use "all necessary means" to expel Iraq from Kuwait and thus represented a major shift in strategy. The organization's experience during the Persian Gulf War contains valuable lessons about the needs of a workable collective-security system for the future.

At Washington's insistence, the date of January 15, 1991, was negotiated as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or else face the use of military force. Iraq remained in Kuwait past this date, and the U.S.-led coalition of twenty-eight states began military operations two days later. A bombing campaign commenced, followed by a ground war one month later with about half a million U.S. military personnel. The coalition's victory reversed the Iraqi invasion and occupation at minimal cost in blood and treasure. It also placed the United Nations at the center of the international security stage.

Members of the Allied Coalition lost relatively few lives, but tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers were killed, raising questions about the proportionality of UN-sponsored actions. The Security Council's process of decision making and the conduct of the war have led some critics to be skeptical about the precise value of the Gulf War as a precedent for subsequent Chapter VII enforcement action. Dominance by the United States, the decision to replace nonforcible sanctions with military force as the dominant means of ensuring Iraq's compliance with the organization's wishes, the extensive use of military means that ensued, and the UN's inability to command and control the operation are also concerns. Each of these criticisms raises serious questions about the ability of the UN's collective-security apparatus to function in a variety of contexts.

_Strengths and Weaknesses of UN Involvement in the 1991 Gulf War_

The first criticism of the Persian Gulf War—that the United States too easily used the United Nations to rubber-stamp its own agenda—was a general criticism of geopolitics after the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a superpower. Washington used its influence to foster perceived national interests, creating and maintaining a diverse coalition against Iraq. The process by which the coalition was created illustrated the extent to which the UN had become a reflection of U.S. influence. The UN had never been a completely neutral forum: Western dominance in the early years had been partially replaced beginning in the 1960s by the Third World's "automatic majority" in the General Assembly, but not in the Security Council. Yet the United States was able to use its considerable political and economic clout in the Security Council to ensure that its Persian Gulf agenda was approved. Political concessions were provided to the Soviet Union to gain its approval for enforcement and to China for its abstentions (instead of vetoes). The United States promised financial aid and debt relief to a number of developing countries for their votes and withdrew aid commitments to Yemen in retribution for its opposing the use of force. This is the way a hegemonic power is supposed to operate, making the "side payments" necessary to get many other states to consent to what the hegemon desires. Moreover, Kuwait, a member state of the UN, had been attacked by traditional means; the question of aggression or breach of the peace was reasonably clear.

A second criticism centers on how the nonforcible sanctions mandated by the Security Council were replaced by forcible ones after only three months. According to Article 42, the Security Council may authorize force after all other means of settlement, and economic sanctions in particular, have proven inadequate. Yet the Security Council chose to use military force before the sanctions had had a chance to take full effect. Critics pointed out that in South Africa, by contrast, partial sanctions had not been discarded in favor of military force even though that country's racist policy had been condemned for decades. They also noted that Israel's expansion and continued occupation of territories from 1967 had not been met with either economic or military sanctions.

Medical personnel from the multinational forces carry an Iraqi refugee into a camp near Safwan, Iraq, in March 1991. (UN Photo 158302/J. Isaac)

Sanctions can take a long time to work, and some doubt their efficacy as violence often continues and can even increase. The use of sanctions became widespread enough that David Cortright and George Lopez called the 1990s the "sanctions decade." When economic sanctions were applied later to Haiti, some observers said military force should have been used earlier and would have caused less suffering. The record regarding the use of sanctions and military force suggests that the politics of the day determines a course of action and, ultimately, the sequence in which action occurs. For instance, the UN continued to use economic sanctions against Iraq after the end of formal military operations, and they were removed with UN approval after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

The third criticism of the handling of the 1991 Persian Gulf War is that no limits on the use of force were enacted and that the world organization exerted no oversight of the U.S.-led military operation. According to the Charter, military enforcement operations are to be directed and controlled by the Military Staff Committee so that the UN can exercise control and military forces can be held accountable to the international community for their actions. As in Korea forty years earlier, command and control of the Gulf War was in the hands of the U.S.-led coalition forces. Only this time, in the Persian Gulf, there was no blue flag and no decision specifically authorizing the preponderant U.S. role. The Security Council was essentially a spectator, but U.S. control appeared necessary for reasons of efficiency as well as political support.

Resolution 678 authorized "all necessary means" and made no restrictions on what kind of, how much, and how long force could be used. According to critics, the United States had left with a blank check to pursue the expulsion of Iraq. Authorizations of this kind may run contrary to the Charter, especially as it relates to the delegation of its Chapter VII authority. Still, the Persian Gulf War provides the first example of the existing security apparatus in an enforcement action in the post–Cold War era. Although the organization proved successful in achieving its stated objective—expelling Iraq from Kuwait—the way that this goal was achieved continues to be debated by diplomats, lawyers, and scholars. There was simply no alternative but to "subcontract" to the twenty-eight members of the U.S.-led coalition. In view of the UN's limited capacities, such a procedure for enforcement seems inevitable for the foreseeable future.

_Forceful Action in Northern Iraq on Behalf of Humanitarian Values_

On April 5, 1991, the Security Council passed resolution 688. It declared that Saddam Hussein's repression of Kurdish and Shiite populations constituted a threat to international peace and security. It insisted that Iraq allow access to international relief organizations so that they could care for the beleaguered groups. Elite troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands moved into Iraq—without explicit approval from the Security Council—and carved out a safe haven above the thirty-sixth parallel, which they guarded to ensure the security of UN relief operations. The council had already taken a broad view of its duty to protect human rights in Rhodesia and South Africa, but this resolution was a dramatic and straightforward linkage between human rights and international peace and security. The notion of human security inside states was much discussed in the corridors of the UN. In Iraq, the Hussein government eventually agreed to the presence of UN guards providing security to agencies working with Iraqi Kurds, but obviously under Western military pressure.

Many in the West applauded resolution 688 as a vigorous step toward enforcing human rights protection, but others feared the precedent. "Who decides?" became a rallying cry for those, particularly in the Global South, who opposed granting the Security Council, dominated by Western foreign policy interests, the authority of Chapter VII to intervene for arguably humanitarian reasons. Later military responses with a humanitarian justification—in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Haiti, Kosovo, and East Timor—served to keep the debate alive about the weight accorded state sovereignty relative to the international protection of human rights. The theme of humanitarian intervention reappears in later humanitarian crises, as does its reformulation as the "responsibility to protect" (R2P).

**NONFORCIBLE SANCTIONS IN THE POST–COLD WAR ERA: HUMANITARIAN DILEMMAS**

Economic sanctions have long been seen as a policy option to give teeth to international decisions. While UN-approved sanctions against Rhodesia and South Africa were exceptional, during the 1990s the Security Council resorted to them more than a dozen times. Partial or comprehensive sanctions were decided on by the Security Council against various countries: Iraq, the states of the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda. Moreover, the council also imposed them on several nonstate actors, including the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (when it was called Kampuchea), the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sanctions pose three pertinent challenges. The first results from the nature of modern warfare as exemplified by the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Gulf crisis dramatizes the extent to which the international responses in modern armed conflicts can themselves do serious harm to innocent and powerless civilians. The political strategies adopted, the economic sanctions imposed, and the military force authorized by the Security Council not only created additional hardships but also complicated the ability of the UN's own humanitarian agencies to help civilians caught in the throes of conflict.

Before the Security Council decides on sanctions with potentially major humanitarian consequences, organizations with humanitarian competence and responsibilities could be consulted. Whether the impact is on citizens in the pariah country or elsewhere, the staff of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Food Programme (WFP) are well situated to warn against, anticipate, and monitor the consequences. Private humanitarian agencies consult regularly with UN bodies and can provide detailed and specialized information on the humane impact of sanctions. Among these, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) usually has personnel on the ground as well as a reputation for accurate reporting.

In Iraq, the decision to use economic sanctions to force compliance with weapons inspections had damaging effects on women and children in Iraq. The ICRC and a few other agencies reported on the looming crisis in the first half of the 1990s. UNICEF in 1999 found that ninety thousand deaths occurred yearly in Iraq as a result of sanctions, and five thousand children a month were dying. The gender dimensions of sanctions are often overlooked, as women and girls tend to bear the brunt as they sacrifice their food rations for the male members of their families.

If the Security Council decides to proceed, governments could provide resources to the UN system so that it could respond fully to the immediate and longer-term human consequences of sanctions. These options clearly were not explored during the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis. UN planning in 2003 in anticipation of a coalition attack on Iraq, while improved, was also insufficient.

The second challenge is an eminently practical one. How long should a sanctions regime be maintained when it is clear that civilians are suffering? Resolution 688 insisted that Iraq provide the United Nations with humanitarian access to its people, a watershed for the UN. Yet Iraq reacted negatively against assertive humanitarianism, creating havoc for UN and NGO efforts. International assistance flowed more easily to minority populations in revolt against Baghdad than to civilians in equal need in parts of the country under the central government's control. Eventually, the Security Council approved a program of allowing Iraq to sell oil in order to pay for food and other civilian needs, which in turn led to numerous abuses.

The third challenge relates to timing the deployment of UN military forces in conjunction with economic sanctions. The UN Charter assumes that nonforcible sanctions should be tried first; only when they fail should collective military action ensue. The suffering civilian populations of the former Yugoslavia and Haiti provided compelling reasons to rethink the conventional wisdom. In the former Yugoslavia, vigorous and earlier preventive deployment of UN soldiers to Bosnia and Herzegovina (rather than just to Croatia, with a symbolic administrative presence in Sarajevo) might have obviated the later need for sanctions to pressure Belgrade and Serbian irregulars and might have prevented that grisly war. This reasoning justified in part the preventive positioning of UN observers as part of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Macedonia in December 1992. In Haiti, some observers, with considerable reason, queried whether an earlier military enforcement action to restore an elected government would have entailed far less civilian suffering than extended economic sanctions did, particularly because the willingness to use such overwhelming force was visible in September 1994. In short, the reluctance to use force may not always be a good thing, if delay means that civilians suffer and aid agencies are projected into conflict as a substitute for military intervention.

**OPERATIONAL QUANDARIES: CAMBODIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, SOMALIA, RWANDA, AND HAITI**

Several UN operations during the 1990s highlight the inadequacy of traditional peacekeeping to meet the challenges of the new world disorder. The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR), the first and second UN Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM I and II), the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), and the UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) represent experiments by the world body to respond in new ways to different kinds of armed conflict. These operations were qualitatively and quantitatively different from UN operations during the Cold War. The formal consent of the parties simply did not mean very much on the ground. The military effectiveness required from, and the dangers faced by, UN military forces went far beyond the parameters of traditional lightly armed peacekeepers. Moreover, these operations suggest the magnitude of the new demands on the UN for services that threatened to overwhelm troop contributors and to break the bank. If classic peacekeeping was said to be based on Chapter "VI.5," these new field operations could be considered part of Chapter "VI.9"—that is, very close to the war-fighting orientation of Chapter VII. Indeed, a criticism waged later by David Rieff was that the gentle vocabulary—especially the word "humanitarian"—sugarcoated the reality that these efforts were ugly and resembled war.

After stable levels of about ten thousand troops and a budget of a few hundred million dollars in the early post–Cold War period, the numbers jumped rapidly. In the mid-1990s, seventy thousand to eighty thousand blue-helmeted soldiers were authorized by the UN's annualized peacekeeping budget, which approached $4 billion in 1995. Accumulated total arrears in these years hovered around $3.5 billion—that is, almost equal to this budget and approaching three times the regular UN budget. The roller-coaster ride continued between 1996 and 1998, when both the number of soldiers and the budget dropped precipitously by two-thirds, at least partially reflecting the world organization's overextension and administrative indigestion. It changed again in the new millennium as police efforts in Kosovo and military ones in East Timor and the Congo began. Throughout, arrears remained at a critical level, and the world organization's cash reserves often covered barely one month's expenditures.

What exactly were the operational quandaries? The Cambodian operation amounted to the UN's taking over all of the important civilian administration of the country while simultaneously disarming guerrillas and governmental armed forces. The UN registered most of the nation for the first democratic election in the country's history. The UNTAC deployment was based—as are most UN undertakings—on national budgetary projections out of touch with real military requirements. These estimates were based on best-case scenarios; the situation on the ground was closer to worst-case ones.

Japan's desire—sustained in part by U.S. and other pressures—to make a large contribution to this operation in "its own region" was important. Despite many problems and sometimes fatal attacks on its personnel, Japan stayed the course in Cambodia—in part because it was urged to do so by Yasushi Akashi, a Japanese national who was head of the UN operation in that country. Also, Japan wanted to prove that it deserved a seat on an expanded Security Council, which provided another reason for its larger role in UN security policy.

Years of internal conflict had left Cambodia's infrastructure devastated and its population displaced. In response, the United Nations invested over $1.6 billion and over twenty-two thousand military and civilian personnel. Yet UNTAC's success was hardly a foregone conclusion, particularly in light of the Khmer Rouge's unwillingness to respect key elements of agreements and Prince Norodom Sihanouk's stated position that the peace process and elections should continue with or without the Khmer Rouge. Failure here could have seriously undermined the confidence of member states attempting an undertaking of this scale or complexity elsewhere.

Participants in a UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia de-mining course learn to cope with trip wires near Siem Reap Town, Cambodia, 1993. (UNHCR Photo/I. Guest)

The May 1993 elections were a turning point. A Khmer Rouge attack on a UN fuel and ammunition dump three weeks before the elections exposed how inadequately prepared UN soldiers were to resist even symbolic military maneuvers, let alone a return to full-scale civil war. However, the elections were held and returned Prince Sihanouk to power as the head of a coalition that included the former government and part of the opposition—but excluded the Khmer Rouge. The UN's achievement was that the Cambodian people struggled for power for the first time by means of a secret ballot. The relative lack of violence—the Khmer Rouge had demonstrated that it could attack with impunity—happened in spite of UNTAC, not because of it. However, the United Nations began to pull out its personnel as quickly as possible, raising concerns that a larger civil war might erupt. The uneasy internal peace managed to hold, the Khmer Rouge continued to weaken, and the UN stayed heavily involved in diplomacy—mainly trying to liberalize the Heng Sen government, including discussions about what to do about past and present violations of human rights.

UN Protection Force soldiers in Stari Vitez, Yugoslavia. (UN Photo 186716/J. Isaac)

The former Yugoslavia was the UN's first military operation on European soil after many years in which regional conflicts seemed to be the monopoly of the Global South. The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia entailed violence and displacement of a magnitude not seen in Europe since World War II. In addition to violence between the warring factions, the region was plagued by ethnic cleansing, detention camps, refugees, killing, systematic rape, and other atrocities committed by all sides. The UN's initial security involvement in Croatia, with close to fourteen thousand peacekeepers, achieved some objectives, such as implementing the cease-fire between Croatia and the Yugoslav Federation. The UNPROFOR mandate was expanded to neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina in part to alleviate the human suffering and ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Muslims and Croats under siege from Serbia and Serbian irregulars.

The 1,500 UN soldiers initially assigned to the Sarajevo area quickly proved inadequate. The Security Council later authorized adding 8,000 soldiers to protect humanitarian convoys and to escort detainees in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The United Nations also asked NATO to enforce a no-fly zone for Serbian aircraft. The secretary-general insisted that these additional humanitarian soldiers be provided at no cost to the world organization, and NATO countries responded affirmatively. U.S. airdrops of food to isolated and ravaged Muslim communities, while largely symbolic, helped saved lives. Yet these efforts were insufficient to halt the bloodshed or inhibit the carving up of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Serbs and Croats.

After months of efforts by the UN special envoy, former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, and the European Community's mediator, former British foreign minister David Owen, a tenuous plan to create a "Swiss-like" set of ten semi-autonomous ethnic enclaves within Bosnia and Herzegovina was finally agreed on by the belligerents. The Vance-Owen plan was undermined almost immediately by renewed Serbian and Croatian military offensives; by 1993 Serbia controlled 70 percent of the territory, and Croatia held 20 percent. The Bosnian Muslims were left with what were ironically called UN safe areas, which were anything but safe, as these areas were systematically attacked.

The situation in the Balkans deteriorated and demonstrated that the United Nations also can provide the means for governments to pretend to be doing something without really doing very much at all. There was a shift from Chapter VI to Chapter VII operations, but without the necessary political will to make the shift work. The half measures in Bosnia can be considered worse than no action at all. Given their traditional operating procedures and constraints, UN soldiers were not strong enough to deter the Serbs. But they also deterred the international community of states from more assertive political and military intervention under Chapter VII because the troops, along with humanitarian workers, were vulnerable targets. Assistance to refugees saved lives but also helped foster ethnic cleansing by cooperating in the forced movement of unwanted populations.

The initial UN response was followed by a steadily growing number of additional UN troops that, although mainly from NATO countries, were equally feeble. No-fly zones were imposed but not fully enforced; other forms of saber rattling, including low-altitude sorties over Serbian positions and warnings about possible retaliatory air strikes, were tried; and the Security Council passed what the _Economist_ called "the confetti of paper resolutions." As Lawrence Freedman observed, the Security Council "experimented with almost every available form of coercion short of war." UN token measures did little to halt Serbian irredentism and consolidation of territory in either Croatia or Bosnia, nor did these measures prevent the initial expansion of Croatian claims in Bosnia. The UN mandatory arms embargo instituted in September 1991 had benefited primarily the Serbs, who controlled the bulk of the military hardware of the former Yugoslav army. UN soldiers were powerless to deter the Serbs, and the vulnerability of UN "protectors" was regularly invoked by Europeans as a rationale _against_ more forceful military measures.

The key dynamic once again involved calculation outside the UN, which then affected decisions taken inside the Security Council. Powerful Western states, especially the United States, did not see in the early 1990s that their traditional vital national interests were at stake. Moreover, they feared "sticky" involvement, as in Southeast Asia in the past and as in Somalia and Rwanda then unfolding. Russia, for its part, viewed the Balkans through the lens of Slavic solidarity rather than more general concern for nonaggression and human rights. China was distant and detached.

The idea of "safe areas" brought derision because, with only slight hyperbole, one could say that the least safe places in the Balkans were under UN control. The ultimate ignominy arrived in summer 1995, when two of these enclaves in eastern Bosnia were overrun by Bosnian Serbs. Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave, was the scene of the largest massacre in Europe since 1945 where some seven thousand to eight thousand men and boys were systematically executed. Srebrenica had been designated a UN safe haven after the UN brokered an agreement between Muslims and Serbs to disarm the enclave in return for UN protection against Serb forces. The agreement provided a modicum of safety for a time, but as the political and military situation in Bosnia deteriorated, the Serbs moved against the "safe haven." Bosnian Muslim fighters also used Srebrenica as a base for staging attacks on Serb forces outside. The outgunned UN peacekeeping unit withdrew from Srebrenica (after the death of one Dutch soldier), leaving its inhabitants vulnerable to the advancing Serb forces, whose known tactics included mass execution, systematic rape, and forced expulsion. Shortly before this horrific incident, Serbs had chained UN blue helmets to strategic targets to prevent NATO air raids. Srebrenica became a conversation stopper in UN circles. UN peacekeepers in Croatia were unable to implement their mandate because they received no cooperation from the Croats or Krajina Serbs. In Bosnia, UN forces were under Chapter VII but lacked the capability to apply coercive force across a wide front. Shortly before resigning in January 1994 from a soldier's nightmare as UN commander in Bosnia, Lt. Gen. Francis Briquemont lamented the disparity between rhetoric and reality: "There is a fantastic gap between the resolutions of the Security Council, the will to execute those resolutions, and the means available to commanders in the field."

The "UN" in this case was the first UN of governments that were simply unwilling to react militarily in the former Yugoslavia until August 1995, and this provides a case study of what not to do. The inaction left many of the inhabitants of the region mistrustful of the United Nations and lent a new and disgraceful connotation to the word "peacekeeping." Bound by the traditional rules of engagement (fire only in self-defense and only after being fired upon), UN troops never fought a single battle with any of the factions in Bosnia that routinely disrupted relief convoys. The rules of engagement led to the appeasement of local forces rather than to the enforcement of UN mandates.

A much heavier dose of NATO's bombing and U.S. arm-twisting proved necessary to compel the belligerents, sequestered at Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in November 1995, to reach a political settlement. The Dayton peace agreements laid the groundwork for military deployment by almost sixty thousand NATO soldiers, one-third from the United States, in the International Force (IFOR). Although the numbers of soldiers in the successive NATO operations diminished over time, still many observers wondered why UN peacekeepers—poorly equipped and without a mandate—were deployed when there was no peace to keep and why NATO war-fighters appeared when there was. The deployment of NATO-led peacekeepers and the creation of a police force served to stabilize Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, such a large military deployment was accompanied by additional problems. Bosnia-Herzegovina has become the center of human trafficking into Western Europe and the locus of an active sex industry. UN officials have been accused of corruption, facilitating the trafficking, and looking the other way regarding the behavior of many peacekeepers. The sexual behavior of peacekeepers has become one of the more serious problems facing current UN peace operations. In fact, a trio of former staff members exposed stunning details of several operations that have tarnished the image of UN peacekeepers in the Balkans.

Somalian children receiving food in 1992. (UN Photo 146504/J. Isaac)

Somalia provided another complicated challenge for UN involvement in internal wars and a breakdown in governance, or "complex emergencies." Like Bosnia, Somalia was an example of violent fragmentation, yet, unlike Bosnia, one without an ethnic logic. In Somalia, a single ethnic group sharing the same religion, history, and language split into heavily armed clans. Somalia had no government in any meaningful sense, and one-third of the population risked death from starvation because the violence prevented humanitarian aid workers from reaching the needy.

In August 1992, the Security Council authorized three thousand to four thousand UN soldiers (UNOSOM I) to protect the delivery of humanitarian assistance under Chapter VII. While the council made formal reference to Chapter VII, quiet diplomacy obtained the consent of the leading clans for deployment of UN force. That force was directed initially not against clan leaders but against bandits interfering with relief. The most important delivery point for relief was not a UN agency, but rather the private International Committee of the Red Cross. UNHCR in particular had retired to the sidelines in Kenya.

In December 1992, the lame-duck president George H. W. Bush moved vigorously to propose a U.S.-led humanitarian intervention. Within days of the passage of Security Council resolution 794, the first of what would become over twenty-seven thousand U.S. troops arrived to provide a modicum of security to help sustain civilians. They were augmented by ten thousand soldiers from twenty-two other countries. This effort was labeled Operation Restore Hope from the American side, or the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), an acronym that reflected the Security Council's authorization to use force to ensure the delivery of humanitarian relief. UNITAF was always under U.S. operational command. With virtually no casualties, humanitarian space was created, and modest disarming of local bandits began.

UNITAF ceased operations in April 1993, when the second phase of the UN Operation in Somalia began as authorized by Security Council resolution 814. The secretary-general, for the second time, directly commanded a military force deployed under Chapter VII. The Security Council authorized UNOSOM II under Chapter VII to use whatever force was necessary to disarm Somali warlords who refused to surrender their arms and to ensure access to suffering civilians. At its maximum strength, some twenty thousand soldiers and eight thousand logistical troops from thirty-three countries were deployed.

Almost three thousand civilian officials were expected to take over the administration of a country. Significantly, the United States initially remained on the ground with logistics troops for the first time under the command of a UN general—who was an officer from a NATO country, Turkey. Another 1,300 soldiers, including 400 Army Rangers, were held in reserve as a "rapid-reaction force" in boats offshore. These U.S. units were strictly under U.S. command.

In retaliation against attacks on UN peacekeepers and aid personnel, U.S. Cobra helicopter gunships were called in by the UN command in June and July 1993 against the armed supporters of one of the main belligerents, General Mohammed Aideed. These attacks were followed by the arrival of U.S. Army Rangers later in the summer. These violent flare-ups put the UN in the awkward position of retaliation, which elicited more violence. The assassination of foreign journalists and aid workers and further attacks on U.S. troops—including the ugly scene in October 1993, when the body of a dead Ranger was dragged by crowds through the streets of Mogadishu in front of television cameras—further inflamed the situation. Washington blamed the UN for the deaths of U.S. soldiers. While this claim was questionable, nonetheless it led to a kind of "Somalia Syndrome" whereby the Pentagon would balk at any further association with a UN multilateral operation.

The U.S. military involvement in the Horn of Africa is criticized on numerous grounds. First, the military was obsessed with the capture of Aideed, which resembled a Wild West hunt, complete with a wanted poster. Hunting a single individual in a foreign and unforgiving land can be demoralizing for troops. Second, the United States was slow to engage in disarmament and nation building. A striking disequilibrium between the military and humanitarian components existed as the costs of Operation Restore Hope alone, at $1 billion, amounted to three times the U.S. total aid contribution to Somalia since independence. Seven months of UNOSOM II in 1993 were estimated to cost $1.5 billion, of which the lowest estimate for humanitarian aid was 0.7 percent of the total and the highest, 10 percent. Also, as UN objectives expanded, resources were actually reduced.

When the last UN soldiers pulled out of Somalia in March 1995, the impact of military and humanitarian help was unclear. Three years and some $4 billion had left the warring parties better armed, rested, and poised to resume civil war. But the worst of starvation had been brought under control. Today Somalia remains without a viable national government, although concerted diplomatic efforts continue to improve the situation. It is a haven for extremists and now widely known for its pirates, who hijack commercial ships and luxury yachts in the Indian Ocean.

An even worse horror story developed simultaneously in East Africa, where long-standing social tensions within Rwanda led to the genocide of some eight hundred thousand people, mainly of Rwanda's Tutsi minority, by the Hutu majority. The genocide was instigated by extremists who rallied the Hutu majority to turn on their Tutsi neighbors. UN peacekeeping forces (UNAMIR) had been present in Kigali for about eight months prior to the genocide. Its mandate was to facilitate the Arusha Peace Accord, which was designed to end the Rwandan civil war between the Hutu-dominated government and the Tutsi rebels, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who were based in neighboring Uganda and had unsuccessfully tried to capture power a few years earlier. Following the downing of the president's plane under suspicious circumstances, the genocide commenced on April 6, 1994, and within a week over fifty thousand Tutsis were murdered. On April 16, the Hutu extremists systematically killed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers. The Belgian government ordered its troops home, and the UN Security Council dramatically cut the UN peacekeeping force, leaving only a token mission. This reduction came in spite of the previous request of the Canadian commander of the blue helmets, Roméo Dallaire, for an augmented force and a warning that genocide was planned by Hutu extremists. As the UN withdrew, the Hutu extremists committed genocide unimpeded, slaughtering even the Tutsis and moderate Hutus who were under UN protection. As the scale of the killings became more widely known, the Security Council wrestled with whether the killings constituted genocide. Members refrained from calling it genocide because such a designation might have a corresponding legal obligation to act. Ironically, Rwanda was seated on the Security Council as one of the nonpermanent members, and sadly, no other members asked Rwanda to explain the killings. The genocide ended as the rebel Tutsi army (the RPF) invaded from neighboring Burundi and overthrew the Hutu government.

The Security Council now found itself "gravely concerned," as two million persons were displaced within Rwanda, while another two million refugees, mostly Hutus, fled into neighboring states. The council authorized two stand-alone initiatives. First, following an announcement by Paris that it was planning on intervening, the council passed resolution 929 under Chapter VII authorizing the French-led Opération Turquoise to stabilize the southwestern part of the country. One effect was that the French used their presence to protect their Hutu allies and their families (who were now refugees in dire need of international assistance after having received French assistance for a number of years) from the invading Tutsi army, despite Hutu participation in the genocide. Second, the UN authorized a massive two-month logistics effort through the U.S. operation Support Hope in July and August to provide relief to the Hutu refugees in the Goma region of Zaire. Numerous national contingents also deployed to this region in support of the assistance efforts by the UNHCR. Arguably, Opération Turquoise prevented another refugee crisis of the record-setting magnitude of the one in May in Goma, where almost a million Rwandan refugees appeared virtually overnight, but it also protected many members of the former regime who had participated in the killings. The crisis was accompanied by a cholera epidemic that is estimated to have killed between fifty thousand and eighty thousand people.

Massive amounts of food, clothing, medicine, shelter, and water were delivered. Outside armed forces thus made essential contributions by using their unexcelled logistical and organizational resources, but only after the genocide had occurred. Rapid military action in April proved totally unfeasible, but the costs of the genocide, massive displacement, and a ruined economy (including decades of wasted development assistance and outside investment) were borne almost immediately afterward by the same governments that had refused to respond militarily a few weeks earlier. The refugee camps established by the UNHCR in Goma and elsewhere after the genocide were militarized: they were taken over by the Hutu extremists, who had established themselves there and used them as military bases to launch attacks against Tutsis in Rwanda. The inability of the UN to control the refugee camps and the repeated attacks by Hutu extremists from the Congo prompted Rwanda to invade the Congo, sparking an African "world war" involving nine nations and what may be five million deaths, although that figure has been disputed and may be closer to one million.

The UN's response to the Rwandan genocide stands as one of its greatest acknowledged failures. Several years later, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had been in charge of the UN's peacekeeping department in New York during the crisis, felt compelled during a visit to Kigali to confess, "We must and we do acknowledge that the world failed Rwanda at that time of evil. The international community and the United Nations could not muster the political will to confront it." In a later statement he continued, "There was a United Nations force in the country at the time, but it was neither mandated nor equipped for the kind of forceful action which would have been needed to prevent or halt the genocide. On behalf of the United Nations, I acknowledge this failure and express my deep remorse." It was Annan who had "buried" the cable from General Dallaire asking for a proactive role to head off the mass murder. In his mind at the time, Annan was acting to save the UN from a possibly final controversy, but Rwandans paid the price.

Meanwhile in the Caribbean, nine months after the United Nations had overseen the first democratic elections in Haiti, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by a military junta led by General Raoul Cédras. The inclusion of Haiti in our discussion is of interest for a number of reasons. Although Haiti had not really endured a civil war, it had all the attributes of a failed state—in particular, political instability, widespread poverty, massive emigration, and human rights abuses. It also became the target of international coercive actions—that is, both nonforcible and forcible sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter similar to those in the other war-torn countries analyzed earlier. Moreover, the basis for outside intervention was the restoration of a democratically elected government; this precedent has widespread potential implications because of its relevance for other countries in crisis.

Multilateral military forces were essential to the solution that ultimately resulted in late 1994. First, however, came the embarrassing performance of the initial UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH I), including the retreat by the USS _Harlan County_ , which carried unarmed American and Canadian military observers, in September 1993 following a rowdy demonstration on the docks in Port-au-Prince. In September 1994, the first soldiers of the UN-authorized and U.S.-led Multinational Force (MNF) landed in Haiti on the basis of Security Council resolution 940. What Pentagon wordsmiths labeled Operation Uphold Democracy grew quickly to twenty-one thousand troops—almost all American except for one thousand police and soldiers from twenty-nine countries, mostly from the eastern Caribbean. This operation ensured the rapid departure into comfortable exile of the illegal military regime and the restoration of the elected government.

Most important for this analysis, the MNF was prepared to use overwhelming military force—although it did not have to: there was only a single military person killed in action, and the local population was almost universally supportive—to accomplish two important tasks with clear humanitarian impacts. First and most immediately, the MNF brought an end to the punishing economic sanctions that had crippled the local economy and penalized Haiti's most vulnerable groups because the programs of humanitarian and development agencies were paralyzed. Second, the MNF established a secure and stable environment that stemmed the tide of asylum seekers, facilitated the rather expeditious repatriation of about 370,000 of them, and immediately stopped the worst human rights abuses. Once the MNF achieved its goals at the end of March 1995, the next UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH II) took over, which was replaced by the even smaller UN Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH) in July 1996. A small UN presence was continued for the remainder of the decade.

Yet a decade after the initial intervention and in spite of subsequent stabilization missions, Haiti was still characterized by political instability, violence, kidnapping, and widespread poverty. The United Nations returned to the island nation in 2004, in response to armed conflict between Aristide and his opponents, who after taking control of the northern part of the country threatened to march on the capital, Port-au-Prince. With Aristide's flight into exile in Africa in February 2004, and following the interim president's request, the Security Council authorized an MNF led by the United States, which was followed up by the 7,500-strong UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Armed gangs, probably working in tandem with certain political factions, actually killed some blue helmets. Under the stress of the action, their Brazilian commander apparently took his own life.

Members of the Jordanian battalion of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti rescue children from an orphanage destroyed by Hurricane Ike. (UN Photo 192376/Marco Dormino)

As of 2009, the stabilization mission had done little to improve the police and judiciary and nothing to alter the fundamental economic situation. The disparity in the distribution of wealth and power between a tiny elite and the vast majority of the population made Haiti one of the world's most polarized societies; this inequality had led to the rise and fall of Aristide. In 2010, the misery and impoverishment of the Haitian people were further exacerbated by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that leveled much the island nation, killing over three hundred thousand people and leaving over one million homeless.

As in other military interventions for humanitarian or other purposes, the initial perception that the interests of key states were threatened spurred leadership and risk taking. The geography of the crisis brought into prominence not just the United States but also Canada and several Caribbean countries. Washington was and is particularly anxious to end the perceived "flood" of boat people upsetting the demographics and politics of places like south Florida and Louisiana. The success of the military deployment was dramatic, notwithstanding that it was authorized to restore democracy rather than respond to a complex emergency. Both the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon were initially lukewarm about what turned out to be a successful operation in the short term.

The most significant feature of the international responses just discussed has been the willingness to address, rather than ignore, fundamental problems within the borders of war-torn states—at least at times. As the UN Development Programme calculated, eighty-two armed conflicts broke out in the first half decade following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and seventy-nine were intrastate wars; in fact, two of the three remaining ones (Nagorno-Karabakh and Bosnia) also could legitimately have been categorized as civil wars. But trying to put a lid on civil wars is not the same as a persistent effort to deal with their root causes. Having gone from famine to feast in the mid-1990s, the United Nations had a bad case of institutional indigestion. The climate had changed so much that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was obliged to write a follow-up, _Supplement to "An Agenda for Peace,"_ to his earlier document. In this January 1995 report he noted, "This increased volume of activity would have strained the Organization even if the nature of the activity had remained unchanged."

**CONCLUSION**

What lessons emerged for the United Nations from security operations after the Cold War, from 1988 to 1998? These operations represent a qualitatively different kind of peace mission from the world organization's previous experiments. UN efforts in Cambodia and El Salvador were ambitious, complex, and multidisciplinary. They represent the first UN attempts at creating or re-creating civil order and respecting the rule of law where governance and stability had either broken down or been nonexistent. They entail reconstructing the social and economic infrastructure, building democratic political institutions, providing humanitarian assistance, and much more. This task expansion changed the character of the humanitarian agencies and led to much soul searching.

"Learning by doing" seems the order of the day. Not to act seems to many unthinkable, especially in light of Srebenica and Rwanda. But how to act remains uncertain in an ever-evolving international environment. In the twenty-first century we can conceive of traditional peacekeeping and complex peacekeeping, both operating under Chapter VI of the Charter. The former involves primarily neutral interposition to supervise cease-fire lines and other military demarcations. The latter involves a complex range of tasks mostly intended to move postconflict or failed states toward a liberal democratic order. In places like the Balkans, the UN has attempted no less than to change an illiberal region into a liberal one—on a stable, permanent basis.

Observers continue to debate the extent to which the dynamics of contemporary civil wars are new, but the two dominant norms of world politics during the Cold War—namely, that borders were sacrosanct and that secession was unthinkable—no longer generate the enthusiasm that they once did, even among states. At the same time, an almost visceral respect for nonintervention in the internal affairs of states has made way for a more subtle interpretation, according to which on occasion the rights of individuals take precedence over the rights of repressive governments and the sovereign states they represent.

Until early in 1993, the dominant perception of outside intervention under UN auspices was largely positive. The United Nations seemed on a roll, first by reversing Iraq's aggression against Kuwait followed closely by the dramatic lifesaving activities by the U.S.-led coalitions in northern Iraq and initially in Somalia. There was undoubted success for the UN in Central America, especially El Salvador. In spite of the lack of resolve in Bosnia, it seemed possible that we were entering an era when governments and insurgents would no longer be allowed to commit abuses with impunity. Some analysts even worried then about "the new interventionists." The new emphasis on protecting persons inside states led to a focus on human security. This focus coexisted alongside the older notion of traditional interstate military security. In the next chapter, we analyze more recent UN security operations to illustrate the links between traditional peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and peacebuilding.

**NOTES**

. Thomas G. Weiss and Meryl A. Kessler, "Moscow's U.N. Policy," _Foreign Policy_ no. 79 (Summer 1990): 94–112; Thomas G. Weiss and Meryl A. Kessler, eds., _Third World Security in the Post–Cold War Era_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Thomas G. Weiss and James G. Blight, eds., _The Suffering Grass: Superpowers and Regional Conflict in Southern Africa and the Caribbean_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992); and G. R. Berridge, _Return to the UN_ (London: Macmillan, 1991).

. Gorbachev's 1988 comments about the war can be found in "The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan," _Afghanistan and the War on Terror, PBS Newshour_ , October 10, 2006, <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/asia/afghanistan/soviet.html>.

. An indication of the growing importance of this phenomenon is a publication from the Center on International Cooperation, _Annual Review of Global Peace Operations_ , which was first published in 2006.

. Tom J. Farer, ed., _Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); David P. Forsythe, "Human Rights and International Security: United Nations Field Operations Redux," in _The Role of the Nation-State in the 21st Century: Human Rights, International Organisations, and Foreign Policy: Essays in Honor of Peter Baehr_ , ed. Monique Castermans-Holleman, Fried van Hoof, and Jacqueline Smith (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998), 265–276; and Fareed Zakaria, _The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad_ (New York: Norton, 2003).

. Mats R. Berdal, _Disarmament and Demobilisation After Civil Wars_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

. Rodrigo Tavares, _Regional Security: The Capacity of International Organizations_ (London: Routledge, 2010); and Monica Herz, _The Organization of American States: Global Governance Away from the_ Media (London: Routledge, 2011).

. Washington's shift to forcible liberation occurred just after U.S. congressional elections. The Senate approved of the new strategy by only five votes, which almost led to a constitutional crisis in the United States over war powers.

. Oscar Schachter, "United Nations Law in the Gulf Conflict," and Burns H. Weston, "Security Council Resolution 678 and Persian Gulf Decision Making: Precarious Legitimacy," _American Journal of International Law_ 85, no. 3 (1991): 452–473, 516.

. Stephen Lewis, Clovis Maksoud, and Robert C. Johansen, "The United Nations After the Gulf War," _World Policy Journal_ 8, no. 3 (1991): 539–574.

. Robert J. Lieber, ed., _Eagle Rules: Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century_ (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2002), Chapter 1.

. David Cortright and George A. Lopez, _The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990s_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000); and David Cortright and George A. Lopez, _Sanctions and the Search for Security: Challenges to UN Action_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002).

. Mario Bettati and Bernard Kouchner, _Le Devoir d'ingérence_ (Paris: De Noël, 1987).

. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, _The Responsibility to Protect_ (Ottawa: ICISS, 2001). For a view about the dangers, see Robert Jackson, _The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

. Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, "Groping and Coping in the Gulf Crisis: Discerning the Shape of a New Humanitarian Order," _World Policy Journal_ 9, no. 4 (1992): 755–777.

. UNICEF, "Results of the 1999 Iraq Child and Maternal Mortality Survey," July 23, 1999, <http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm>.

. Richard Jolly and Ralph van der Hoeven, eds., "Adjustment with a Human Face—Record and Relevance," special issue, _World Development_ 19, no. 12 (1991). For general discussions, see Lori Fisler Damrosch, "The Civilian Impact of Economic Sanctions," in _Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts_ , ed. Lori Fisler Damrosch (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), 274–315; and Patrick Clawson, "Sanctions as Punishment, Enforcement, and Prelude to Further Action," _Ethics & International Affairs_ 7 (1993): 17–37.

. Jarat Chopra and Thomas G. Weiss, "Sovereignty Is No Longer Sacrosanct: Codifying Humanitarian Intervention," _Ethics & International Affairs_ 6 (1992): 95–117; and David J. Scheffer, "Toward a Modern Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention," _University of Toledo Law Review_ 23, no. 2 (1992): 253–293.

. David Rieff, _At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

. Stephen R. Ratner, _The New UN Peacekeeping_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1995); and Michael W. Doyle, Ian Johnstone, and Robert C. Orr, eds., _Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

. "In Bosnia's Fog," _Economist_ , April 23, 1994, 16.

. Lawrence Freedman, "Why the West Failed," _Foreign Policy_ 97 (Winter 1994–1995): 59.

. Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, _Srebenica, a "Safe" Area: Reconstruction, Background, Consequences, and Analyses of the Fall of a Safe Area_ (Amsterdam: Boom Publishers, 2002); Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, _Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime_ (London: Penguin, 1996); and David Rohde, _Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998).

. "U.N. Bosnia Commander Wants More Troops, Fewer Resolutions," _New York Times_ , December 31, 1993.

. UN General Assembly, _A Comprehensive Strategy to Eliminate Future Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations_ , UN document A/59/710, March 24, 2005.

. Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson, _Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth_ (New York: Hyperion, 2004).

. Debarati G. Sapir and Hedwig Deconinck, "The Paradox of Humanitarian Assistance and Military Intervention in Somalia," in _The United Nations and Civil Wars_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 168.

. See "The Triumph of Evil," _PBS Frontline_ , January 26, 1999, <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/>.

. Larry Minear and Philippe Guillot, _Soldiers to the Rescue: Humanitarian Lessons from Rwanda_ (Paris: OECD, 1996); Gérard Prunier, _The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, _The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwandan Experience_ , 5 vols. (Copenhagen: Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1995).

. Sadako Ogata asked the Security Council to control the Hutu militia in the refugee camps, but the members lacked the necessary fortitude for a proper response. Ogata then contracted with Zaire, as it then was, to provide security in the camps—less than an ideal solution. See Sadako Ogata, _The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crisis of the 1990s_ (New York: Norton, 2005), Chapter 3.

. The Human Security Report Project, _Miniatlas of Human Security_ (Brighton: UK Myriad Editions, 2008), 13.

. Kofi Annan, Address to the Parliament of Rwanda, Kigali, May 7, 1998, document SG/SM/6552.

. Kofi Annan, "Statement on Receiving the Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," United Nations, New York, December 16, 1999.

. Roméo Dallaire, _Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda_ (Toronto: Brent Beardsley, 2004). See further Michael N. Barnett, _Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002); and the UN's own hard-hitting report from an independent inquiry, available at <http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=S/1999/1257>.

. United Nations Development Programme, _Human Development Report 1994_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 47.

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, _Supplement to "An Agenda for Peace"_ (New York: United Nations, 1995), para. 77.

. Michael Barnett, "Humanitarianism Transformed," _Perspectives on Politics_ 3, no. 4 (2005): 723–740; and Janice Stein, "Humanitarianism as Political Fusion," _Perspectives on Politics_ 3, no. 4 (2005): 740–744.

. Forsythe, "Human Rights and International Security."

. Mohammed Ayoob, "The New-Old Disorder in the Third World," in _Collective Security in a Changing World_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 13–30.

. Stephen John Stedman, "The New Interventionists," _Foreign Affairs_ 72, no. 1 (1993): 1–16.

. Rob McRae and Don Hubert, eds., _Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace_ (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001). See also S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong, _Human Security and the UN: A Critical History_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
* * *

CHAPTER 4

* * *

_Evolving Security Operations_

Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, and Syria

AN INTERESTING LENS through which to examine normative and operational change emerging from ongoing UN security operations is the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The commission's 2001 report, _The Responsibility to Protect_ , provides a snapshot of issues surrounding nonconsensual international military action to foster values. The ICISS responded to two sets of events. The first were several moral pleas in 1999 from the future Nobel laureate, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who argued that human rights concerns transcended claims of sovereignty, a theme that he put forward more delicately a year later at the Millennium Summit. The reaction was loud, bitter, and predictable, especially from China, Russia, and throughout the Global South. "Intervention"—for whatever reasons, including humanitarian—remains taboo. The second set of events concerned the weak, untimely, and inadequate reactions by the Security Council in Rwanda and the Balkans. In both cases, the Security Council was unable to act expeditiously and authorize the use of deadly force to protect vulnerable populations. The role of humanitarian concerns in justifying outside military force was the most salient new dimension of UN security operations since the 1990s, which is the story for much of this chapter. Events in Libya and Syria during 2011–2012 accentuated the issues.

**USING MILITARY FORCE FOR HUMAN PROTECTION PURPOSES**

The ICISS and its report encapsulated three conceptual developments. First, and most critically, the responsibility to protect (R2P) infused state sovereignty with a human rights dimension—that is, sovereignty was not a license to do as state authorities wished but was contingent on respecting minimal human rights standards. The standards may not have been that high—not committing mass atrocity crimes—but sovereignty was contingent instead of absolute, and this clearly represents a substantial change in international relations, at least concerning abstract norms. Second, R2P reformulates the conceptual basis for humanitarian intervention. It calls for moving away from the rights of interveners (outsiders) toward the rights of victims (insiders) and the obligations of outsiders to act. The responsibility to protect includes action not only to intervene when large-scale loss of life occurs but also to prevent armed conflicts and to help mend societies. Third, the ICISS proposes a new international default setting: a modified just-war doctrine for future interventions to sustain humanitarian values or human rights. As such, just cause, proportionality, likelihood of success, and right authority (ideally, the Security Council) are seen as essential elements of a responsible decision to act.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan holds the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in December 2000 to the United Nations and to him, as the organization's secretary-general. (UN/DPI Photo by S. Bermeniev)

Why was this such a sea change? During the Cold War, the Security Council was largely missing in action regarding humanitarian matters. No resolutions mentioned the humanitarian aspects of any armed conflict from 1945 until the Six-Day War of 1967. The first mention of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was not until 1978. And in the 1970s and 1980s, "the Security Council gave humanitarian aspects of armed conflict limited priority." During the first half of the 1990s, twice as many resolutions were passed as during the first forty-five years of UN history. They contained repeated references, in the context of Chapter VII, to humanitarian crises amounting to threats to international peace and security, and repeated demands for parties to have respect for the principles of international humanitarian law.

The ICISS reiterates the central role of the Security Council and urges it to act. But if it does not, humanitarians and victims are left where the secretary-general himself was in September 1999, when he queried his diplomatic audience about their reactions had there been a state or a group of states willing to act in April 1994 in Rwanda even without a Security Council imprimatur. "Should such a coalition have stood aside," he asked rhetorically, "and allowed the horror to unfold?" The answer by any of the eight hundred thousand dead Rwandans would be clear, even if in UN circles it remains cloudy.

Enthusiasm for UN helping hands must be tempered with the realities of UN operations. Complex political emergencies often involve a "humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society where there is a total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing UN country programme." A military venture might help quell ethnic violence, create humanitarian space, and protect fundamental human rights; however, coercive military intervention necessitates a revision of conventional wisdom regarding the lack of consent for Chapter VII operations. Legally speaking, intervention as authorized by the Security Council does not require "consent" from the targeted authorities, de jure or de facto. Politically speaking, however, intervention normally requires the support of the domestic constituencies in troop-contributing countries and from affected local populations—or there may be debilitating blowback, as was the case in Somalia on both fronts in the early 1990s.

Thus, a progression of three steps underlies this lesson. First, the chances for a successful intervention are improved when preceded by establishing and maintaining the consent of the publics that send their sons and daughters into hostile environments. For example, Americans were prepared for possible casualties prior to Washington's involvement on the ground in Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003, but they were not prepared, nor was their consent sought, in Somalia in 1993. The fierce negative popular reactions in Somalia and the United States ended up later inhibiting decisive U.S. action in Rwanda in 1994. Second, although consent by definition is not necessary from local belligerents for Chapter VII, the consent of local populations should be sought and nurtured. Somalia illustrates that the neglect of local populations by third-party interveners gives belligerents the opportunity to foster the impression among locals that those who have come to assist them are the ones contributing to their pain. Third, with legitimacy established and possible deaths of soldiers and the presence of "outsiders" accounted for, no compromises should be made while robustly making all requisite military efforts to quickly establish a secure environment.

Any intervention is risky and may backfire, but satisfying these steps increases the likelihood of success. The "messiness" of intervention comes from both lack of legitimacy and lack of efficiency, which the first lesson addresses. A well-planned, systematic response is required, but only after consent has been garnered from local populations in both troop-contributing states and the area of conflict. Outsiders need to reestablish security quickly and credibly in part of a disputed territory even if subsequently additional reinforcements are sent or another strategy evolves. This is the opposite of a slowly-turning-the-screws approach in the hopes that either political will or a meaningful strategy will appear over time. If there is no clarity about mission and little commitment to equipping the UN to act responsibly, "then the U.N. and the world at large," in John Ruggie's words, "are better off by lowering the organization's military profile and not muddling in the strategic calculus of states."

**IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UN'S SECURITY EFFORTS**

The UN is also something of an independent variable, the semi-independent actor staffed with a semi-autonomous civil service. Without putting too fine a point on it, the history of security operations after the Cold War indicates that the United Nations is incapable of exercising command and control over combat operations. The capacity to plan, support, and command peacekeeping—let alone peace-enforcement—missions is scarcely greater now than during the Cold War. And this situation will not change in the foreseeable future. Powerful member states simply do not want the world body to possess such autonomous military capabilities. As Michael Mandelbaum asserts, "the U.N. itself can no more conduct military operations on a large scale on its own than a trade association of hospitals can conduct heart surgery."

Taking advantage of experience acquired during the 1990s and the demonstrated need for change, Secretary-General Annan appointed a high-level international panel to examine critically the UN's handling of peace operations. Led by Lakhdar Brahimi, the panel found a great deal to criticize. The Brahimi report's blunt language focused on getting states to take their responsibilities seriously, on creating clear mandates and reasonable goals, and on providing well-trained and well-equipped troops. Not surprisingly, consensus among member states was not achieved, and most of the report's recommendations were not implemented. As such, the United Nations as actor has distanced itself from actually exercising coercion for two reasons. First, states are unwilling to provide the secretary-general with the necessary tools for military action. Standby troops and funds, independent intelligence, and appropriate systems for command and control, along with professional personnel, are simply not forthcoming. The secretary-general does not have the capacity of independent action in this regard.

Second, and perhaps more important, the strength of the office of the secretary-general lies in its ability to be above the fray and open to discussions with all parties to a conflict, which is derived from the lack of vested interests. Giandomenico Picco, a former senior official who negotiated the release of hostages in Lebanon, has argued that "transforming the institution of the Secretary-General into a pale imitation of a state" in order "to manage the use of force may well be a suicidal embrace". In order to maintain credibility as a third party, the head of the United Nations—insofar as it is separate from states—should refrain from taking sides. Even when Chapter VII action is taken against the wishes of a state, the secretary-general needs to be able to engage with the targeted state. Fen Hampson concluded his comprehensive study on the UN's negotiating the end to five ethnic conflicts with the suggestion, "Enforcement is therefore best left to others." The Security Council should still authorize enforcement on selected occasions, but such efforts should be subcontracted to regional arrangements or coalitions of the willing. The UN's comparative advantage—certainly in comparison with the United States—seems to be in post-conflict peacebuilding.

The failure to distinguish between the military operations that the United Nations Secretariat can manage (traditional and even slightly muscular peacekeeping) and those that it cannot and should not (enforcement) has led to obfuscation. The latter are problematic under any circumstances, but they have given governments that are unable and unwilling to act decisively the opportunity to treat the United Nations as scapegoat. The third UN secretary-general, U Thant, once commented wryly, "It is not surprising that the organization should often be blamed for failing to solve problems that have already been found to be insoluble by governments."

With Richard Holbrooke of the United States presiding in the Security Council in January 2000, the focus was on Africa's woes. Everyone agreed that a peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) was desirable. Yet, with what is somewhat hyperbolically called "Africa's World War," the initial force of some five thousand soldiers was way too small when there was no peace to keep. Subsequent increases in troop levels alongside continued chaos in the DRC only confirmed the accuracy of the original skepticism. The UN field presence there remains largely symbolic, although approaching twenty thousand international soldiers and political staff, because the physical size of the country and its political challenges compound the lack of political will in New York and elsewhere to make a greater practical impact. In regions (especially to the east in Ituri), the UN's presence has nonetheless been helpful in tamping down violence.

A positive development within the UN has been the ability, on occasion, to call a spade a spade. The UN secretary-general's 1999 report on Srebrenica and the Ingmar Carlsson report on Rwanda contained plenty of blame to go around and were followed by another remarkably frank document—about the failings of sanctions against Angola—by a group under Robert Fowler. States should be held accountable for a lack of political will, but also important is to hold senior UN officials' feet to the fire because they are capable of choices, of doing the right or the wrong thing. State political will, or the lack thereof, matters. But UN officials matter as well.

**TABLE 4.1** UN Peace and Security Operations, 1999–Present

a UNIFIL was created in 1978 to monitor an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon; however, the mission was significantly enhanced following the outbreak of violence between Israel and Lebanon in July 2006.

The demand for the UN's security activities remains as great as ever. It is important to keep in mind that states and other actors often seek to involve the UN or "hide behind a blue skirt" to buy time or because they cannot or will not undertake action alone. In the last few years, the Security Council held sessions on the situations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Western Sahara, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, Congo, Burundi, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Central African Republic, Georgia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, Haiti, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria.

In the face of these crises, the critical question confronting the UN is how to respond effectively when demand so clearly outstrips supply—in short, how to "muddle through." The answer to this question emerges on a case-by-case basis, yet with each new response seemingly informed by and building on the last. Table 4.2 lists completed operations. The following discussion illustrates the evolution in UN security operations, many with a humanitarian dimension and with robust military requirements.

**TABLE 4.2** UN Peace and Security Operations: Completed as of December 2012

a Although authorized by the UN Security Council, Opération Turquoise was commanded and financed by France.

**THE CRISIS IN THE BALKANS**

The 1991 Gulf War and the creation of internal safe havens for Kurds in Iraq illustrate what we referred to in Chapter 1 as military "subcontracting." That is, the job of exercising coercion is subcontracted to others. Other examples include IFOR and SFOR (the Implementation Force and the Stabilization Force, respectively, in the former Yugoslavia) and the more controversial case of UNITAF in Somalia. The growing relevance of military intervention by major powers in regions of their traditional interests had become obvious; however, the gap between UN capacities and demands for action remains. This has led almost inevitably to calls for action by various states with the blessing of the larger community of states through either the explicit or the implicit approval of the Security Council.

The NATO action in Kosovo in spring 1999 is a dramatic case in point. Depending on how one reads the script of diplomatic code embedded in Security Council resolutions, the action by NATO could be argued to represent a breach of international law or to have been launched with the council's implicit approval. The Independent Commission on Kosovo, composed largely of human rights proponents, called it "illegal but legitimate"—that is, without the Security Council's blessing but justified in human terms. The secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana, of course, chose the latter interpretation of Security Council resolution 1199. On the other hand, both Russia and China condemned the action as illegal. Russia weakened its own position and made a tactical blunder by introducing a resolution criticizing the NATO bombing and asking that it be halted. The resolution's defeat by a wide margin (12–3) enhanced the status of NATO's action even if it did not make the illegal (that is, against the Charter's rules) legal. Secretary-General Annan drew considerable fire for his speech at the opening of the General Assembly in September 1999, when he wished the Security Council had been able to give explicit approval to the bombing yet nonetheless could not condone idleness in the face of Serb atrocities.

Diplomacy had failed to change Serbian policy. Time and again Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević demonstrated his blatant disregard for negotiated agreements. In late January 1999, U.S. officials shifted away from a diplomatic approach and threatened military action. The secretary-general had apparently arrived at a similar conclusion. In a statement before NATO leaders in Brussels, he indicated that indeed force might be necessary. In doing so, he praised past UNNATO collaboration in Bosnia and suggested that a NATO-led mission under UN auspices might well be what was needed. He concluded:

The bloody wars of the last decade have left us with no illusions about the difficulty of halting internal conflicts by reason or by force particularly against the wishes of the government of a sovereign state. Nor have they left us with any illusions about the need to use force, when all other means have failed. We may be reaching that limit, once again, in the former Yugoslavia.

But neither NATO nor the UN was willing to give up totally on diplomacy. In February 1999 in Rambouillet, France, the so-called contact group—the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom—hosted a peace conference that sought to broker a solution between Yugoslavia and an Albanian Kosovar delegation. Talks foundered, and the situation in Kosovo continued to deteriorate. On March 24, NATO began a seventy-seven-day aerial bombardment of Serbian targets. Soon after the bombing started, Serbian security forces launched an all-out campaign to exorcise Kosovo of its predominant ethnic-Albanian population. Initially, the intervention accelerated flight and humanitarian suffering, as 1.8 million Kosovar Albanians were forcibly displaced. As NATO's intervention progressed, air strikes intensified, until finally, in the context of a Russian-mediated settlement, Milošević agreed on June 3 to an immediate and verifiable end to the violence and repression and to the withdrawal of all Serbian security forces. Almost immediately the refugees began returning home.

Other aspects of the agreement included the deployment under UN auspices of an effective international civilian and security presence with substantial NATO participation, the establishment of an interim administration, safe return of all refugees and displaced persons, demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and a substantially self-governing Kosovo.

On June 10, 1999, the council, in a 14–0–1 vote (China abstained), adopted resolution 1244 authorizing an international civil and security presence in Kosovo under UN auspices. NATO's preceding "humanitarian war" had been unusual to say the least, and many aid agencies had trouble pronouncing those two words together, and choked trying to say "humanitarian bombing." But the new UN peace mission, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), was unprecedented in its nature and scope. NATO authorized forty-nine thousand troops (KFOR) to maintain order and security, and meanwhile UNMIK was to assume authority over all the territory and people of Kosovo, including judicial, legislative, and executive powers. It was to move the region toward self-governance; perform all normal civilian administrative functions; provide humanitarian relief, including the safe return of refugees and displaced persons; maintain law and order and establish the rule of law; promote human rights; assist in reconstructing basic social and economic infrastructure; and facilitate a democratic political order.

The mission was pathbreaking in integrating several non-UN international organizations under a unified UN leadership. It was organized around four substantive pillars: civil administration (UN-led); humanitarian affairs (UNHCR-led); reconstruction (European Union–led); and democratic institution-building (OSCE-led). The scope was mind-boggling. Civil administration, for example, was to be comprehensive, including health, education, energy and public utilities, post and telecommunications, judicial, legal, public finance, trade, science, agriculture, environment, and democratization. Over eight hundred thousand people had to be repatriated. Over 120,000 houses had been damaged or destroyed. Schools needed to be reestablished; food, medical aid, and other humanitarian assistance provided; electrical power, sanitation, and clean water restored; land mines cleared and security ensured; and so on.

Although the initial UNMIK mandate was twelve months, it remains in Kosovo today. Military forces have been reduced, elections held, and the rebuilding of a society begun. Serious problems persist regarding continued ethnic violence, the status of the Serb minority, widespread unemployment, and the thriving sex trade. In 2004, ethnic Albanians rioted and attacked ethnic Serbs in the volatile and ethnically mixed city of Mitrovica, killing nineteen people. Both NATO and UNMIK were criticized for not protecting Serbian enclaves or confronting the rioters. This outbreak of ethnic violence, and UNMIK and NATO's inability to prevent it, plagued the negotiations on the most serious and intractable of Kosovo problems: the final status of the mostly Albanian province.

Deadlines for negotiating the final status of Kosovo came and went. Initial negotiations launched in 2005 by Special Envoy Marti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president and UN undersecretary-general, began with a plan that called for Kosovo's formal independence from Serbia. This was immediately rejected by Serbia with the backing of Russia and China. These states said such a plan would inspire other separatist movements and set a dangerous precedent. Negotiations were then turned over to the so-called troika of the European Union, the United States, and Russia, and another deadline was set for December 10, 2007.

Backed by Russia, Serbia offered Kosovo the autonomous status it enjoyed under the former Yugoslavia prior to the rise of Milošević; however, Serbia would retain sovereignty over the province. Kosovo, backed by the United States and the European Union, wanted formal independence—indeed, the Albanian majority had overwhelmingly voted for independence—with special political protections for the Serb minority in Kosovo. The UN and the European Union were in an awkward position because Security Council resolution 1244 reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo was a part. With Serbia as the internationally recognized successor state, Kosovo falls under Serbia's sovereignty.

The situation came to a head with Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008. The secession of a former part of a sovereign state (Serbia) with international assistance (as Kosovo was a UN protectorate since 1999) was particularly problematic for Moscow because it faced similar tensions in Chechnya. While Albanians celebrated in the streets in the new capital, Pristina, Serbs in their enclave to the north confronted NATO troops and threatened to secede as well. Serbs in Belgrade burned the U.S. embassy, as Washington and several Western states recognized a sovereign Kosovo. The EU's common foreign policy was anything but: Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Romania, and Spain opposed formal recognition.

In 2008 the General Assembly approved Serbia's bid to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence. In this much anticipated opinion, the ICJ deftly and narrowly concluded in 2010 that the declaration did not violate international law. The ICJ chose neither to address the legal consequences of such declarations nor to say whether Kosovo was a state. It avoided giving primacy to either the principle of sovereignty or that of self-determination. Rather, the analysis was confined to the narrow question of Kosovo and found nothing in international law preventing a unilateral declaration of independence.

States seem increasingly willing to formally recognize Kosovo. By mid-2012, over ninety states had recognized Kosovo. The UN and its member states as well as the EU are still striving for a mediated solution between Kosovo and Serbia, with predictably mixed results. On the one hand, a compromise between the parties was reached, allowing Kosovo to represent itself at international meetings. The deal says that the word "republic" will not appear next to the name Kosovo and instead a footnote will be added referencing Security Council resolution 1244 and the ICJ advisory opinion. This compromise represents an important step toward EU membership for Serbia and recognition of Kosovo by Serbia. On the other hand, Serbia continues to claim that it will never recognize Kosovo, violence continues in Serbian enclaves in northern Kosovo, and in April 2012 Serbia's plans for local elections in Kosovo forced NATO to send reinforcements to its peacekeeping mission.

**TURMOIL IN TIMOR-LESTE (EAST TIMOR)**

After seventeen years of UN-mediated efforts to resolve the status of East Timor, an agreement was reached on May 5, 1999, between Indonesia and Portugal (the last colonial power). The two states agreed that the UN secretary-general would be responsible for organizing and conducting a popular consultation to determine whether the people of East Timor would accept or reject a special autonomous status within the unitary Republic of Indonesia. A rejection of such special status meant that the UN would administer the territory during its transition to independence. Security Council resolution 1246 established the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) with the mandate of conducting such a consultation; after several postponements, the popular vote was held, and the special autonomy status option was overwhelmingly rejected in favor of independence.

News of the outcome stirred pro-integration forces backed by armed militias to violence. Within a matter of weeks nearly a half million East Timorese were displaced from their homes and villages. Indonesian military troops and police were either unwilling or unable to restore order, and the security situation deteriorated. In September, the Security Council, in resolution 1264, authorized the creation of a multilateral force to restore order and protect and support UNAMET. Member states were welcomed to lead, organize, and contribute troops to such a force. Sitting in the wings ready to act, an Australian-led force began arriving in East Timor less than a week later. Numerous arms had been twisted in Jakarta so that Indonesia "requested" the coalition force. In less than a month general order was restored, and the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly voted on October 19 to formally recognize the results of the popular consultation. The following week the Security Council unanimously approved resolution 1272, establishing the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

The nature and scope of the UNTAET mission was exceedingly ambitious and wide-ranging. As in the case of Cambodia, a country with substantial interests and motivation (in this case, Australia) took the military lead. It was empowered to exercise all legislative and executive powers and judicial authority; establish an effective civil administration; assist in developing civil and social services; provide security and maintain law and order; ensure the coordination and delivery of humanitarian assistance, rehabilitation, and development assistance; promote sustainable development; and build the foundation for a stable liberal democracy. To carry out this mandate, authorization was given for a military component of 8,950 troops, 200 observers, and a civilian police component of up to 1,640 personnel. By 2000, the processes of reconstruction and state building were well under way, and in 2002 East Timor became the 191st member of the United Nations with its new name: Timor-Leste.

In mid-2006, skeptics' fears were confirmed with the explosion of violence in Dili and the hurried return of Australian soldiers to restore order and security. The violence was sparked by former soldiers who rebelled against the newly elected civilian government. In August 2006, the Security Council created the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) through resolution 1704, with a mandate to help the current government consolidate stability and keep the peace. Continued violence (and the emergency return of Australian troops in 2007) has forced the Security Council to extend the mandate of UNMIT annually since. The UN also established the Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste to investigate the violence and make recommendations regarding how to hold those responsible accountable through the domestic legal system. Most of the recommendations were not implemented, but the report does create an official narrative of the events.

In 2012, largely peaceful first-round elections were held and hailed as a success by Timor-Leste president José Ramos-Horta. The Nobel Peace Prize winner who served Timor-Leste as prime minister and president said that the elections demonstrated the willingness of the Timorese to take their battles to the polls instead of the street. Ironically, Ramos-Horta was on the ballot but lost to former rebel leader, José Maria Vasconcelos, whom the Independent Special Commission had recommended be prosecuted for supplying illegal arms during the 2006 violence. Pragmatically, national reconciliation sometimes trumps accountability. Successful parliamentary elections in July 2012 led Secretary-General Ban to recommend the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping mission.

Ana Vaz (second from right), a Formed Police Unit officer of the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste from Portugal, speaks to a Rapid Intervention Unit officer of the Timor-Leste police about protecting the trucks distributing food to internally displaced persons with the help of the International Organization for Migration and the World Food Programme. (UN Photo 186422/Martine Perret)

**REESTABLISHING STABILITY IN SIERRA LEONE**

The year 1999 brought both great sorrow and hope to the people of Sierra Leone, who were reeling from over eight years of civil war. The bloody civil conflict that had intensified during 1998 turned even bloodier in January 1999, when rebel forces once again captured the capital, Freetown, and launched a four-day spree of killing and destruction. Judges, journalists, human rights workers, government officials, civil servants, churches, hospitals, prisons, UN offices, and others were targets of the rebel alliance, comprising forces of the former junta and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Complicating and fueling the conflict was the material support of the RUF by neighboring Liberia. Liberian president Charles Taylor provided sanctuary to RUF rebels and used the RUF to gain control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines. Over six thousand were killed, and about 20 percent of the total stock of dwellings was destroyed. The UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), which had been established in June 1998, was evacuated.

Fighting continued throughout the spring and early summer, uprooting more than a million people, about 450,000 of whom fled to neighboring Guinea. The issue remained on the Security Council agenda, and the council kept extending UNOMSIL's mandate several months at a time. Finally, on July 7, 1999, the Lomé Peace Agreement was negotiated between the government and the RUF. The Security Council responded positively to this move and on August 20 unanimously adopted resolution 1260, extending and expanding the UNOMSIL mandate. The UN presence was further expanded in October, when the council adopted resolution 1270, creating a new mission, the UN Mission for Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), which mandated the tasks of establishing a presence at key locations throughout the country to assist the government of Sierra Leone in implementing the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of rebel troops; ensuring the security and freedom of movement of UN personnel; monitoring adherence to the cease-fire agreement of May 18; encouraging the parties to create confidence-building mechanisms and support their functioning; facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance; supporting the operations of UN civilian officials, including the special representative of the secretary-general and his staff, human rights officers, and civil affairs officers; and providing support, as requested, for the elections, which are to be held in accordance with the present constitution of Sierra Leone.

Initially, the UN mission did not go well, in part because member states predictably failed to follow through on the UNAMSIL mandate with the necessary resources. The force of 6,000 soldiers (from Nigeria, Kenya, and Guinea) was authorized under Chapter VII to use force if necessary to protect UN personnel and civilians threatened with imminent physical violence. However, the security situation was unstable, as 45,000 combatants remained armed and in control of the diamond mines. In May 2000, nearly 500 UNAMSIL peacekeepers were kidnapped and held hostage by rebels. At the same time, the United Kingdom sent heavily armed forces to protect and extricate its nationals from the deteriorating security situation in Freetown. Although unplanned, events on the ground played out such that UNAMSIL and UK forces worked together to stabilize Freetown and restore order to outlying regions. As the British began to draw down troops in 2001, the Security Council, in resolution 1346, expanded the peacekeeping force to 17,500 soldiers.

UNAMSIL and UK military forces were successful in establishing a "negative peace" in that they were able to lock down Sierra Leone militarily and also deter rebel groups from pursuing violence as a political strategy. However, militaries and soldiers are often ill-suited for the other necessary elements of peacekeeping, such as humanitarian activities and postconflict reconciliation. Part of the problem centers on how to square the militarized masculinity associated with being a soldier in war-fighting situations with the requirements of maintaining peace. Soldiers are trained for fighting, not reconstruction. On the other hand, properly trained civilian corps can make important progress in deepening political integration, reaching compromises among multiple and competing parties, and building the institutions of civil society. Sierra Leone, as well as other cases discussed thus far, represents the informal and often ill-defined relationship between state military power and UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding capacities.

To create a "positive peace" in Sierra Leone, the newly created Peacebuilding Commission (PBC, discussed in more detail in the next chapter) decided in 2006 to undertake missions in Sierra Leone and Burundi as pilots for the new and more concentrated UN efforts in postconflict countries. By selecting two of the more troubled African countries, the PBC took on exceptional challenges. The commission's mandate is to "marshal resources at the disposal of the international community to advise and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention on reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development, in countries emerging from conflict." In its report on Sierra Leone, it notes that while important political progress has been made, "the majority of the population remains extremely insecure because of poverty, lack of access to justice, lack of employment opportunities, high crime rates and corruption. The situation is even more difficult for young people and women, who face additional marginalization and discrimination. Many of the root causes of conflict, such as lack of employment for the large youth population, the proliferation of small arms, inadequate State capacity to deliver basic services, corruption and instability in the region, persist today." In 2007, the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), which supports PBC missions, allocated $35 million for youth employment, good governance, justice and security, and capacity building for public administrations. Sierra Leone remains an important test for the nascent Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund. More recently, the PBC has focused its work on building multiparty dialogue and democratic governance, combating corruption, and preparing elections in 2012. Successful elections mean Sierra-Leone can make the transition from late-stage peacebuilding toward longer-term development.

Creating a positive peace increasingly involves the use of international courts to address war crimes and crimes against humanity. Beginning with the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s, UN security efforts have often entailed a legal dimension to end the culture of impunity for violence and to help societies turn the page on armed conflict. Discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, these courts are important tools to help restore international peace and security and provide a form of restorative justice. In 2000, at the request of Sierra Leone, the Security Council authorized the secretary-general to work with Sierra Leone to create what is now known as the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for violations of international and Sierra Leonean law. The SCSL has successfully prosecuted and convicted thirteen people, including former Liberian president Charles Taylor, for aiding and abetting war crimes.

**LEBANON—AGAIN**

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia based in Lebanon, conducted a raid into Israel, kidnapping and later executing two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. In the past, such raids have been used against Israel as a negotiating tactic to secure the release of Islamic militants held in Israeli prisons. Israel responded by launching a large-scale war against Hezbollah, beginning with air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching rockets into the Israeli cities of Kiryat Shmona and Haifa, leading to further escalation by Israel. IDF forces in massive attacks, including the use of cluster bombs, destroyed a substantial part of the economic infrastructure of Lebanon and eventually entered southern Lebanon to create a buffer zone between Hezbollah rockets and Israeli territory. After nearly a month of intense fighting, in which more than 1,200 civilians were killed and more than 4,000 wounded, the Security Council approved resolution 1701, which called for a cease-fire and the deployment of UNIFIL into southern Lebanon. Readers should recall from Chapter 3 that UNIFIL was created in 1978 to deal with earlier crises in Lebanon. Before the 2006 deployment, UNIFIL forces needed to be increased from some two thousand to a more robust fifteen thousand soldiers. Its mandate also had to be expanded.

According to resolution 1701, UNIFIL's mandate is to monitor the cease-fire, assist the Lebanese government in deploying its troops into southern Lebanon, and aid in the delivery of humanitarian assistance or the safe return of displaced persons. Most important, 1701 calls for UNIFIL to create a zone along the Israeli-Lebanon border where the only armed personnel are members of the Lebanese military or UNIFIL. Finally, the Security Council authorized UNIFIL to use appropriate military force as necessary to carry out its mandate.

Beefing up UNIFIL and its mandate was not without its problems. Two issues generated considerable media attention and debate at the UN. The first issue centered on rules of engagement for UNIFIL. Although UNIFIL was authorized to use military force, questions remained about whether it should attempt to disarm Hezbollah or engage Hezbollah directly. The answers to these questions would directly affect the second issue of the composition of UNIFIL forces. France, which helped broker the cease-fire, was widely expected to contribute the bulk of the military forces and to lead UNIFIL. However, Paris announced on August 16 that it would contribute only two hundred soldiers and provide some logistical support. After a few days of widespread criticism, France offered to contribute four hundred soldiers, generating even more criticism that such a paltry contribution would harm UN peacekeeping recruiting efforts for UNIFIL. Only after Italy offered to contribute two thousand troops and lead UNIFIL did France agree to increase its troops to two thousand.

By the end of 2009, UNIFIL had 12,158 military troops from twenty-seven countries and an annual operating budget of $681 million. By most accounts, the mission has been successful in that it has deterred violence in the border region, observed the Israeli withdrawal, and assisted with the deployment of Lebanese troops. The mixture of local armed forces with UN military forces was yet another departure for peace operations. The problems of command and control seemingly have been overcome, largely because the combined forces have not yet encountered serious challenge. The deterrence capacity of UNIFIL is due in large part to its military strength, which includes significant naval as well as land forces. Although UNIFIL is a more traditional peacekeeping operation, it is unique in that it is more robust: it is heavily armed and allowed to use military force beyond self-defense. Nevertheless, UNIFIL lacks the capacity as well as the mandate to undertake postconflict peacebuilding, which is desperately needed in the war-ravaged country once again.

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon troops observe Section 83 near the Blue Line on the border between Lebanon and Israel. (UN Photo 123914/Mark Garten)

UNIFIL faces several challenges. The first centers on the sustainability of the mission. Fielding such a large and well-equipped military force indefinitely, especially in the absence of a political solution regarding the leadership of the Lebanese government, tests UN peacekeeping resolve. With no endgame in sight, contributing countries might seek to draw down their UNIFIL commitments. A second concern centers on balancing the security of UNIFIL forces with the security of civilians in the border region. UNIFIL has had a remarkable record: only six peacekeepers have lost their lives, all in a single June 2007 suicide car bombing. UNIFIL has been criticized for spending more time protecting itself than preventing Hezbollah rocket attacks in Israel, raising questions of whether it has become a victim of "soldier safety first," or the so-called UN peacekeeping syndrome. At the same time, UNIFIL has done some remarkable work in clearing land mines and other weapons, including cluster bombs, making civilians' lives considerably safer. Finally, to date, neither Hezbollah nor Israel has really challenged the resolve to UNIFIL. Hezbollah sporadically fires rockets at Israel, and Israel occasionally violates Lebanese airspace by conducting air patrols; however, these incidents have not posed a significant impediment to UNIFIL operations. Given that Hezbollah is not adverse to terrorist attacks against UN personnel, and in the past Israel has ignored UNIFIL and in the 1980s invaded Lebanon, questions remain about what will happen if or when UNIFIL comes into violent conflict with the well-armed Hezbollah or Israel or both.

The future of Lebanon, and by extension UNIFIL, depends in large part on the prospect of a peaceful settlement for the current political leadership vacuum in Lebanon. The Security Council extends the mission of UNIFIL annually. A series of political murders has decimated the leadership of pro-Western forces in Lebanon, while Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has increased its political influence. Also complicating matters is the UN's use of a judicial response to the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Using Chapter VII, the Security Council authorized in 2005 the creation of what is now known as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to investigate and try suspects in the assassination. The STL is considered a "hybrid" court because it applies Lebanese national law but is located in the Netherlands and comprised of Lebanese as well as international judges. The work of the tribunal is slow in part because of the controversy surrounding its creation, the lack of sufficient funding, and the minimal cooperation of the Lebanese government, now heavily influenced by Hezbollah. Remarkably, the instability emanating from Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and other Middle East states has not been significantly transmitted to Lebanon. UNIFIL's maritime operations have intercepted ships containing weapons destined for armed gangs in Syria, but there is little evidence of similar domestic unrest within Lebanon itself.

**DARFUR, SUDAN**

The Darfur crisis is the culmination of a series of unresolved conflicts resulting from Sudan's decolonization in 1956. After Sudan gained independence from the United Kingdom, it descended into an almost continuous civil war, which pitted the government of Sudan in the north against rebel groups in the south, east, and west. Darfur, in the western part of Sudan, is home to two insurgencies, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice Equality Movement. Intense fighting erupted in 2003 between Sudanese government forces and the Sudan Liberation Army, creating a humanitarian crisis for civilians in the area. After sustaining attacks in the north, Sudanese government forces, along with Arab militias known as the _janjaweed_ , attacked towns and villages in Darfur with little regard for civilians. Claiming that the civilian population was harboring the insurgents, government and _janjaweed_ forces razed entire communities and pursued a scorched-earth policy. Although estimates vary, it is commonly thought that since 2003 at least 300,000 people have lost their lives and over 2.5 million people been displaced.

In the case of Darfur, the relative effectiveness of regional versus universal organizations comes back into focus as a major theme. Both the African Union and the UN have been involved in efforts to resolve this complex armed conflict and to protect the civilian population. The AU until recently had been at the forefront, mediating peace talks and successfully brokering an important cease-fire in 2004. It also deployed its first peacekeeping mission, the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), to monitor the cease-fire in 2004 and to help build a secure environment for delivering humanitarian assistance. Originally consisting of 150 troops, AMIS expanded over the next few years to include 7,000 troops. AMIS was plagued by poor funding, poor equipment, and poor training—in short, nothing like the force that would be necessary to improve conditions in an area the size of France. Moreover, its mandate did not include disarmament or the use of force to protect civilians. The cease-fire brokered in 2004 did not hold, and neither did a series of cease-fires in 2006 and 2007. Attacks on civilians continued. To complicate matters further, AMIS peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers also became targets of government, _janjaweed_ , and insurgent forces.

The UN initially played a supporting role to the African Union by highlighting human rights abuses and keeping pressure on the Sudanese government. UN agencies and personnel, such as the UN coordinator for Sudan and the UN high commissioner for human rights, reported that gross violations and ethnic cleansing were commonplace in Sudan as early as 2004. In September 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell used the term "genocide" to describe the actions of the Sudanese government, sparking an international debate among practitioners and scholars about whether events on the ground actually constituted genocide, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously that this was the case. The Security Council, with resolution 1564, invited the secretary-general to create the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to investigate whether genocide was occurring in Sudan, and while the commission stopped short of calling the violence genocide, it did find that serious crimes were being committed. This eventually led the council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a remarkable occurrence given the U.S. antagonism to the ICC (U.S. and Chinese abstentions allowed the resolution to pass).

The ICC has since issued indictments against two Sudanese officials for their role in the conflict. In 2008, the ICC prosecutor sought an indictment against Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The ruling by a panel of judges was likely to add to an already controversial course of action, especially when fuel was added to the fire in March 2009 with an arrest warrant for the sitting president. Some critics question the wisdom of such an indictment when UN and AU officials are seeking more cooperation and consent from Sudan about security operations in the field. This, of course, has been a common bone of contention since Nuremberg between those who seek to turn a page on armed conflict and those who view impunity as a longer-run threat to society. Some even claimed that African states were the only target for the ICC's attention, conveniently overlooking the fact that most of the requests emanated from African governments themselves. In early summer 2012, the ICC outgoing prosecutor again called on the council to ensure the arrest of al-Bashir, who had been, among other things, openly received on an official visit to China.

In 2005 Security Council resolution 1590 created the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) to monitor the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between rebel groups and the Sudanese government. The main thrust of the agreement was to end hostilities in southern Sudan, but it was also seen as a framework for ending hostilities throughout Sudan, including Darfur. UNMIS was additionally tasked with providing political and logistical support to the floundering AMIS with the hopes of stabilizing peacekeeping operations. The mandate of UNMIS included protecting civilians; however, its primary operations were in southern Sudan, where until recently a relative peace prevailed and the civilian population was not at risk.

The Security Council was, and remains, deeply divided between members who want to authorize a more forceful UN response and those members, such as Russia and China, who are wary of infringing on Sudanese sovereignty, which is augmented by their desire to protect their commercial (oil and arms) interests. As such, most of the Darfur resolutions passed by the Security Council have been watered down so that a consensus could be reached. Still, the Security Council was able to place limited, but targeted, sanctions on certain individuals and authorize an arms embargo and no-fly zone. The government of Sudan has resisted accepting UN peacekeepers, claiming that the deployment of a peacekeeping force would amount to a Western recolonization of Sudan, an argument that still resonates with many developing countries. As a compromise, Sudan accepted a small, underfunded, and poorly equipped AU mission. UNMIS was accepted later only because its principal task is to monitor the cease-fire created by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and to "support" AMIS. In 2006, the Security Council, in resolution 1706, in theory expanded the scope, military troop levels, and mandate of UNMIS. The intent was to deploy UN peacekeepers to Darfur; however, in a Security Council compromise, the resolution also called for Sudan's consent. Needless to say, the government of Sudan never gave its consent, and limited progress has been made to protect civilians in Darfur.

The UN's supporting role did pave the way for an unprecedented hybrid peacekeeping force between the UN and the African Union. With its July 2007 resolution 1769, the Security Council finally authorized the creation of a more robust peacekeeping force, armed with a mandate to protect civilians. This new peacekeeping operation, called United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) involved folding in AMIS forces and beefing up the entire mission to include twenty-six thousand people, most of whom were uniformed military and a few thousand police personnel. The resolution authorized the UN to assume peacekeeping duties in Darfur on December 31, 2007. The existence of UNAMID was seen by some as an early success for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is largely credited with gaining China's acquiescence to the mission.

Chinese engineers working for the United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur unload their equipment kits upon arrival in Nyala, Sudan. (UN Photo 190255/Stuart Price)

Unfortunately, UNAMID did not get off to a good start. Khartoum appointed ICC-indicted Ahmad Harun to coordinate and oversee the deployment of UNAMID. In late 2008, the force was less than half strength (with seven thousand soldiers coming from the beleaguered AU mission already in Darfur) and without the necessary logistical and communications support. In addition, Sudan also objected to non-Muslim and non-African contingents and kept changing the terms of the mission. UNAMID also came under fire from Sudanese government forces and by various rebel factions. Seven UNAMID peacekeepers were killed in a rebel ambush in July 2008. As a result, and after the ICC prosecutor sought the indictment against al-Bashir in August 2008, UNAMID convoys were attacked by government forces. In what many saw as a textbook case for the "responsibility to protect," the new norm seemed very much in question, since moral rhetoric and political reality were so distinct.

By 2012 UNAMID staffing issues had improved, and more than 17,000 soldiers were deployed. While violence has ebbed and flowed, UNAMID peacekeepers have been held hostage, and a total of 114 have lost their lives. Just as UNAMID is approaching full strength, the UN is considering reducing the number of peacekeepers. International attention has shifted back to the south, as Sudan itself and the UN's newest member, South Sudan, have resorted to force to try to resolve their border and economic issues. The two states exchanged military blows over contested oil fields, prompting the African Union to call on the states to withdraw troops from the disputed area and for the Security Council to issue a Chapter VII decision.

**CÔTE D'IVOIRE**

UN peace operations in Côte d'Ivoire date back to 2003, when the Security Council created the United Nations Mission in Côte d'Ivoire (MINUCI) to facilitate the implementation of the Linas-Marcoussi agreement (which ended the Ivoirian civil war) and to complement the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and French peacekeeping forces that had been deployed since 2002. After the agreement was concluded, violent demonstrations erupted in Côte d'Ivoire as the parties backtracked on their negotiated agreements. At the behest of France, the Security Council adopted resolution 1528, under Chapter VII, which established a peacekeeping force of about seven thousand troops—the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI). It became operational in 2004 and was authorized to use force to protect civilians. The council also authorized France to use all necessary means to support UNOCI.

Similar to the other UN missions discussed above, the UNOCI mandate is extensive, including monitoring the cease-fire, disarming militias, establishing law and order, and preparing for national elections. While UNOCI helped to stabilize parts of the country, forces loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo routinely clashed with French forces. After an eruption of intense hostilities, the UN helped broker the Ouagadougou Agreement in 2007 that called for a transitional government, free and fair elections, and a phased withdrawal of UNOCI and French forces after elections. In 2010, those elections were held and led to a presidential runoff between Gbagbo and the former prime minister, Alassane Ouattara. Preelection violence erupted as Gbagbo and Ouattara supporters clashed. As election results clearly indicated a victory for Ouattara, pro-Gbagbo forces took to the streets and killed civilians. Gbagbo refused to cede power and used military force to confine Ouattara in a hotel surrounded by his UNOCI bodyguards. The military used heavy artillery in the capital, causing mass casualties. In December 2010, Ouattara requested the ICC to investigate the postelection violence, and the ICC opened an official investigation.

Most of the international community recognized Ouattara as the duly elected president, and in 2011 the Security Council passed resolution 1975 calling on Gbagbo to step down. Even though Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been widely criticized for his ambivalence toward UN military deployments and his doubts regarding the UN's ability to manage and direct such operations, he did urge UNOCI and French forces to halt the military assault on the capital with backing of the Security Council. By April 2011, with the independent French forces playing a leading role, Gbagbo surrendered and was taken into custody. The ICC unsealed a secret arrest warrant for Gbagbo, and the Security Council cooperated with the ICC by lifting the travel ban against Gbagbo, which facilitated his transfer to The Hague. Today, Ouattara is the recognized president of the country, and Laurent Gbagbo sits in an ICC cell in The Hague facing criminal charges. The UNOCI mandate is reviewed annually, and troops will likely remain on the ground supporting ECOWAS, France, and the new Ivoirian government for the next several years.

The eventual ouster of incumbent Gbagbo followed robust military action by the 1,650-strong French Licorne force as the avant-garde of the UN peace operation, but only after a half year of dawdling. The contrast with what happened in Libya, described below, suggests why military humanitarianism is a necessary, if insufficient, component of the responsibility to protect. The unwillingness to apply armed force abetted Gbagbo's intransigence as the disaster in Côte d'Ivoire unfolded. Was it really necessary to sustain war crimes, crimes against humanity, a million refugees, and a ravaged economy? International military action could and should have taken place earlier.

**LIBYA**

The contagion of the Arab Spring hit Libya in January 2011 when civilians and opposition groups took to the streets to protest the authoritarian dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled Libya since his 1969 coup d'état. The Gaddafi regime, already notorious for its repressiveness, responded with tanks, heavy artillery, and snipers. Suspected dissents were rounded up and tortured. Opposition forces organized the National Transitional Council (NTC) and claimed to be the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The opposition soon took control of the strategic city of Benghazi, prompting Gaddafi to threaten an all-out assault and promising no mercy for rebels. His usual rhetoric was surpassed by a vile menace against those "cockroaches" and "rats" who opposed him (the same dehumanizing terms used in 1994 by Rwanda's genocidal government).

The international community responded on national, regional, and global levels. European and North American governments condemned the assaults on civilians, as did the African Union, the European Union, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Secretary-General Ban and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the excessive use of force, and by the end of February, Libya was squarely on the Security Council's agenda.

The mere consideration of military force for Libya undoubtedly made the initial decision on other Chapter VII measures easier. Security Council resolution 1970 contained a package of actions: an arms embargo, assets freeze, travel bans, and an inquiry by the International Criminal Court. These relatively robust stances, for the UN at least, were agreed unanimously in late February 2011, instead of being the most that might have been expected after months or years of protracted discussion. Predictably, Gaddafi responded with even greater violence, and regional organizations (the African Union and the Islamic Conference) condemned that response and called for all necessary means to protect civilians.

In March 2011, after considerable behind-the-scenes negotiation securing the abstentions of veto-holding Russia and China, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1973, which authorized the creation of a no-fly zone and all necessary measures to ensure compliance with the order to cease attacks on civilians. After forces loyal to Gaddafi violated the terms of resolution 1973, and only thirty-six hours after approval of the resolution, French, British, and U.S. fighter jets and cruise missiles began to hammer Libyan military positions.

Resolution 1973 noted that both NATO and the Arab League were ready to act in support of the resolution. NATO took the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone (fourteen NATO states and four Arab states participated in military operations) and eventually providing air cover for advancing opposition forces. NATO airstrikes continued for seven months, much to the dismay of those who initially supported international action, apparently thinking that Gaddafi would back off. But he was eventually captured and brutally killed by opposition forces in October 2011. During the seven months of NATO operations against Libyan forces, the NTC gained wider recognition as the voice of the Libyan people, and in September the UN General Assembly allowed the NTC to represent Libya in that body. The Security Council, through resolution 2009, created the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) to help with the transition. Unlike traditional peacekeeping, UNSMIL is a peacebuilding mission, run by the UN Department of Political Affairs, whose emphasis is on diplomatic and political support, creating a lighter UN footprint.

The Security Council set precedents for applying the responsibility to protect in justifying both resolution 1970 (which had unanimous support) and resolution 1973 (which no country voted against, although there were five abstentions). In addition, the Human Rights Council referred to R2P for the first time in resolution S-15/1, which led to the General Assembly's resolution 65/60 to suspend Libya—the first time that an elected member state had been suspended from such a position. Critically, some ten council decisions involved the R2P norm, and six of those took place in 2011 alone and a seventh in 2012.

While ultimately successful in removing Gaddafi from power, the use of force by NATO, with UN blessing, generated two broad criticisms. The first, and perhaps most important, was that NATO interpreted resolution 1973 to mean whatever it wanted and went well beyond what was apparently authorized. Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Germany abstained from resolution 1973; however, their representatives later expressed concerns that NATO had done more than enforce the no-fly zone or use deadly force to protect civilians. It had effectively become the air force of the opposition. NATO provided technical and intelligence assistance, and credible evidence suggests that Libyan opposition forces were supported by foreign special forces on the ground. The criticism from China and Russia was particularly pointed, raising concerns that the contortion of resolution 1973 from the responsibility to protect civilians to regime change would mean no future support for R2P initiatives. That fear was borne out by the Security Council's inability to take action in Syria.

The theatrical huffing and puffing was reminiscent of earlier high-voltage and high-decibel criticism that confronted the emergence of R2P ten years earlier. For many critics, those seeking to make "never again" more than a slogan were not necessarily on the side of the angels. The feigned surprise among the harshest critics is hard to take seriously. It makes sense to expect that international action will result in altered behavior away from abhorrent practices by a pariah government like Tripoli's—that is, causing the Gaddafi regime to halt abuse and negotiate an end to repression and violence. If no such change in behavior occurs, and in Libya it did not, a change in regime should not come as a surprise but as the logical outcome of deploying R2P military force.

The anguished hue and cry about R2P as a ruse for Western imperialism or a pretext for regime change seems quaint or disingenuous, but it remains resonant. While Libya may have helped reorient policy and decision makers toward realizing the centrality of the responsibility to protect for both normative and operational issues, it has also provoked doubts and stimulated anew thoughts of buyer's remorse. Such ruminations were clear in the proposal from Brazil at the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly in fall 2011. It argued that "the international community, as it exercises its responsibility to protect, must demonstrate a high level of responsibility while protecting." Brazil's support for human rights and unwillingness to be seen as unenthusiastic about R2P were clear, along with its unease about the use of military force for regime change.

Second, as has always been the case for subcontracted operations, the Security Council exercised no effective oversight of the use of force approved by it. Reports of civilian casualties and the unwillingness of NATO officials to investigate have drawn criticism. The Human Rights Council appointed the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, which issued a report in March 2012 that highlighted crimes by both the regime and the opposition forces; it indicated NATO's "demonstrable determination to avoid civilian casualties" but also "confirmed civilian casualties and found targets that showed no military utility." The UN Security Council seems reluctant to pressure the current Libyan government given fluidity of events on the ground. Gaddafi's son, Saif el Islam, for instance, is in Libyan custody although under ICC indictment. Libyan officials want to try him in Libya; in the view of the ICC, Libya lacks the domestic legal structures to insure a fair trial in accordance with international standards. Still, it is reluctant to press for his extradition. The United Nations simply lacks the capacity to carry out enforcement missions on its own but must take more responsibility for actions done in its name.

**SYRIA**

The popular uprisings of the Arab Spring found their way to Syria in March 2011, as mass protests against forty years of al-Assad family rule broke out across the country. The government of Bashar al-Assad, responding to what it said were "terrorist acts," arrested hundreds, and security forces fired on protesters. This initially slow-motion crisis took place simultaneously with the Libyan conflict. The controversies surrounding the Libyan operation spilled over into UN deliberations regarding Syria, with Russia and China unwilling to consider coercion. While the exact number of civilian casualties is impossible to calculate, the UN estimated in October 2011 that some three thousand had died, and by July 2012 that figure had probably reached seventeen thousand.

The situation in Syria was considerably more complicated, chancy, and confused than in Libya. Whereas the latter's relatively cohesive opposition movement was run from inside and spoke with one voice, Syria's was based outside as well as inside of the country, dispersed geographically, and divided politically. The more visible but fractious central opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council, was divided among the Muslim Brotherhood (itself split into more and less tolerant factions) and two other Islamist organizations, the National Action Group and the Syria National Movement. Inside the country, eclectic and rag-tag groups of fighters and unarmed protesters agreed on little except that Assad must go. They were unable to coalesce into a unified force, they had no common ideology, and they lacked a clear chain of command to coordinate operations, protests, or arms supplies.

Moreover, instead of virtually an entire country (other than those on his payroll) being mobilized against Gaddafi, a substantial number of Syrians supported the regime in Damascus and cities like Aleppo, or at least stood on the sidelines waiting to see who ended up on top. Unlike Libya, which has virtually a single ethnic group (Arabized Berbers, virtually all Sunni Muslims), Syria is strikingly diverse: while Arabs constitute 90 percent of the population, there are substantial numbers of Kurds, Armenians, and others. Sunni Muslims constitute some three-quarters of the population, but over 15 percent are Alawites, Druze, and other Muslim sects. In addition to the possible inter-Muslim divide, there is also the likely cleavage with 10 percent of the population who are Christian. In comparison to the largely desert-like Libya with a few isolated cities, Syria's numerous urban and suburban areas meant that surgical airstrikes were implausible and that significant civilian deaths from military action were guaranteed. Rather than Libya's small mercenary army, which quickly defected or departed, the Syrian armed forces remained well equipped, disciplined, and loyal.

Buoyed by its effective activism in Libya, the Arab League called upon Syria to cease attacks against civilians. In November 2011, the Arab League suspended Syria, called for an Arab League observer mission, and imposed economic sanctions. These steps did little to curb the violence, and in January 2012 the Arab League proposed a plan that called for al-Assad to transfer power and begin talks to form a transitional government. The Arab League also presented the plan to the UN Security Council and asked for its support.

The draft Security Council resolution supporting the plan was vetoed by Russia and China in February 2012. Those states thought the resolution sent an unbalanced message by emboldening opposition forces and supporting regime change. After the resounding double veto, Syrian violence escalated, this time involving not only government attack on civilians but insurgent attacks on government forces and personnel. After more than a year of al-Assad's murderous repression, the Arab League and the UN appointed a joint envoy, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, to negotiate a political solution. Annan's plan consisted of a cease-fire, humanitarian access, and the deployment of three hundred unarmed monitors to replace the handful of Arab League observers.

The litany of ineffective international actions for Syria demonstrates that a robust R2P response is never automatic. Public lamentations were audible as Syrian security forces deployed tanks, warships, and heavy weapons against civilians. Despite strong condemnatory statements of al-Assad's crimes against humanity, no decision with teeth was possible because China and Russia routinely threatened to veto or vetoed even the most watered-down proposals. In August 2012, Annan resigned, citing the intransigence of the al-Assad regime and conflict on the Security Council. In the face of increasing violence, the UN decided to end the monitoring mission when its mandate expired; however, it did appoint Lakhdar Brahimi to replace Annan to continue the negotiations to end the violence.

The responsibility to protect is a principle and not a tactic, and the principle remained intact in Syria even if international action was considerably slower and less fulsome than in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. Yet the transformation of international attitudes is remarkable if we compare the deafening silence that greeted the 1982 massacre by Hafez al-Assad of some forty thousand people in an artillery barrage of Hama with the steady stream of hostile condemnations of his son's machinations from a host of actors: the UN's Joint Office on the Prevention of Genocide and R2P called for a halt to crimes against humanity; the Human Rights Council condemned the crimes by a crushing vote and published a report detailing extensive crimes; the United States, the European Union, and other states imposed sanctions; the Arab League condemned the actions, formulated a peace plan, and sent human rights monitors; and the UN General Assembly initially condemned the violence and supported the peace plan with a two-thirds majority and later even more overwhelmingly (only 12 of 193 states voted against it) condemned Bashar al-Assad's unbridled crackdown on his population and specifically called for his resignation.

**CONCLUSION: WHITHER THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT?**

Dilemmas remain as Libya—a country with no history of democratic rule and plenty of evidence of ethnic feuds and bitterness—hurtles headlong into a new era. Côte d'Ivoire appears to be turning a page: it is returning displaced persons, soothing memories of massacres, and alleviating human suffering. Syria continues to hemorrhage. Let us be clear: R2P is not a panacea. Gary Bass's _Freedom's_ _Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention_ concludes, "We are all atrocitarians now—but so far only in words, and not yet in deeds."

In the abstract, R2P clearly suggests that state sovereignty is not absolute but contingent on responsible governmental behavior. If a government egregiously violates international law, and in particular if it allows atrocities or is the perpetrator of abuse, its claims to sovereignty will be reviewed and maybe restricted or even overturned by the Security Council. A standard of consistent implementation is a fool's errand. In terms of applying the emerging norm, Syria is not Libya, and Sri Lanka is not Côte d'Ivoire. Political interest and will vary from case to case. Coming to the rescue may not be popular when blood and treasure are involved. Military intervention even for human protection purposes is not a favored option when a quagmire looms. Particularly difficult to sustain for democratic states is a foreign venture costing the lives of their military personnel, but when no traditional self-interests seem at stake. That has not changed since Somalia in the early 1990s.

The UN's track record in the early part of the twenty-first century is disputed. On the one hand, the organization has fielded significant security operations in some of the world's most troubled hot spots and saved and improved lives. Often this has been done with the "coerced consent" of the parties involved—for instance, Serbia in Kosovo and Indonesia in East Timor. At the end of 2012, the United Nations was engaged in seventeen peacekeeping operations and twelve additional peace-related field missions. When already authorized missions have been fully deployed, well over 110,000 uniformed personnel will be in the field from some 120 troop-contributing member states.

On the other hand, important states such as China and Russia, along with some countries in the Global South, have created a backlash against the responsibility to protect. Despite the norm's approval of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the _World Summit Outcome Document_ , evidence of buyer's remorse continues to surface in New York, as some of the usual suspects who are uneasy with any incursions into human rights are up in arms and trying to argue that the emerging norm is no longer emerging and should not be described as having emerged. At the same time, there is ample cultural evidence across the Global South to sustain robust and justifiable humanitarian action, and support by countries in the region for outside intervention in Libya was noteworthy and perhaps a harbinger, as was fulsome rhetorical support by regional organizations for action in Côte d'Ivoire and Syria.

Civil society's norm entrepreneurs can make a difference, which requires R2P supporters to advocate for an alternative vision that is intellectually and doctrinally coherent and clearly expressed. The long-term goal is protecting the essence of the R2P norm such that it triggers effective action to save lives from mass atrocities. The more immediate goal is ensuring that R2P supporters influence the purpose and tenor of any debate on R2P in the General Assembly so that the 2005 agreement is not weakened. Interactive dialogues by the General Assembly each summer beginning in 2009 have diminished the chorus of spoilers. In spite of the dispute over the intended results in Libya, the conversations in 2011 and 2012 were less heated than in the previous summers, with fewer of the usual suspects trying to torpedo the consensus. While the usual suspects sought to raise the usual concerns, there was no normative rollback; the agreement from the World Summit remained intact.

The R2P notion is complex and multifaceted. In discussing the need for conceptual clarity, we saw that some observers hope the responsibility to protect can be a springboard for all international responses to prevent and resolve armed conflicts, while others see it as a framework for international efforts to protect civilians, and still others as a framework for military intervention. Whatever else, R2P is fundamentally about overriding sovereignty when mass atrocities occur, and so the concept will always be contested. Diplomatic efforts to keep all of the countries happy all of the time is not a sensible expectation.

It is important to place these developments within a historical context. With the possible exception of the prevention of genocide after World War II, no idea has moved faster or further in the international normative arena than the responsibility to protect. It was not so long ago—in 1995—that the Commission on Global Governance proposed amending the UN Charter to explicitly permit Chapter VII military action with a humanitarian justification. The recommendation was moot, however, as we have seen in the previous chapter and this one. Since the interventions of the 1990s the Security Council has clearly recognized that massive suffering constitutes a sufficient threat to international peace and security to justify forceful action. José Alvarez observes the acceleration in the usual pace for normative development: "Traditional descriptions of the requisites of custom—the need for the passage of a considerable period of time and the accumulation of evidence of the diplomatic practices between sets of states reacting to one another's acts—appear increasingly passé."

What is perhaps most important is the reconceptualization of state sovereignty—instead of an absolute barrier to outside action, it is seen as the duty to protect human rights and respect human security when the politics are right. After centuries of more or less passive and mindless acceptance of the proposition that state sovereignty was a license to kill and repress, it is now clear that sovereigns have the duty to govern responsibly. We are at the dawn of a new normative era, but in the dusk of the most bullish days of humanitarian intervention.

As in other arenas, actions speak louder than words. And in this latter regard, the international response to Burmese policy in the wake of a devastating cyclone in May 2008, for example, can only give pause. That military government was clearly insensitive to the humanitarian needs of many of its coastal citizens, who were further impoverished and sometimes displaced by natural disaster, after tens of thousands had been killed. Yet important outsiders like China were not much interested in compelling the government to act on behalf of those in need, so the government's sluggish response continued for some time. This insensitivity involved the refusal to give permission to U.S. Navy vessels and others waiting offshore for permission to provide assistance. The ships eventually sailed away for lack of sovereign consent, although the predicted mass starvation and disease did not transpire.

In short, we can say that the R2P norm has moved quickly but that the concept is young. Edward Luck provides a note of caution: "Like most infants, R2P will need to walk before it can run." We see that R2P is an idea, and we should remind ourselves that ideas matter, for good and for ill. Political theorist Daniel Philpott's study of revolutions in sovereignty demonstrates that they are driven primarily by the power of ideas, and we are in the midst of a revolution in which state sovereignty is becoming more contingent on upholding basic human rights values. Gareth Evans encourages us: "And for all the difficulties of acceptance and application that lie ahead, there are—I have come optimistically, but firmly, to believe—not many ideas that have the potential to matter more for good, not only in theory but in practice, than that of the responsibility to protect."

**NOTES**

. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, _The Responsibility to Protect: Report_ (Ottawa: ICISS, 2001). See also Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, _The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, and Background_ (Ottawa: ICISS, 2001). For interpretations by some of the major participants, see Gareth Evans, _The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2008); Thomas G. Weiss, _Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); and Ramesh Thakur, _The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

. Thomas G. Weiss, "The Politics of Humanitarian Ideas," _Security Dialogue_ 31, no. 1 (2000): 11–23.

. Mohammed Ayoob, "Humanitarian Intervention and International Society," _Global Governance_ 7, no. 3 (2001): 225–230; and Robert Jackson, _The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

. Christine Bourloyannis, "The Security Council of the United Nations and the Implementation of International Humanitarian Law," _Denver Journal of International Law and Policy_ 20, no. 3 (1993): 43.

. T. A. van Baarda, "The Involvement of the Security Council in Maintaining International Law," _Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights_ 12, no. 1 (1994): 140.

. Kofi A. Annan, _The Question of Intervention: Statements by the Secretary-General_ (New York: United Nations, 1999), 39.

. See James Pattison, _Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

. Inter-Agency Standing Committee, "Working Paper on the Definition of Complex Emergency" (December 1994), in _Humanitarian Report 1997_ , by the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations (New York: United Nations, 1997), 9.

. John Gerard Ruggie, _The United Nations and the Collective Use of Force: Whither? or Whether?_ (New York: United Nations Association of the USA, 1996), 1. See also Niels Blokker and Nico Schrijver, eds., _The Security Council and the Use of Force: A Need for Change?_ (Leiden, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005).

. Michael Mandelbaum, "The Reluctance to Intervene," _Foreign Policy_ 95 (Summer 1994): 11.

. Giandomenico Picco, "The U.N. and the Use of Force," _Foreign Affairs_ 73, no. 5 (1994): 15. See also his _Man Without a Gun_ (New York: Random House, 1999).

. Fen Osler Hampson, _Nurturing Peace: Why Peace Settlements Succeed or Fail_ (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 226. See also William I. Zartman, _Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995).

. James Dobbins, _The UN's Role in Nation-Building: From Congo to Iraq_ (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2005).

. U Thant, _View from the UN_ (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 32.

. Ian Johnstone, ed., _Global Peace Operations 2007_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 22–232.

. Kofi A. Annan, _Report on the Fall of Srebrenica_ , document A54/549, November 15, 1999; _Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda_ , document S/1999/1257, December 15, 1999; and _Report of the Panel of Experts on Violations of Security Council Sanctions Against UNITA_ , document S/2000/203, March 10, 2000.

. Michael Pugh and W. Pal Singh Sidhu, eds., _The United Nations and Regional Security: Europe and Beyond_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003); Thomas G. Weiss, ed., _Beyond UN Subcontracting: Task-Sharing with Regional Security Arrangements and Service-Providing NGOs_ (London: Macmillan, 1998); and William B. Tow, _Subregional Security Cooperation in the Third World_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990).

. Independent Commission on Kosovo, _Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. Kofi A. Annan, "Secretary-General's Speech to the 54th Session of the General Assembly," September 20, 1999.

. UN Press Release SG/SM/6878, January 28, 1999.

. Adam Roberts, "NATO's 'Humanitarian War' in Kosovo," _Survival_ 41, no. 3 (1999): 102–123.

. See Human Rights Watch, "Kosovo: Failure of NATO, U.N. to Protect Minorities," July 27, 2004, www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/27/serbia9136.htm.

. _Accordance with International Law of Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion_ , http//www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/141/15987.pdf. For discussions of this opinion, see "Recent International Advisory Opinion," _Harvard Law Review_ 124 (2011): 1098–1105; Ralph Wilde, "Accordance with International Law of Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion," _American Journal of International Law_ 105, no. 2 (2011): 301–307; Marc Weller, "Modesty Can Be a Virtue: Judicial Economy in the ICJ Kosovo Opinion?" _Leiden Journal of International Law_ 24, no. 1 (2011): 127–147.

. Matthew Brunwasser, "Kosovo and Serbia Reach Key Deal," _New York Times_ , February 24, 2012.

. Michael G. Smith with Moreen Dee, _Peacekeeping in East Timor: The Path to Independence_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003).

. The Report of United Nations Independent Special Commission of Inquiry for Timor-Leste, document S/2006/628, October 2, 2006, www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/COITimorLeste.pdf.

. José Ramos-Horta, "Elections to Be Proud Of," _New York Times_ , April 18, 2012.

. Associated Press, "UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Says East Timor Ready for International Peacekeepers to Leave," _Washington Post_ , August 15, 2012.

. Funmi Olonisakin, _Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The Story of UNAMSIL_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2008).

. See "Sierra Leone Profile," BBC News, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1065898.stm>.

. David Curran and Tom Woodhouse, "Cosmopolitan Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: What Can Africa Contribute?" _International Affairs_ 83, no. 6 (2007): 1055–1070.

. Thierry Tardy, "The UN and the Use of Force: A Marriage Against Nature," _Security Dialogue_ 38 (March 2007): 49–70.

. Sandra Whitworth, _Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis_ (Boulder: Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2004).

. General Assembly document A/61/901 and Security Council document S/2007/269, www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/peace_b/pdfs/sil_070514_missionrep.pdf.

. Peacebuilding Commission, _Review of the Outcome of the High-Level Special Session of the Peacebuilding Commission on Sierra Leone_ , PBC/4/SLE/3, October 1, 2010.

. Statement by Ambassador Guillermo E. Rishchynski, Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations to the Security Council on the Situation in Sierra Leone, March 22, 2012.

. Colum Lynch, "France Declines to Contribute Major Force for UN Mission," _Washington Post_ , August 16, 2006.

. UNIFIL Facts and Figures, www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/facts.html.

. David Axe, "UN Adds Bulk to Peacekeeping Forces in Lebanon," _Aviation Week_ , February 7, 2007.

. Andrzej Sitkowski, _UN Peacekeeping: Myth and Reality_ (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2006).

. Dave Benjamin, "Sudan and the Resort to Regional Arrangements: Putting Effect to the Responsibility to Protect?" _International Journal of Human Rights_ 14 (April 2010): 233–245.

. Scott Strauss, "Darfur and the Genocide Debate," _Foreign Affairs_ 84 (2005): 123–133; Noelle Quenivet, "The Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: The Question of Genocide," _Human Rights Review_ 7 (July 2006): 38–68; and Gerard Prunier, _Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007).

. Corrina Heyder, "The U.N. Security Council's Referral of the Crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court in Light of U.S. Opposition to the Court," _Berkeley Journal of International Law_ 24 (2006): 650–671.

. Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, "The UN Security Council and the Question of Humanitarian Intervention in Darfur," _Journal of Military Ethics_ 5 (June 2006): 144–160.

. "The Rewards of Beavering Away," _Economist_ , January 3, 2008.

. Richard Gowan, "Floating Down the River of History: Ban Ki-moon and Peacekeeping, 2007–2011," _Global Governance_ 17 (2011): 400.

. Hemi Mistry and Deborah Ruiz Verduzco, "The UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court: International Law Meeting Summary, with Parliamentarians for Global Action," Chatham House, March 12, 2012, <http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/International%20Law/160312summary.pdf>.

. For a timeline of events, see "Libya Profile," BBC News, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13755445>.

. Mehrdad Payandeh, "The United Nations, Military Intervention and Regime Change in Libya," _Virginia Journal of International Law_ 52 (2012): 372.

. UN Press Release, GA/11137, September 16, 2011.

. Alex Bellamy and Paul D. Williams, "The New Politics of Protection: Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the Responsibility to Protect," _International Affairs_ 4 (2011): 845.

. The use of special forces in Libya has been reported by the _Mirror_ , the _Guardian, Al Jazeera_ , CNN, and Fox News.

. Richard Norton Taylor, "Libya Mission 'Has Made UN Missions to Protect Civilians Unlikely,'" _Guardian_ (London), March 18, 2012, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/19/libya-un-missions-civilians>.

. "Letter Dated 9 November 2011 from the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General," UN document A/66/551-S/2011/701, 1.

. Amnesty International Report, March 19, 2012; C. J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, "In Strikes on Libya by NATO, an Unspoken Civilian Toll," _New York Times_ , December 17, 2011.

. _Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya_ , Human Rights Council document A/HRC/19/68, March 2, 2012, 1.

. "Security Council Fails to Adopt Draft Resolution on Syria as Russian Federation, China Veto Text Supporting Arab League's Proposed Peace Plan," UN Security Council, SC/10536, February 4, 2012, <http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sc10536.doc.htm>.

. The argument and conclusion draw on Thomas G. Weiss, "Humanitarian Intervention and US Policy," in _Great Decisions_ , ed. Karen Rohan (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 2012).

. Gary J. Bass, _Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention_ (New York: Knopf, 2008), 382.

. John Kabia, _Humanitarian Intervention and Conflict Resolution in West Africa: From ECOMOG to ECOMIL_ (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009).

. Thomas G. Weiss, "Reinserting 'Never' into 'Never Again': Political Innovations and the Responsibility to Protect," in _Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants_ , ed. David Hollenbach (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2010), 207–228.

. Rama Mani and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _The Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. Report from Global Centre for R2P, <http://globalr2p.org/advocacy>.

. Commission on Global Governance, _Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 90.

. José E. Alvarez, _International Organizations as Law-Makers_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 591.

. Edward C. Luck, "The United Nations and the Responsibility to Protect," _Policy Analysis Brief_ (Muscatine, Ia.: Stanley Foundation, 2008), 8.

. Daniel Philpott, _Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

. Evans, _The Responsibility to Protect_ , 7.
* * *

CHAPTER 5

* * *

_The Challenges of the Twenty-First Century_

IN LOOKING AHEAD to future security operations, we retain our focus on the political dynamics that have propelled UN activities and will continue to do so. The political landscape, which reappears in the next two parts of this volume, helps us situate whether and how the world organization can respond to contemporary security challenges that confront both member states and the Secretariat, or what we called at the outset "the two United Nations." We begin with a lengthy look at the events of September 11, 2001, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and the war against Iraq—crucial issues for the world organization as well as for the United States. We then explore the challenges and opportunities for the UN as it confronts evolving security threats in an uncertain political and financial environment.

**AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, WHAT'S NEW?**

A few days after the tragic attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, which killed some three thousand civilians, Secretary-General Kofi Annan outlined the relevance of the topic: "Terrorism is a global menace. It calls for a united, global response. To defeat it, all nations must take counsel together, and act in unison. That is why we have the United Nations." In addition to drawing the world's attention to the issue of terrorism, the events of September 11 brought into sharper focus the post–Cold War world's problem of disarmament, proliferation, and regulation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The possibility that terrorist groups could get their hands on WMDs emerged as yet another critical security concern on the world body's agenda. Moreover, the possibility of rogue regimes' allying themselves with terrorist groups—exemplified by Washington's tenuous and ultimately erroneous linkage of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda—renders the issue of WMDs even more urgent. The security threats posed by terrorism and WMDs appear prominently on the radar screens of UN member states.

_Terrorism_

Until the 1990s terrorism was dealt with almost entirely by the General Assembly, which approached the issue as a general problem of international law. The twelve existing UN conventions related to terrorism identify particular forms of outlawed action but contain no definition of terrorism per se. The lack of consensus among member states about the definition exposes a rift in the world organization. Defining terrorism reflects many concerns of states, such as their wanting to protect the option of small-scale and supposedly nonstate violent resistance to foreign occupation, like the French resistance against Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Other states want to protect the option of using small-scale and supposedly nonstate force to harass what they see as unjust domination, as the American colonists did early on against their British masters. Today, many developing countries and nonstate actors (NSAs) justify armed violence in the name of fighting for national liberation or resisting foreign occupation—hence the oft-used phrase "one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." Complicating matters further is the extent to which "terrorism" can be applied to state behavior, through a state's direct uses of violence or its direct or indirect support of NSAs. Some uses of force by Israel and the United States resulting in civilian casualties are mentioned in the same breath as suicide bombers. State military and financial aid for opposition groups in other states (e.g., Libya and Syria) that then set off car bombs in urban areas could constitute state-supported terrorism.

The UN's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change confronted head-on these traditional stumbling blocks: "Attacks that specifically target innocent civilians and non-combatants must be condemned clearly and unequivocally by all." The secretary-general added, "The proposal has clear moral force." While the final text from the 2005 World Summit lacked a clear definition of terrorism, for the first time in UN history the heads of state and government issued an unqualified condemnation. They agreed to "strongly condemn terrorism in all forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes." However, the final text also eliminated earlier and clearer language that making targets of civilians could not be justified—even for movements resisting occupation. On balance, the summit added momentum to the secretary-general's evolving counterterrorism strategy. The summit's clear condemnation of terrorism was a step forward, fully consistent with the laws of war. It has ethical content, contains the basis for a future treaty that would reinforce existing humanitarian law, and places the UN near the center of the fight against terrorism—at least in terms of important norms, if not operational decisions.

Several points have become clear over the years. Attacks on civilians who take no active part in hostilities are prohibited by international humanitarian law, specifically the 1949 Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols of 1977. Various other treaties prohibit attacks on diplomats and the interference with civilian aircraft. Thus, the international community of states can reach and has reached agreement on prohibited targets of violence, thereby bypassing disagreement on an all-encompassing definition of terrorism.

The Security Council became more focused on terrorism primarily at the instigation of the United States and in response to events: several aerial incidents in the late 1980s, including the downing of a Pan American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland; the attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995; and the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. In each case, the Security Council responded by imposing sanctions against states like Libya, Sudan, and Afghanistan for refusing to extradite suspects. Sanctions contributed to curbing state terrorism by Libya and Sudan but were ineffective in altering the behavior of the Taliban and Al Qaeda because such groups "situate themselves outside of the international system and reject its institutions and norms."

The Security Council's approach changed in the aftermath of September 11. The council acted immediately and endorsed measures ranging from approval of the use of force in self-defense to requiring member states to undertake wide-ranging and comprehensive measures against terrorism. Previously an issue drawing inconsistent attention from the General Assembly and the Security Council, terrorism quickly became a persistent and systematic focus at the UN.

The council's responses are noteworthy. Resolution 1368, passed the day after the attacks on U.S. territory, recognized "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense." This was the first time that the right to self-defense was formally recognized as a legitimate response to nonstate violence. A few weeks later, the Security Council passed a comprehensive resolution outlining a series of wide-ranging measures to be undertaken by states to "prevent and suppress" terrorist acts. Resolution 1373 detailed the requirements for member states, including changes to national legislation. The resolution established the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) to monitor member-state implementation of these measures. Once again the council had shrunk the domain of purely domestic affairs, in that national legislation involving tax laws for contributions to charities was subjected to international monitoring and mandates. And the Security Council went further in resolution 1540, unsettling some states as well as international lawyers by using Chapter VII to call on states to enact national legislation intended to prohibit nonstate actors from acquiring WMDs. Resolution 1540 also mandated that states detail to the Security Council, through a committee, their legislative and administrative efforts to curb the proliferation of WMDs.

The General Assembly's work in developing international conventions on terrorism, while subsequently overshadowed by the Security Council, remains important. The most significant advantage of the assembly is that it is an inclusive forum involving all member states. It is also the place where decisions about allocating organizational resources are made, thus giving it a direct impact on determining the administrative capability of the world organization to deal with terrorism. Still, this organizational capacity is greatly affected by the political will of member states. Thus, codification of emerging norms can perhaps better take place in a forum that can take a comprehensive, politically informed, and longer-term view.

President George W. Bush and Secretary-General Kofi Annan at Ground Zero in New York City. (UN/DPI photo)

The secretary-general and the Secretariat also play roles. The world organization's head has the ability to take a less reactive, more comprehensive approach. After September 11, Kofi Annan established a Policy Working Group on terrorism to examine how the UN should deal with the phenomenon. In September 2006, the General Assembly agreed to the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which enables the UN to take a more coordinated approach to combating terrorism by building state capacity. Most of the heavy lifting in implementing the strategy is done by the Counter-Terrorism Task Force (CTTF), which is chaired by the Office of the Secretary-General. Ban Ki-moon has made combating terrorism a priority for his office and, in February 2007, launched an online handbook on counterterrorism to help states, agencies, and regional organizations coordinate operations. By 2012, eight working groups had been established to comprehensively deal with the multiple dimensions of counterterrorism: Preventing and Resolving Conflict, Supporting and Highlighting Victims of Terrorism, Countering the Use of the Internet for Terrorism, Preventing and Responding to WMD Terrorism, Tackling Financing of Terrorism, Strengthening the Protection of Vulnerable Targets, Protecting Human Rights While Countering Terrorism, and Border Management. These groups were highlighted by Secretary General Ban in his remarks to the Symposium on International Counter-Terrorism Cooperation. The CTTF has a comprehensive strategy to combat the appeal of terrorist acts and to undermine the perceived legitimacy of such acts among different constituencies.

_WMDs and Nonproliferation_

The UN's efforts to grapple with the threats to world peace posed by weapons of mass destruction extend back to the founding of the world body. Although absent from the Charter, eliminating atomic weapons arsenals and other weapons adaptable to mass destruction was the centerpiece of the General Assembly's first resolution, passed in 1946. The long-standing efforts of the "two UNs" to regulate WMDs have met varying degrees of success in at least three ways.

First, the UN is a forum for negotiations among states, for example, through the General Assembly and its First Committee, and the Conference on Disarmament, which is not formally part of the UN but reports to the assembly and is staffed by UN officials. Among the major treaties concluded under UN auspices is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The only countries that have not joined the regime are India, Pakistan, and Israel, and in 2003 North Korea withdrew. The NPT rests on an asymmetric agreement between nuclear and nonnuclear states, committing the latter to forgo the acquisition of nuclear weapons in exchange for the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes (energy, medical, etc.). This technology is provided largely by the former, and the use of the nuclear technology is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Another dimension of this asymmetric bargain is that the nuclear-armed states are to reduce their stockpiles with the eventual goal of total disarmament. September 11 generated increased emphasis, especially by the United States, on nonproliferation. In particular, it shined a spotlight on the possibility of "rogue regimes" acquiring nuclear and other WMD capabilities. In addition to the NPT, other major treaties include the 1972 Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the General Assembly adopted in 1996 but which has not yet entered into force.

Second, the UN also has a limited role in directly implementing arms control and disarmament. It collaborates with the IAEA, which conducts inspections to verify that nuclear materials and activities are not used for military purposes. The UN also works with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

Third, the UN has also engaged in coercive disarmament, particularly with regard to Iraq. After the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the Security Council passed resolution 687, which required Iraq to declare its WMD programs and facilities; imposed sanctions; and established intrusive weapons inspections bodies, such as the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). UNSCOM uncovered nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and oversaw the destruction of Iraq's chemical weapons and facilities as well as the country's biological weapons industry. UNSCOM's activities, however, were compromised by not only Iraqi deception but also its association with the CIA, which led the Hussein regime to expel the commission and ban IAEA inspections in 1998. This brought to the forefront the issue of the autonomy of multilateral monitoring organizations that lack their own intelligence-gathering capacity. Subsequently the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was established and began a round of renewed weapons inspections in 2002, after a three-year hiatus.

By the end of 2002, the U.S. administration of George W. Bush was determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein on the pretense that his regime had violated previous council resolutions and was engaging in the development of WMDs, which could potentially fall into the hands of terrorist groups, particularly Al Qaeda. Britain sided with the United States, but France, Russia, and China staunchly opposed the use of force to disarm Iraq without the passage of more time and without an additional resolution from the Security Council. A fact that escaped notice was Saddam Hussein's reluctance to declare that he had few WMDs for fear of exposing his weakness.

The debate at the UN about how to deal appropriately with Iraq reflects the nature of power and how it manifests in the world organization—and world politics more generally. In a world in which a nonstate terrorist actor attacked the sole superpower, the struggle over resolutions in the Security Council and the publication of a new doctrine of a very broad anticipatory self-defense, or preventive, war (incorrectly, in international legal terms, dubbed "preemption" by U.S. officials), are relevant to assessing the role of international law and the UN. Also relevant is the United States' and Great Britain's taking forceful action without UN authorization and the U.S. declaration of a goal of "regime change" in Iraq. The interplay of law and politics is part and parcel of understanding the UN's role in world affairs.

The U.S. invocation of self-defense against terrorism in response to September 11, and its military campaign in Afghanistan to dislodge a government that was intertwined with a terrorist network, was approved by the council. The U.S. focus on WMDs in Iraq that might be put at the disposal of terrorists was placed within the framework of previous UN resolutions, thus indicating that traditional concerns about state security are by no means incompatible with international law and organization. Up to this point, basic U.S. foreign policy was largely consistent with and supportive of international law and the UN. Moreover, President George W. Bush was persuaded by British prime minister Tony Blair and U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell to return to the council in the fall of 2002, even after the United States had started its military buildup in the Persian Gulf during the summer. These actions indicate that the United Nations still matters and that obtaining international legitimacy through UN endorsement still counts for something, even to the United States, whose government under the George W. Bush administration believed in doctrinaire unilateralism.

The rest of the story about Iraq and the UN in 2003 demonstrates that a fundamental point had not changed since 1945 and the ratification of the UN Charter, namely that the members of the Security Council need to be in agreement for it to be effective, diplomatically and militarily. The council was in agreement up to a point, demanding Iraqi compliance with previous disarmament resolutions and stating in resolution 1441 that serious consequences would follow upon further noncompliance. The United States tried to get the council to state that the time for diplomacy had ended and that military responses were in order. But Washington was unable to muster the evidence needed to get nine votes for its draft resolution (cosponsored by Britain and Spain), much less counter an expected veto of its proposal by France, Russia, and China. In fact, except for the United States, Britain, Spain, and perhaps Bulgaria, votes for war were hard to come by in the council. This was a remarkable development: in the fall of 2001 the council had endorsed U.S. military strikes on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which had supported the Al Qaeda network, and in fall 2002, the council had unanimously called for Iraq's rapid disarmament or it would face "serious consequences."

States like France and Russia did not believe, for good reasons, that the United States had demonstrated a substantial link between Iraq and the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Bush administration's argument that in the future Saddam Hussein might cooperate with terrorists in some type of attack on the United States seemed too amorphous for many states to justify an invasion of Iraq. These dissenting states were troubled by this new Bush doctrine, namely a broad notion of preventive war. This hesitation is understandable. The Bush administration argued that it alone would determine what government, because of its direct actions or through state-supported terrorism, would be targeted by the extremely powerful U.S. military. This was too much for council members like Chile and Mexico, even though their governments were basically friendly toward the United States.

The U.S. stance was controversial and departed from the notion in international law of a limited preemption doctrine that might be appropriate when threats were immediate and overwhelming, leaving no time for further diplomacy. This approach, articulated in the nineteenth century by U.S. secretary of state Daniel Webster in the _Caroline_ affair—when Canadian loyalists to the British crown destroyed a U.S. ship that was being used to supply arms and other provisions to Canadian rebels—was replaced by the Bush administration with the much broader standard of a possible and distant threat. This latter standard was not in line with customary international legal norms and not a doctrine that many states wanted the council to endorse in the Iraqi case. These critical states saw the Bush doctrine of so-called preemption as a large Pandora's box. Would, for example, Russia have the unilateral right to use force in a neighboring state with no role for other states or the UN?

There were other complications. Based on the earlier efforts at monitoring in Iraq, the council had created a new weapons inspection regime centered on UNMOVIC for chemical and biological weapons and on the IAEA for nuclear weapons. These two UN agencies, one ad hoc and one permanent, had elicited some cooperation from Saddam Hussein—in the context of a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf that eventually reached about three hundred thousand soldiers. Many states wanted to avoid war by giving these UN inspection teams more time to work, whereas the United States and its allies, especially Britain, felt that Iraq could always evade the more important inspection efforts. Moreover, Washington was concerned that protracted diplomacy would undercut its military pressure. More than one state also thought the United States had always been more interested in removing the Saddam Hussein regime than in making serious arguments about homeland security. Indeed, both Clinton and Bush administration officials had talked of removing that regime even before the 9/11 attacks.

Many subplots were at work to fracture the Security Council over what to do about Iraq. Some observers thought that France was again deliberately taking anti-American positions and demonstrating a persistent effort to play the role of global power despite its limited economic and military capacity. Some thought that Russia was only too happy to make difficulties for a United States that had seemed disdainful of a major Russian role after the Cold War. Moreover, Russia had substantial economic interests both in Iraq and in a continued high price for oil, one of Russia's chief exports. Both France and Russia had businesses that benefited extensively from the $64 billion Oil-for-Food Programme. Germany, then a nonpermanent member, opposed U.S. policy in order to appeal to domestic public opinion and win elections—at least in the view of many commentators. Some thought that the Bush administration was never interested in the type of multilateral diplomacy that constrained decision making in Washington and that the Bush team simply wanted to use its power superiority to take out a "rogue state" and part of "the axis of evil"—even absent any substantial connection to Al Qaeda or any other group interested in attacks on the United States. After all, most high officials in the Bush administration thought that the United States had lost the war in Southeast Asia (1954–1975) because of a failure to apply its hard power in a determined way. The "Vulcans" or "hawks" or members of the "war cabinet" in the Bush administration were determined not to repeat what they saw as the central mistake of previous administrations.

As on the question of Kosovo in 1999, the Security Council could not present a united front regarding Iraq in 2003. Unlike Kosovo, the United States could not fall back on the collective approval of the liberal democratic states making up NATO, because NATO was also divided over Iraq, as were the members of the European Union. The United States could only seek legitimization through a "coalition of the willing," albeit a less impressive one than had been mobilized in 1991 (to push Iraq from Kuwait) and 1999. The question of the collective authorization of force is a perennial one in international relations, especially when an armed attack against a state has not occurred.

The Iraq case casts a long shadow as the UN deals with similar threats. The dangers posed by the spread of WMDs remain, and the UN and its most powerful member states have had to confront the international instability associated with the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. North Korea has been especially problematic as it tries to negotiate its six decades of antagonistic relations with the United States. North Korea has acquired crude nuclear weapons, and there is considerable evidence of North Korea's deliberate nuclear weapons proliferation. As such, the UN has lurched from one North Korean crisis to another. The Security Council, as in the past, remains divided regarding the strength of the measures, in spite of North Korean provocations. In 2006, North Korea tested a series of long-range missiles in violation of past agreements. The Western powers sought a strong Chapter VII decision ordering North Korea to cease developing and testing missiles and to prevent other member states from assisting them. China and Russia insisted on a watered-down version that excluded any reference to Chapter VII, which thus meant excluding any possibility of coercive measures to give teeth to the resolution. The resulting decision in resolution 1695 was weak but nonetheless the first Security Council decision about North Korea since 1993. It condemned the missile tests and demanded the North Korea return to the Six Party Talks (the negotiating forum consisting of China, the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea.)

Three months later, North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon. Western reaction was furious, but again China was reluctant to punish its ally and insisted that it would veto any council resolution that allowed the possibility of the use of force. When resolution 1718 was eventually passed, it invoked Chapter VII, but only Article 41 permitting for sanctions, not Article 42 allowing military force. Resolution 1718 represents incremental progress in dealing with the development of WMDs and the ability to deliver such weapons. It also created a panel of experts to assist states in enforcing sanctions. But sanctions did little to deter North Korea's rogue behavior.

In September 2007 an Israeli raid in the Syrian desert destroyed a nuclear reactor that had been supplied by North Korea. The international reaction was surprisingly tight-lipped, and even Syria did not ask for a Security Council meeting. The IAEA launched an investigation into the site and after being stymied by Syria for several years, in 2011 referred Syria to the Security Council for noncompliance of its international obligations under the NPT. While some members of the council wanted sanctions, Russia and China were reluctant to impose them over a site and situation that no longer existed.

In 2009, in what many observers saw as clear violation of 1718, North Korea launched a ballistic missile. The Security Council was unable to find the necessary consensus to respond. North Korea then tested another nuclear weapon, which resulted in Security Council resolution 1874, which enhanced sanctions and also placed an arms embargo against North Korea. The travel ban and financial restrictions were strengthened. With the seizures of ships and cargo, along with targeted sanctions against key North Korean officials and companies, the international community was able to step up the pressure.

The next major crisis centered on a series of events that started with the sinking of a South Korean warship, the _Cheonan_ , in March 2010 in disputed waters centering on the maritime borders between the two Koreas. Several days later, North Korea announced that it was starting construction on a nuclear reactor, thereby once again derailing the Six Party Talks. The illness of Kim Jong Il also raised concerns about leadership succession and control of the North's nuclear arsenal. In 2010, Kim Jong Un, the youngest son of Kim Jong Il, was elevated to key positions within the North Korean hierarchy, fueling speculation that Kim Jong Il was terminally ill. Kim Jong Un assumed leadership in 2011 after the death of his father and in 2012 decided to launch a satellite, which was seen as a ruse to demonstrate North Korea's ballistic missile capability. The launch failed, but the Security Council condemned it and expanded and tightened sanctions under previous resolutions. The council remains concerned about future developments in the North Korean nuclear arsenal, but China and Russia remain obstacles for tougher measures. Whether such measures or even Chinese and Russian intransigence matter is questionable, because once nuclear weapons are acquired, the risk of armed attack by a state or one sanctioned by the Security Council declines significantly. In short, North Korea remains a security, WMD, and proliferation challenge.

While similar in many respects, Iran is qualitatively different, should war break out or a WMD be used. Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) was identified as the part of the "axis of evil" in the famous 2002 State of the Union address by President George W. Bush. Unlike North Korea, Iran is not an isolated and autarkic pariah. At the time of the 2002 speech, the Iranian president was a moderate but was quickly undermined after Bush's declaration. Iran is a large, diverse, and complicated state and a major player in the region, with an essential role in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf.

Unlike its nondeclared but nuclear neighbor Israel, Iran has been a member of the NPT since 1968 and embarked on a comprehensive nuclear energy program with the blessing and cooperation of the United States and under the auspices of the IAEA. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, however, Washington suspended its cooperation and forced Iran to abandon its nuclear energy program. In 1989 Iran restarted the program, this time working with France, China, and Russia and under the supervision of IAEA. In 2002 Iran quietly began construction of a nuclear reactor, a uranium enrichment program, and a heavy water facility. Iran did not initially notify the IAEA, although it did agree to IAEA inspections in 2003. After those inspections, the IAEA reported that Iran was noncompliant with its obligations under the NPT, especially as it related to its enrichment activities. Iran responded by agreeing to talks with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

After negotiations (but not Iranian enrichment activities) stalled, the IAEA referred Iran to the Security Council in 2006. The central problem is that the NPT allows for states to pursue and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under IAEA supervision. States that have complex and developed nuclear energy programs also have the technical know-how and material capability to create nuclear weapons. That is, these states are nuclear weapon–capable or "nuclear latent states." States such as Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil are nuclear latent. Iran claims that it is only seeking to peacefully develop nuclear energy, as all countries have a right to do under the NPT. Moreover, three permanent members of the Security Council have lucrative contracts with Iran to develop that energy. Enriching uranium is necessary for nuclear energy, but enriching uranium to weapons grade is a relatively modest additional step involving more centrifuges and longer processing. The IAEA found evidence of weapons-grade uranium, prompting the referral to the Security Council. The council issued a Presidential Statement calling on Iran to suspend its enrichment activities and to ratify and implement the Additional Protocol of the NPT that governs enriching technologies. Iran refused, and the council passed resolution 1696 under Chapter VII, which made the Presidential Statement binding on Iran. Iran continued to defy the council, which relied on resolutions 1737 and 1803, involving targeted sanctions again in 2007. Russia also suspended its cooperation in building a nuclear power plant.

In 2008, Iran successfully launched a ballistic missile as part of its space program; however, the dual use alarmed many, especially in Israel and Europe. In March 2008 the Security Council tightened sanctions with resolution 1835, this time banning trade in items that have both military and civilian uses. Iran responded with testing intermediate and long-range missiles. U.S. President Barack Obama was elected and promised Iran more dialogue on its nuclear program; however, optimism waned when Iran's President Ahmadinejad declared victory over the "green movement" in a disputed election in June. Iran also acknowledged a secret nuclear facility near Qom and test-fired additional missiles. After several IAEA plans were developed and rejected, in 2010 the three Western powers of the P-5 began negotiations for tougher sanctions. Resolution 1929 expanded the arms embargo and tightened financial and shipping restrictions. The resolution also targeted the financial interests of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The Arab Spring turmoil distracted some, but clearly Russia and China would not support stronger Security Council actions. As such, by 2012 the EU and the United States implemented stronger sanctions on their own, clamping down on the Iranian Central Bank and embargoing Iranian oil. Other countries to varying degrees reduced Iranian oil imports. Covert operations of dubious legality have also hampered Iranian nuclear ambitions. A computer worm debilitated several key systems, and illegal centrifuges were sabotaged prior to purchase by the Iranians. Several Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated in Iran, and one defected to the United States (although Iran claims he was kidnapped). Israel threatened a preemptive military strike. The crisis remains in a dangerous phase and certainly nowhere near resolution.

**POLITICAL CHALLENGES**

The United Nations faces several daunting political challenges that will determine its effectiveness in the future. The first is leadership, which has two dimensions: one affecting the first UN of member states and the other the "second UN" of professional staff. A void of leadership persists in the first UN. Without the support of the sole remaining superpower, the world body faces marginalization on many issues relating to international security. Such leadership is necessary to build a relative consensus regarding strategies for handling today's security problems: failed states, terrorism by nonstate actors, and secessionist movements dismembering existing states. Yet U.S. decisions regarding Iraq and President Bush's controversial recess appointment of outspoken UN critic John Bolton in 2005 as the U.S. representative to the UN raised serious questions about Washington's ability to provide constructive leadership at that critical juncture. Bolton was forced to leave his position after his recess appointment expired in 2007, and Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad to the post. The former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq was far more polished and diplomatic than Bolton, but he hailed from the same neoconservative school that generally distrusts multilateralism.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama renewed hope that Washington would assume a constructive leadership role at the United Nations. President Obama appointed his confidante Susan Rice as the U.S. representative to the UN and elevated that position to cabinet level. Compared to his predecessor, Obama demonstrated a relatively greater interest in multilateral approaches to many problems. The administration sought to reengage with the UN on many levels, and Rice has been a strong and measured voice on the council. On issues like Libya and Sudan, the Obama team has stressed the need for council approval for any outside intervention. At the same time, it is under no illusion as to what the world organization can accomplish. Hence its approach has been pragmatic and inconsistent. It has not hesitated to resort to controversial unilateralism, as in drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, where it believes its security interests are threatened. The Obama administration has not joined the ICC (which requires an uphill battle for advice and consent in the Senate), taken a hands-off approach to Sudan, boycotted a meeting on racism in solidarity with Israel, and failed to follow up the Goldstone report for the Human Rights Council, which criticized Israeli and Palestinian actions in Gaza. President Obama's reelection in 2012 signaled that the United States would remain engaged with the UN on selected issues when multilateralism has a reasonable chance of success both domestically and internationally.

Even if Washington wished to lead in the Security Council, China and Russia often have very different perspectives. On the one hand, they may genuinely feel that sanctions, military force, and muscular peace operations have little utility and contribute to instability and human suffering. They may genuinely feel that traditional notions of sovereignty and the inviolability of a state's territory are more conducive to world order. On the other hand, China and Russia are autocratic states that give other autocrats the diplomatic cover to pursue WMDs or policies that result in the gross violations of human rights. The distance between liberal democracies and autocracies has not risen to the level of a cold war, but it does present certain serious obstacles for managing the world's problems. In particular, the Security Council is sometimes divided, which encourages the United States to act unilaterally if and when it thinks it has the power to go it alone successfully.

The leadership provided by the secretary-general is also a central question. The administrations of Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali came under fire for mismanagement of the Oil-for-Food Programme and the alleged corruption of staff and family members. Although the scale of corruption was extremely limited, the United States has cited the kickbacks and inept oversight as reasons to end the standoff between Iraq and the UN in the lead-up to the 2003 war. A strong and independent Office of the Secretary-General is crucial for UN legitimacy and for conflict resolution in the future. U.S. efforts to undermine the integrity and independence of the Office of the Secretary-General, coupled with scandal and mismanagement, have done little to strengthen the UN's major representative to the rest of the world. The five-volume report issued in 2005 by the commission headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker made for sober reading and cast a shadow over Kofi Annan. Annan's successor, Ban Ki-moon, is a South Korean career diplomat with little experience within the UN itself. The first years of his tenure yielded a few diplomatic victories, such as Chinese consent to a UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur. However, concrete successes are few and far between for a secretary-general who has far less charisma and presence than his two immediate predecessors and who prides himself on his invisibility. Ban has singled out climate change and R2P as his signature issues, and in 2012 he was elected to a second term in June of his final term, the earliest such reelection in UN history.

A second political challenge centers on the safety of UN personnel. Since the 1990s UN staff have been killed, kidnapped, and physically and sexually assaulted in record numbers. United Nations personnel have become targets in Bosnia, Lebanon, Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Algeria, and Cambodia. The UN must be able to defend itself if it is to continue humanitarian and development operations in insecure environments. The bombings of the UN headquarters in Iraq in August and September 2003, killing 22 and injuring 162, exacerbated the U.S.–UN relationship, as U.S. occupying forces were unable to provide a secure environment for UN personnel. According to the _Report of the Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of UN Personnel in Iraq_ , the attacks were "signals of the emergence of a new and more difficult era for the UN system." The new security environment involving failed states and terrorism requires that the UN move beyond merely guarding against criminal and opportunistic attacks to develop a comprehensive strategy for protecting personnel in conflict areas. The same security problems confront private relief and development agencies that work in tandem with UN programs. In December 2007, UN and private aid agencies were targeted by terrorists in Algeria. The attack on UN facilities killed 41 people, including 17 UN personnel. Secretary-General Ban responded by unveiling plans to create another independent panel to investigate the attacks in Algeria and other security threats UN personnel face around the world. Algeria responded negatively, claiming it was not consulted and therefore would not consent to the investigation.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the staff members of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. (UN Photo 201380/Jean-Marc Ferre)

A third political challenge centers on the proliferation of actors, particularly non-state actors. The nature and dynamics of peaceful relationships require that the UN pay more attention to NSAs and differentiate among them based on their importance to the issue at hand, especially in the humanitarian arena. Conflicts have deeper roots than governments or armed opposition groups hoping to assume power. The origins of armed conflicts as well as their mitigation and management must be conceived broadly enough to include a host of such nongovernmental actors as clans, "terrorist groups," and the International Committee of the Red Cross. People make war, and people respond to it. Experience in Sudan, for example, suggests that the UN as an intergovernmental organization is frequently at a disadvantage in dealing with irregular forces and insurgents. Private relief agencies may be better placed than intergovernmental ones for delivering aid in certain war zones.

A fourth political challenge centers on resources. The UN simply does not have enough money to properly conduct peace operations. It also does not have adequate resources to properly fight poverty, promote economic and social development, or protect and promote human rights. Many member states, including the United States, are in arrears of their regular and peacekeeping dues, and the UN peacekeeping coffers were over $1 billion in arrears at the end of 2012. Compared to the annual global defense expenditures of over $1 trillion, the amount contributed to peacekeeping seems trivial. If every country devoted 1 percent of its defense budget to UN efforts, $10 billion would be available. Other measures, such as surcharges on the sale of weaponry and on the use of UN-provided services—for example, ensuring the right of passage for ships—could help provide additional income. The solution supported by an independent group of bankers and politicians is that governments must respect their international treaty obligations to pay the bills for UN security operations. The UN's long-standing resource problems are exacerbated by the global financial crisis and economic recession, as states are either reducing their budgets or devoting scarce resources to domestic initiatives in order to stabilize their economics and their debts.

**THE CHALLENGES OF REFORM**

Since the election of Kofi Annan as secretary-general, the UN has been continually discussing the need for substantive reform. When Annan unveiled his strategy of a "quiet revolution" to reform the world organization in 1997, he initiated measures to make the UN a more effective mechanism for administering and managing peace operations. The creation and effective implementation of a rationalized cabinet system, consisting of the Senior Management Group (SMG) with division heads and an executive committee system, introduced a greater degree of horizontal cooperation than had been the case before. Senior officials throughout the organization (including those based in Geneva and Vienna through teleconferencing) meet weekly with the secretary-general. In addition, the executive committee on peace and security, which brings together those senior officials whose units deal with peacekeeping, holds biweekly discussions. This process is supplemented with a number of issue-specific task forces, including ones for each multidisciplinary peace operation, as well as special meetings involving a much wider set of actors who serve as operational partners in the field, including development and humanitarian agencies and international financial institutions.

How full or empty the reform glass happens to be depends on the observer. In 2008, shortly after leaving his post as deputy secretary-general and prior to becoming the UK's minister for Africa, Asia, and the United Nations, Mark Malloch Brown commented that no topic, not even sex, was more popular than reform around water coolers or over coffee. Neither governments nor Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon understood "the scale of change required." Member states "would have to rise above their own current sense of entrenched rights and privileges and find a grand bargain to allow a new more realistic governance model for the UN." But, he continued, "that may take a crisis."

Attempting reform of the second UN is one thing, but reforming the first UN is quite another. In 2003 Secretary-General Annan appointed the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, which consisted of sixteen former government officials, including Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser for President George H. W. Bush. The HLP was tasked with identifying the principal threats facing the international community and developing proposals to reform the UN to meet its new challenges. The panel issued its final report, _A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility_ , in December 2004, and the report served as the foundation for the secretary-general's recommendations, _In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security, and Human Rights for All._ Both documents, in turn, were used to set the stage for the September 2005 World Summit, dubbed "San Francisco II" for its ambitious task of remaking the UN. The distance between the two foundational documents and the decision from the 2005 World Summit reflects the difference between the "two United Nations" concerning what knowledgeable government and UN officials deem necessary and what is politically possible among member states. A great deal of consensus existed on the threats facing the international community of states; however, important political differences remained on definition, priorities, strategies, and implementation. The interplay between the two United Nations illustrates the complexities of governance on international security issues.

**THE 2005 WORLD SUMMIT**

The 2005 World Summit celebrated the UN's sixtieth birthday, but, more important, it was supposed to transform the organization to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. After years of laying the groundwork through the work of HLP and others, a preliminary draft included several important interconnected reforms that would affect UN security operations: proposals to enlarge the Security Council; new guidelines for authorizing military action (including international intervention in countries that fail to protect their people against genocide); initiatives for combating terrorism; strategies for controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons; new policies to curb abuses by peacekeepers; and the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. These are discussed in turn below, while other measures—related to human rights and sustainable development—were also on the table but are discussed later, in Parts Two and Three of this book.

_Security Council Reform._ Reform of the Security Council's permanent membership is seemingly a permanent agenda item in New York, with little likelihood of being resolved anytime soon. Possibilities for long-range reform involve changes in the Security Council's permanent membership; shorter-range changes involve longer and more frequent terms on the council for influential countries. However, each major structural reform opens another Pandora's box. Which developing countries should be added? Should they be the most powerful or populous? After a civil war, should a splintered state retain its seat? Why should economic powers whose constitutions impede overseas military involvement be given a seat at all? Should there be three permanent European members, and what about the European Union? Which countries should wield vetoes? Should not all regions have at least one permanent member?

The HLP attempted to answer these questions in 2004 by proposing two models for Security Council reform. Both are based on regional representation in that they create new council seats (expanding the council from fifteen to twenty-four members) and distribute them between four major regional areas: Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. The models do not expand the veto or change the veto among the existing permanent members. The models also address several principles designed to avoid many of the issues discussed above. The first principle is that all members of the council have enhanced financial, military, and diplomatic responsibilities to the UN. Second, the models bring more countries, especially countries from the South, into the decision-making process. Third, the models do not impair the council's effectiveness. Finally, both models increase democracy and accountability.

Model A proposed creating six new permanent seats, albeit without the veto, and three new nonpermanent (elected for the usual two-year term, renewable), bringing the total membership to twenty-four. Africa would receive two permanent seats and four nonpermanent seats, thereby having six representatives. Asia/Pacific would receive two new permanent and three new nonpermanent seats. Coupled with China's permanent seat with veto, this region would also have six representatives. Europe would receive one new permanent and two nonpermanent seats. Coupled with the three existing seats (Great Britain, France, and Russia), Europe would have six seats. The Americas would have one new permanent seat and four nonpermanent seats. With the existing seat held by the United States, the region would have six representatives.

Model B was similar in terms of making the council more representative; however, rather than creating new permanent seats, it establishes an entirely new category of eight seats that have four-year renewable terms and one new nonpermanent seat with a nonrenewable two-year term. In this reform scenario, each region would receive two of the new, four-year renewable seats, and Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, and the Americas would each receive four, three, one, and three nonrenewable two-year seats, respectively. Added to the five existing permanent members, the total membership of the council would be expanded to twenty-four states, with each region having six representatives.

If sixteen individual members of a panel (and the UN's chief) could not make a recommendation, how could states come to a consensus? The best member states could muster at the 2005 Summit was to reaffirm their desire to make the council more representative and recommend "that the Security Council continue to adapt its working methods so as to increase the involvement of States not members of the Council in its work, as appropriate, enhance its accountability to the membership and increase the transparency of its work." At least the verbal jousting and rhetoric over the years have created a permissive environment that helped facilitate pragmatic modifications in working methods. These have injected more openness, accountability, and diverse inputs into council deliberations and should be expanded. The present situation is analogous to a group of doctors who all agree on the patient's illness but cannot agree on the remedy. All agree that council membership is out of date relative to realities in world affairs, but none can come up with a workable formula for new membership that satisfies the leading stakeholders.

_Authorizing Military Force._ The controversial aspects of the debate about under what conditions the UN should authorize military force involve what constitutes an imminent threat to international peace and security and situations in which governments are unable or unwilling to protect their citizens against mass-atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, major war crimes, and ethnic cleansing). These issues are contentious and divisive in the best of times and even more so in the not so best of times. An odd alliance emerged between the United States and the many developing countries whereby they would support the status quo by avoiding formal criteria for authorizing force and language that would formally allow for humanitarian intervention in cases of genocide. The former served the interests of the United States, whose use of force in Iraq was still widely criticized long after 2003, and the latter served the interests of many developing countries concerned that any right to humanitarian intervention would threaten their hard-won but shaky sovereignty. The notion of aggression remains much discussed but ill-defined, as shown by meetings of state members of the ICC who debate but cannot agree on adding that crime to the jurisdiction of the court. In the meantime, much discourse skips the legalities by referring, for example, to U.S. actions in Iraq since 2003 as a "war of choice." Presumably if it is a war of choice and not necessary self-defense, it is an aggressive war or at least a breach of the peace.

The summit outcome reiterated the prohibition against the use of force in international relations except in self-defense, with no reference as to what constitutes an imminent threat as it relates to self-defense. It also reiterated that the primary responsibility to protect is with states and that the first duty of the international community is to use appropriate nonviolent means to protect populations. The UN may "take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity." In diplomatic-speak, the international community of states avoided a formal right to humanitarian intervention yet left open the possibility that military intervention could be authorized if the Security Council had the political will to determine that such situations constituted a threat to international peace and security.

_Terrorism._ The HLP reinforces international law and norms prohibiting deliberate attacks on civilians by describing terrorism as any act "that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act." At the World Summit, a formal definition of terrorism could not be adopted for many of the reasons cited above, but the member states did agree to "condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever, and for whatever purposes, as it constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security." Member states also committed themselves to reach an agreement regarding a comprehensive treaty on international terrorism and to cooperate to fight terrorism in conformity with international law.

This outcome reflects what is politically possible between states that see violence as necessary for national liberation and a superpower that articulates a right to fight terrorism as it sees fit. Although debate was heated and inconclusive to some, it nonetheless was significant that heads of state and government present in New York agreed that terrorism "in all forms" was a common threat to international stability and was to be condemned. In September 2006 Secretary-General Annan unveiled the UN's counterterrorism strategy, which is being implemented under the leadership of Secretary-General Ban; however, the General Assembly has been unable to conclude a comprehensive convention on international terrorism.

_Nonproliferation._ Perhaps the biggest disappointment at the World Summit was the inability to reach any agreement on the proliferation of WMDs, supposedly one of the main reasons the summit was organized in the first place. In light of the threat such weapons pose in an era of global terrorism in general and the justification of the 2003 Iraq war on the same grounds, member states should have been able to find common ground for controlling these weapons. The HLP and the secretary-general identified proliferation as one of the more serious threats to international peace and security. The United States blocked the inclusion of nonproliferation in the World Summit document, as many states insisted on matching nonproliferation measures with steps toward disarmament by existing nuclear states. This is the same dynamic that has characterized virtually all discussions, and so the World Summit's final document is totally silent on disarmament and nonproliferation. This crucial priority for the United States was a victim of last-minute horse-trading—a "disgrace," according to Kofi Annan. Washington has since agreed to provide material and technical atomic assistance to India, a nuclear state outside of the nonproliferation treaty, further undercutting U.S. leadership abilities in this important area. All of this is not lost on Iran, which resents Western pressure to alter its nuclear policies, given that particularly Britain, France, and the United States have not paid much attention to the disarmament called for in the NPT agreement and have not criticized the presumed acquisition of nuclear weapons by Israel.

_Sexual Abuse by Peacekeepers._ Member states included strong language in the World Summit Outcome document regarding sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers. They urged that UN policies of zero tolerance and zero impunity be implemented without delay. The formal procedures the UN developed to curb sexual abuse represent an important first step in restoring the credibility of UN peacekeeping. However, a formal change in procedures does not translate into a formal change in attitudes. A report issued by Refugees International in October 2005 charges that the procedures are not being implemented because the "boys will be boys" attitude in peacekeeping missions breeds tolerance for exploitation and abuse. Rapes continue to be dismissed as simple acts of prostitution. Anna Shotton, author of the report, does nonetheless argue that progress has been made. In the past, the UN had only occasionally repatriated uniformed personnel, but in the twenty months preceding her report the UN had completed 221 investigations, which resulted in the firing of ten civilian employees and the repatriation of eighty-eight military personnel, including six commanders. Still, much work remains to be done in prosecuting sex crimes by troop-contributing states and on changing the attitudes among the armed forces involved in peacekeeping.

_Peacebuilding._ Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the 2005 World Summit for the security arena was the decision to create a new Peacebuilding Commission, as we have seen in the preceding chapter. The PBC actually represents "follow-through," or learning based on previous UN peacekeeping and peacemaking activities in places like Somalia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Liberia, the Congo, and Rwanda. It is necessary to rebuild state capacity. This is not nostalgia for the national security state of the past but a clear recognition that a modicum of state capacity is a prerequisite for peace or development. It is worth spending a moment on the PBC, which was one of the few concrete steps taken by the 2005 World Summit, along with the decision to establish its supporting office and a new fund specifically geared to elicit more coherence from UN partners in their collective efforts to move beyond conflict. Trying to restore broken states along this path was clearly a challenge emerging from the UN's main growth industry, and just as clearly, the incoherence of UN efforts in picking up the pieces from conflict was no longer desirable.

The decision to establish the PBC in spring 2006 was a step in the right direction, toward improving efficiency in UN efforts to prevent conflict relapse in war-torn countries that have just turned a page on armed conflict. Its mandate is to propose integrated strategies for postconflict peacebuilding, ensure predictable financing for recovery, draw international attention to the tasks, provide recommendations and information to improve coordination, and develop best practices requiring the collaboration of a variety of actors.

The PBC has an Organizational Committee that is comprised of thirty-one members: seven from the Security Council, seven from the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), five of the main financial contributors to the United Nations, five of the top military contributors to the world organization's peace operations, and seven elected by the General Assembly to redress geographical imbalances that may result from the other selection criteria. The PBC also includes country-specific committees, which tailor programs to include country representatives and relevant contributors in each case.

The World Summit also requested that the secretary-general establish a Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) within the Secretariat, whose staff could assist and support the PBC as well as advise the secretary-general. The PBSO also oversees the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), established in 2006 with a target of $250 million. In 2012, deposits reached about $434 million, with a total portfolio of approximately $542 million.

The aim of the fund is to provide initial support for peacebuilding and kickstart donor investment in long-term recovery. If managed effectively, the fund has the potential to reduce waste and the duplication of efforts and to enhance coordination among financial sources, because the power of the purse is to make decisions centrally. Thus far, it has allocated $35 million to both Burundi and Sierra Leone, the two countries on which the PBC focused attention in its first year of operation. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has declared Guinea-Bissau and Comoros eligible to receive assistance, and funding is pending. Additionally, the PBSO has approved emergency funding for more urgent peacebuilding activities in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Haiti, Liberia, and Kenya.

Like all international institutions, the PBC is not without shortcomings. It is a subsidiary body of both the General Assembly and the Security Council, which exacerbates reporting problems. Moreover, it is an advisory rather than a decision-making body; it has no enforcement mechanisms. As one analyst notes, "The advisory nature of the PBC—coupled with the stipulation that it 'shall act in all matters on the basis of consensus of its members'—seems at odds with the very concept of the body assuming the final responsibility for peacebuilding." Moreover, there appears to be some overlap between the PBSO and the activities entrusted to the Department of Political Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which exposes the potential for turf battles.

Nevertheless, the creation of the PBC, PBSO, and PBF is an important step toward enhancing the coordination, efficiency, and effectiveness of postconflict peacebuilding efforts financed and supervised by the United Nations.

The initial optimism surrounding the potential of the 2005 UN summit was tempered by the political realities of an international system in an unusual period of transition. The responsibility to protect was reaffirmed, but no right of humanitarian intervention was created. Terrorism in "all its forms" was condemned, but terrorism could not be defined. The summit did reiterate the importance of strengthening the role of the Secretariat in maintaining international peace and security, an issue to which we now turn.

**STRENGTHENING THE SECRETARIAT**

The ability of the Secretariat and thereby of the Security Council to monitor enforcement operations has long been a subject of heated discussions. The 1991 Persian Gulf War represented the first military enforcement action of the post–Cold War era, but the UN secretary-general and the Secretariat were on the sidelines when decisions were made about how to wage the ground war. Although Security Council authorizations were politically useful, coalition forces were not accountable to the world organization. This pattern has been repeated in enforcement and peacekeeping in Libya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Increasing the secretary-general's influence over Security Council decision making and subsequent UN military operations is problematic. Article 99 of the Charter already empowers the secretary-general to bring the council's attention to matters that he believes could threaten international peace and security. Greater use of this article could allow the secretary-general to place issues on the council's agenda that otherwise might be avoided because of their sensitivity, but he thereby risks alienating states and cannot be effective if he offends one of the P-5.

The Office of the Secretary-General has also asked for a mandate to request advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under Article 96 of the Charter. Such a course of action could allow the organization's head to help refine the legitimate definitions of those situations that present threats to the peace as well as to provide more concrete policy options that are both politically and legally acceptable. One key to advisory opinions is asking a question and getting a specific-enough response. Like all courts, the ICJ oftentimes avoids the substance of an issue and relies on procedural interpretations to set aside a case. Time is also a problem because the ICJ never acts quickly, and until recently the court decided only a case or two a year. Moreover, given that the United States has made clear that it does not want the new International Criminal Court second-guessing its decisions about choice of weapons and targets in armed conflict, it is highly doubtful that the United States—or Russia or China—would welcome the secretary-general's raising similar questions of the ICJ.

Agreement on standards may be increasingly necessary, however. Resolutions are often kept vague to secure intergovernmental assent ("all necessary means" in the war against Iraq created a host of questions about proportionality, and "all measures necessary" was quintessential UN doublespeak that did not permit sufficient action to help Bosnia's Muslims). The language of international decisions is sometimes too elliptical to allow a determination of which concrete actions and procedures would constitute legitimate follow-up. The secretary-general—and not just the General Assembly, the Security Council, and other UN organs—should be authorized to request advisory opinions from the ICJ to help reduce the criticism of selective application by the Security Council of the principles guiding its decision making. Although seeking the court's opinion would be harmful in the midst of a crisis, it could be useful in anticipating future contingencies.

As part of the reform process, steps have been taken to enhance the Secretariat's means of fact-finding so that the secretary-general can improve his access to timely, unbiased, and impartial accounts of dangerous situations. Special units have proliferated that focus exclusively on early warning and prevention. The mandate of these units is to provide greater access to information about potential threats to the peace, thus enhancing the Secretariat's ability to launch preventive diplomacy and possibly to recommend preventive deployment. Of course, much more could be done, and the Office of the Secretary-General could and should be equipped and staffed to act as an effective crisis-monitoring center for events that threaten the peace.

The end of the Cold War permitted the world organization to move toward reviving old-fashioned ideals of an objective and competent international civil service, on which the organization was supposedly founded. The success of the organization's activities begins and ends with the people in its employ. A long-ignored reality is the need to overhaul the international civil service, for which qualifications have long been secondary to geographic and political considerations, and within which women have hardly played a role commensurate with their potential.

This reality became more obvious with the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal. Along with highlighting the earlier sexual scandals involving peacekeepers, the Volcker report demonstrated serious flaws in management and judgment by the central administration, which is almost universally agreed to be inefficient, politicized, and in desperate need of repair. The preface to the fourth Volcker report contained language that could have been written by an American unilateralist: "The inescapable conclusion from the Committee's work is that the United Nations Organization needs thoroughgoing reform—and it needs it urgently." Nothing has changed since 2005. As we have discovered earlier, "urgent" has an unusual connotation in UN circles that is distinct from any commonsensical definition.

Member states and peoples across the world are looking toward the United Nations, through the Secretariat, to muster multilateral responses for international and civil strife. These "softer" sides of the UN moved forward during the Cold War, while collective-security mechanisms stalled. The end of the Cold War had a decided impact on international efforts to constitute working regimes in these areas, too. The meaning of "security" has come into question as issues of human rights, democratization, and sustainable human development have worked their way into global discourse about security matters.

**STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF WOMEN**

In 2000 the Security Council passed resolution 1325 to ensure that peace operations and postconflict reconstruction would be sensitive to gender and gendered inequalities. The effects of violence, sanctions, and poverty have disparate impacts on women and are often overlooked by states and organizations. The council lent considerable legitimacy to reform efforts involving gender equity. Resolution 1325 and the overall reform effort have led to substantive reforms dealing with sexual abuse by peacekeepers and within UN agencies themselves. The world organization has explored ways that women could be empowered, and in July 2010 the General Assembly created a new agency: UN Women. Formally titled the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women merged four smaller bodies, the first time in UN history that such organizations had been shuttered. Its mission is to support governments and intergovernmental organizations in implementing standards and meeting their obligations under national and international law. Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, was appointed the first undersecretary-general and executive director of UN Women.

While early in its life, UN Women has emerged as pivotal within the UN family. In relation to international peace and security, UN Women is now at the decision-making table regarding peacebuilding activities, security and justice, gender- and sex-based violence, and postconflict humanitarian planning. As discussed in subsequent chapters, the role of UN Women in development is a necessary institutional reform for improving the lives of women and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

**EXPLAINING CHANGE**

Within the security arena, as will be the case in subsequent chapters on human rights and development, it is not easy to deal with matters of presumed knowledge and learning. What are the proper lessons to be drawn from decades of UN peacekeeping, from various efforts at enforcement, from failures to reach a common approach to Kosovo in 1999, Iraq in 2003, or Syria and Iran in 2012? Do different actors learn different things based on their existing ideologies or mind-sets, indicating an absence of scientific certainty on these matters and the persistent presence of ever-changing policy debates?

"While the reform process is often tortuous at the United Nations," writes former UN deputy secretary-general Louise Fréchette, "real progress has been achieved in strengthening the UN machinery's capacity to implement the complex mandates given by the Security Council." That overview should be characterized as giving the best possible interpretation to developments over the past two decades because so much UN peacekeeping, even of the traditional type, is still unsystematic and essentially ad hoc in composition and deployment. Many states have not learned that international peace and security could be improved by concluding Article 43 agreements with the UN, which would provide the secretary-general with advance notice of what military units would be available for armed interposition under UN aegis. States like Canada certainly recognize that a UN rapid-reaction force could be a significant contribution to stability and humanitarian actions in a world of failed states and small wars. But it seems that many states—including the important ones with the most military wherewithal, such as the United States, China, and Russia—do not want to transfer much hard power to the UN even if under the ultimate authority of the Security Council, where they have a veto.

Thus, the secretary-general has to go begging and start from scratch if he advocates a multilateral force for places like Liberia or Darfur. Even for the armed observation of cease-fires, which the UN has been doing consistently well and on a fairly large scale since 1956, there is no UN system that can be activated on short notice, ready for rapid deployment. Indeed, fielding such missions was done more quickly in the 1950s and 1960s than now because of the absence of political will in nastier conflicts. The problem is not intellectual but the absence of national and international political will. Important states simply do not wish to commit in advance even small, voluntary parts of their armed forces for deployments determined by the council and managed by the Secretariat. Even for traditional peacekeeping, not to mention the more ambitious and complex peace operations, there have not been so much "learning lessons" as "spurning lessons." In short, policy changes to make the whole enterprise more streamlined and effective make good sense, just not political sense to key states.

Enforcement events indicate the same lack of decisive change, the same lack of policy transformation, which would indicate not much learning. Iraq in 2003 demonstrated starkly what Kosovo had already shown in 1999, namely that the permanent members of the Security Council could be as deeply divided after the Cold War as during it. In both of those cases, one saw a determined United States ready to employ its military superiority even in the face of opposition within the council. Being determined to exploit its power advantage over the Saddam Hussein regime and destroy it, Washington "learned" that the members of the council could not be relied on to endorse decisive preventive action. Kosovo had already demonstrated that war by multilateral committee was a bad idea. At the same time, what a majority of the council members "learned" about Saddam Hussein's Iraq was that diplomacy still had a chance of containing and deterring that regime. So knowledge in this case was not a scientific matter but a debatable proposition greatly affected by perceptions of power and norms.

The Security Council, of which ten members are not permanent and serve only two-year elected terms, may "learn" the benefits of involving the UN in postcombat security measures of occupation, state building, and nation building. On the one hand, the United States was encountering many difficulties in trying to transform Iraq. On the other hand, the UN had demonstrated a certain messy success in administering Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. Afghanistan was a separate case in which the United Nations was involved immediately after combat in a diplomatic way but did not have major responsibility for security and other measures on the ground for the Hamid Karzai government. Postcombat Afghanistan was a fractured, dangerous, and deadly place, but the UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) was part of the picture in support of both NATO's ISAF and the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom. Over time, even if UNAMA grows and takes certain initiatives, it will still require the cooperation of Brussels and Washington.

The fallout from September 11 and the Bush administration's war on terrorism and in Iraq has had a negative and significant impact on human rights and humanitarian law. The UN has been more central to U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration than it was from 2000 to 2008; it would be difficult to be less. Postwar (if that is the correct term) activities in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that recovery, reconstruction, and rebuilding are not U.S. strong suits. Meanwhile, the UN has accumulated substantial experience over several decades, and this comparative advantage makes the PBC a sensible idea. Former U.S. assistant secretary of state James Dobbins and a Rand Corporation evaluation team have argued that the world organization's performance in postconflict effectiveness is remarkably good in comparison with Washington's—they say that seven of eight UN operations have been successful, versus only four out of eight for the United States.

Almost all actors, whether state participants or nonstate observers and experts, learned that the UN was not good at the heavy lifting of combat and that the UN lacked the independent power and management skills to move beyond collective legitimization and the less muscular forms of peacekeeping. There also seemed to be widespread learning regarding "smart" sanctions, which targeted elites rather than the rank-and-file citizens, who often had little control over events.

**NOTES**

. This discussion draws on Jane Boulden and Thomas G. Weiss, "Whither Terrorism and the United Nations?" in _Terrorism and the United Nations: Before and After September 11_ , ed. Jane Boulden and Thomas G. Weiss (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 3–26. See also Thomas G. Weiss, Margaret E. Crahan, and John Goering, eds., _War on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and U.S. Foreign Policy_ (London: Routledge, 2004).

. UN Press Release, SG/SM/7962/Rev.1, September 18, 2001.

. Adam Roberts, "Terrorism and International Order," in _Terrorism and International Order_ , ed. Lawrence Freedman, Christopher Hill, Adam Roberts, R. J. Vincent, Paul Wilkinson, and Philip Windsor (London: Routledge, 1986), 9–10; and M. J. Peterson, "Using the General Assembly," in Boulden and Weiss, _Terrorism and the United Nations_ , 173–197.

. _A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility—Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change_ (New York: United Nations, 2004), para. 161. See "The Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change," _Security Dialogue_ 36, no. 3 (2005): 361–394; and Paul Heinbecker and Patricia Goff, eds., _Irrelevant or Indispensable?The United Nations in the 21st Century_ (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2005).

. Kofi Annan, _In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ , UN document A/59/2005, March 21, 2005, para. 91.

. _2005 World Summit Outcome_ , UN resolution A/60/1, October 24, 2005, para. 81.

. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, "The Role of the Security Council," in Boulden and Weiss, _Terrorism and the UN_ , 151–172.

. Peter Romaniuk, _Multilateral Counter-Terrorism: The Global Politics of Cooperation and Contestation_ (London: Routledge, 2010).

. _Report of the Policy Working Group on the United Nations and Terrorism_ , UN document A/57/273/S/2002/875.

. See statements by Secretary-General Ban at www.un.org/terrorism/sg.shtml.

. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "Remarks at Symposium on International Counter-Terrorism Cooperation," New York, September 19, 2011.

. This discussion relies on the work of Nina Tannenwald, "The UN and Debates Over Weapons of Mass Destruction," in _The United Nations and Global Security_ , ed. Richard M. Price and Mark W. Zacher (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 3–20.

. Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _The United Nations and the Nuclear Challenges_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2009).

. George W. Bush, in an address to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) on June 1, 2002, described the role of preventive war in U.S. foreign policy and national defense, saying that Americans needed "to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."

. John Ruggie, "Doctrinal Unilateralism and Its Limits: America and Global Governance in the New Century," in _American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World_ , ed. David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. MacMahon, and Andrew Wedeman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 31–50.

. Rosemary Foot, S. Neil MacFarlane, and Michael Mastanduno, eds., _U.S. Hegemony and International Organizations: The United States and Multilateral Institutions_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

. Anthony Clark Arend and Robert J. Beck, _International Law and the Use of Force: Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm_ (London: Routledge, 1993). On the Bush doctrine as a violation of the UN Charter, see Tom J. Farer, "Beyond the Charter Frame: Unilateralism or Condominium," _American Journal of International Law_ 96, no. 2 (2002): 359–364. Yoram Dienstein, in _War, Aggression, and Self-Defense_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), endorses the notion of anticipatory self-defense as found in Israel's first use of force in 1967.

. Jean E. Krasno and James R. Sutterlin, _The United Nations and Iraq: Defanging the Viper_ (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003).

. James Mann, _Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet_ (London: Penguin, 2004).

. Alexander Bernard and Paul J. Leaf, "Modern Threats and the United National Security Council," _Stanford Law Review_ 62 (2010): 1395–1443.

. Security Council Press Release, SC/8778, July 15, 2006, <http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8778.doc.html>.

. Bernard and Leaf, "Modern Threats," 1420.

. "UN Nuclear Watchdog Refers Syria to Security Council," BBC News, June 9, 2011, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13717874>.

. "Security Council Strongly Condemns DPR Korea's Satellite Launch Attempt," UN News Centre, April 2012, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41784&Cr=Democratic&Cr1=Korea.

. David Sobek, Dennis M. Foster, and Samuel B. Robinson, "Conventional Wisdom? The Effect of Nuclear Proliferation on Armed Conflict, 1945–2001," _International Studies Quarterly_ 56, no. 1 (2012): 149–162.

. Kelly-Kate Pease, _International Organizations: Perspective on Governance in the Twenty-First Century_ , 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 2012), 144–146.

. Maria Rost-Rublee, "Taking Stock of the Nuclear Proliferation Regime: Using Social Psychology to Understand Regime Change," _International Studies Review_ 10, no. 3 (2008): 421.

. Presidential Statements are often used by the Security Council when it lacks the necessary consensus to pass a resolution. This statement (S/PRST/200/15) was issued on March 29, 2006. See N. Jansen Calamita, "Sanctions, Countermeasures and the Iranian Nuclear Issue," _Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law_ 42 (November 2009): 1393–1442.

. "Security Council Imposes Additional Sanctions on Iran," Security Council SC/9948, June 9, 2010, <http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sc9948.doc.htm>.

. Edward Newman, _A Crisis of Global Institutions? Multilateralism and International Security_ (London: Routledge, 2007).

. John Bolton, _Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations_ (New York: Baker & Taylor, 2008).

. "US Hits Out at Russia and China After UN Security Council Veto," _Guardian_ (London), October 5, 2011, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/oct/05/us-russia-china-un-syria-video>.

. LiseMorje Howard, "Sources of Change in United States–United Nations Relations," _Global Governance_ 16, no. 4 (2010): 485–503.

. Stephen Schlesinger, "Bosom Buddies? Ban and Obama's Curious Relations," _World Policy Journal_ 27, no. 1 (2010): 87–95.

. Bernard and Leaf, "Modern Threats," 1414.

. Robert Kagan, _The Return of History and the End of Dreams_ (New York: Knopf, 2008).

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, _The UN and Preventive Diplomacy_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

. Jeffrey A. Meyer and Mark G. Califano, _Good Intentions Corrupted: The Oil-for-Food Scandal and the Threat to the U.N._ (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006).

. The complete reports by Paul A. Volcker, Richard J. Goldstone, and Mark Pieth are available at www.iic-offp.org.

. "The Rewards of Beavering Away," _Economist_ , January 3, 2008.

. _Report of the Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of UN Personnel in Iraq_ , October 20, 2003, <http://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/safety-security-un-personnel-iraq.pdf>.

. Thomas G. Weiss and Peter J. Hoffman, "Making Humanitarianism Work," in _Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance_ , ed. Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2005), 296–317. See also Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008).

. Larry Minear et al., _Humanitarianism Under Siege: A Critical Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan_ (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea, 1991); and Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear, _TheChallenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992).

. William J. Durch, ed., _Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations_ (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace and the Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006).

. Paul Volcker and Shijuro Ogata, _Financing an Effective United Nations: A Report of the Independent Advisory Group on U.N. Financing_ (New York: Ford Foundation, 1993).

. Kofi Annan, "The Quiet Revolution," _Global Governance_ 4, no. 2 (1998): 123–138.

. Mark Malloch Brown, "Can the UN Be Reformed?" _Global Governance_ 14, no. 1 (2008): 7–8.

. Edward C. Luck, _Reforming the United Nations: Lessons from a History in Progress_ , United Nations Occasional Paper no. 1 (New Haven, Conn.: ACUNS, 2003), 7–16; Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers, _A World in Need of Leadership: Tomorrow's United Nations—A Fresh Appraisal_ (Uppsala, Sweden: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 1996); Commission on Global Governance, _Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); South Centre, _For a Strong and Democratic United Nations: A South Perspective on UN Reform_ (Geneva: South Centre, 1995); and Erskine Childers and Brian Urquhart, _Renewing the United Nations System_ (Upland, Penn.: Diane Publishing, 1999).

. _More Secure World_ , para. 247–260.

. General Assembly, _2005 World Summit Outcome_ , para. 154.

. Thomas G. Weiss, _Overcoming the Security Council Impasse: Envisioning Reform_ , United Nations Occasional Paper no. 14 (Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2005).

. General Assembly, _2005 World Summit Outcome_ , para. 139.

. _More Secure World_ , para. 164(d).

. General Assembly, _2005 World Summit Outcome_ , para. 81.

. Ibid.

. Paragraphs 57–64 of the _Draft Outcome Document_ , August 5, 2005, were devoted to this topic.

. Warren Hoge, "Report Finds U.N. Peacekeeping Isn't Moving to End Sex Abuse by Peacekeepers," _New York Times_ , October 19, 2005.

. Robert Jenkins, _Peacebuilding and the Peacebuilding Commission_ (London: Routledge, 2012); Graciana del Castillo, _Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenges of Post-Conflict Reconstruction_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Simon Chesterman, _You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); James Crawford, _The Creation of States in International Law_ , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Ralph Wilde, _International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Mark T. Berger, ed., "From Nation-Building to State-Building," special issue, _Third World Quarterly_ 27, no. 1 (2006); Charles T. Call with Vanessa Wyeth, eds., _Building States to Build Peace_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2006); Richard Caplan, _International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur, eds., _State Failure and the Crisis of Governance: Making States Work_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2005); and Paul Collier et al., _Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy_ (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003).

. See Peacebuilding Fund, "Trust Fund Fact Sheet," <http://mptf.undp.org/factsheet/fund/PB000>.

. Alberto Cutillo, _International Assistance to Countries Emerging from Conflict: A Review of Fifteen Years of Interventions and the Future of Peacebuilding_ , International Peace Academy, The Security-Development Nexus Program, February 2006, 60.

. See John Mackinlay, "The Requirement for a Multinational Enforcement Capability," in _Collective Security in a Changing World_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 139–152.

. The classic treatment is by Dag Hammarskjöld, _The International Civil Servant in Law and in Fact: A Lecture Delivered to Congregation on 30 May 1961_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961). See also Thomas G. Weiss, _What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), and _International Bureaucracy: An Analysis of the Operation of Functional and Global International Secretariats_ (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1975); and Robert S. Jordan, ed., _International Administration: Its Evolution and Contemporary Applications_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

. Christine Chinkin and Hilary Charlesworth, _The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis_ (New York: Juris Publications, 2000).

. Paul A. Volcker, Richard J. Goldstone, and Mark Pieth, _The Management of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme_ , vol. 1: _The Report of the Committee_ , September 7, 2005, 4, <http://www.iic-offp.org/Mgmt_Report.htm>.

. Laura Shepherd, "Power and Authority in the Production of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325," _International Studies Quarterly_ 52, no. 2 (June 2008): 383–404.

. UN Women's website has details; see <http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/about-un-women>.

. Fleur Roberts, "Understanding the Need for UN Women: Notes for New Zealand Civil Society," _Women's Studies Journal_ 25 (2011): 31–46.

. Louise Fréchette, _UN Peacekeeping: 20 Years of Reform_ , CIGI Papers no. 2 (Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2012), 4.

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, _Preventive Human Rights Strategies in a World of Acute Threats and Challenges_ (London: Routledge, 2010).

. James Dobbins et al., _The UN's Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq_ (New York: Rand Corporation, 2005), xxxvii.
**PART TWO**

HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS

* * *

CHAPTER 6

* * *

_The United Nations, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Affairs_

IN 2013 THE WORLD celebrates the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which reminds us of the UN's crucial role in promoting international human rights norms and principles. The UDHR specifies the more general mandates of the UN Charter in this field, and it thus places limits on governments' claims to unbridled sovereignty. According to the Charter and the Universal Declaration, not to mention the numerous follow-on human rights treaties, the established standards of civilized conduct apply to all states and hence affect the sensitive relationship between governments and those over whom they rule.

Human rights standards are always under some kind of challenge, and we cite just two examples now. The human rights of women across the world remain at risk because women lack the same legal status of men and in some societies are even treated as property. For some, the oppression of women is the twenty-first century's most pervasive human rights problem. Violence against women remains a basic problem, and while some governments may not directly target women, private actors such as members of their family, social groups, and even employers do. Direct physical threats are complicated by structural violence against women, whereby women are systematically denied equal protection and access to food, health, education, and the right to participate in public life. If the human rights of half the population are in question, then the very idea of universal human rights is also in question. Even where women have the same legal status as men, cultural practices and norms often dictate a subordinate position of women in society.

The so-called era of terrorism also challenges commitment to human rights. Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer at Harvard University, openly advocated torture as a legitimate security measure under certain conditions. Another prominent public intellectual, Michael Ignatieff, who directed a human rights center at Harvard before being elected to the Canadian parliament, argued that even liberal democracies could understandably violate even the most basic human rights when faced with major threats to national security. In January 2003 the _Economist_ ran a cover story under the title "Is Torture Ever Justified?" This focus was a follow-up to a _Washington Post_ story reporting that in its war on terrorism, the United States was using "stress and duress" interrogation techniques on prisoners detained in Afghanistan and at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where more than thirty prisoners had attempted suicide. At the now infamous prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, U.S. personnel subjected prisoners in 2003 to torture and cruel treatment. The United States also transferred certain prisoners to states such as Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Syria, where interrogation procedures were, euphemistically speaking, harsh. All of this was coupled with secret CIA detention facilities, acknowledged by President George W. Bush, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

President Obama signed executive order 13491 in 2009 prohibiting torture and ensuring lawful interrogation. While this put an end to most Bush-era tactics, some defenders of prisoner abuse continue to argue that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are lawful and give rise to important actionable intelligence. Also in 2009 President Obama ordered the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility but was blocked by Congress. In March 2011 and hemmed in by congressional legislation, he reluctantly signed another executive order that allowed for unlimited administrative detention at Guantánamo Bay, as well as having to accept controversial military commissions rather than trials in federal courts. Obama has also made extensive use of drones to target and kill terror suspects, raising concerns about the human rights dimensions of these kinds of extrajudicial killings. For example, it is not clear that all of those so attacked were active combatants as compared to having some kind of civilian status.

If the example of the rights of women indicates many challenges to human rights norms most importantly in the non-Western world, the example of the rights of terror suspects indicates that Western democracies also adopt policies that raise serious question about commitment to human rights values. But where does all this fit in the scope of the global human rights regime, and what are likely implications for the future of promoting, maintaining, and expanding human rights around the world? Answering these questions is the purpose of this chapter.

**THE THEORY**

Since 1945, states have used their plenary or constitutive sovereignty to create international human rights obligations that in turn have restricted their operational sovereignty. The international law of human rights, developed on a global scale mostly at the United Nations, clearly regulates what legal policies states can adopt even within their own territorial jurisdictions. International agreements on human rights norms have been followed at least occasionally by concrete, noteworthy developments showing that international organizations have begun to reach deeply into matters that were once considered the core of national domestic affairs.

The process by which a territorial state's assumed sovereignty has given way to shared authority and power between the state and international organizations is not a recent phenomenon. These changes accelerated with the start of the United Nations in 1945, became remarkable from about 1970, and became spasmodically dramatic from about 1991. The UN's role in human rights remains one of the more provocative subjects of the twenty-first century, what Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi have aptly called "the unfinished revolution."

Acknowledging these historical changes concerning the United Nations and human rights is not the same as being overly optimistic about these developments. Indeed, some UN proceedings on human rights would "depress Dr. Pangloss," the character in Voltaire's _Candide_ who believes that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Although noteworthy in historical perspective, UN activity concerning human rights often displays an enormous gap between the law on the books and the law in action. At any given time or on any given issue, state expediency may supersede the application of UN human rights standards. Revolutionary change in a given context may not be institutionalized in UN machinery; similar situations can give rise to different UN roles and different outcomes for human rights. A number of states, some of them with democratic governments, have opposed progressive action for human rights at the United Nations. If the international movement for human rights means separating the individual from full state control, then this movement has not always been well received by those who rule in the name of the state and who may be primarily interested in national power, wealth, and independence.

The territorial state remains the most important legal-political entity in the modern world despite the obvious importance of ethnic, religious, and cultural identifications and an increasing number of actors in civil society everywhere. Thus many ethnic and religious groups try to capture control of the government so that they can speak officially for the state. The state constitutes the basic building block of the United Nations. State actors primarily shape the world organization's agenda and action on human rights, although states are pushed and pulled by other actors, such as private human rights groups and UN Secretariat officials. Developments at the UN concerning human rights have sometimes been remarkable. However, in general, state authorities still control the most important final decisions, and traditional national interests still trump individual human rights much of the time in international relations. States have primary responsibility for the protection of human rights, while at the same time they are often the primary violators of international human rights.

Positive and negative developments concerning the United Nations and human rights were evident at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The Vienna conference was the last major global conference relating to human rights, and many states reaffirmed their commitment to universal human rights. A small minority of delegations, especially from Asia and the Middle East, argued for cultural relativism in a strong form: namely, that there were few or no universal human rights, mostly only rights specific to various countries, regions, or cultures. Some of the delegates making arguments in favor of strong cultural relativism were representing states that were party to numerous human rights treaties, without reservations.

A large number of NGOs attended the conference and tried to focus on concrete rights violations in specific countries, but most governments wanted to deal with abstract principles, not specific violations. At the same time that the U.S. delegation took a strong stand in favor of internationally recognized human rights in general, the Clinton administration refused to provide military specialists and protective troops to conduct an investigation into war crimes in Serbian-controlled territory in the Balkans. These examples show that a certain diplomatic progress concerning international human rights was accompanied by much controversy and reluctance to act decisively.

A legal distinction exists between human rights and humanitarian affairs. In international law, there are two legislative histories and bodies of law: one for human rights and one for international humanitarian law—the latter pertaining to situations of armed conflict. Increasingly human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concern themselves with the part of the laws of war pertaining to civilians and detained fighters in war, not just with human rights standards in peace. Human rights law and humanitarian law both focus on protecting human dignity, yet they have separate legislative histories, and humanitarian law applies only to armed conflict. This subject is complex and cannot be fully addressed here; some human rights norms are inviolable in all situations and thus apply in both peace and war.

Actions undertaken because persons have a legal right to them must be distinguished from actions undertaken because they are humane, because in the former persons are fundamentally entitled to the actions, but in the latter they are not. For example, in the diplomacy of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe during the Cold War, some families divided by the Iron Curtain were reunited in the name of humanitarianism. The objective was to achieve a humane outcome, sidestepping debates about a right to emigrate. Likewise, some foreign assistance is provided for victims of earthquakes and other natural disasters at least in part because of humane considerations, whether or not persons have a legal right to that international assistance.

A great many international actions are undertaken for mixed motives with various justifications. In 1992 the Security Council authorized the use of force, in effect, to curtail starvation in Somalia. To some, this was a response to the codified human rights to life, adequate nutrition, and health care. To others, this was acting humanely to alleviate suffering. The concept of international security was expanded to include humanitarian threats so that the Security Council could respond with a binding decision. States used the United Nations to try to improve order and reduce starvation. Whether outside troops went into Somalia for reasons of human rights or humanitarian affairs was a theoretical distinction without operational significance.

In this section we refer mostly to "human rights." Sometimes we note that UN involvement in a situation is oriented toward humane outcomes, whether or not the language of international human rights is employed. Internationally recognized human rights have been defined so broadly that one can rationalize almost any action designed to improve the human condition in terms of fundamental rights. Given the extent of violence in the world, those concerned about individuals in dire straits need to be aware of international humanitarian law for armed conflicts and the long effort to create humanitarian space in the midst of what belligerents call "military necessity." The driving force behind many of these developments has been to protect or restore human dignity—meaning the fundamental value and worth of the human person.

**UNDERSTANDING RIGHTS**

Human rights are fundamental entitlements of persons, constituting means to the end of minimal human dignity or social justice. If persons have human rights, they are entitled to a fundamental claim that others must do, or refrain from doing, something. Under the Westphalian system of international relations, which the UN modifies but does not fundamentally contradict, states are primarily responsible for order and social justice in their jurisdictions. Their governments are the primary targets of these personal and fundamental claims. If an individual has a right to freedom from torture, governments are obligated to ensure that torture does not occur. If an individual has a right to adequate health care, governments are obligated to ensure that such health care is provided, especially to those who cannot afford it.

The legal system codifies what are recognized as human rights at any point in time. The legal system, of course, recognizes many legal rights. The ones seen as most fundamental to human dignity—that is, a life worthy of being lived—are called human rights. There is a difference between fundamental human rights and other legal rights that are perhaps important but not, relatively speaking, fundamental. This theoretical distinction between fundamental and important rights can and does give rise to debate. Is access to minimal health care fundamental, and thus a human right, as the Canadian legal system guarantees? Or is that access only something that people should have if they can afford it, as the U.S. system implies? Why does the U.S. legal system recognize a patient's legal right to sue a doctor for negligence but not allow that same person access to adequate health care as a human right?

The origin of human rights outside of codification in the legal system is also debated. Legal positivists are content to accept the identification of human rights as found in the legal system. But others, especially philosophers, wish to know what are the "true" or "moral" human rights that exist independently of legal codification. Natural law theorists, for example, believe that human rights exist in natural law as provided by a supreme being. Analytical theorists believe there are moral rights associated inherently with persons; the legal system only indicates a changing view of what these moral rights are. According to Michael Ignatieff, we now have human rights at home and abroad not because of philosophy but because of history. If one reads history and notes the chronic abuse of individuals by public authorities, and if one notes that the societies that accept human rights do a better job of providing for the welfare of their citizens, that is sufficient justification for human rights. Despite the long-standing debate about the ultimate origin of human rights, many societies have come to some agreement about fundamental personal rights, writing them into national constitutions and other legal instruments. In international society formal agreement exists on what constitutes universal human rights.

_International Origins_

When important territorial states arose and became consolidated in the middle of the seventeenth century, human rights were treated, if at all, as national rather than international issues. Indeed, the core of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, designed to end the religious wars of Europe, indicated that the territorial ruler would henceforth determine the territory's religion. In the modern language of rights, freedom of religion, or its absence, was left to the territorial ruler. The dominant international rule was what today we call state sovereignty. Any question of human rights was subsumed under that ordering principle. International order at one time was based on the principle of noninterference in domestic affairs.

Later, the Americans in 1776–1787 decided to recognize human rights, and the French in 1789 attempted to do so, both revolutions referring to such rights as universal and drawing on the power of the ideas. These revolutions had no immediate legal effect, and sometimes no immediate political effect, on other countries. In fact, many non-Western peoples and their rulers were not immediately affected by these two revolutions, oriented as they were to definitions of what were then called "the rights of man." Many non-Western societies, such as China, relied primarily on enlightened leaders for human dignity and social justice. Such leaders might be seen as limited by social or religious principles, but they were not widely seen as limited by the personal rights of their "subjects." The idea of human rights was a Western invention in both theory and practice, but ethical considerations from many cultures affected European and North American thought.

During the middle of the nineteenth century, the West was swept by a wave of international sentiment. Growing international concern for the plight of persons without regard to nationality laid the moral foundations for a later resurrection and expansion of the notion of personal rights. Moral concern led eventually to an explosion in human rights developments, even if the notion of human rights was not particularly resurrected then. In some ways Marxism was part of this European-based transnational concern for the individual, since Karl Marx focused on the plight of the industrialized worker everywhere under early and crude capitalism. But he was not a persistent or consistent champion of all individual rights, being especially critical of unbridled property rights.

Early Marxism had its moral dimensions about individual suffering. Two other moral or social movements occurred about the same time and are usually cited as the earliest manifestations of internationally recognized human rights. In the 1860s, about the time Marx wrote _Das Kapital_ , a Swiss businessman named Henry Dunant started what is now called the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Dunant was appalled that in the 1859 Battle of Solferino in what is now Italy, which was entangled in the war for the Austrian succession, wounded soldiers were simply left on the battlefield. Armies had no adequate medical corps. European armies had more veterinarians to care for horses than doctors to care for soldiers. Dunant envisioned what became national Red Cross societies, and these putatively private agencies not only geared up for practical action in war but also lobbied governments for new treaties to protect sick and wounded soldiers. In 1864 the first Geneva Convention for Victims of War was concluded, providing legal protection to fighters disabled in international war and the medical personnel who cared for them. According to a third protocol added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions in December 2005, neutral emblems recognized for certain aid societies in armed conflict are the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and the Red Crystal. Other neutral emblems are also recognized. Today the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement encompasses over 186 national Red Cross or Red Crescent societies, the associated but autonomous International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the independent International Committee of the Red Cross.

The antislavery movement was another nineteenth-century effort to identify and correct a problem of human dignity on an international basis. By 1890 in Brussels, all the major Western states finally signed a multilateral treaty prohibiting the African slave trade. This capped a movement that had started about the turn of the nineteenth century in Britain. Just as private Red Cross organizations had pushed for protection and assistance for victims of war, so the London-based Anti-Slavery Society (today, Anti-Slavery International) and other private groups pushed the British government in particular to stop the slave trade. Britain outlawed the trade in the first decade of the nineteenth century; obtained a broader, similar international agreement at the Congress of Vienna in 1815; and thereafter used the British navy to try to enforce its ban on the slave trade.

The early resistance by the United States and other major slave-trading states was overcome by the end of the century. Yet an international agreement on principles and applications, reaching deeply into the European colonies in Africa, was necessary to significantly reduce this long-accepted and lucrative practice. In the twentieth century freedom from slavery, the slave trade, and slavery-like practices came to be accepted as an internationally recognized human right. Its roots lay in the transnational morality of the nineteenth century.

During the nineteenth century from time to time domestic pressure on the leading Western powers like Britain and France resulted in use of force abroad to "save strangers" or protect certain individuals from massacres—what today we call "atrocities." These "interventions" mostly occurred in "the sick man of Europe"—namely the Ottoman Empire. So it was that the Greek, Bulgarian, and Syrian peoples under Ottoman rule benefitted from British and French (even sometimes Russian) military action. These early "humanitarian interventions" often displayed a religious link, with "Christian nations" acting on behalf of "Christian peoples" menaced by Islamic (that is, Turkish or Ottoman) authorities. While episodic and unsystematic, such action also contributed to a growing concern for the fate of persons regardless of national borders. Of course, not all menaced groups were so fortunate in attracting outside protectors, as the fate of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire demonstrated.

This trend of focusing on human need across national borders increased during the League of Nations era, although the League's Covenant contained no human rights provisions and most efforts to focus on human dignity met with less than full success in an era of fascism, militarism, nationalism, racism, and isolationism. The Versailles conference in 1919 represented efforts to write into the League of Nations Covenant rights to religious freedom and racial equality. The British even proposed a right of outside intervention into states to protect religious freedom. These proposals failed largely because of Woodrow Wilson. Despite a Japanese push for the endorsement of racial equality, the U.S. president was so adamantly against any mention of race that U.S. and British proposals on religious freedom were withdrawn. During the 1930s the League's assembly debated the merits of an international agreement on human rights in general, but French and Polish proposals to this effect failed. Some states were opposed in principle, and some did not want to antagonize Nazi Germany, given the prevailing policy of accommodation or appeasement. Nevertheless, the language of universal human rights was appearing more and more in diplomacy.

International efforts to codify and institutionalize labor rights were more successful. The International Labour Organization (ILO) was created and based in Geneva alongside the League. Its tripartite membership consisted of government, labor, and management delegations from each member state. This structure was conducive to the approval of a series of treaties and other agreements recognizing labor rights, as well as to the development of mechanisms to monitor state practice under the treaties. The ILO thus preceded the United Nations but continued after 1945 as a UN specialized agency. It was one of the first international organizations to monitor internationally recognized rights—in this case labor rights—within states.

Although the Covenant of the League of Nations (the equivalent of the UN's Charter) failed to deal with human rights in general, its Article 23 did indicate that the League should be concerned with social justice. In addition to calling for international coordination of labor policy, Article 23 called on member states to take action on such matters as "native inhabitants," "traffic in women and children," "opium and other dangerous drugs," "freedom of communications," and "the prevention and control of disease." Precise standards, however, were decidedly lacking in these issue areas.

The League of Nations was connected to the minority treaties designed for about a dozen states after World War I in an effort to curtail the ethnic passions that had contributed to the outbreak of the Great War in the Balkans. Only a few states were legally obligated to give special rights to minorities. The system of minority treaties did not function very well under the acute nationalist pressures of the 1930s. So dismal was the League record on minority rights that global efforts at minority protection per se were not renewed by the United Nations until the 1980s—a gap of about fifty years.

The League mandate system sought to protect the welfare of dependent peoples. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised the European states that controlled certain territories taken from the losing side in World War I. Those European states were theoretically obligated to rule for the welfare of dependent peoples. Peoples in "A" mandates were supposed to be allowed to exercise their collective right to self-determination in the relatively near future. The Permanent Mandates Commission was made up of experts named by the League Council, and it established a reputation for integrity—so much so that the controlling states regarded it as a nuisance. The League of Nations tried to promote humane values—a synonym for social justice. It was concerned with human dignity, even if it did not often use the specific language of human rights. In some cases it sought to improve the situation of persons without actually codifying their rights. In so doing it laid the foundation for later rights developments. For example, the League of Nations Refugee Office sought to help refugees, which was useful in 1951, when the UN sponsored a treaty on refugee rights and established the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

These and other developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries expressed "an epochal shift in moral sentiment." The growing "moral interdependence" was to undergird the creation of human rights "regimes" in the UN era. This moral solidarity was not cohesive enough to eradicate many of the ills addressed. How could it be, when in the 1930s some major states (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were glorifying brutal power at the service of particular races or nationalities? The Soviet Union had an extensive record of brutal repression and exploitation within its borders, using mass murder and starvation as a policy tool to obtain compliance. The United States engaged in its own version of apartheid (namely, legally sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination) as well as blatantly racist immigration laws. Thus, while a shift occurred toward a cosmopolitan morality that tended to disregard national boundaries and citizenship, a "thick morality" still centered on national communities and was subject to the disease of chauvinistic nationalism. "Thin morality" was left for international society. Prevailing wisdom was that governments existed to pursue the national interest, whereas attention to the plight of others abroad was a distinctly secondary consideration.

Legal and organizational developments during the League of Nations era were more important as historical stepping-stones than as durable solutions in and of themselves. International moral solidarity was strong enough to create certain laws, agreements, and organizations, but states lacked sufficient political will to make these legal and organizational arrangements function effectively. Cosmopolitan compassion did not always fit well with traditional _raisons d'état._

When the United Nations was created in 1945, a growing corpus of legal and organizational experience existed that the international community could draw on in trying to improve international order and justice. By 1948, conventional wisdom held that internationally recognized human rights would have to be reaffirmed and expanded, not erased. The UN would have to devise better ways of improving human dignity, through both law and organization.

**BASIC NORMS IN THE UN ERA**

The American and British founders of the United Nations were determined to include human rights in the Charter. This determination preceded widespread knowledge about the extent of the Holocaust and other World War II atrocities. Intellectual opinion in the United States and United Kingdom pushed for an endorsement of human rights as a statement about the rationale for World War II. This could be seen in the Atlantic Charter issued by the United States and Britain early in 1941. Franklin D. Roosevelt stressed the importance of four freedoms, including freedom from "want." A handful of Latin American states joined in this push to emphasize human rights as a statement about civilized nations. Eleanor Roosevelt became an outspoken champion of human rights in general and women's rights in particular. In the UN Human Rights Commission, however, which Eleanor Roosevelt chaired in the 1940s, the most outspoken advocate for women's rights was the Indian representative, Hansa Mehta.

The Truman administration, unlike the Wilson administration in 1919, agreed to a series of statements on human rights in the Charter and successfully lobbied the other victorious great powers. This was not an easy decision for the Truman administration, particularly given the continuation of legally sanctioned and widely supported racial discrimination within the United States. Whether the Truman administration was genuinely and deeply committed to getting human rights into the Charter or whether it was pushed in that direction by others remains a point of historical debate. Franklin D. Roosevelt became convinced that the origins of World War II lay in the denial of human rights in fascist Europe and imperial Japan, and Harry Truman accepted this interpretation. Various other states and NGOs expanded the references to human rights in the UN Charter, but U.S. support for this human rights language would have remained general and judicially unenforceable.

Why Joseph Stalin accepted these human rights statements is not clear, especially given the widespread political murder and persecution within the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps the USSR saw this human rights language as useful in deflecting criticism of Soviet policies, particularly since the Charter language was vague and not immediately followed by specifics on application. Perhaps Stalin saw the language of rights as useful in his attempt to focus on socialism—that is, he might accept the general wording on rights if it was intended to concentrate only on social and economic rights. This would not be the last time the Soviet Union underestimated the influence of language written into international agreements. The 1975 Helsinki Accord, and especially its provisions on human rights and humanitarian affairs, generated pressures that helped weaken European communism. The Soviet Union initially resisted human rights language in the accord, but it eventually accepted that language in the mistaken notion that the codification and dissemination of human rights would not upset totalitarian control.

The United Kingdom accepted the Charter language on human rights with the understanding that it would not be applied in British colonies. For Winston Churchill, who had helped author ringing pronouncements about human rights during World War II to highlight enemy atrocities, the British Empire should continue, with all that it implied about an unequal status for nonwhite peoples. In this view he was not dissimilar from the American Founding Fathers, albeit two centuries earlier, whose proclamations about human rights were not intended for women, slaves, or Native Americans. The 1945 Charter statements on human rights, although more progressive than some had originally wanted, were vague. Nevertheless, they provided the legal cornerstone or foundation for a later legal and diplomatic revolution. The Charter's preamble states that a principal purpose of the UN is "to affirm faith in fundamental human rights." In Article 1, the Charter says that one of the purposes of the organization is to promote and encourage "respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion." In Article 55, the Charter imposes on states these legal obligations:

With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote:

A. higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development;

B. solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation; and

C. universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

Article 56 states that "all Members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55."

The language of Article 55 endorses the notion of human rights because they were linked to international peace and security. Western democracies believed that states respecting human rights in the form of civil and political rights would not make war on others. In this view, brutal authoritarian states, those that denied civil and political rights, were inherently aggressive, whereas democracies were inherently peaceful. At the same time, many accepted the notion of human rights by seeing them as a means to human dignity, not necessarily or primarily as a means to ensure international peace.

Both motivations drove the diplomatic process regarding human rights in 1945. Some policymakers genuinely saw human rights as linked to peace, and others may have accepted that rationale as a useful justification for promoting human dignity. Motivation and justification are not the same, but in reality separating the two is difficult. The relationship between human rights and peace has intrinsic importance to world politics. A clear correlation between at least some human rights and peace has importance not only for a direct and "micro" contribution to human dignity but for a contribution to human dignity in a "macro" sense by enhancing international—and perhaps national—security and stability through eliminating major violence.

The connection between various human rights and international and national peace—with "peace" defined as the absence of widespread violence between or within countries—has been widely researched. The following five statements summarize some of that voluminous research. First, liberal democratic governments (those that emerge from, and thereafter respect, widespread civil and political rights) tend not to engage in international war with one another. Documenting international war between or among democracies is difficult, and some scholars believe that the absence of war is not because of democracy. The United Kingdom and the United States fought in 1812, but one scholar holds that because of the severely limited franchise, the United States did not become a democracy until the 1820s and Britain not until the 1830s.

The debate about threshold conditions for democracy continues. One view is that the United States did not become a democracy until women, or half of the population, gained the franchise. In the American Civil War, the Union and the Confederacy both had elected presidents, but the Confederacy was not recognized as a separate state by many outsiders, and it also severely restricted the voting franchise. At the start of World War I, Germany manifested a very broad franchise, but its parliament lacked authority and the kaiser went unchecked in making much policy. Even though some scholars think the historical absence of war between democracies is either a statistical accident or explicable by security factors, other scholars continue to insist that consolidated liberal democracies (as compared to transitional democracies and illiberal democracies) do not often make war on each other. But as long as scholars cannot explain precisely why the latter is usually true, one must remain cautious about the accuracy and durability of this apparent pattern.

Second, liberal democratic governments have used covert force against other elected governments that are not perceived to be truly in the liberal democratic community. The United States during the Cold War used force to overthrow some elected governments in developing countries—for example, Iran in 1953 (Mohammed Mossadeq was elected by Iran's parliament), Guatemala in 1954 (Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was genuinely if imperfectly elected in a popular vote), Chile in 1973 (Salvador Allende won a plurality), and Nicaragua after 1984 (some international observers regarded Daniel Ortega as genuinely if imperfectly elected). Several democracies used force to remove the Patrice Lumumba government in the Congo in the 1960s; those elections, too, were imperfect but reflected popular sentiment.

Third, some industrialized liberal democratic governments seem to be war-prone and clearly have initiated force against authoritarian governments. Britain, France, and the United States are among the most war-prone states, owing perhaps to their power and geography. Liberal democratic governments initiated hostilities in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Suez crisis of 1956, not to mention U.S. use of force in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s and in Iraq in 2003.

Fourth, human rights of various types do not correlate clearly and easily with major national violence such as civil wars and rebellions. In some of these situations a particular human rights issue may be important—for example, slavery in the American Civil War, ethnic and religious persecution in the Romanian violence of 1989, and perceived ethnic discrimination in contemporary Sri Lanka. But in other civil wars and similar domestic violence, human rights factors seemed not to be a leading cause—for example, the Russian civil war of 1917 and the Chinese civil war in the 1930s. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights presents itself, in part, as a barrier to national revolution against repression. This follows the Jeffersonian philosophy that if human rights are not respected, revolution may be justified. But the link between human rights violations and national violence is difficult to verify as a prominent and recurring pattern. A number of repressive and exploitative governing arrangements have lasted for a relatively long time while various rights-protective governments have yielded under violent pressure to more authoritarian elites.

Fifth, armed conflict seems clearly to lead to an increase in human rights violations. If some uncertainty remains about whether liberal democracy at home leads to a certain peace abroad, a reverse pattern does not seem open to debate. When states participate in international and internal armed conflict, there is almost always a rise in violations of rights of personal integrity and an increase in forced disappearance, torture, arbitrary arrest, and other violations of important civil rights. Human rights may or may not lead to peace, but peace is conducive to enhanced human rights.

**CORE NORMS BEYOND THE CHARTER**

The UN Charter presented the interesting situation of codifying a general commitment to human rights before an international definition or list of human rights was developed. To answer the question of what internationally recognized human rights states are obligated to apply, the United Nations developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an effort to specify Charter principles. On December 10, 1948—December 10 is now recognized as International Human Rights Day—the General Assembly adopted the UDHR without a negative vote (but with eight abstentions: the Soviet Union and its allies, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa). This resolution, not legally binding at the time of adoption, listed thirty human rights principles covering perhaps sixty rights. They fell into three broad clusters.

First-generation negative rights are the individual civil and political rights that are well known in the West. They are called "first-generation" because they were the ones first endorsed in national constitutions and called "negative" because civil rights in particular blocked public authority from interfering with the private person in civil society. These were the rights to freedom of thought, speech, religion, privacy, and assembly, plus the right to participate in the making of public policy. In the view of some observers, these are the only true human rights. In the view of others, these are the most important human rights, because if one has civil and political rights, one can use them to obtain and apply the others. In the view of still others, these rights are not so important because if one lacks the material basics of life such as food, shelter, health care, and education, then civil and political rights become relatively meaningless.

Second-generation positive rights are socioeconomic rights. They are called "second-generation" because they were associated with various twentieth-century revolutions emphasizing a redistribution of the material benefits of economic growth, and "positive" because they obligate public authority to take positive steps to ensure minimal food, shelter, and health care. European states, Japan, and Canada have enshrined these rights in their welfare states, and these rights have been rhetorically emphasized in many developing countries. How important these rights are is still a matter of debate. In the United States, the Democratic Carter and Clinton administrations accepted them in theory and gave them some rhetorical attention but never fully embraced them. Republican administrations from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush rejected them as dangerous to individual responsibility and leading to big government.

Third-generation solidarity rights are the rights emphasized by some contemporary actors. They are called "third-generation" because they followed the other two clusters and also are called "solidarity" because they pertain to collections of persons—for instance, indigenous peoples—rather than to individuals. Later formulations have included claims to a right to peace, development, and a healthy environment as the common heritage of humankind. Under some national laws, groups receive formal recognition. Some minorities are guaranteed a certain number of seats in Parliament. Other peoples are recognized as holding collective title to land. Whether some of these group arrangements should be called collective human rights of universal validity remains controversial.

Eleanor Roosevelt holds a Universal Declaration of Human Rights poster. (UN/DPI Photo 23783)

One collective right, a people's right to self-determination, has been much discussed, especially since the end of World War I. The principle of national self-determination is recognized as the first article in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Thus, the collective right to self-determination is cast in modern times as a human right. It is clear, however, that this general principle has not been translated into specific rules indicating which group is a national people with this right and which is not. Also lacking is a clear indication of what "self-determination" means, and the options range from various forms of internal autonomy to full independence. Unfortunately, most claims to self-determination are resolved by politics, including violent politics, rather than peaceful change under judicial supervision.

Parsing rights into several categories or "generations" is perhaps useful to summarize developments, but analytical care is necessary. To apply negative rights, positive action must be taken. States must develop legislation to protect civil and political rights and spend billions each year to see that they are respected. Second-generation socioeconomic rights were emphasized by the Catholic Church as well as by the state of Ireland and various Latin American states relatively early on. Collective rights can also pertain to individuals. Moreover, they are not so new. The right to national self-determination is actually a right of peoples or nations that has been (a vague) part of international law for decades.

A prevalent view, articulated nicely by Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who stepped down in September 2002 as the UN high commissioner for human rights, is that all of the generations should be viewed as a "package." Her position reflected votes in the General Assembly stating that all internationally recognized rights were important and interdependent. At the same time, however, the Security Council created international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda with legal jurisdiction for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This suggested that the right to be free from these violations was more important or more basic. UN member states created the International Criminal Court with the same focus. The structure of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights suggests that even within that category of rights some rights are core, permitting no violation even in national emergencies, while other rights can be suspended in exceptional times. All of this leads to much debate about whether there should be some prioritizing of rights action. Also, in international law there is the concept of _jus cogens_ : fundamental legal rights that can never be abridged, even by other rights developments. There is no definitive list of _jus cogens_ approved by states, but a virtually universal view is that some human rights, such as freedom from genocide and summary execution and torture, are part of _jus cogens_. This consideration again leads to the conclusion that some human rights are more basic than others. The notion of R2P, discussed extensively in earlier chapters, indicates that mass atrocities should receive special attention, namely genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

The United States is an outlier among states that traditionally support human rights. It has not ratified three of seven core treaties—the ones protecting economic, cultural, and social rights, protecting children's rights, and eliminating discrimination against women. Within the Group of 8 (G-8), or the seven most powerful Western democracies (including Japan) and the Russian Federation, the United States is the only country that has not ratified any of these. And in the expanded G-20, the United States finds itself in the company of China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa in not ratifying one or more of these treaties. Moreover, even when ratifying human rights treaties like the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the United States adds reservations and other statements that prevent the treaties from having domestic effect, which, as a former State Department lawyer noted, makes it very difficult to get international law introduced into courts within the United States.

No state voting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has succeeded in meeting all its terms through national legislation and practice. This vote was the homage that vice paid to virtue. This would not be the last time that state diplomacy presented a large measure of hypocrisy. Yet most contemporary states want to be associated with the notion of human rights. Of the UN's 193 member states, 167 had formally accepted the civil-political covenant by mid-2012, and 160 the economic-social-cultural covenant.

Since 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has acquired a status far beyond that of a normal or regular General Assembly recommendation. Some national courts have held that parts of the declaration have passed into customary international law and thus became legally binding (e.g., the declaration's Article 5, prohibiting torture). Some authorities and publicists believe the entire declaration is now legally binding, whereas others say that only parts of it are. The International Court of Justice in The Hague has not rendered an opinion on this question, and so the declaration's exact overall legal status remains unclear.

Nonetheless, the practical impact of the declaration is considerable. Its principles have been endorsed in numerous national constitutions and other legal and quasi-legal documents. All the new or newly independent European states that once had communist governments accepted its principles in theory in the 1990s. Of the eight states abstaining in 1948, seven had renounced their abstention by 1993. Only Saudi Arabia continued to object openly to the declaration. Even China, despite its repressive policies and government, issued statements accepting the abstract validity of the universal declaration.

Having adopted the declaration, UN member states turned to an even more specific elaboration of internationally recognized human rights. The decision was made to negotiate two separate core human rights treaties, one on civil and political rights and one on social, economic, and cultural rights. This was not done only, or even primarily, because of theoretical or ideological differences among states. The different types of rights also were seen as requiring different types of follow-up. A widely held view was that civil-political rights could be implemented immediately, given sufficient political will, and were enforceable by judicial proceedings. By comparison, socioeconomic rights were seen as requiring certain policies over time, as greatly affected by economic and social factors, and hence as not subject to immediate enforcement by court order. As mentioned earlier, the more recent approach within the United Nations, in the General Assembly and elsewhere, is to blur distinctions and consider rights comprehensively.

By 1956 two UN covenants, or multilateral treaties, were essentially complete on the two clusters of rights. By 1966 they were formally approved by states voting in the General Assembly, the time lag indicating that not all states were enthusiastic about the emergence of human rights treaties limiting state sovereignty. By 1976 a sufficient number of state adherences had been obtained to bring the treaties into legal force by parties giving their formal consent. Few followed the example of the United States of accepting one but rejecting the other (the United States became a party to the civil-political covenant in 1992, with reservations, but not to the socioeconomic covenant). Most states accepted both covenants.

More than fifty states (not including the United States) have agreed to allow their citizens to petition the UN Human Rights Committee (after exhausting national efforts) alleging a violation of the civil-political covenant by a government. The Human Rights Committee is made up of individual experts, not governmental representatives. It is not a court but a "monitoring mechanism" that can direct negative publicity toward an offending and recalcitrant government. It works to prod governments toward fulfilling their international commitments. All states that have accepted the socioeconomic covenant are automatically supervised by a UN Committee of Experts. After a slow start, that committee, too, began a systematic effort to persuade states to honor their commitments. The mechanisms of both committees are treated below.

The Palais des Nations, UN Office at Geneva. (UN/DPI Photo/P. Klee)

These three documents, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two 1966 UN covenants, make up what was not included in the UN's Charter: an International Bill of Rights, or a core list of internationally recognized human rights that would have similar status to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. Most of the treaty provisions are clarifications of, and elaborations on, the thirty norms found in the declaration. There are a few discrepancies. The declaration notes a right to private property, but this right was not codified in the two covenants. After the fall of European communism, the General Assembly on several occasions returned to a recognition of property rights. As already noted, there was a broad and formal acceptance of this International Bill of Rights, even though there is no such official label or document. At the same time, a number of governments were tardy in filing reports with both the Human Rights Committee under the civil-political covenant and the Committee of Experts under the socioeconomic covenant. But from either 1966 or 1976, depending on which date is emphasized, there was a core definition of universal human rights in legally binding form with a monitoring process designed to specify what the treaties meant.

**SUPPLEMENTING THE CORE**

During most of the UN era, states were willing to endorse abstract human rights. But until the 1990s, they were not willing to create specialized human rights courts or even to make the global treaties enforceable through national courts. In the next chapter we address the establishment of ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the International Criminal Court with broad jurisdiction, as well as the Pinochet case from Chile involving national action concerning torture and other crimes against humanity. Traditionally, in the absence of dependable adjudication, states tried to reinforce the International Bill of Rights, while protecting their legal independence, by negotiating more human rights treaties. This is a way to bring diplomatic emphasis to a problem, to raise awareness of a problem, or to further specify state obligation in the hopes that specificity will improve behavior.

About one hundred international human rights instruments exist. These include conventions, protocols, declarations, codes of conduct, and formal statements of standards and basic principles. Table 6.1 summarizes part of the situation. Despite overlap and duplication, the United Nations has seen the emergence of treaties on racial discrimination, apartheid, political rights of women, discrimination against women, slavery, the slave trade and slavery-like practices, genocide, hostages, torture, the nationality of married women, stateless persons, refugees, marriage, prostitution, children, and discrimination in education. The ILO has sponsored treaties on forced labor, the right to organize, and rights to collective bargaining, among others. A number of supplemental human rights treaties are in varying stages of negotiation at the United Nations, including those on indigenous peoples, forced disappearances, persons with disabilities, and minorities. A collective right to development has been declared by various UN bodies, including the General Assembly, and may become the subject matter of a treaty.

Regional human rights treaties fall outside the domain of the UN, as do some treaties on human rights in armed conflict that are sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Switzerland, the latter being the official depository for what is called international humanitarian law (IHL). In this regard, diplomatic events that technically fall outside the UN, especially related to IHL, contributed to further specifying international standards on human rights and humanitarian affairs. IHL sought to protect human dignity in armed conflicts, just as human rights law sought to protect human dignity more generally.

In 1949 the international community of states adopted four conventions for victims of war. Initially drafted by the ICRC, the Geneva Conventions of August 1949 sought to codify and improve on the humanitarian practices undertaken during World War II. For the first time in history, a treaty was directed to the rights of civilians in international armed conflict and in occupied territory resulting from armed conflict. Each of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 contained an article (hence Common Article 3) that extended written humanitarian law into internal armed conflict. The ICRC, although technically a Swiss private association, was given the right in public international law to see detainees resulting from international armed conflict. And for the first time in history, civilians in occupied territory were recognized as having a right to humanitarian assistance.

**TABLE 6.1** UN Human Rights Conventions

This body of humanitarian law—from one point of view the international law for human rights in armed conflict and from another the laws of war—was further developed in 1977 through two protocols (or additional treaties): Protocol I for international armed conflict and Protocol II for internal (or noninternational) armed conflict. Normative standards continued to evolve. For the first time in the history of warfare, Protocol I prohibited the starvation of civilians as a legal means of warfare. Protocol II represented the first separate treaty on victims in internal war. In 2005 Additional Protocol III was added, regulating neutral emblems for aid societies. Among its practical effects was allowing the official Israeli aid society, Magen David Adom (MDA), to be recognized into the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Before, since MDA used the Red Shield of David as its emblem, it could not be officially recognized by the ICRC or admitted into the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. For many states, what was at issue was indirect recognition of the legitimacy of the state of Israel through accommodation of its official aid society. For that reason, Protocol III was approved not by consensus but by contested vote. The protocol allowed use of a Red Crystal, in addition to the Red Cross and Red Crescent, as approved neutral emblems, to which national emblems could be added. Thus MDA could now use the Red Crystal in international operations devoid of religious or historical significance, along with its red six-sided star. Such were the complications when humanitarian considerations collided with state strategic calculation.

Regional human rights developments are noteworthy. A regional human rights regime was created in Western Europe, and it served as an excellent model for the international protection of human rights. The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms defined a set of civil and political rights. For a time the European Commission on Human Rights served as a collective conciliator, responding to state or private complaints to seek out-of-court settlements. The European Court of Human Rights existed to give binding judgments about the legality of state policies under the European Convention on Human Rights.

All states in the Council of Europe bound themselves to abide by the convention. All governments allowed their citizens to have the right of individual petition to the commission, a body that could then—failing a negotiated agreement—take the petition to the European Court of Human Rights. All states eventually accepted the court's supranational authority. Member states voluntarily complied with its judgments holding state policies illegal. Such was the political consensus in support of human rights within the Council of Europe. This regional international regime for human rights functioned through international agencies made up of uninstructed individuals rather than state officials, although there was also a Committee of Ministers made up of state representatives.

In the mid-1990s, Council of Europe members progressively moved toward giving individuals standing to sue in the European Court of Human Rights without having the commission represent them. Thus an individual would have almost the same legal "personality" or status in the court as a state. Persons came to acquire both substantive and procedural rights of note, a distinctive feature, since formerly it was possible to present a case—or have full "personality," in the language of international lawyers—only as a state.

The European system for the international protection of civil and political rights under the European Human Rights Convention generated such a large number of cases that, to streamline procedure, the commission was done away with. Individuals were allowed to proceed directly to a lower chamber of the European Court of Human Rights for an initial review of the admissibility of their complaint. If the complaint met procedural requirements, the individual could then move on to the substantive phase, basically on an equal footing with state representatives. There were other regional human rights regimes in the Western Hemisphere and Africa, but they did not match the Western European record in successfully protecting human rights. The European situation shows that "muscular," supranational, effective protection of human rights is possible in international relations when there is sufficient political will. Unfortunately, the European situation also shows how far the UN system has to go before it can provide the same sort of human rights regime. Popular and state commitment to the serious protection of human rights is much greater in Europe than elsewhere. Possibilities at the UN are limited by this factor. In this sense political culture is the independent variable, and institutional authority the dependent variable.

Diplomatic activity concerning setting human rights standards internationally has expanded greatly. A sizable, and still expanding, part of international law deals with human rights. Human rights have been formally accepted as a legitimate part of international relations. Most states do not oppose these normative developments in the abstract—that is, they do not dispute that international law should regulate the rights of persons even when persons are within states in "normal" times. This generalization also pertains to international or internal armed conflict, and to public emergency—although some rights protections can be modified in these exceptional situations. All states are now parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The United Nations clearly is acting within accepted bounds in establishing human rights standards. For ease of reference, Table 6.1 contains a list of human rights that are generally accepted as protected under international law.

One theme that appears in Part Three of this volume is how contemporary globalization represents a powerful challenge to integrating human rights more effectively into efforts to ensure a values-led process. The progressive integration of economies and societies, a helpful definition formed by the ILO's World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalization, has generated uneven benefits. While an academic debate continues about whether globalization is new, its current costs are borne unevenly. Future human rights challenges include the need for global policies to address a host of problems, which emerge from such global issues as transnational criminal and terrorist activities, human trafficking, and HIV/AIDS. In 2000 then secretary-general Kofi Annan launched the Global Compact, an effort to get powerful multinational corporations to pledge to respect human rights along with other standards that pertain to protecting the environment and reducing corruption.

The Permanent Court of International Justice said in the early 1920s that what is international and what is domestic depends on the changing nature of international relations. The UN era has clearly seen the zone of exclusive or essential domestic jurisdiction shrinking. Article 2 (7) mandates that the UN shall not "intervene" in matters "essentially" within the domestic jurisdiction of states. The diplomatic record confirms, however, that most states no longer view many human rights matters as essentially within domestic jurisdiction. Certainly the establishment of international standards on human rights cannot logically be considered an unlawful intrusion into state internal affairs. If the Security Council decides that international peace and security are threatened, even internationally approved "intervention"—in the sense of coercive economic, judicial, and military action—can be taken to rectify massive human rights violations under the doctrine of "the responsibility to protect."

As the extensive standard-setting activity of the UN has made clear, at least in legal theory, human rights have been internationalized and internalized. Beyond the setting of standards, an answer is emerging to the ancient question: _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes_? (Who shall guard the guardians?) In the field of human rights, the United Nations supervises governmental policy against the background of universal norms.

**NOTES**

. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, _Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide_ (New York: Random House, 2010).

. Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, "For CIA Suspects Abroad, Brass-Knuckle Treatment," _Washington Post_ , December 27, 2002. This article generated virtually no immediate reaction in official Washington. Compare "Is Torture Ever Justified?" _Economist_ , January 11–17, 2003. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz defended some use of torture in a debate with Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch on NBC, _Today Show_ , March 4, 2003.

. Michael Ignatieff, _The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

. John Yoo quoted in Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, "Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on the Value of Torture," _New York Times_ , May 3, 2011, and Scott Shane, "The Role of Torture Revisited in bin Laden Narrative," _New York Times_ , April 30, 2012.

. Sebastian Wuschka, "The Use of Combat Drones in Current Conflicts—A Legal Issue or a Political Problem," _Goettingen Journal of International Law_ 3 (2011): 891–905, and "Self-Defence Targetings of Non-State Actors and Permissibility of U.S. Use of Drones in Pakistan," _Journal of Transnational Law and Policy_ 19 (Spring 2010): 237–280.

. Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, _Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal Justice_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

. Tom J. Farer, "The UN and Human Rights: More Than a Whimper, Less Than a Roar," in _United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations_ , ed. Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 129.

. Julie A. Mertus, _The United Nations and Human Rights: A Guide for a New Era_ , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2009); Martin J. Rochester, _Between Peril and Promise: The Politics ofInternational Law_ (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006); and Michael Byers, ed., _The Role of Law in International Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. Michael G. Schechter, _United Nations Global Conferences_ (London: Routledge, 2005), 128–134.

. Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell, eds., _The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

. Jack Donnelly, _Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice_ , 2nd ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 7–21.

. Michael Ignatieff, _Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

. Stephen James, _Universal Human Rights: Origins and Development_ (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007); and David P. Forsythe, general ed., _Encyclopedia of Human Rights_ , 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, _Contemporary Human Rights Ideas_ (London: Routledge, 2008).

. Micheline R. Ishay, _The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

. John F. Hutchinson, "Rethinking the Origins of the Red Cross," _Bulletin of Historical Medicine_ 63 (1989): 557–578, and _Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996).

. Jan Herman Burgers, "The Road to San Francisco: The Revival of the Human Rights Idea in the Twentieth Century," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 14, no. 2 (1992): 447–478.

. David P. Forsythe, _The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

. François Bugnion, _Le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des victims de la guerre_ (Geneva: ICRC, 1994); and Edwin M. Smith, "The Law of War and Humanitarian War: A Turbulent Vista," _Global Governance_ 9, no. 1 (2003): 115–134.

. David P. Forsythe and Barbara Ann J. Rieffer, _The International Committee of the Red Cross: A Neutral Humanitarian Actor_ (London: Routledge, 2007).

. Nicholas J. Wheeler, _Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. Gary J. Bass, _Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention_ (New York: Knopf, 2008).

. Paul Gordon Lauren, _Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988), 76–101; Burgers, "Road to San Francisco," 449.

. Ernst Haas, _Human Rights and International Action_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970); Hector G. Bartolomei de la Cruz et al., _The International Labor Organization: The International Standards System and Basic Human Rights_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996); Steve Hughes, _The International Labour Organization_ (London: Routledge, 2009).

. Farer, "UN and Human Rights," 97.

. Jack Donnelly, "International Human Rights: A Regime Analysis," _International Organization_ 40, no. 3 (1985): 599–642.

. Timothy Snyder, _Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler_ (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

. Farer, "UN and Human Rights," 98.

. See Burgers, "Road to San Francisco."

. Cathal J. Nolan, _Principled Diplomacy: Security and Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy_ (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993), 181–202.

. Burgers, "Road to San Francisco," 475.

. David P. Forsythe, "Human Rights and Peace," in _Encyclopedia of Human Rights_ , 3rd. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 187–196.

. Nolan, _Principled Diplomacy._

. Daniel C. Thomas, _The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); and William Korey, _The Promises We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American Foreign Policy_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1993).

. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, _The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America's Purpose_ (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992), 86.

. Bruce Russett, "Politics and Alternative Security: Toward a More Democratic, Therefore More Peaceful, World," in _Alternative Security: Living Without Nuclear Deterrence_ , ed. Burns Weston (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), 107–136.

. Samuel P. Huntington, _The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century_ (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

. Bruce M. Russett and John R. Oneal, _Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations_ (New York: Norton, 2001).

. David P. Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action," _Journal of Peace Research_ 29, no. 4 (1992): 385–396.

. David N. Gibbs, _The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

. David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights and Peace: International and National Dimensions_ (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993).

. Steven C. Poe and C. Neal Tate, "Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis," _American Political Science Review_ 88, no. 4 (1994): 853–872.

. Johannes Morsink, _The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and Intent_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); and Mary Ann Glendon, _A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights_ (New York: Random House, 2001).

. William F. Felice, _The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Human Rights in World Politics_ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); and A. Belden Fields, _Rethinking Human Rights for the New Millennium_ (New York: Palgrave, 2003).

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 2000_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

. John F. Murphy, _The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

. Hurst Hannum, "The Status of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in National and International Law," _Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law_ 25 (1995–1996): 287–397.

. This is not the place for a technical discussion of the two bodies of law. There is some overlap, because, for example, the core rights of the civil-political covenant, such as the prohibition on torture, are legally valid in armed conflict as well as in other situations.

. The ICRC and the government of Switzerland signed a headquarters agreement protecting its premises and personnel from review or intrusion by Swiss authorities, as if the ICRC were an intergovernmental organization. The ICRC seems neither fully public nor fully private, legally speaking; rather it is sui generis (or in a category by itself). See Forsythe, _The Humanitarians._

. See _A Fair Globalization: Making It Happen_ , <http://www.ilo.org/fairglobalization/lang--en/index.htm>.

. David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, _Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); James P. Muldoon et al., eds., _Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999); and James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds., _Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

. Nationality Decrees in Tunis and Morocco, Permanent Court of International Justice, Series B, no. 4, _World Court Report_ , 143.
* * *

CHAPTER 7

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_The United Nations and Applying Human Rights Standards_

AVARIETY OF UN ORGANS, offices, and agencies try to see that states apply the norms of internationally recognized human rights. Through their governmental authorities, states are primarily responsible for promoting and protecting human rights within their territorial jurisdiction—and sometimes beyond. Individuals and private groups may have obligations in the field of human rights, and nongovernmental actors may play a large role at the UN, but under international law, governments are legally obligated to make national law and practice consistent with the international agreements that they have accepted. The role of the United Nations is usually indirect. Its organizational units encourage, prod, push, and sometimes embarrass states to take active steps to protect and promote human rights. On occasion, the Security Council authorizes outside parties to undertake direct protection, and UN officials themselves can engage in direct protection.

The overall UN processes of helping to apply international human rights standards are exceedingly broad and complex. The structure of the main organizational components underpinning that process is illustrated in Figure 7.1. Fundamentally, UN diplomacy for human rights involves informal education or socialization, in that the UN seeks to "teach" new attitudes that benefit individuals. Changing attitudes may take quite a long period of time, as they did with slavery and decolonization. As part of this long-term socialization process, the United Nations is extensively engaged in supervising state behavior under international human rights standards.

**SECURITY COUNCIL**

The Security Council has the authority to declare a situation a threat to or breach of the peace, which enables it to play an important role in promoting and protecting human rights. It can invoke Chapter VII of the Charter and reach a "decision" binding on all states. Such decisions can entail economic, judicial, or military action. On several occasions the Security Council has linked an ugly human rights situation to a threat to or breach of the peace, or it has otherwise reached a legally binding decision declaring that economic, judicial, or military steps are needed to correct a human rights problem. With its power of self-definition—that is, what it declares to be a threat to international peace and security is a threat to international peace and security—the council sometimes links human rights to security.

FIGURE 7.1 UN Human Rights Organizational Structure

* * *

_Source:_ United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, <http://www.unhchr.ch/hrostr.htm>. (The Human Rights Council now replaces the Commission on Human Rights.)

Another dramatic set of developments unfolded in international criminal law when the council established the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994 to seek legal justice against those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Subsequently, in 2002 it oversaw the creation of both a special court and a fact-finding commission in Sierra Leone, and in 2003 the council was again involved in the creation of a special court in East Timor. In 2005 the General Assembly helped establish another hybrid court (part national and part international) in Cambodia to try members of the former Khmer Rouge regime who were responsible for the "killing fields." The Security Council also created a special criminal tribunal in response to a political assassination in Lebanon in 2005. The binding council decisions under Chapter VII are in addition to the more usual advisory resolutions that, although not directly and legally binding on states, may influence human rights policy. One saw this latter process at work in 2012, when the Security Council endorsed a peace plan for Syria and mediation by former secretary-general Kofi Annan, in response to prolonged instability and atrocities.

Security Council Chapter VII decisions demonstrate the maximum concern for human rights expressed through the United Nations. During the Cold War, only two situations led to the invocation of Chapter VII concerning human rights; both pertained to white-minority rule in southern Africa. We emphasized earlier the coercive aspects of sanctions; here we stress the rationale behind them—namely, the protection of basic human rights.

In 1966 the Security Council voted mandatory economic sanctions on the Ian Smith government of what was then southern Rhodesia. A more comprehensive action in 1968 mentioned the human rights situation as one justification for the sanctions. Another justification addressed illegal secession from the United Kingdom. These sanctions remained in effect until 1979, when majority rule was obtained in the new state of Zimbabwe. Although the sanctions were too gradual and porous to have been the only cause of the fall of white-minority rule in Rhodesia, they were the first attempt at UN collective economic measures—of a mandatory nature—at least partly in the name of human rights. The council, being a political as well as legal body, often uses general language to maximize support for a resolution, even if doing so makes precise legal analysis more difficult.

In 1977 the Security Council voted a mandatory arms embargo on the Republic of South Africa. Human rights were not explicitly mentioned, only "the situation in South Africa," but the basic issues of concern to the international community were apartheid, the denial of a people's right to self-determination, and majority rule—all defined as human rights issues in international law. The arms embargo, although perhaps manifesting some symbolic value, was too limited and again too porous to end apartheid by itself. It was one element among many that led to progressive change in South Africa by the 1990s.

After the end of the Cold War, the Security Council expanded the use of Chapter VII in relation to human rights with mixed results. In 1991, after the first Persian Gulf War, the council declared that the international repercussions of the human rights situation in Iraq, especially to the government's attacks on the Iraqi Kurds, constituted a threat to international peace and security. Iraqi Kurds were fleeing into both Iran and Turkey to escape repression, although international armed conflict among states was not imminent over this migration. This was the council's first explicit declaration that violating human rights created an international security threat since the vague resolutions on both Rhodesia and South Africa.

The Security Council did not expressly authorize the use of force to stop Iraqi repression of its citizens, but several states claimed that the council had implicitly authorized force for that purpose. Led by the United States, they created a protected area for Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq. Airpower was later used in southern Iraq to protect Iraqi Shiites then being repressed by the government, again with the claim that the council had implicitly approved such force.

In the Balkans following the breakup of greater Yugoslavia, the Security Council, apart from its other actions, authorized the use of all necessary means for the protection of humanitarian personnel in Bosnia. The initial UN peacekeeping forces were deployed under Chapter VI; humanitarian assistance was treated under Chapter VII. Once again, the diplomatic language "all necessary means" was a euphemism for authorizing military force with a human rights rationale.

In spite of this authorizing language, UN member states remained more reluctant to use force in Bosnia than in the Persian Gulf without the expressed consent of the various fighting parties. Member states' officials, including those in the United States, feared a complex and open-ended involvement in the Balkans that might come to resemble the Vietnam War. The cases of Rhodesia, South Africa, and Iraq showed that the council could link human rights violations to international peace and security. Although the Security Council declared the same linkage in Bosnia's case, the council was cautious about implementing what it had declared when the military costs might be high. In other words, the costs of enforcement carried weight in considering whether to insist on respect for agreed-upon standards of human rights.

Likewise, when the council adopted resolutions on the question of Balkan war crimes and related atrocities, the resolutions looked more like diplomatic bluff than strong political will to stop such gross violations of human rights as genocide, political murder, and the use of rape as a weapon of war. Even systematic rape and ethnic cleansing did not motivate the Security Council to act decisively. The council created "safe areas" but did not provide the UN peace operation with the legal authority to protect the areas militarily. Srebrenica, where approximately eight thousand Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb militias in July 1995, serves as a reminder of the disastrous consequences of the council's indecisiveness when the willingness to commit military resources lags behind its rhetoric. Information was collected for possible war-crimes prosecutions, but initially there was no permanent international criminal court to which that information could be submitted. In early 1993 the Security Council resolved to create such an international court strictly for the armed conflict in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, but a number of major hurdles remained.

Political factors had encouraged the Security Council to break new ground concerning human rights in Iraq. But different political factors led to the council's caution in dealing with the Balkans. The council endorsed the Dayton Peace Accords, after which NATO initially deployed some sixty thousand troops, including approximately twenty thousand Americans, to constitute the Implementation Force (IFOR). Although this military deployment helped end the fighting and secured the disengagement of fighting parties, IFOR was reluctant at first to use force to arrest indicted war criminals or to secure the safe return of refugees and displaced persons. Both of these human rights objectives were written into the Dayton accords but were not pursued rigorously. Western governments, including the Clinton administration still smarting from the deaths of soldiers in Somalia, feared that public opinion would not support a vigorous arrest policy if Western casualties resulted.

In the context of extensive coverage by the Western media of Somalia's plight in 1992, the Security Council authorized all necessary means to create "a secure environment" for the delivery of humanitarian relief. In addition, the council declared that in that "unique" situation—referring to the chaos that constituted the absence of effective government—civilians had a right to humanitarian assistance. Anyone blocking delivery of that assistance would be committing a war crime for which there was individual legal responsibility. Under this pathbreaking resolution, some thirty-seven thousand troops—mostly from the United States—were deployed in Somalia to maintain the order necessary to feed starving civilians. As a result of Security Council resolution 814, the United Nations took control of this operation with twenty-eight thousand of its own blue helmets in May 1993. This was the first Chapter VII military operation under actual command and control of the United Nations.

The primary political factors encouraging these developments in Somalia were not only media coverage and exhortations from the secretary-general but also the absence of a national government, which had led to a multisided civil war. Moreover, the costs of the undertaking, when focused on secure assistance and not state building, were judged by military establishments to be reasonable. The international community of states, including developing countries prone to defend the narrowest interpretation of state sovereignty, found it easier to act when there was no national government whose consent was being bypassed. And from the viewpoint of the developed countries, the local nonpolitical bandits, unlike the armed factions in the Balkans, were clearly no match for Western military forces. Some believe that the United States—and UN—were more assertive in Somalia than in the Balkans because at the outset of military operations the former looked "more doable" than the latter. Lest anyone forget, power calculation counts.

These events clearly demonstrate that the Security Council can authorize direct protection for persons such as the Kurds in Iraq or millions of civilians in Somalia. International peace and security could mean not just the security of states from foreign attack but also the security of persons inside states. Talk of "human security" could often be heard in the UN's corridors and conference rooms. No agreed criteria exist for authorizing coercion to enforce human rights or humanitarian law; such actions reflect what the international political traffic can bear at a particular moment—borne out at the 2005 World Summit, when criteria still were not on the table although the responsibility to protect was. So there still are no precise rules governing military intervention for human protection purposes. One sees the continuing ambiguity when comparing council action in Libya and Syria during 2011–2012.

In Somalia, the low risk of international violence, or even much international disruption outside the country, did not deter the Security Council from invoking Chapter VII and passing resolution 794, which ordered fighting parties to resolve their differences and permit humanitarian assistance, in December 1992. In reality, the council was applying Chapter VII to an internal conflict with primary emphasis on humanitarian action. This application has led some observers to conclude that the Security Council was developing, after 1990 and especially in Somalia, a doctrine for humanitarian intervention apart from issues of international peace and security. Formally, however, the council asserted not a right of forcible humanitarian intervention per se but a right to respond to situations that it said threatened international peace and security. From Somalia some war refugees fled to states like Kenya, but the international implications were, relatively speaking, modest with the possible exception of piracy. The council did not formally elevate the notion of human security inside states to a level equal with traditional interstate security. However, human security, and especially the protection of civilians, informed council decisions.

Likewise in Haiti in 1994, the council labeled the situation a threat to international peace. The situation clearly did not involve a threat of attack on any other state by the weak authoritarian government. Rather, the most pressing international issue was the flight of asylum seekers to the United States, stemming from an abusive national regime that also failed to promote sustainable development. Once the council authorized the use of all necessary means to restore democracy, the United States was in a strong position to threaten the use of force. The reactionary rulers eventually agreed to yield peacefully, and migration to the United States was greatly reduced. The UN and a bevy of other agencies subsequently tried to consolidate the fragile democracy in Haiti. The situation by 2008, reinforced by a different UN peacekeeping operation, seemed a modest improvement over pre-1994, but many human rights problems remained. The UN was involved in several firefights with gangs and militias, and kidnapping rates increased dramatically. In an effort to establish order and stability, the UN took a more robust posture by militarily confronting the armed gangs. The 2010 devastating earthquake forced the UN mission into a more humanitarian posture, coordinating the delivery of first response and reconstruction assistance. The UN field mission was expanded, but structural problems in Haiti remained daunting.

The primary external agents of UN protection for Iraq, Somalia, the Balkans, and Haiti, for example, were states, through their military establishments. The Security Council played an authorizing role, and UN agencies like UNHCR and UNICEF helped provide assistance on the ground. The delivery of assistance under the aegis of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which was a form of guaranteeing socioeconomic human rights, initially went well in Somalia. But the Balkans showed clearly that some situations did not lend themselves easily to outside intervention, even for those with the purest of motives. People had internationally recognized human rights, in both peace and war. But guaranteeing those rights involved complex calculations about feasibility linked to power. In most of the situations under discussion, various armed actors cared little about civilian protection, the laws of armed conflict, military honor, or the good intentions of UN personnel. Controlling these actors required shrewd political judgment and often hard power.

Haitians take to the streets of Port-au-Prince to celebrate Jean-Bertrand Aristide's election in 1990. (UN Photo 177258/M. Grant)

The Security Council can authorize a member state or regional organization to enforce human rights, or the council itself can manage direct enforcement, as in Somalia. In the Balkans, UN officials also directly participated in decisions involving combat. In places such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Namibia, and Cambodia, UN forces managed by UN personnel had mainly observed electoral and other agreements. But in these types of operations UN armed personnel observed but did not enforce human rights standards themselves. UN personnel expected that UN headquarters would take steps with national parties to see that rights were protected. The more frequent UN role was not direct protection through enforcement of human rights norms but indirect protection by prodding others to take action.

Increasingly, traditional peacekeeping entails a human rights element. As Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote in his last annual report as secretary-general in 1996, "The United Nations . . . has moved to integrate, to the extent possible, its human rights and humanitarian efforts with its peace efforts." The first United Nations Angola Verification Mission verified both troop movements and elections in Angola. The same was true of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia. The United Nations Protection Force in the Balkans was intended to supervise a cease-fire and deliver humanitarian relief. In Cambodia, in an effort to achieve a national peace, the Khmer Rouge—killers of at least a million persons in the 1970s—were persuaded by UN personnel to sign the Geneva Conventions protecting human rights in armed conflict. All personnel of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia were supposed to carry out human rights functions.

Controversy surrounds the question of whether the UN itself should enforce, rather than observe and mediate, human rights standards. In Somalia, military forces under UN command fired on both civilian demonstrators and combatants and launched military operations against one of the major warlords of the country, when securing assistance was expanded to coercive state building. While the UN was trying to produce national order and an effective and democratic government, the scores of fatalities and chain reaction of violence led to declining enthusiasm for this type of international involvement.

These events greatly undermined risk taking in Rwanda during 1994, when approximately 800,000 persons were murdered during a genocide committed by Hutu extremists manipulated by militant Hutu elements within the government against the Tutsi minority and some moderate Hutus as well. The Security Council balked at taking the necessary steps to halt the genocide and actually reduced its presence during the worst of the killing. When the Security Council members agreed to send more troops six weeks after the beginning of the slaughter, the then undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, contacted over eighty governments, but none were willing to commit troops. Later the secretary-general contacted a number of states with a view to a military deployment in Burundi, where similar ethnic violence was resulting in the "slow-motion genocide" of perhaps 150,000 persons during a five-year period. Of the fifty states approached, only twenty-one responded. Of these, eleven declined to help; of the remaining ten, only three offered ground troops. The situation did not explode in a Rwanda-like fashion, but the country remained on the brink of a human rights disaster. "Saving strangers" was not popular in most outside states.

The Security Council's response to the evolving humanitarian crisis in Kosovo in 1998–1999 added another twist to the story. Concerned with the increased violence and human rights violations in the territory, the council responded in September 1998 by condemning such acts and calling for an end to all such conflict and terrorism. Yet no concrete preventive or protection action was taken. And when NATO finally acted militarily to deal with the eroding human security situation in March 1999, it did so without explicit UN authorization.

The Security Council's complex and multidimensional operational responses to the crises in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo similarly demonstrate a growing willingness to incorporate human rights elements, including special attention to children, directly into peacekeeping operations. They also reflect an increased commitment to the concept of comprehensive human security and peacebuilding. At the same time, they also may reflect a lack of political will to match rhetoric with operational resources. Expansive words in New York or Geneva can outstrip action in the field.

The operational definition of security the council has employed has evolved in recent years to include a much broader range of human security concerns, not the least of which are actions to stop genocide and other gross violations of human rights. How far council members are willing to go remains to be seen. The Security Council's painful dithering over Darfur, for instance, demonstrates the dramatic disconnect between multilateral rhetoric and reality. As Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the feeble UN force in Rwanda when civil war turned to genocide in 1994, lamented, "Having called what is happening in Darfur genocide and having vowed to stop it, it is time for the West to keep its word." He was referring to the collective yawn since early 2003 in the face of genocide in Darfur. Could this be even more destructive to the fabric of international law than the eight hundred thousand deaths in Rwanda? In 2004, the U.S. Congress condemned Darfur unanimously, voting 422–0 that Khartoum was committing "genocide," and Secretary of State Colin Powell actually used the term in a speech in September of that year, coinciding with views from such private groups as Physicians for Human Rights. Also in September, European Union parliamentarians urged Sudan to end actions that could be "construed as tantamount to genocide." Meanwhile, the African Union sent seven thousand ill-equipped troops to Sudan to protect its sixty monitors, although not the Sudanese victims. The repeated failure to act mocks the value of the 1948 Genocide Convention as well as the emerging "responsibility to protect" norm and ultimately may further erode public support for the United Nations. However, Western publics do not seem terribly concerned about atrocities in places like Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially during times of economic difficulties at home accompanied by fatigue from past interventions.

The United Nations continues to use another tool for protecting and promoting human rights—at least after the fact of atrocities: the ICC and other internationally approved criminal courts. Since 1993 and the creation of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), the Security Council (and once the General Assembly) has directly or indirectly approved a variety of criminal courts and referred some situations to the ICC for investigation. For a time the U.S. opposition to the ICC was clear; however, from 2005 on this opposition has not meant that Washington would stand in the way of using the ICC to pressure those seen as responsible for atrocities. The United States certainly on occasion is willing to subject others to ICC jurisdiction as long as there is no prospect of American citizens becoming defendants in that court. More recently the Security Council has referred the situations in Sudan and Libya to the ICC as well, which has in turn issued important arrest warrants for certain top officials. The Security Council, with significant U.S. political and financial assistance, has also enabled the hybrid courts associated with Sierra Leone, Cambodia, East Timor, and Lebanon. Whether this proliferation of international courts, cases, and prosecutions is the result of states "learning" about the utility of international criminal law, in which individuals are said to be responsible for atrocities, is debatable. Sometimes the recourse to criminal law through the United Nations occurs because member states do not want to engage in more controversial—if potentially decisive—actions.

On balance, the functioning of the ICTY and ICTR has led to the prosecutions of a number of high-level political and military officials, which is what the courts were intended primarily to do. And in a narrow sense these two UN ad hoc courts have been successful not only in convicting and incarcerating a number of criminal defendants but also in engaging in a major rewriting of modern international criminal law. Whether these courts have had a broader ameliorative impact on national and regional politics is still uncertain.

Similarly, in 2012 the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, and sentenced him to fifty years in prison for his role in supporting rebel atrocities. In the same year the ICC saw its first conviction and sentencing: Thomas Lubanga for his recruitment of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because of these and other cases, various dictators and warlords—at least those in small and weak states—cannot be assured that their evil deeds will go unpunished.

But in some circles of opinion, there is dissatisfaction with the evident selective application of the law. The criminal courts established thus far have dealt almost always with situations in powerless countries. An ICC arrest warrant for the sitting president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has not been enforced at the time of writing, nor have the warrants for his colleagues. An ICC process in Kenya, involving important public figures, is still playing out in the aftermath of violence following the disputed 2007 presidential elections. Moreover, most international trials have been exceedingly slow and costly, leading to complaints about expenses and coddling heinous defendants. There are also complaints about the way certain ICC prosecutions have been managed. Still further, there is the central question of whether pursuit of criminal justice at least sometimes impedes a diplomatic solution to the problem. After all, if one wants al-Assad to step down in Syria, would threat of prosecution not be an impediment to that objective?

The Security Council still has a long way to go to achieve a balanced and systematic record concerning the protection of human rights, especially under Chapter VII. Many more persons died in Rwanda during 1994 or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002 than died in Kosovo in 1999. Yet the council, pushed by Western states, showed far more interest in the human rights violations in the Balkans than in Africa, even if it failed to approve a decision. This double standard stemmed partly from the media coverage of Western-based reporting, partly from the interests of Western governments. Racism may also have been involved. China and Russia, which have less than stellar human rights records themselves, have sometimes protected notorious violators of human rights from Security Council scrutiny. In January 2007, China and Russia helped block a council resolution sponsored by the United States and the United Kingdom condemning human rights violations by Myanmar (formerly Burma) and declaring the situation a threat to international peace and security. China and Russia admitted that human rights violations existed but asserted there was no threat to international peace and security. After Myanmar's bloody crackdown on demonstrators in September 2007, China blocked a council resolution calling for sanctions. The same two countries exercised a double veto in 2012 to block council attempts to apply pressure on Syria, despite clear atrocities by forces loyal to the government. These countries, however, did not block council resolutions referring the Sudanese and Libyan situations to the ICC.

**GENERAL ASSEMBLY**

Beyond setting standards, the General Assembly indirectly protects human rights in two ways. It passes resolutions to condemn or otherwise draw attention to violations of human rights. In 2012, after China and Russia double vetoed a Security Council Chapter VII resolution on the violence in Syria, the General Assembly passed a resolution strongly condemning widespread and systematic human rights violations by Syrian authorities. The vote (with only 12 of 193 countries voting against) was a remarkably clear rebuke of Syrian intransigence as supported by Russia, China, Iran, and a few others. More generally, about one-third of the General Assembly's resolutions each year deal with human rights, which keeps one of its main standing committees—the Third Committee—quite busy dealing with social, humanitarian, and cultural affairs. Many of these resolutions are adopted by consensus and constitute a rough barometer of which rights policies are judged most acceptable or egregious. In 1995, for example, the General Assembly responded to the execution of a Nigerian human rights and environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, with a resolution condemning the then-military government. The vote was 101–14, with 47 abstentions (mostly African states, as regional defensiveness was evident), one of forty-six human rights resolutions adopted during that session. Other years show the same general pattern. For example, in 2008 the General Assembly adopted a resolution expressing deep concern regarding Iran's human rights practices and adopted fifty-six resolutions dealing with human rights and humanitarian affairs.

When a resolution targets a specific country or violation, evaluating the resolution's effect over time is difficult. The assembly's repeated condemnations of apartheid in South Africa may have had some impact on changing attitudes among South Africans. At the same time, words divorced from coercive power cannot have much effect in the short term. In trying to account for change in South Africa, violence against apartheid, formal economic sanctions, and the shrinking of investments by the international business community all played a role.

A General Assembly resolution on human rights can also backfire and work against the protection of those rights. General Augusto Pinochet in Chile used critical assembly resolutions to rally nationalistic support for his rule despite the gross violations of basic rights that he was overseeing. The assembly's 1975 declaration that Zionism was a form of racism not only antagonized Israel but alienated some of Israel's supporters from the assembly. The resolution did nothing for the practice of rights in either Israel proper or the occupied territories that Israel controlled militarily. The resolution was repealed in 1991.

The General Assembly has created a segment of the UN Secretariat to deal with Palestinian rights and a committee to oversee Israeli practices pertaining to human rights in the territories militarily occupied since 1967. The assembly also voted to hold the World Conference on Human Rights during June 1993 in Vienna. Sometimes the assembly takes a half step to help with rights. It created the Fund for Victims of Torture, but it refused to make the fund part of the regular UN budget. The fund relies on voluntary donations. This and other compensatory funds for the victims of human rights violations have been poorly supported.

When decisions are not made by consensus, human rights policies reflect the majority controlling the General Assembly. From 1945 until about 1955, the Western majority was not very sensitive to issues of racial discrimination and tended to focus instead on such issues as forced labor under communism. In the period that followed, the assembly tended to emphasize issues of national self-determination and an end to racial discrimination, reflecting the desires of the developing countries, which had become a different "automatic majority" through decolonization. After the end of the Cold War, an intensified North-South conflict dominated human rights proceedings in the assembly. In the late 1980s and 1990s, developing countries successfully reaffirmed the principle of state sovereignty in the face of the industrialized countries' expressed desire to emphasize a right of humanitarian assistance that would supersede state sovereignty. By the early twenty-first century, little had changed.

While the members of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) could assert "no more Rwandas," many states from the Global South stressed the supremacy of state sovereignty. While more stable states from the North, such as Sweden, stress the supremacy of the international community's obligation to interfere to protect the interests of the victims of violence or deprivation, many countries from the Global South still see the discourse of human rights as menacing their sovereignty. For some of them, for instance, the responsibility to protect may be seen as a Trojan horse for Western imperialism. In short, no consensus in the assembly exists as to the proper limits of state sovereignty or when the UN is justified in approving action without state consent in the name of human rights.

In other manifestations, the General Assembly is also characterized by fragmented views that shift from issue to issue. On the question of human rights in Iraq during the 1990s, for example, a number of Islamic states thought that the Security Council had gone too far in restricting Iraqi sovereignty. Yet on the question of human rights for Muslims in Bosnia, many Islamic states in the assembly wanted the Security Council to go further in challenging Yugoslav and Serbian policies toward Bosnia. Thus, Western states do not have a monopoly on double standards for human rights.

Although developing countries control the majority of votes in the General Assembly and despite the rise of the likes of India, China, and Brazil, the West has predominant economic and military power. This situation provides the recipe for some accommodation between the North and Global South, especially since the number of developing countries with governments prone to compromise rather than to confrontation has grown substantially since the mid-1980s. Hence, in the assembly in the early 1990s, several resolutions endorsed democracy and the integration of civil and political rights into development decisions. These resolutions of the 1990s were not a radical change from some earlier resolutions endorsing the equal value of all human rights, whether civil-political or socioeconomic. They did emphasize democracy more than did other earlier resolutions. The General Assembly had more electoral democracies among member states by 2012 than at any other time in the world organization's history.

**INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT**

After a decade of efforts by the assembly and certain subsidiary bodies, like the International Law Commission, 160 member states met in Rome during June and July 1998 to finalize a treaty on international criminal justice. Against some difficult odds, this United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court was successful in doing just that. The resulting Rome Statute entered into force upon ratification by 60 states, which occurred on July 1, 2002. By early 2003, the first set of judges (who sit in their individual capacity rather than as state representatives) had been elected and took up their positions in The Hague. Canada's Philippe Kirsh was the court's first president, and Argentina's Luis Moreno Ocampo was its first chief prosecutor. Readers will recall that we have made passing reference to the ICC above, but the historical significance of the court merits further analysis.

By 2007, the governments of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic had authorized the ICC to conduct investigations in their states regarding possible genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. In reality, these governments were using the court to try to go after troublesome figures in their countries. For example, Uganda wanted help in suppressing Joseph Kony and his atrocious movement, the Lord's Resistance Army. At the same time, the Museveni government in Kampala did not want any ICC investigations into its human rights violations, which included tolerance for murderous attacks on gay people. In 2005, the Security Council instructed the prosecutor to inquire into bringing charges against certain individuals in Sudan because of policies in the Darfur region that might constitute one or more of the crimes covered by the ICC's statute. In 2008, Moreno Ocampo sought an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, along with two of his colleagues in the government, and in March 2009 an arrest warrant was issued. Thus, the court was increasingly busy, despite opposition or tepid support by a number of important states.

Indeed, although 20 African countries were among the founders of the ICC and 30 of its 108 members are African, a communiqué from the African Union in 2008 asking the Security Council to suspend the court's proceedings against al-Bashir suggests that, at least in that situation, a number of African states prioritized diplomatic rather than judicial proceedings. In 2012, however, Mali refused to allow al-Bashir to enter that country to attend an AU meeting, and the meeting was moved. This showed that an ICC arrest warrant could at least complicate politics as usual. China, on the other hand, allowed al-Bashir into that country on a state visit, even though China had declined to veto the council resolution referring the Sudanese situation to the ICC. In 2011, the African Union was not supportive of referring the Libyan situation to the ICC, once again giving the official reason of preferring diplomatic approaches to the conflict between the Gaddafi regime and its opponents. Furthermore, a number of African governments expressed some concern when the ICC became deeply involved in Kenya's politics, investigating a number of high politicians for playing a role in ethnic violence, albeit on the recommendation of Kofi Annan as the AU's mediator and a prominent African. All of the ICC's cases at the time of writing have arisen out of Africa.

The UN had thus helped establish a permanent international criminal court to try individuals for certain egregious human rights violations, the first such court in history. The court's jurisdiction is complementary to states in that, unlike the two ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, states retain the primary responsibility to respond to allegations of mass-atrocity crimes. Through the independent prosecutor, who, like the judges, is elected by states that have accepted the Rome Statute, the court becomes active only if a state is unwilling or unable to investigate such allegations and, if warranted, prosecute. In 2012, over one hundred states, including most NATO members that did indeed sometimes deploy their military forces abroad, had accepted the Rome Statute and hence the ICC's jurisdiction and authority, which was encouraging for the protection of fundamental human rights. Yet important states such as the United States, Israel, Russia, China, India, and others still reject the court's jurisdiction over their nationals.

The United States led an active opposition up until 2005, threatening states that accepted the court with dire consequences and concluding new agreements with as many states as possible in which the two states agreed not to turn over the other's citizens to the court. During 2002 the United States delayed extending deployments of UN blue helmets until the Security Council granted it a one-year renewable exemption from the court's jurisdiction. This sequence was repeated the following year, but in 2004, after evidence surfaced of U.S. war crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during 2003, the George W. Bush administration abandoned this blocking strategy in the Security Council. Also in 2002, the U.S. Congress passed legislation, subsequently signed into law by President Bush and informally dubbed "The Hague Invasion Act," which among other sections authorized the United States to use force to liberate any American citizen detained in relation to the ICC. In many ways 2002 represented the last major effort of the United States to kill the ICC. By 2005 Washington decided to utilize the court when dealing with others, as in Sudan, and the follow-on Obama administration continued that policy—without, however, seeking U.S. membership in the court.

The United States claimed that it feared politically motivated and false charges against its citizens by other states, a rogue prosecutor who would engage in the same behavior, and legal exposure to its citizens that was unacceptable given the extensive security operations taken in the name of the UN or NATO. Furthermore, the Rome Statute was vague about the crime of "aggression." Signing onto the court potentially could limit U.S. use of military force without UN authorization. Washington's opposition to the court could also be more ideological than pragmatic. Given that, for example, the prosecutor could not proceed with charges against a U.S. citizen unless such proceedings had been approved by a special panel of judges of the court, it seems that Washington was more interested in defending an absolute conception of state sovereignty and national independence on doctrinaire grounds than in resisting potential and unwarranted dangers to its citizens.

Theoretically, the ICC still could come into play when and if the United States were to select targets and weapons that might contradict international humanitarian law and thus constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. The latter concept pertains to a systematic attack on civilians, whether in peace or war. Such charges about illegal U.S. policies arose with regard to such matters as military attacks on a TV station in Belgrade in 1999 and the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas in Afghanistan in 2001. The prosecutor of the ICTY undertook a preliminary investigation but declined to pursue the matter further. Such decisions pertaining to bombing targets and other tactical matters were never independently investigated either by the U.S. Congress or by the federal courts. It was precisely in such situations that the ICC might become operational and threatening with regard to U.S. citizens, if the state in which events occurred and the United States were parties to the court's statute.

Either the state where the alleged crime took place or the state of the defendant would have to be a party to the Rome Statute for the ICC to have jurisdiction. When the United States engaged in armed conflict in Iraq in 2003, neither U.S. nor Iraqi citizens were subject to the court's jurisdiction, since neither state had exercised the necessary consent. But British policymakers and military personnel were. Thus theoretically a state such as France could file a complaint in the ICC about systematic policy in Iraq against a British national, but not against an American or an Iraqi. As events played out, the United Kingdom itself investigated a number of war crimes allegations against its troops in Iraq. The ICC was never involved.

The court marked a historical milestone in the evolution of efforts to improve the protection of important human rights. The ICC can be "pulled off the shelf" if states do not exercise their responsibility to seriously follow up on allegations of certain mass-atrocity crimes. Whether it will actually play an active and important deterrent or enforcement role in international relations will be determined by future events. While the ICC is accepted by the likes of Britain, France, Italy, and Canada, it continues to be viewed with reservation by the United States and other important states such as Russia and China. Indeed, two scholars, albeit of realist orientation, warned that the ICC was an example of "international idealism run amuck." Yet the Bush administration utilized the ICC regarding Darfur in 2005, and the Obama administration did so regarding Libya in 2011.

**OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL**

Before Kofi Annan, UN secretaries-general did not publicly display a major commitment to human rights. Perhaps they had seen their primary role as producing progress on peace and security. This emphasis was understood to mean that they could not speak out on specific human rights violations. Had Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, for example, made protection of individual human rights his primary concern, his office probably would have been unacceptable as mediator between Iran and Iraq, or between the Salvadoran armed forces and the FMLN, or in the Afghan situation after the Soviet invasion.

Virtually all secretaries-general have engaged in good offices or quiet mediation for the advancement of human rights. But only Annan systematically, though cautiously, threw the full weight of his office behind human rights protection. The current secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has spoken out on Darfur, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, and Syria; however, his nonconfrontational personality and style make him unlikely to use the UN's bully pulpit for human rights to the same extent as his immediate predecessor, and he usually awaits public stances by major powers before taking a public position himself.

Whether one speaks of Dag Hammarskjöld or Kurt Waldheim, however, the point on human rights remains the same. Hammarskjöld was personally not much interested in human rights at the United Nations, and Waldheim was even less dynamic. Much the same could be said for U Thant, who was not as personally committed to individual rights as he was to the collective right of peoples to self-determination. As human rights became more institutionalized in UN proceedings, however, secretaries-general took a higher profile on rights. Pérez de Cuéllar is instructive in this regard. A cautious Peruvian diplomat, he entered office showing great deference to states, especially Latin ones. One of his first acts was to not renew the contract of his most senior human rights official, Theo van Boven. Van Boven had irritated the Argentine junta, then in the process of murdering at least nine thousand Argentines. By the end of his term, Pérez de Cuéllar had projected the UN, by his own authority, into the affairs of both El Salvador and Nicaragua, including deep involvement on human rights. In Nicaragua during his tenure, the UN came to oversee a regional peace accord, to supervise national elections for the first time in a sovereign state, and to collect weapons from a disbanding rebel force. He also oversaw human rights observers in Haiti in 1991, the first time UN election verification had taken place in a country not wracked at the time by civil conflict.

When human rights were linked to peace, Pérez de Cuéllar and his office came to be bold and innovative. And the two issues were indeed inseparable in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Namibia, Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia, East Timor, and Kosovo. The Office of the Secretary-General took initiatives and then obtained the backing of both the General Assembly and the Security Council. Increasingly, the secretary-general was drawn into rights questions that had previously been considered the domestic affairs of states or seen as in opposition to U.S. desires.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali followed in his predecessors' footsteps. Upon becoming secretary-general in 1992, he seemed uninterested in human rights, even appointing an old friend without a human rights record as head of the UN Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. But within the year, Boutros-Ghali was as deeply involved in human rights issues as Pérez de Cuéllar had been. In El Salvador, for example, Boutros-Ghali was active in supporting President Alfredo Cristiani as he tried to purge the army of most of those who had committed gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Boutros-Ghali was outspoken in promoting democratic or participatory values as part of the quest for economic development. This stand may not have been completely desired by some developing countries, but his speeches and reports in support of democratic development were backed by many donor countries. In the early 1990s the major donor countries pushed for more grassroots participation in the search for sustainable development, whether through bilateral programs, the World Bank, or agencies of the UN. The secretary-general's position fit nicely within this paradigm shift in favor of the human right to participation in public affairs.

Moreover, Boutros-Ghali appointed the Swedish diplomat who had mediated the Iran-Iraq War, Jan Eliasson, to a new position as emergency relief coordinator (ERC) responsible for pulling together the various parts of the UN system to provide humanitarian assistance. This post evolved toward being a type of general troubleshooter for humanitarian affairs, which were difficult to insulate from wider human rights issues, as discussed earlier and below.

Until 1993 the General Assembly had long been unwilling to formally create the post of high commissioner for human rights, largely because of opposition from developing and communist countries. But after the Cold War, developing countries tolerated this new post. As human rights became more entrenched in UN proceedings, the secretary-general became more openly active on the issue, especially when human rights were integrated with peace and security.

Below the highest levels of the Office of the Secretary-General, from the earliest days parts of the Secretariat have often actively tried to improve behavior under human rights norms. Van Boven, who had annoyed the Argentine junta before his "nonrenewal" by Pérez de Cuéllar, was the clearest example, but other UN officials also were active, frequently behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the secretary-general sets the tone on human rights for the entire Secretariat, and van Boven's fate showed that these officials could do only so much without the support of secretary-general.

The UN's seventh secretary-general, Kofi Annan, took office in 1997 and was a more activist leader, including in his priority concerns the encouragement and advocacy of human rights, the rule of law, and the universal values of equality, tolerance, and human dignity as articulated in the UN Charter. One of his most eloquent statements in this regard was the 1998 address to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ceremony marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In part he said:

Our belief in the centrality of human rights to the work and life of the United Nations stems from a simple proposition: that States which respect human rights respect the rules of international society. States which respect human rights are more likely to seek cooperation and not confrontation, tolerance and not violence, moderation and not might, peace and not war. States which treat their own people with fundamental respect are more likely to treat their neighbors with the same respect. From this proposition, it is clear that human rights—in practice, as in principle—can have no walls and no boundaries.

One of Annan's pet projects was to try to galvanize the for-profit sector into a greater interest in human rights, in partnership with the UN. Recognizing the economic power of transnational corporations (TNCs), he tried to get them to take a broad approach to their role in the world, one that reflected more social responsibility. In 1999 he launched the idea of a Global Compact at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which projected certain universal principles relevant to business practices in the areas of human rights and the environment. The four main UN agencies that participated in this venture were the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Hoping to reduce especially what some called economic exploitation of labor (and damage to the environment), Annan worked hard to create this partnership, which had great implications for many human rights, even if much of the discourse was about social responsibility. By mid-2008 some seven thousand corporations had signed on to this initiative. The secretary-general's efforts reflect the growing realization that states are not the only entities that can have an impact on human rights.

Secretary-General Annan also demonstrated the strength of his commitment to human rights by nominating a strong-willed high commissioner for human rights, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson. Such an appointment had its own merits and contrasted sharply with her diplomatic predecessor, José Ayala-Lasso. Robinson was initially welcomed by the United States and certain other Western states, which after the Cold War seemed to want the United Nations to be more assertive in general on human rights issues. Robinson's departure in September 2002 came, to a significant degree, because the United States had become disillusioned with her. Support for her from the Clinton administration became hyper-criticism during the George W. Bush administration.

Human rights are on the agenda of the eighth secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, but appear to rank below other priorities, such as global climate change. Secretary-General Ban got off to a rough start when he declined to oppose or criticize the execution of Saddam Hussein despite the UN's long-standing condemnation of the death penalty as a violation of human rights. Moreover, he stated that "the issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide." He later clarified his remarks by acknowledging the growing trend among states to abolish the death penalty; however, concern remains as to whether he will be as powerful a voice for human rights as Annan. In spite of his low-key, nonconfrontational approach, Ban has publicly denounced human rights violations in Myanmar, Sudan, Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, and Syria and on occasion appointed special envoys. Arguably Ban's leadership in Côte d'Ivoire built the necessary consensus and provided international coordination by the UN mission.

**HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS**

Debate about the need for a UN high commissioner for human rights started in the 1940s. The 1993 UN Vienna conference on human rights recommended that the General Assembly create such a post. After a heavy lobbying campaign by a variety of actors—including many NGOs, the Carter Presidential Center, and the U.S. government—the General Assembly finally created the post that autumn. The office had a vague mandate with weak authority. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali appointed as the first occupant José Ayala-Lasso of Ecuador, who had held several national diplomatic posts, including foreign minister under a repressive military government. He began his activities in 1994.

The first UN high commissioner for human rights practiced quiet diplomacy out of the limelight rather than being a visible public advocate. This approach helped alleviate some of the developing countries' fears that the post would be used exclusively to emphasize civil and political rights favored by Western states, with developing countries serving as "primary targets." The first high commissioner met with any number of developing countries with questionable human rights policies; during these visits, those policies presumably were discussed. Among other activities, Ayala-Lasso tried to interject more attention to economic and social rights into the work of the UN regional commissions for economic development. This emphasis was continued by his successor.

Beyond an annual report on international human rights at the UN, probably the most important work of the first high commissioner was to establish human rights field missions inside countries either as part of, or as separate from, UN peacekeeping operations. The first of these missions was established in Rwanda, where the human rights field staff broke new ground in legal and diplomatic theory but achieved little in practical terms during its early deployment. Ayala-Lasso then tried to turn Rwanda into a precedent by creating field missions elsewhere, the first of which were in Abkhazia, Georgia, Colombia, and Zaire.

By the end of the decade and with Mary Robinson's enthusiastic backing, a UN field presence for human rights had expanded to include Cambodia, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Gaza, Guatemala, Indonesia, Liberia, Malawi, Mongolia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, southern Africa, and Southeast Europe. Once more, in the name of universal human rights, the UN was acting on matters that had once been considered fully part of domestic affairs. In addition to debates about human rights in New York and Geneva, the second high commissioner was trying to make a difference "on the ground."

The establishment of this post created some confusion about the overall management and coordination of UN human rights work. Sometimes the high commissioner, the Office of the Secretary-General, and the UN Commission on Human Rights did not seem to be playing from the same page of music; nor was it always clear who, if anyone, was the conductor. The division of labor is in the process of being worked out. In 1997 the Centre for Human Rights was merged with OHCHR; however, the Office of the High Commissioner remained chronically short of staff and funds. Robinson ran afoul of the United States, and in 2002 she stepped down under pressure. Just as Washington had seen to it that Boutros-Ghali did not continue as secretary-general, so too it made clear that Robinson's high-profile discussion of human rights violations in such places as China and Israeli-occupied territories did not coincide with U.S. policies. In China, for instance, the United States had adopted a bipartisan policy of engagement with authoritarian Beijing, in which human rights was relegated to quiet diplomacy, not public pressure. Regarding Israel, the United States had long declined to take up seriously Israel's repeated violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 regulating occupied territory, as affirmed by various UN agencies as well as the ICRC. Because Robinson was more committed to raising awareness about human rights and violations than to quiet diplomacy, she became an irritant not only to those states with serious human rights violations but also to the United States, which had close relations with some of these same states. Robinson also openly criticized U.S. policy regarding interrogation and other treatment of "enemy combatants" after 9/11. The final straw for Washington was the perceived way that Robinson ran the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001, which featured attacks on Israel and Zionism. She also championed socioeconomic rights, which the United States rejected.

Secretary-General Annan, whose diplomatic skills were normally commensurate with the demands of his position, then nominated, and the General Assembly approved, Brazil's Sergio Vieira de Mello as high commissioner. He had considerable UN experience in humanitarian and refugee matters—in UNHCR as emergency relief coordinator, and head of UN operations in Kosovo and East Timor—and he was known as a much more polished diplomat than Robinson. Some private human rights groups in fact thought he might be too polished at the expense of defending human rights for the sake of getting along with the governments that violate them. His good relations with the George W. Bush administration made him the U.S. choice to be the secretary-general's representative in postcombat Iraq, where he and twenty-one other colleagues were killed during a suicide bombing of UN headquarters in August 2003. After Vieira de Mello's tragic death, Bertrand Ramcharan of Guyana became acting high commissioner.

In July 2004, Louise Arbour assumed the key human rights post, having been a judge on Canada's Supreme Court and chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Arbour had more of a judicial temperament than Robinson. And given what had happened to both van Boven and Robinson, for a time Arbour took a lower-key approach. But over time, she spoke out more. And like her predecessors, she wound up in public conflict with Washington, especially when she took exception to some U.S. policies pertaining to the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. Arbour's statements caused her to be publicly rebuked by U.S. permanent representative John Bolton.

In 2008, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon selected a distinguished South African female jurist, Navanethem (Navi) Pillay, to succeed Arbour. Pillay has been a strong voice for human rights but not without generating controversy. The UN's troubled relationship with Rwanda was made worse in 2010, when a report issued by her office on the violence in Congo labeled actions by the Rwandan government as "possible genocide." In 2011 Sri Lanka expressed outrage over her call for an independent investigation into alleged atrocities and war crimes by the government in defeating the Tamil Tigers. Pillay, who is of Tamil descent, was vilified as a bullying, racist "Tamil Tigress." She managed to annoy many governments by highlighting the violence and human rights violations experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. She called on governments to protect the rights of LGBT people and to repeal discriminatory laws. More recently she has been a vocal critic of the Syrian government's crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators. She called for a UN intervention to protect civilians and condemned the violence before a special session of the General Assembly on the situation there.

States like to be associated with the notion of human rights as a matter of principle, but they often take exception when UN officials criticize their policies or those of their allies. The UN high commissioner for human rights, like the secretary-general, has found it difficult to be a public advocate for human rights and to satisfy the human rights NGO community, which often demands clear and decisive action, while maintaining the support of member states. Both the secretary-general and the UN high commissioner for human rights have impossible jobs and must walk a diplomatic high wire.

**COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 1946–2006**

If, when dealing with human rights, the broad and complex UN system is thought of as a wheel, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) was the hub from its establishment in 1946 until its abolition in 2006. This commission was eventually made up of fifty-three states elected officially by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and its history reflects in microcosm the legal and diplomatic revolution on human rights. Despite Western domination of the UN during its early years, the commission was content to promote rights by setting standards rather than by trying to protect them, even indirectly, through various forms of diplomatic pressure. When private complaints about rights violations came to the UN, the CHR buried them in an elaborate proceeding leading nowhere, one of the most complicated trash baskets ever devised. The early commission, in the words of one careful observer, displayed a "fierce commitment to inoffensiveness."

A North-South compromise, however, opened up new possibilities between 1967 and 1970. The commission began to deal with specific states and began to examine private complaints more seriously. Developing states wanted to focus on Israel and South Africa, but developed states broadened the commission's mandate so that states like Greece under military rule (1967–1974) and Haiti under the Duvalier dynasty (1957–1986) also became targets of commission scrutiny. Member states of the commission agreed that private petitions could lead, after screening, to quiet diplomacy and even the publication of a "blacklist" of states with a pattern of gross violations of human rights. These private petitions, however, were treated in a confidential process that minimized the negative publicity that could be directed at an offending government. Ironically, a state could minimize public scrutiny of its rights record by responding somewhat to private petitions in the confidential process.

The Commission on Human Rights struggled to find ways of working for human rights in meaningful ways. It created "thematic procedures" to deal with certain violations. That is, it created either working groups of states or independent experts, called rapporteurs, to examine more than two dozen issues, such as forced disappearances, arbitrary detention, summary execution, torture, religious discrimination, mercenaries, and deprived or suffering children. The subject of human rights affects crucial questions of governmental power, and thus this intergovernmental commission was highly politicized. Various double standards and inconsistencies are well-documented. The United States at times focused on rights violations in Cuba out of proportion to events there, especially compared to more serious rights violations in allied states like Guatemala and El Salvador. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was openly opportunistic in the commission, using human rights as a weapon against U.S. allies, such as Pinochet's Chile, but remained silent about major violations of human rights in communist states. Again, human rights language was put at the service of ideological and strategic calculations.

In 2002 Libya was nominated by the African caucus for president of the commission. Given Libya's poor record on many civil and political rights, the African caucus obviously placed more emphasis on equitable geographical representation and friendly relations than on performance in these human rights matters. Since, according to UN tradition, it was "Africa's turn" to hold the presidency of the commission, Libya was duly elected over the protests of the United States and other Western governments. Adding fuel to the fire, other prominently repressive governments like Cuba and Saudi Arabia were also elected to the commission by their regional caucuses. The CHR was never made up of "a club of the clean" who acted consistently on principle and without regard to strategic calculation, but it had often become a mechanism to protect abusers and to promote sovereignty, rather than human rights. These developments gave the UN a bad name in the field of human rights.

The double standards by states operated side-by-side with the more principled work of human rights NGOs that participated in commission proceedings. NGOs played a more significant role in Geneva in the CHR than they played on other issues or in UN institutions elsewhere. NGOs focused on the commission and increased their numbers and influence. By the 1990s large numbers of NGOs were active in all phases of the commission's proceedings. The reports from these groups at least brought some diplomatic pressure to bear on the problems addressed, although decisive and short-term improvement in the practice of rights was rare to nonexistent.

The obvious shortcomings of the CHR figured prominently in the 2004 report from the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (HLP). Viewed from Washington as well as many other capitals, the performance of the UN's human rights machinery was scandalous. The primary evidence for the travesty was the commission's fifty-three elected members, who in 2005 included Sudan while it was pursuing genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwe while it was bulldozing the houses of seven hundred thousand opposition supporters and rounding up journalists and other critics. That China and Cuba played prominent roles and that Libya was a former chair of the commission added to the litany of embarrassments. The HLP recognized the "eroding credibility and professionalism" and that "states have sought membership of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others."

However, the HLP recommendation was counterintuitive: universal membership instead of "only" one-quarter of the members. Advancing serious attention to human rights is not served by having matters discussed by a committee of the whole, at that time 192 state delegations. This idea deservedly found its way to the trash heap of diplomatic history. The secretary-general, in his only serious dissent from the HLP's recommendations, courageously went out on a limb and proposed that member states "replace the Commission on Human Rights with a smaller standing Human Rights Council." By the 2005 World Summit, the word "discredited" was used in tandem to describe the Commission on Human Rights, and member states agreed to replace it.

Any obituary of the UN Commission on Human Rights should also include its accomplishments. Although it was politicized and prone to double standards and hypocrisy, the commission did target states that were egregious violators of human rights. Commission activities may have had only a limited role in improving human rights conditions in target countries, but they did serve to try to socialize and educate all states on the importance of human rights over time. The commission also amassed an impressive record of originating and developing human rights instruments. The Commission on Human Rights held its final session in Geneva in March 2006 and was abolished in June 2006. At that final session, then high commissioner Louise Arbour noted, "It would, however, be a distortion of fact, and a gross disservice to this institution, if we failed on this occasion to celebrate the achievements of the Commission even as we, in full knowledge of its flaws, welcome the arrival of its successor." She listed those accomplishments as setting standards, establishing the system of special procedures, considering the situations in specific countries, creating global forums, and nurturing a unique relationship with civil society.

**HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, 2006–PRESENT**

The heads of state and government at the 2005 World Summit resolved to create a Human Rights Council (HRC) as a subsidiary of the General Assembly. The General Assembly was assigned the responsibility for creating it (as Charter Article 22 so provides) and deciding its "mandate, modalities, functions, size, composition, membership, working methods, and procedures." Bitter disputes quickly emerged over the shape of the new council, but the General Assembly reached an agreement. Jan Eliasson, the assembly's president and since July 2012 the deputy secretary-general, managed to push for a vote on the HRC with three-year terms with the assent of a simple majority of the General Assembly. Some were disgruntled because the numbers in the new council had decreased only to forty-seven—hardly a big decrease from fifty-three and perhaps still too large to be businesslike.

Membership is subject only to a simple majority vote instead of the more stringent two-thirds requirement that the secretary-general had proposed and the United States desired. However, membership in the council entails special scrutiny designed to discourage the candidacy by the worst human rights offenders. States sitting on the council are subject to a council review during their first term, forcing such abusers as Libya and Zimbabwe to think twice about running for membership. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a peer-review process designed to challenge HRC members to improve human rights at home and abroad. The council also would meet for ten weeks at least three times a year, which was a step in the right direction; in fact, the HRC has been in almost continual session since 2006. Still, the United States voted against the creation of the HRC and decided at first not to stand for election. Instead, it opted for permanent observer status.

Unfortunately, the first election to the HRC yielded such human rights "stalwarts" as Algeria, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba, confirming U.S. fears that the council was more like "a caterpillar with lipstick on" than a "butterfly"—Bolton's picturesque imagery ignored the fact that UN larvae require nourishment by important states to grow. Many viewed the U.S. choice not to stand for election not as a protest but a tactic to avoid embarrassment because it might not have had enough votes to be elected. After all, the Bush administration was flagrantly violating international human rights with regard to its detainees in its war on terrorism.

The Human Rights Council's record during its first years was, as expected, mixed. In terms of promoting and protecting human rights in specific states, the council spent its first year investigating Israel, which was the only state drawing a critical council resolution. On the other hand, Sudan, China, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe were not criticized. By the council's second year, Israel had been criticized fifteen times and Myanmar only once (after its junta's bloody crackdown on monks and demonstrators). The Human Rights Council's biased and unbalanced focus on Israel drew a rare rebuke by Secretary-General Ban, who stated that he was "worried by its disproportionate focus on violations by Israel." The council, he said, "has clearly not justified all the hopes that so many of us placed on it."

After the election of Barack Obama, the United States ran for the HRC and was elected in 2009. The U.S. approach has been to attempt to reform the HRC from within. This participation was generally positive until Washington distanced itself from the council-sponsored Goldstone Report, which accused Israel and Palestinian authorities of war crimes in Gaza and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Moreover, the United States underwent the UPR in 2010, when its domestic and international human rights record was explored. The U.S. death penalty and its voter identification laws have been called into question, and Washington still has not signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. These policies are not popular in Geneva, where the United States also rejects the authority of the HRC and its special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions, who has concerns about Washington's war on terror and its use of drones to target terror suspects.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon unveils the artistic new ceiling of a conference room of the United Nations Human Rights Council. (UN Photo 206120/Jean-Marc Ferre)

In a number of ways the Human Rights Council has evolved to be more equitable than many expected, given that its membership is still of states and not that dissimilar from its predecessor commission. A promising development is the use of fact-finding commissions made up of independent experts rather than state representatives—for instance, the three-person Goldstone Commission. In 2011, the HRC set up an Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which found that Syrian security forces had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against pro-democracy forces (who were also singled out for their abuses). This report detailed vast crimes and was part of the impetus for the UN and the Arab League to jointly appoint Kofi Annan as their special envoy for resolving the crisis in Syria. Such procedures hardly guarantee that states who are members of the UN will act decisively and in a timely way to respond to atrocities. But these independent commissions are a step in the right direction, being an improvement over the many politicized debates and resolutions of the commission era.

The HRC has continued the commission's tradition of using special rapporteurs and working groups. Special rapporteurs have been involved in monitoring, fact-finding, and standard setting and have been created for women, indigenous peoples, and so on. Although rapporteurs can create controversy, they are generally considered an asset in the promotion and protection of human rights. In 2007, the council appointed a working group to study the feasibility of individual private petitions under the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Such petitions would enhance UN supervision of these often neglected rights. In terms of setting standards, the council has approved a new Convention of Enforced Disappearances, which has been approved by the General Assembly. The council also approved a draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and after a year's delay it was passed by the General Assembly over the opposition of the United States, Canada, and Australia. In many respects, the nascent Human Rights Council is very much like its predecessor: sometimes politicized and almost always ineffective in the short term at tangibly improving human rights conditions in some of the worst offending states. But the glass is perhaps half full when considering the council's standard-setting activities, which can help educate and socialize states over the long term. And it has certainly been dynamic in shining the diplomatic spotlight on problem areas in several states, even if specific advances in protection of rights still proves elusive.

**SUPPLEMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS BODIES**

The full panoply of UN machinery is discussed below. It includes both state and nonstate actors that independently and collectively work to promote and protect human rights.

_Sub-Commission._ The former UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, now the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, is another all-purpose human rights agency. It is composed of individual experts rather than state or governmental representatives. It screens private petitions before sending them to the Human Rights Council. These private petitions may come from NGOs, not just from victimized individuals. After a dismal start to the petition process, the subcommission began to display increasing seriousness, but the process generated only weak pressure. The process was confidential, with a minimum of vague publicity through the parent commission.

Much of the subcommission's other work overlapped with that of the CHR. It manifested considerable dynamism on a number of issues, so much so that its recommendations often were seen as irritating by government representatives on the commission. At one point during a financial crisis, the subcommission's sessions were suspended. Many suggested that it be either drastically reformed or dissolved. Now that the UN Human Rights Council has been created, the subcommission has become a permanent advisory body to that council, with uncertain role and influence.

_Human Rights Committee._ Not to be confused with the UN Commission on Human Rights, which reported to the General Assembly through ECOSOC, the UN Human Rights Committee was created under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It is composed of individual experts, is elected by parties to that convention, and functions only in relation to monitoring the implementation of the civil and political rights codified in that treaty. It reports to the General Assembly but is not part of the "regular" UN bureaucracy.

Beginning in the late 1970s the Human Rights Committee has processed state reports about implementing the civil-political covenant and handled individual petitions when state parties have allowed their citizens that procedural right. Despite the Cold War, European communist states became parties to the covenant, and the committee managed to question many states objectively about their record on civil and political rights. Many states are lax about reporting, and about fifty have adhered to the covenant but not consented to the right of individual petition. The United States is among this group, having ratified the covenant with significant and debatable reservations in 1992. The committee has seemed most influential when dealing with states committed to human rights but perhaps needing some prodding to conform to all international obligations.

A second optional protocol to the ICCPR prohibits the death penalty for common crime. In 2005, Canada became the fifty-fifth state to accept this international obligation in the field of human rights. Like most other Western democracies, Canada long ago eliminated almost all possibility of using the death penalty in its domestic laws. Still, only 75 of 193 UN member states are parties to this protocol, which has been open for acceptance since 1991. Japan, like the United States, is among the few liberal democracies to maintain the death penalty for common crime. All EU members except France are parties to the protocol.

_Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights._ The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights authorized ECOSOC to supervise the application of the treaty. State parties are obligated to submit a report periodically on state action to implement the covenant. This provision allows some members of ECOSOC to comment on state behavior under the treaty, even though the state making the comments is not a party to the treaty. The United States falls into this category.

In 1979, ECOSOC created the Committee of Governmental Experts to process these state reports. The committee was unable to encourage serious attention to treaty obligations, and in 1985, ECOSOC replaced it with the Committee of Individual Experts. Since it first met in 1987, this committee has proved more dynamic than its predecessors. Initially taking a cooperative or positive approach toward reporting states, it tried to get states to establish national guidelines for minimum standards of food, shelter, health care, and the other rights found in the socioeconomic covenant. Rather than attempt to create a global standard, it prodded states to think seriously about what the covenant meant in their jurisdictions. The focus was on "the extent to which the most disadvantaged individuals in any given society are enjoying a basic minimum level of subsistence rights." Alone among the UN's monitoring mechanisms, the Committee of Individual Experts accepts written submissions from NGOs and IGOs. But most human rights NGOs have not been active regarding these socioeconomic rights. Advocacy groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concentrated primarily on civil and political rights. Most NGOs working for adequate food, clothing, shelter, and health care conducted humanitarian or development programs rather than human rights campaigns. This meant that NGOs such as Oxfam have been oriented more toward practical results in a country based on humanitarian concerns and less toward lobbying for socioeconomic rights through the Committee of Individual Experts. There is, however, some change under way on this matter, as a human rights approach to development is gaining ground with both UN development agencies and also private organizations.

Despite praise for its independence, effective procedures, and constructive recommendations, several problems have plagued the committee. It has functioned in a political vacuum, since few powerful actors have wanted to devote diplomatic efforts to helping implement socioeconomic rights internationally. It considers only a few state reports each year because reports are late and are delayed at the request of states. This UN effort to monitor and improve state behavior pertaining to socioeconomic rights is a long-term project.

_Other Supervising Committees._ Four other human rights treaties create supervising committees of individual experts that function in similar ways: the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Committee Against Torture (CAT), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). They may have generated some influence on states that are parties to the treaties, but not enough to merit detailed study here.

The CERD and its parent treaty against racial discrimination help outline the gap between normative theory and behavioral reality. More than 130 states are parties to this human rights treaty, and much rhetoric has been expended within the UN system about the evils of racial discrimination. Every four years state parties are required to submit comprehensive reports regarding compliance with treaty provisions, with briefer updating reports due every two years. Such reports serve as the primary input into the committee's work. Yet many states routinely fail to comply, thus making it difficult for the committee to fulfill its mandate. Only a few states permit their citizens to bring a private petition to CERD claiming violation of the treaty, as specified under the treaty's Article 14. These kinds of problems are common to the overall monitoring of various human rights treaties. State reports are filed late and are not always serious in substance. Private petitions do not often lead to clear protection of rights within a reasonable time. The media do not often cover proceedings or outcomes. Consequently, various proposals to improve the fractured UN system of monitoring human rights treaties have lacked impact. Given the fragmentation of the system, proposals to merge the supervising committees have not led to significant change, although the committees do now meet to try to coordinate their efforts.

_UN High Commissioner for Refugees._ The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warrants special mention, given the sheer numbers of people falling under the UNHCR's formal and informal mandates. In the past ten years, the number of persons of concern to the UNHCR has ranged between fifteen million and twenty-five million. The UNHCR was created by the General Assembly in 1950 and functions largely under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, providing protection and assistance to refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Originally the UNHCR mandate centered on de jure refugees, or "convention refugees," defined by the 1951 convention/1967 protocol as those who have crossed an international border because of a well-founded fear of persecution. Over time, the UNHCR's mandate has expanded to include those who are in refugee-like situations, which means the General Assembly has authorized the UNHCR to deal, at least sometimes, with persons displaced within a state—internally displaced persons (IDPs) in official parlance—and with those fleeing war or a breakdown in public order.

States themselves make the final determination of who is a convention refugee and therefore entitled to temporary asylum from persecution. The exact role of the UNHCR in protection can vary according to national law, but in general one of its primary roles is to help states determine who should not be returned to a situation of possible persecution. The agency calls this "legal" or "diplomatic" protection, and it can involve interviewing those who claim to be refugees, advising executive branches of government, and helping legislators draft new norms. The UNHCR also often submits legal papers in court cases.

Particularly when faced with an influx of unwanted persons, states may show a racial, ideological, or other bias in their procedures to determine who is recognized as a legal refugee and entitled not to be returned to a dangerous situation. At times the UNHCR will publicly protest what a government is doing. For example, even though the United States is the largest contributor to the agency's voluntary budget, in 1992 the UNHCR officially protested the forced return of Haitians without a proper hearing about their refugee status.

The agency also is involved in assistance. Rather than being an operating agency itself, the UNHCR normally supervises material and medical assistance to refugees, broadly defined, by contracting with NGOs to provide for the delivery of necessary goods and services to both refugees and internally displaced persons. In 2012 the agency had operations in 125 countries with a staff of over 7,800 assisting 33.9 million people. About 425 NGOs were implementing partners. Most of the amounts raised through voluntary contributions were devoted to assistance, and most of this was spent in Africa and Asia.

In the 1990s the UNHCR became deeply enmeshed in the Balkans, devoting about a third of its total resources there. In 1994 the agency was responsible for coordinating relief to some 2 million persons who had fled Rwanda. The growing emphasis on assistance has led some observers to criticize the diminishing role of its traditional legal protection in the organization's priorities. A basis for this criticism is that many institutions can provide aid but only the UNHCR can protect refugees. Internally displaced persons are also of concern to the UNHCR, as they experience refugee-like situations but have been unwilling or unable to flee their war-torn countries. IDPs have become more numerous than refugees, numbering about 27 million. When IDPs were first counted in 1982, there were only 1 million, at which time there were about 10.5 million refugees.

The rapid evolution of measures on behalf of IDPs in the 1990s and the embrace of their plight by IGOs and NGOs demonstrate the increasing weight of human rights in state decision making. Efforts accelerated as individuals and private institutions pushed governments and intergovernmental organizations to find new ways to deal with the growing problem of internal displacement. Roberta Cohen documents that "as early as 1991, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) began calling for the consolidation into a single document of the different international standards that apply to IDPs." As the numbers of internally displaced victims rose, so did the decibel level within the UN Commission on Human Rights via the voices of such NGOs as the Quakers, the Refugee Policy Group, the World Council of Churches, and Caritas.

Francis M. Deng, a former Sudanese diplomat, was designated as the first representative of the secretary-general on internally displaced persons. The development of a comprehensive global approach for effective assistance and protection of IDPs was independently formulated and financed. As we saw earlier, he and colleagues formulated "sovereignty as responsibility." Between his appointment in 1992 and his replacement by Swiss jurist Walter Kälin in 2004, Deng's efforts put the issue of IDPs squarely on the international agenda, including the development of "soft law," embodied in the _Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement._ In 2010, Chaloka Beyani, a Zambian lawyer and NGO activist, assumed the position. Still, IDPs have no institutional home in the UN system.

Whether for IDPs or refugees, the UNHCR has always found it difficult to negotiate what it calls "durable solutions." The preferred option is repatriation, but this usually entails fundamental political change in the country of origin, something the UNHCR obviously cannot produce. The UNHCR does not deal with Palestinian refugees; they are serviced by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). But the fundamental problems remain the same. In the Middle East, at least two generations of refugees have been born in camps; durable solutions have proven elusive.

The UNHCR and UNRWA share other frustrations. Both depend on host-state cooperation for security and other policies in refugee camps. For Rwandan refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), as for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon or Syria, the host state decides what groups are allowed to have arms or engage in political activity. In both examples, refugees have been active, respectively, in preparing to launch cross-border armed attacks in Rwanda or Israel. UN refugee agencies are caught in these types of political struggles without either the legal authority or the power to make a difference. Because of such considerations in Zaire and Tanzania, some NGOs, or at least some of their national sections such as Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), refused to service refugee needs, believing the NGO was contributing to a resumption of violence. The UNHCR decided to stay, as it did not want to abandon civilians who had been displaced and really were being held hostage by armed militias. In the view of the UNHCR, the Security Council has the responsibility to provide proper security in refugee camps.

Despite the best efforts of Operation Lifeline Sudan, millions of displaced people endured famine in the country even in areas that did not directly experience military clashes. (UNHCR Photo/E. Dagnino, A. G. L. Ronchi)

Another durable solution entails resettlement. This option is made difficult because of the large numbers of people involved in many migrations. Permanent resettlement for most refugees was out of the question as far as host states were concerned. For example, almost five million persons, or a third of the population, left Afghanistan during the fighting there in the 1980s. Iran and Pakistan hosted many of these persons. Resettlement was not a serious option, given the sheer numbers and the lack of economic infrastructure of the two host states. And most refugees do not want to settle in a strange land if there is any hope of a sufficient change to make their home country safe.

Restricting numbers is relatively easy when a country is one of second asylum, or resettlement. A state party to the 1951 Refugee Convention is not obligated to accept any refugees for resettlement. When dealing with refugees from Vietnam who are in Hong Kong, the United States can select whomever it wishes for entry into the United States. Only a country of first asylum is legally obligated not to return those with a well-founded fear of persecution. Economic migrants can be returned legally, but for genuine refugees under the UN convention of 1951, no ceiling exists on the number entitled to temporary safe haven in the form of asylum. This can be a problem from the point of view of _raisons d'état._ Thus the UNHCR can find itself trying to protect and assist refugees, but in a context in which the host government may have its own reasons for denying safe haven to as many as possible. In 1981 the UNHCR was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Afterward, however, criticisms increased about its internal management and external influence. One high commissioner, Jean-Pierre Hocké of Switzerland, resigned in the midst of controversy over his spending habits and other policies. In 1990 Sadako Ogata of Japan became the first woman to head the agency, and the agency regained some of the previous high ground. But by the end of the 1990s, questions continued about what had become a sizable bureaucracy. Ogata was replaced after two five-year terms by a former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers. Responding to the desires of the Western states that funded his budget, he instituted a series of cost-cutting measures but then resigned in early 2005 amid allegations of sexual harassment. Antonio Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, replaced him. Since taking office, he has focused especially on voluntary repatriation initiatives and the refugee/IDP situation stemming from the violent conflict in the Darfur.

Refugees and those in refugee-like situations usually are fleeing human rights violations. Hence, the root causes of these human flows must be addressed if the preferred durable solution, repatriation, is to be achieved. This requires political commitment by member states, which are increasingly recognizing that they cannot ignore the nexus between security, human rights, extreme poverty, and environmental degradation. It also requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach.

**HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT**

Despite resolutions from the General Assembly and Commission on Human Rights about socioeconomic rights and a claimed right of development, the first forty-five years of the United Nations witnessed too few concrete efforts to translate this diplomatic rhetoric into policy. For much of the UN's history, government policymakers and decision makers made little effort to devise programs that promoted economic growth in developing countries while integrating internationally recognized human rights. As a former head of the UN Centre for Human Rights documented, rhetoric about human rights and planning for economic growth were kept in separate compartments at the UN. The UNDP, the World Bank, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and other UN organizations went about their traditional business in developing countries without much regard for the language of rights.

This situation began to change in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Important opinion leaders in developed countries became dissatisfied with the record of attempts to achieve economic growth through authoritarian governments. The record in Africa was especially poor. Political changes, particularly in Latin America but to a lesser extent elsewhere, gave rise to more democratic governments in developing countries. Seeking macronational economic growth without attention to human rights could lead to marginalization of sectors of society. Even the World Bank, which had long claimed that human rights factors were "political" and therefore not within the Bank's mandate, began to reconsider its stance—albeit sometimes under the confusing concept of "good governance." This could and sometimes did entail attention to civil and political rights, even though competing interpretations abounded. Although the Bank still sought to avoid taking a stand about democracy at the national level, it did endorse participatory development. Within the concept of social assessment, it made judgments about the extent of popular participation in development projects.

As part of this broad shift by various actors toward incorporating human rights considerations into "development," the UNDP created indices trying to measure "human freedom" and "human development" in a socioeconomic context, which are illustrated in Tables 7.1 and 7.2. Now more than two decades old, the effort began in 1990 under the guidance of the late Pakistani economist Mahbubul Haq. The annual _Human Development Report_ provoked a storm of controversy. In some circles of opinion, the UNDP may have exceeded the responsibilities of an international civil service because it touched on human rights and domestic jurisdiction. Developing countries had long been sensitive to Secretariat officials' passing judgment about how states measured up to international standards. But to its credit, the UNDP stood its ground and even devoted an entire issue to human rights in the _Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development._ UNDP abandoned its freedom index, but like the World Bank, the agency talked more about participatory development. It endorsed an active role for citizens' groups in development projects. This approach entailed defense of civil rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.

**EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE**

Human rights are at particular risk during war, public emergencies, and natural disasters (sometimes combined with corruption or incompetence). Various UN organizations exist either to prepare for these disasters or to respond to them. In 1992 the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), incorporating the UN Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO), was created to coordinate international humanitarian relief. In January 1998, as part of the secretary-general's reform initiative, the department was restructured and renamed the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. OCHA is headed by an undersecretary-general who serves as emergency relief coordinator (ERC) responsible for coordinating disaster relief both within and outside the UN system. The UNHCR and UNICEF usually play active, and sometimes lead, roles in coordinating international relief. The WFP is usually involved in logistics. The WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization usually are not far behind. And the UNDP, which is supposed to coordinate all UN activities within a country, is also involved. The ERC has been mandated the responsibility of overseeing the rapid deployment of staff during crisis situations and ensuring that appropriate coordination mechanisms are set up.

**TABLE 7.1** Controversial Human Freedom Index, 1991

_Countries Scoring High_ | _Countries Scoring Low_

---|---

Sweden, 38 | Iraq, 0

Denmark, 38 | Libya, 1

Netherlands, 37 | Romania, 1

Finland, 36 | Ethiopia, 2

New Zealand, 36 | China, 2

Austria, 36 | South Africa, 3

Norway, 35 | USSR, 3

France, 35 | Bulgaria, 4

Germany, 35 | Zaire, 5

Belgium, 35 | Pakistan, 5

Canada, 34 | Vietnam, 5

Switzerland, 34 | Indonesia, 5

United States, 33 | North Korea, 5

Australia, 33 | Syria, 5

Japan, 32 | Cuba, 5

United Kingdom, 32 | Mozambique, 6

Greece, 31 | Saudi Arabia, 6

Costa Rica, 31 | Czechoslovakia, 6

_Note:_ 40 is a perfect score.

_Source:_ UN Development Programme, _Human Development Report 1991_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 20. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press Inc.

**TABLE 7.2** Human Development Index, 2011

_Top Ten_ | _Bottom Ten_

---|---

Norway | Guinea

Australia | Central African Republic

Netherlands | Sierra Leone

United States | Burkina Faso

New Zealand | Liberia

Canada | Chad

Ireland | Mozambique

Liechtenstein | Burundi

Germany | Niger

Sweden | Democratic Republic of the Congo

_Source:_ Based on information from the UN Development Programme found at <http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/>.

Moreover, a galaxy of private relief organizations is also active. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which loosely coordinates about 186 national units, sees natural-disaster work as one of its primary reasons for being. Hundreds of other private agencies, such as Oxfam, Caritas, and Feed the Children, try to respond to natural disasters with emergency assistance. Ian Smillie and Larry Minear, for instance, have calculated that "humanitarianism has become a big business." As a result, critics have pointed out that quest for "market share" may be assuming more importance for these agencies than saving lives. Although it might or might not be the marketplace that unleashes an "NGO scramble," there is little question that an environment with scarce resources required for humanitarian organizations to survive and thrive will create a competitive dynamic. The size of the "humanitarian business" in 2012 was about $18 billion, a figure that most MBAs would consider nontrivial.

The major problem with all of this international assistance, broadly conceived, is that no one is really in charge. "Coordination" is an oft-used word to describe a loosely knit network of IGOs and NGOs as well as state agencies active in humanitarian relief. Every agency is in favor of coordination in principle, but few wish to be coordinated in practice. UN organizations have been protective of their decentralized independence. Private agencies have resisted coming under the full control of public authorities. As such, agencies compete among themselves for a slice of the action and for credit for whatever accomplishments can be achieved. The result is often confusion and duplication of services.

The General Assembly in 1991 authorized in resolution 46/182 a new position of undersecretary-general for emergency relief. With the creation of DHA (now OCHA) and the ERC, a step was taken toward a more coherent approach. The ERC chairs an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), which includes major UN and non-UN humanitarian actors. This body strives to facilitate interagency analysis and decision making in response to humanitarian emergencies. Also, in his role as a UN undersecretary-general, the head of OCHA serves as convener of the Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA), a cabinet-level forum for coordinating humanitarian policies within the UN. The relevance of OCHA was demonstrated in the aftermath of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, which killed approximately 275,000 people and left tens of millions homeless and without basic services, such as food, water, housing, and medical care. The undersecretary-general at the time, Jan Egeland, prodded many donor countries, which eventually contributed billions of dollars in the largest relief operation in history. OCHA shifted into high gear again to respond to the 2005 earthquake in the Kashmir region, which left approximately 30,000 people dead and millions homeless.

After the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, OHCA led the humanitarian response. Over 200,000 Haitians died, and millions were injured and left homeless. In one of the largest humanitarian efforts ever, OCHA "coordinated" the emergency responses of hundreds governments and aid groups with a devastated (and largely corrupt) Haitian government. After the initial emergency needs were met, OCHA worked to maintain international support for reconstruction efforts. More recently, OCHA has led the response to the cholera epidemic through treatment and large-scale vaccination. While Haiti still has a long way to go, the operational support and advocacy of OCHA brought some order to a large, complicated, and decentralized response to an unexpected emergency situation.

In armed conflicts and public emergencies stemming from so-called human-made disasters, the politics of providing emergency relief to civilians is far more complicated than in natural disasters, and the task of effectively protecting war victims may be impossible, depending on the security situation and the stance of a government or political authorities. By law and by tradition, the International Committee of the Red Cross coordinates international relief in international wars on behalf of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The 1949 Geneva Conventions for victims of war, and the supplemental 1977 Protocol I, give the ICRC a preferred position for this task, especially since protecting powers (neutral states appointed by the fighting parties for humanitarian tasks) are rarely named anymore. The Security Council has affirmed the rights of civilians to international assistance in such wars, and belligerents have a legal duty to cooperate with neutral relief efforts. Protocol I from 1977 states clearly that starvation of civilians is not legally permitted in warfare and that belligerents are not legally permitted to attack objects vital to the survival of the civilian population.

The ICRC is a private agency whose sources of funds are summarized in Table 7.3. The agency is specifically recognized in public international law and by the General Assembly, which has accorded the ICRC observer status along with the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. For large-scale relief the assembly prefers that UN organizations, along with NGOs, be the primary operational agents of humanitarian assistance and that the ICRC adopt a monitoring role. In Somalia in the early 1990s, the ICRC remained to play a central role in relief, even after the Security Council authorized the use of force to deliver that relief. In other violent situations, as on the Indian subcontinent in 1971, the ICRC worked closely with the UN system in monitoring the delivery of food and other socioeconomic relief to East Pakistan/Bangladesh. More recently in Syria, the ICRC worked closely with the Syrian Red Crescent to try to bring assistance to civilians caught in harm's way. In that situation there were some accomplishments but also heavy restrictions at times from the authorities.

The disorganization of the UN system regarding assistance again comes into play. No institutionalized UN agency exists to take the system's lead in armed conflicts. The secretary-general or General Assembly may ask an agency on an ad hoc basis to take the lead; for example, that was the case for the UNHCR in the Balkans during 1992–1995. More recently the UN has experimented with "cluster" leaders: UNHCR taking the lead for forcibly displaced persons, for example. The undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs still must negotiate operational details from a welter of options. What is now called the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is either disorganized or decentralized; the ICRC does not fully control national Red Cross–Red Crescent units and certainly not their international federation. Suggestions concerning how to improve the broad international response to civilian needs in violent situations remain just suggestions.

**TABLE 7.3** Top Financial Contributors to the International Committee of the Red Cross, 2011

* * *

**Governments**

United States

United Kingdom

Switzerland

European Commission

Sweden

Norway

Japan

Australia

Netherlands

Germany

Canada

Spain

* * *

_Source:_ ICRC Secretariat, _Annual Report 2011_ , <http://www.icrc.org>.

The situation is even more complicated in internal armed conflict in which one or more fighting parties do not represent a widely recognized state and most of the fighting occurs primarily in the territory of one state. The laws of war (which also are called humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict, or the law for human rights in war) do not create a clear obligation to cooperate with the purveyors of humanitarian assistance. The ICRC does not have the same legal rights in intrastate wars that it does in interstate wars. Moreover, states and other fighting parties frequently disagree on whether an internal armed conflict exists as compared to a rebellion or insurrection falling under national rather than international law. The number of interstate wars has declined since 1945, but the number of violent situations seen by some as "internal wars" has risen, accompanied by great civilian loss of life and other suffering.

Neither the UN organization nor NGOs nor the ICRC can claim consistent success in delivering humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies. Permitting such assistance has limited meaning to parties using starvation as a weapon and who are engaged in ethnic cleansing, genocide, widespread rape, and deliberate attacks on civilians and aid personnel. Child soldiers and ragtag local militias make the inculcation of humanitarian values difficult. Given the difficulties encountered by both the UN and the ICRC in obtaining the consent of fighting parties in internal wars and public emergencies, NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders, began cross-border operations without consent, a practice that is now widespread. As a practical matter, trying to proceed without the consent of the warring parties can lead—and has led—to attacks on international and local relief personnel, numbers that have skyrocketed in recent years along with the size of humanitarian disbursements. Beyond legal niceties centering on sovereignty, the safety of staff members is of practical concern. Since 1990, more journalists and aid workers have died than peacekeepers. For aid agencies, this kind of insecurity represents a very acute challenge.

Jan Egeland arrived in New York for his briefing as UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs on the very day that the world organization's Baghdad headquarters was destroyed. He noted the irony in his memoirs of the period: "The age of innocence has gone. . . . I had expected to spend all my energies in the UN on the security and survival of disaster and conflict victims, not the security and survival of our own UN staff." Shortly thereafter, the _Economist_ opined, "It was not until the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the UN and other aid agencies began to be deliberately hunted down."

Addressing the nationalistic, ethnic, and communal wars and tensions was traumatic not only for states but for aid agencies. Until recently, the two most essential humanitarian principles (neutrality and impartiality) had been relatively uncontroversial, along with the key operating procedure of seeking consent from belligerents. These principles, too, became casualties as "these Maginot line principles defending humanitarianism from politics crumbled during the 1990s." A host of factors have challenged the classic posture: the complete disregard for international humanitarian law by war criminals and even by child soldiers; the direct targeting of civilians and relief personnel; the use of foreign aid to fuel conflicts and war economies; and the protracted nature of many so-called emergencies.

In many ways, international humanitarian law seems to have been formulated to deal with a different world, one populated by governments and regular armies whose interests were often served by respecting the laws of war. In writing of old-fashioned humanitarianism, David Rieff has gone so far as to suggest "the death of a good idea." At the end of the day, he came around to the view that traditional, neutral, limited humanitarianism was the right course of action after earlier having been a proponent of armed intervention to halt atrocities.

In spite of these problems—and "identity crisis" is not too strong a term to describe the individual and collective soul-searching by civilian personnel—the preceding pages should have made clear that humanitarian values and expenditures on emergency assistance have expanded substantially. The business of some $18 billion a year has led such harsh critics as Mark Duffield to question whether humanitarian assistance has not become a necessity for maintaining Western hegemony. And at a minimum, the marketplace unleashes a "scramble" because an environment of scarce resources creates a competitive dynamic for status, power, and authority among competitive UN agencies and NGOs whose staffs and budgets depend on expanding resources. As Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss have noted, humanitarians are no longer necessarily on the side of the angels, and so humanitarianism is "in question" and "contested."

A securitization of human rights and humanitarian assistance has also taken place, whereby these concerns are subordinated to improving the overall security situation at the same time as others view them as tools to create a secure environment. Because of safety concerns and the nature of contemporary humanitarian crises, the military has moved into the humanitarian space once occupied almost exclusively by NGOs. Coupled with the increased use of private contractors by the military, the distinction between a neutral and impartial humanitarian aid organization and an agent of a state becomes difficult to discern. The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan resulted from intelligence gathered by a Pakistani physician working for the CIA. Under the guise of a vaccination program the doctor also was collecting DNA to determine if bin Laden or his relatives were in the area. That physician, who has since been arrested, interrogated, and convicted of treason by Pakistani authorities, claimed that he had been introduced to the CIA by Save the Children, the largest international aid agency in Pakistan. This has led the government of Pakistan to clamp down on NGO operations and restrict their access to those most in need.

Normative developments and political reality are rarely in sync. The idea of an international responsibility to protect reflects a steady and clear normative growth since the early 1990s, whereas the operational capacity and political will to engage in humanitarian intervention has been on a roller coaster. While the international community of states stood back in Darfur, it intervened in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya. In 2012 there was much hesitation about Syria, although aid agencies were trying to create a humanitarian space to treat the victims of the conflict and protect the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life.

**NOTES**

. Julie A. Mertus, _The United Nations and Human Rights: A Guide for a New Era_ , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2009); Philip Alston, ed., _The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal_ , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002); David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights in International Relations_ , 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

. Neta C. Crawford, _Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Paul Gordon Lauren, _Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination_ , 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996).

. David P. Forsythe, "The UN Security Council and Response to Atrocities: The P-5 and International Criminal Law," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 34, no. 3 (2012): 840–863.

. Roger S. Clark and Madeleine Sann, eds., _The Prosecution of International Crimes: A Critical Study of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia_ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1996).

. Jon Western, _Selling Intervention and War_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).

. Fernando R. Tesón, "Changing Perceptions of Domestic Jurisdiction and Intervention," in _Beyond Sovereignty: Collectively Defending Democracy in the Americas_ , ed. Tom Farer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 29–51.

. _Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts_ , March 30, 2001, UN document S/2001/331. The Security Council also adopted resolution 1296 on protecting civilians on April 19, 2000; resolution 1325 on protecting women's rights on October 31, 2000; and resolution 1379 on protecting children's rights on November 20, 2001.

. _Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization_ , UN document A/51/1, para. 1132.

. Barbara Crossette, "UN Asks for Intervention Force as Burundi Nears Collapse," _New York Times_ , July 25, 1996.

. International Crisis Group, _A Framework for Responsible Aid to Burundi_ , <http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/central-africa/burundi/057-a-framework-for-responsible-aid-to-burundi.aspx>.

. Hugo Slim, "Dithering over Darfur? A Preliminary Review of the International Response," _International Affairs_ 80, no. 5 (2004): 811–833. See also Cheryl O. Igiri and Princeton N. Lyman, _Giving Meaning to "Never Again": Seeking an Effective Response to the Crisis in Darfur and Beyond_ , CFR no. 5 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2004).

. Roméo Dallaire, "Looking at Darfur, Seeing Rwanda," _New York Times_ , October 4, 2004.

. UN OCHA, "Sudan: US Congress Unanimously Defines Darfur Violence as 'Genocide,'" July 23, 2004, <http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2004/07/mil-040723-irin03.htm>.

. Colin Powell, "The Crisis in Darfur," written remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, D.C., September 9, 2004, <http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/36032.htm>.

. Physicians for Human Rights, "Call for Intervention to Save Lives in the Sudan: Field Team Compiles Indicators of Genocide," June 23, 2004, <http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/about/record/pdf/summer04_record.pdf>.

. Agence France-Presse, "EU Lawmakers Call Darfur Crisis 'Genocide,'" September 16, 2004.

. Scott Straus, "Darfur and the Genocide Debate," _Foreign Affairs_ 84, no. 1 (2005): 123–133.

. Eric A. Posner, _The Perils of Global Legalism_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 205–206.

. David Lague, "China Braces for Prospect of Change," _New York Times_ , September 27, 2007.

. David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights and World Politics_ , 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), Chapter 3.

. For a contrary view, see Rama Mani and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _The Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. John Tessitore and Susan Woolfson, eds., _A Global Agenda: Issues Before the 47th General Assembly of the United Nations_ (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992), 240.

. Richard J. Goldstone and Adam Smith, _International Judicial Institutions: The Architecture of International Justice at Home and Abroad_ (London: Routledge, 2008); Gary Jonathan Bass, _Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); Steven R. Ratner and James L. Bischoff, eds., _International War Crimes Trials: Making a Difference_ (Austin: University of Texas Law School, 2004); and Eric Stover and Harvey M. Weinstein, eds., _My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity_ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

. David P. Forsythe, "The United States and International Criminal Justice," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 24, no. 4 (2002): 974–991.

. John Goldsmith and Stephen D. Krasner, "The Limits of Idealism," _Daedalus_ 132, no. 1 (2003): 47–63.

. David P. Forsythe, "The UN Secretary-General and Human Rights," in _The Challenging Role of the UN Secretary-General: Making "The Most Impossible Job in the World" Possible_ , ed. Benjamin Rivlin and Leon Gordenker (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993), 211–232. See also Kent J. Kille, ed., _The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership_ (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008).

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, _Preventive Diplomacy at the UN_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

. John P. Humphrey, _Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure_ (New York: Transaction Books, 1984).

. A joke circulating about the various recent heads of the UN Centre for Human Rights involved these characters: van Boven was supposedly the most active and committed; his successor, Kurt Herndl, having seen what happened to van Boven, supposedly kept a low profile; his successor, Jan Martenson, was supposedly preoccupied with a public image for himself and his office; his successor, Antoine Blanca, was supposedly an old crony of the secretary-general who had no interest in human rights. So the joke went like this: van Boven (in fact) wrote the book _People Matter_ ; so Herndl supposedly wrote _States Matter_ ; Martenson, _I Mat_ ter; Blanca, _It Doesn't Matter._

. Press Release SG/SM/6825 HR/4391, December 8, 1998.

. See the website of the United Nations Global Compact: <http://www.unglobalcompact.org>.

. Brian Knowlton, "Rights Chief Talks of U.S. Role in Her Leaving," _International Herald Tribune_ , July 31, 2002, 6.

. Julia Preston, "New U.N. Chief Invites Controversy by Declining to Oppose Hussein Execution," _New York Times_ , January 3, 2007.

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, ed., _Human Rights Protection in the Field_ (Leiden, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2006).

. David P. Forsythe, "U.S. Policy Toward Enemy Detainees," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 28, no. 2 (2006): 465–491.

. "A Tigress and Her Tormentors," _Economist_ (October 8, 2011), 74.

. "Gay People Around the World Face Bias, Abuse and Violence," _New York Times_ , December 16, 2011; and Navi Pillay, "Ending Violence and Criminal Sanctions Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Statement by the High Commissioner," September 17, 2010, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=10717&LangID=E.

. Rick Gladstone and Neil MacFarquhar, "U.N. Official Rebukes Syria Over Violence," _New York Times_ , February 14, 2012.

. Howard Tolley Jr., _The UN Commission on Human Rights_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987), was the last in-depth scholarly overview of the commission. For a general picture, see Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, _Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal Justice_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); and James H. Lebovic and Eric Voeten, "The Politics of Shame," _International Studies Quarterly_ 50, no. 4 (2006): 861–888.

. Tom J. Farer, "The UN and Human Rights: More Than a Whimper, Less Than a Roar," in _Human Rights and the World Community: Issues and Action_ , ed. Richard Pierre Claude and Burns H. Weston, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, "Musings of a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights," _Global Governance_ 9, no. 1 (2003): 1–13.

. Morris B. Abram, "Human Rights and the United Nations: Past as Prologue," _Harvard Human Rights Law Journal_ 4 (1991): 69–83.

. Tolley Jr., _Commission on Human Rights_ , 179.

. Joe W. Pitts III and David Weissbrodt, "Major Developments at the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1992," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 15, no. 1 (1993): 122–196.

. _A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility—Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change_ (New York: United Nations, 2004), paras. 283 and 285.

. Kofi Annan, _In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ , UN document A/59/2005, March 21, 2005, para. 183.

. Lebovic and Voeten, "The Politics of Shame."

. See Thomas Buergenthal, "The Evolving International Human Rights System," _American Journal of International Law_ 100 (October 2006): 791.

. Louise Arbour, "Statement by High Commissioner for Human Rights to Last Meeting of Commission on Human Rights," March 27, 2006, 3–6. See further David P. Forsythe, with Baekkwan Park, "Turbulent Transition," in _The United Nations: Past, Present, and Future—Proceedings of the 2007 Francis Marion University UN Symposium_ , ed. Scott Kaufman and Alissa Warters (New York: Nova Science, 2009).

. Bertrand G. Ramcharan, _The UN Human Rights Council_ (New York: Routledge, 2011).

. General Assembly, _2005 World Summit Outcome_ , UN resolution A/60/1, September 24, 2005, paras.157 and 160.

. Nico Schrijver, "The UN Human Rights Council: 'A Society of the Committed' or Just Old Wine in New Bottles?" _Leiden Journal of International Law_ 20, no. 4 (2007): 809–823; and Yvonne Terlingen, "The Human Rights Council: A New Era in UN Human Rights Work?" _Ethics & International Affairs_ 21, no. 2 (2007): 167–178.

. Quoted in Warren Hoge, "Dismay Over New U.N. Human Rights Council," _New York Times_ , March 11, 2007.

. Kenneth Roth, "Empty Promises," _Foreign Affairs_ 89, no. 1 (2010): 10–16.

. Philip Alston, Jason Morgan-Foster, and William Abresch, "The Competence of the UN Human Rights Council and Its Special Procedures in Armed Conflicts: Extrajudicial Executions in the 'War on Terror,'" _European Journal of International Law_ 19 (2008): 183–209.

. "Syria: UN and Arab League Appoint Joint Envoy to Deal with Crisis," UN News Centre, February 12, 2012, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41346&Cr=syria&Cr1.

. Surya P. Subedi, Steven Wheatley, Amrita Mukherjee, and Sylvia Ngane, "The Role of Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the Development and Promotion of International Human Rights Norms," _International Journal of Human Rights_ 15, no. 2 (2011): 155–161.

. Karen Reierson and David Weissbrodt, "The Forty-Third Session of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities: The Sub-Commission Under Scrutiny," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 14, no. 1 (1992): 271.

. David Harris, "Commentary by the Rapporteur on the Consideration of States Parties' Reports and International Cooperation," paper presented at the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights symposium, _Human Rights Quarterly_ 9, no. 1 (1997): 149.

. Philip Alston and Bruno Simma, "First Session of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," _American Journal of International Law_ 81, no. 3 (1987): 750.

. Scott Leckie, "An Overview and Appraisal," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 13, no. 3 (September 1991): 566–567.

. Philip Alston and James Crawford, eds., _The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Anne Bayefsky, _The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Universality at the Crossroads_ (Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 2001).

. Gil Loescher, _The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Arthur C. Helton, _The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Niclaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, and Gil Loescher, eds., _Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights_ (New York: Routledge, 2003); and Alexander Betts, Gil Loescher, and James Milner, _The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection_ , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011).

. Thomas G. Weiss, "Internal Exiles: What Next for Internally Displaced Persons?" _Third World Quarterly_ 24, no. 3 (2003): 429–447; and Kathleen Newland, with Erin Patrick and Monette Zard, _No Refuge: The Challenge of Internal Displacements_ (New York: UNOCHA, 2003).

. The changing numbers of "persons of concern" to the UNHCR can be followed by checking the different editions of _The Refugee Survey Quarterly_ , published by the UNHCR, or by going to <http://www.unhcr.org>. For complete statistics on IDPs, see <http://www.idpproject.org>, maintained by the Norwegian Refugee Council.

. Michael Ignatieff, "Human Rights: The Midlife Crisis," _New York Review of Books_ 46, no. 9 (1999): 58.

. Thomas G. Weiss and David A. Korn, _Internal Displacement: Conceptualization and Its Consequences_ (London: Routledge, 2006).

. Benjamin N. Schiff, _Refugees unto the Third Generation: UN Aid to Palestinians_ (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995).

. Fiona Terry, _Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002).

. Tessitore and Woolfson, _Global Agenda_ , 260.

. UNHCR local staff in East Africa were accused of exchanging services for sexual favors, a controversy that did not enhance the agency's reputation. Loescher found in his 2001 study that parts of the UNHCR headquarters could be insensitive to refugee needs.

. Theo van Boven, "Human Rights and Development: The UN Experience," in _Human Rights and Development_ , ed. David P. Forsythe (London: Macmillan, 1989), 121–135.

. Internal World Bank documents increasingly dealt with human rights. See, for example, C. Mark Blackden, "Human Rights, Governance, and Development: Issues, Avenues, and Tasks," October 10, 1991, 17 plus attachments. For an overview, see David P. Forsythe, "Human Rights, Development, and the United Nations," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 19, no. 2 (1997): 334–349.

. Khadija _Haq and Richard Ponzio, eds., Pioneering the Human Development Revolution: An Intellectual Biography of Mahbubul Haq (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008)._

. Tessitore and Woolfson, _Global Agenda_ , 245.

. Thomas G. Weiss and Cindy Collins, _Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention_ , 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000); and Jonathan Moore, _The UN and Complex Emergencies_ (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 1996).

. Ian Smillie and Larry Minear, _The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World_ (Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian, 2004), 8.

. Andrew Cooley and James Ron, "The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action," _International Security_ 27, no. 1 (2002): 5–39.

. Thomas G. Weiss, _Humanitarian Business_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 7.

. David P. Forsythe, "Choices More Ethical Than Legal: The International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights," _Ethics & International Affairs_ 7 (1993): 131–152.

. Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear, eds., _Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993).

. Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, _Sword & Salve: Confronting New Wars and Humanitarian Crises_ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

. Simon Chesterman, ed., _Civilians in War_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001); P. W. Singer, _Children at War_ (New York: Pantheon, 2005).

. Jan Egeland, Adele Harmer, and Abby Stoddard, _To Stay and Deliver: Good Practice for Humanitarians in Complex Security Environments_ (New York: OCHA, 2011).

. Jan Egeland, _A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 8.

. "More Dangerous to Work Than Ever," _Economist_ , November 20, 2004, 49.

. Thomas G. Weiss, "Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action," _Ethics & International Affairs_ 13 (1999): 1–22, as well as "Responses" by Cornelio Sommaruga, Joelle Tanguy, Fiona Terry, and David Rieff, 23–42.

. Michael Barnett, "Humanitarianism Transformed," _Perspectives on Politics_ 3, no. 4 (2005): 724.

. Michael Maren, _The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity_ (New York: Free Press, 1997); Alex de Waal, _Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa_ (Oxford: James Currey, 1997); John Borton, "The State of the International Humanitarian System," Overseas Development Institute Briefing Paper no. 1 (March 1998); Myron Wiener, "The Clash of Norms: Dilemmas in Refugee Policies," _Journal of Refugee Studies_ 11, no. 4 (1998): 1–21; Mark Duffield, "NGO Relief in War Zones: Toward an Analysis of the New Aid Paradigm," in _Beyond UN Subcontracting: Task-Sharing with Regional Security Arrangements and Service-Providing NGO_ s, ed. Thomas G. Weiss (London: Macmillan, 1998), 139–159; Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi, eds., _War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to Complex Emergencies_ (London: Zed Books, 1994); and David Keen, _The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars_ , Adelphi Paper 320 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

. Adam Roberts, "Implementation of the Laws of War in Late 20th Century Conflicts," Parts 1, 2, _Security Dialogue_ 29, nos. 2 and 3 (1998): 137–150 and 265–280; and a special issue on "Humanitarian Debate: Law, Policy, Action," _International Review of the Red Cross_ 81, no. 833 (1999).

. David Rieff, "The Death of a Good Idea," _Newsweek_ , May 10, 1999, 65.

. David Rieff, _A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

. David Rieff, "Humanitarianism in Crisis," _Foreign Affairs_ 81, no. 6 (2002): 111–121.

. David P. Forsythe, _"Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics_ (Review)," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 31, no. 1 (2009): 269–277.

. Mark Duffield, _Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security_ (London: Zed Books, 2001). See also Philip White, "Complex Political Emergencies—Grasping Contexts, Seizing Opportunities," _Disasters_ 24, no. 4 (2000): 288–290, and Des Gasper, "'Drawing a Line'—Ethical and Political Strategies in Complex Emergency Assistance," _European Journal of Development Research_ 11, no. 2 (1999): 87–114.

. Andrew Cooley and James Ron, "The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action," _International Security_ 27, no. 1 (2002): 5–39.

. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., _Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, _Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. Roisin Shannon, "Playing with Principles in an Era of Securitized Aid: Negotiating Humanitarian Space in Post-9/11 Afghanistan," _Progress in Developing Studies_ 9, no. 1 (2009): 15–36.

. Declan Walsh, "Fallout of Bin Laden Raid: Aid Groups in Pakistan Are Suspect," _New York Times_ , May 2, 2012.
* * *

CHAPTER 8

* * *

_Change, the United Nations, and Human Rights_

THE NAME "UNITED NATIONS" refers more to a framework, a stage, or an institutional setting than to an organization with the capacity for independent action. Although some people, such as those in the Office of the Secretary-General, can take relatively independent action, "the UN" mostly refers to a process in which the most important policy decisions are made by governments representing territorial states. Fundamentally, the world organization has become involved in changing policies toward human rights as states have changed their policies. But other actors have been important, too.

The promotion and protection of human rights has become one of the UN's more prominent activities. In the annual _United Nations Yearbook_ , more pages are usually devoted to human rights, by far, than to any other subject matter. Those printed pages accurately reflect the attention given to UN diplomacy on human rights. Nevertheless, problems continue relating to definition, implementation, and coordination. Below are several ideas to improve on the UN's central role in promoting and protecting human rights through diplomacy:

• The secretary-general or his representative should present an annual human rights report, similar to his annual report on the work of the organization, to the General Assembly each September in which he draws attention to the most important rights problems. The UN high commissioner for human rights already makes an annual report, but it does not receive the same attention as those from the secretary-general. The UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of each UN member state once every four years will take time to be authoritative. A concentrated report highlighting major issues from the UN secretary-general report, the most visible of international civil servants, is still desirable.

The Peace Palace, seat of the International Court of Justice. (UN/DPI Photo/A. Brizzi)

• Treaty-monitoring bodies should be allowed to participate in the work of other UN bodies—for example, the Human Rights Council. They should continue to coordinate their activities to fight fragmented efforts and in search of concentrated impact.

• UN programs of technical assistance and education for human rights should be greatly expanded to strengthen national institutions for rights protection and thus to head off major rights problems before they become international crises.

• The Office of the Secretary-General, in conjunction with OHCHR and OCHA, should improve dramatically the UN's early-warning system to predict gross violations of internationally recognized human rights that are likely to lead to mass displacement.

• Human rights considerations should be integrated into development programs through the UNDP, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and UN specialized agencies. Just as there is a UN body on sustainable development and momentum hopefully resulting from the 2012 Rio+20 meeting, there should be a coordinating body on human rights in development. Efforts have been grouped under the rubric of "mainstreaming human rights," but change has been more cosmetic than real. Some agencies like UNICEF have a good record in this regard, while the WHO, World Bank, IMF, and WTO have lagged.

• Greater use should be made of preventive diplomacy, such as the systematic dispatch of UN human rights observers in situations of tension, both to deter rights violations and to provide timely reporting to New York.

These "doable" steps could be taken without waiting for a radical alteration in state attitudes. Nevertheless, a meaningful improvement in UN actions for human rights depends on further and more dramatic changes in state policies, an especial challenge in most postcolonial states, which are very protective about any codification of norms encroaching on conventional notions of state sovereignty. And when it comes to sovereignty, the United States and China are every bit as protective of sovereign prerogatives as states in the Global South, such as India and South Africa. The modest reforms approved at the 2005 World Summit reflected this reality. The change from the Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council showed above all that many states were not ready for strong enforcement of human rights standards, preferring to emphasize continuing dialogue over time. Even exceptionally poor human rights situations, as in Darfur, produced only modest responses.

**MORE ON _RAISONS D'ÉTAT_**

The meaning of "national interest" is not fixed, and certainly not for human rights. "National interest," like "state sovereignty," is a social construct. Humans derive ideas about national interest in a process of change over time. Even for schools of thought like realism that emphasize the concept of national interest as a core component of international relations theory, the concept lacks precise and transcendent meaning. Whether human rights should be, or can be, linked to national interests is a matter of debate. How it is linked, as with the securitization of human rights and humanitarian aid, also matters. States have pursued human rights at the United Nations as a weapon in power struggles. The objective has been to delegitimize a certain government; the means has been to emphasize human rights violations. We are witnessing this with Muslim states targeting Israel in the Human Rights Council.

Some states have adopted a broad definition of their own self-interests. Like Canada or Sweden, for instance, they seek not just territorial integrity, political independence, and other goals directly related to the narrow and expedient interests of the state. They also define their interests in terms of an international society in which human dignity is advanced by serious attention to human rights. Just as governments have defined their domestic interests beyond physical security and economic welfare, so have they used their foreign policies to advance human rights and humanitarian goals.

Some states have adopted a variation on this theme by arguing that the practice of human rights advances not only human dignity but also national security and peace. The lack of major international wars between liberal democracies serves as evidence. Sometimes dealing with human rights violations is requisite for bringing peace to countries like El Salvador or Bosnia.

Navanethem Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, addresses a plenary meeting of the General Assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights, on the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (UN Photo 234409/Paulo Filgueiras)

Some states may even lend support to international action on human rights not because they believe any of the arguments above but simply because they feel pressured or obligated to support such action. Various states will sometimes align with China or the United States on human rights issues not because of the merits, but to curry favor with the powerful.

For all of these reasons, states have brought about a legal and diplomatic revolution with regard to the treatment of human rights at the United Nations. The same process has occurred in such multilateral forums as the Council of Europe, the EU, the CSCE and OSCE, OAS, and, to a lesser extent, the African Union and the Arab League. Especially the powerful liberal democracies have a human rights component to their foreign policies, inconsistent and with other defects, to be sure, and this affects the UN.

The link between human rights and _raisons d'état_ at least sometimes is a reflection of increasing moral solidarity in international society. Governmental authorities may speak in terms of their interests, but the deeper process may involve a moral stance on the dignity of persons without regard to nationality or borders. John Ruggie has shown that a concern to better the world is deeply ingrained in American culture and history and that this concern has often taken a multilateral form, including great attention to the United Nations, in the twentieth century. Edward Luck, however, has emphasized a fundamental ambivalence in American attitudes toward multilateralism. Clinton administration officials may have spoken of American strategic interests in a stable, democratic, and prosperous Europe, but the deeper driving force behind Washington's policy in the 1990s may have been moral outrage at atrocities in the Balkans. In Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, U.S. policy was intertwined with various multilateral efforts, including most especially those of the United Nations.

The rubble of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad following a suicide bomber attack on August 19, 2003, which killed twenty-two, including the secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. (UN/DPI Photo)

Moral and practical components of state foreign policy may also be sufficiently entangled as to be inseparable. In fact, rarely are motives purely self-interested or altruistic. The United States in 1999 might have been morally outraged about Kosovo and at the same time may have believed that self-interest dictated not ignoring Serbian atrocities of ethnic cleansing. Not to oppose those human rights violations would have been to encourage more atrocities. Not to act against atrocities might have been to encourage refugee flight that could destabilize friendly states. Not to so act might have entailed loss of reputation and thus some loss of soft power.

The driving forces of state foreign policies are difficult to discern, but the cumulative effect has been to internationalize human rights and to internalize them in domestic policies. State authorities in general consider human rights, even those within a state's territorial boundaries, to be a proper subject for international discussion. They often are willing to engage in a wide range of diplomatic activity to promote and also indirectly to protect those rights. At times states are even willing to engage in economic coercion in the name of rights, and more rarely they at least agree to some type of military action to guarantee such fundamental rights as the access by suffering civilians to international help.

The principle of state sovereignty certainly has not been abandoned, nor the derivative notion of national interests. Any thought that we are moving toward a world community with consensus about the protection of human rights in complicated and difficult situations is exceedingly optimistic. Sovereignty is often used as a defense against UN action on human rights by different states on different issues at different times. The principle is especially favored as a defense mechanism by the authorities of weaker and younger developing countries that fear losing status and influence at the hands of more powerful states. As noted above, older and more powerful states also do not hesitate to trot out the tired slogans of sacrosanct state sovereignty when some UN agency or regional organization criticizes their actions. The United States chastises others for politicizing the Human Rights Council at the same it resists UN rapporteurs and agencies trying to implement UN standards on torture and the treatment of prisoners, on terrorists, or on the death penalty.

The appeal to traditional notions of state sovereignty and their use have weakened as UN organizations have expanded diplomatic activity for human rights across and even within states. They also have occasionally resorted to economic and military sanctions in this area. The world organization is now deeply involved in human rights issues to an extent completely unforeseen in 1945. States have created UN standards and supervisory procedures that later restricted their operational sovereignty in the field of human rights. In legal theory, states are no longer free to treat even their own citizens as they wish. Internationally recognized human rights impose standards that are binding on governments. In political practice, governments may be pressured or coerced because of human rights violations. The process is far from consistent, systematic, reliable, or effective, but it is irreversible.

**STATE COALITIONS**

In multilateral organizations, many key decisions are taken by voting, so coalitions among states become important. During the early years of the UN, the Western coalition controlled proceedings in the General Assembly and the CHR. Western states pushed for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at least the negotiation of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The communist coalition played the game of negotiating the treaties and accepting human rights in theory while opposing the implementation of many internationally recognized rights in practice. Yet beyond standards being set, few breakthroughs in UN diplomatic action for protecting human rights followed.

Perhaps most important, Washington exercised little constructive leadership on human rights at the United Nations for several decades after about 1953. The United States was a dominant power and, to some states, hegemonic on security and economic issues. But it was neither dominant nor hegemonic on human rights. Human rights issues were a sensitive topic in the United States both because of legally sanctioned racial discrimination and because some members of Congress feared a more powerful executive through the treaty process. So from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter, no president asked the Senate for advice or consent on the two core UN human rights covenants.

Beyond the United States and the Western coalition of states, the admission of newly independent developing countries from 1955 and the acceleration of this pattern from 1960 drastically changed voting on human rights at the United Nations. Developing countries sought to use the language of human rights to pressure Israel and South Africa, and the West countered with efforts to broaden those rights-oriented maneuvers. Human rights NGOs helped fashion this North-South compromise. The result was a new diplomatic dynamism in UN attempts to protect certain human rights in certain countries. The Soviet coalition added its own emphases, particularly focusing on rights violations in Augusto Pinochet's Chile after the overthrow of Marxist president Salvador Allende.

This North-South interchange on human rights, with European communist states usually aligned with the South, accounted for many human rights developments at the United Nations from 1970 to 1985. For example, rhetorical interest was taken in a collective right to development after the newly independent states from the South gained membership and were seated in the General Assembly. This new alignment of states can also explain why efforts to protect human rights fell flat at the UN. For instance, the world organization was unable to put diplomatic pressure on Idi Amin's brutal government in Uganda because of the shield provided by the solidarity in the Global South. A double standard emerged whereby discrimination by a black government against Asians and white Europeans was not of major concern in the General Assembly. This same anticolonial shield has so far protected Robert Mugabe's repressive government in Zimbabwe, as South Africa and others avoid publicly criticizing a hero who struggled against white domination and spent eleven years in white prisons for it. A related reaction was an African Union communiqué asking the Security Council to suspend the ICC's proceedings against Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Beyond developing countries, some permanent members of the Security Council also were ambivalent or reluctant about international action for human rights and humanitarian affairs. Russia expressed open reservations about some of the policies being pursued against rights violations by governments in Iraq and Serbia. China did not support international action to protect human rights and abstained on most council resolutions rather than vetoing them. The United States sheltered the Siad Barre regime in Somalia and protected Israel from any condemnation or sanction by the council with regard to its policies in the occupied territories.

At the Killing Fields memorial near Phnom Penh, shelves filled with skulls testify to Cambodia's tragic past. (UN Photo 159753/J. Isaac)

In spite of rapid economic advances, the North-South theater is a remnant of the UN's past that continues to hamstring multilateral conversations and certainly to limit UN efforts to protect human rights, and Russia and China regularly join developing countries in obstructing protective efforts. But Western states like France and the United States blocked UN intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda. At the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, most developing and formerly communist countries reaffirmed the idea of universal human rights. But since 1948 the central problem has not been the abstract codification of norms, but rather marshaling sufficient political will to deal with concrete violations of internationally recognized human rights. The major fault line in negotiations about the new UN Human Rights Council was a North-South conflict, with Russia aligned with most of the South, while Chile and Mexico and a few other developing democracies aligned with the North.

**NONSTATE ACTORS**

States may be the official building blocks of the United Nations, but NSAs have been especially active and influential in human rights and humanitarian matters. Three types of nonstate actors are discussed here: NGOs, individual experts, and Secretariat personnel. Precision is difficult when gauging the influence generated by NGOs on human rights. In a speech at the United Nations just after the adoption of the Universal Declaration in December 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt aptly predicted that "a curious grapevine" would spread the ideas contained in the declaration far and wide. That image in fact captures the reality because human rights have a momentum and life of their own.

The most general analytical problem, then, is that their impact becomes intertwined with governmental and other influences, often making it impossible to say with precision where NGO influence leaves off and governmental influence begins. If Amnesty International lobbies for new standards and monitoring mechanisms concerning torture, and if states in the General Assembly approve these ideas in treaty form, it is difficult to pinpoint what has occurred because of Amnesty International's efforts and what has occurred because of governmental policy. What does appear to be clear is that international relations, as it relates to human rights, is shifting away from a system in which states make the rules to a more cosmopolitan order in which IGOs and NGOs play central roles as well.

Transnational networks of state and nonstate actors were crucial to the creation of two essential tools that undoubtedly have had a positive impact on the enforcement of basic human rights and dignity, namely the ICC and the treaty banning antipersonnel land mines. NGOs have been active on human rights issues at the United Nations. And they certainly have generated influence for the promotion and protection of human rights in the abstract. Their cumulative impact has been such that various states have opposed UN consultative status for some of the more assertive NGOs. In 1991 Cuba and some Arab states temporarily prevented Human Rights Watch from obtaining consultative status via the Economic and Social Council. NGOs want to achieve that status because they gain the right to circulate documents and speak in UN meetings. During the Cold War several human rights NGOs were excluded from consultative status by communist and developing governments, a practice that continues only somewhat attenuated. In 1995 Freedom House, like Human Rights Watch also based in New York, was temporarily denied consultative status by a coalition of states, including democracies such as India and the Philippines. These states disliked the rating system and other reports authored by Freedom House. Had NGOs generated no influence, governments would not try so hard to keep them out of UN proceedings.

Toward the end of 2007 the government of Vladimir Putin tried to obstruct the activities of a number of Western-based NGOs active on human rights in Russia. He had adopted a variety of policies that reduced individual freedom, and his crackdown on human rights NGOs, both domestic and international, was part of that orientation. Had human rights NGOs generated no influence in Russia on behalf of the UN's International Bill of Human Rights, it is unlikely that Putin, as president or prime minister, would have devoted so much effort to harassing them. He also blocked effective election monitoring by the OSCE in 2008. In 2012 Egypt raided the offices of several human rights NGOs and shut down the offices of Freedom House and the National Democratic Institution. Officials of these NGOs were arrested, and many were prevented from leaving the country in spite of the supposed opening of the Arab Spring's most prominent country.

At the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the tensions between governments and human rights NGOs were very evident. Some governments feared the influence that might be generated by NGOs, perhaps by releasing damaging information to the world press. At the 1968 UN International Conference on Human Rights in Teheran, NGOs participated in the intergovernmental sessions. In Vienna in 1993, governments denied NGO participation in the official meetings but agreed to a separate NGO parallel conference. This formula was followed at the 1995 Beijing Fourth UN World Conference on Women and at the 2002 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. On human rights as on many other subjects, states feel they cannot completely suppress NGOs, but many states try to limit NGO influence.

The ICRC is the only nonstate actor working for human rights and humanitarian affairs that has been granted observer status in the General Assembly; it also meets monthly with the president of the Security Council. This came about because of its close work with governments especially in situations of armed conflict and because of its reputation. The ICRC is a quasi-public actor, being explicitly recognized in international public law, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions for armed conflict. But the ICRC follows a general policy of discretion and therefore does not normally reveal the details of what its delegates have observed inside states. Unlike Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, for example, the ICRC does not normally rely on detailed public pressure to achieve its objectives. For all these reasons states were prepared to accord to the ICRC a status at the UN "higher" than other private or quasi-private agencies. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is also accorded observer status. It normally works in situations of natural and industrial/technological disasters, but it also works with refugees. The RC Federation is made up of state-sanctioned relief agencies; they are quasi–state agencies.

In addition to pressuring states and the United Nations to do more to promote and protect human rights, NGOs also perform other important functions. An important aspect of advocacy centers on information-related activities. NGOs document human rights violations and engage in fact-finding. They produce educational materials and give expert testimony for national and international bodies. Large numbers of NGOs had consultative status and participated in meetings of the Commission on Human Rights, which is also now true of the Human Rights Council, albeit with additional constraints that many see as a step backward. They submit private complaints about a pattern of gross violations of human rights to the UN system. Their information is officially used in most of the monitoring agencies of the UN system such as the Human Rights Committee; the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; Committee Against Torture; Committee on the Rights of the Child; and others. Some NGOs have played influential roles behind the scenes in the adoption of General Assembly resolutions concerning human rights.

Just as private human rights groups have had an impact on national policies, so have they influenced UN proceedings. A formal UN vote or document, reflecting the policy of a majority of governments, may have started or been advanced by one or more NGOs. For instance, NGOs advanced the UN Declaration on Minorities and the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, although states voted for it. Approximately one thousand NGOs attended the World Conference on Human Rights, conducting their own proceedings and engaging in the specific criticisms that state delegations at the conference had agreed to avoid. Just as private groups have teamed with the U.S. Congress to improve human rights reporting by the Department of State, NGOs have teamed with interested governments to improve rights activity through the United Nations. Just as a group of secular and faith-based private groups pressured Congress to do more about the violation of religious freedom in the world, so these and other groups constantly pressure states at the UN to take action for human rights. If human rights NGOs had been absent at the UN during its first seven decades, it is unlikely that the world organization's record would be as good as it is. The record is not good enough in the view of these same NGOs, but positive steps have been taken.

Had those NGOs been absent, something would have been done on human rights nevertheless—not only because of states but because of Secretariat personnel. John P. Humphrey of Canada, the first UN director-general of human rights, appears to have had some influence on the content of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other Secretariat personnel have advanced ideas or proposals that eventually were accepted by governments voting in UN bodies. Executive heads of UN agencies like UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR, International Labour Organization, and UN Women have clearly taken action on their own for children's health care, the right to adequate health care in general, refugee rights, labor rights, and the rights of women. All this is apart from the human rights activity of the Office of the Secretary-General itself.

Moreover, the individual experts who have sat on the UN Sub-Commission on Protection of Minorities or who have been rapporteurs or other experts for the Commission on Human Rights have often nudged the process along. Most of the monitoring agencies created by treaty have been staffed by individuals acting in their personal capacity. Many have been truly independent from their governments as well as serious about and dedicated to human rights. Samantha Power argues that the tireless effort of one private person, Raphael Lemkin, led to the creation of the genocide convention. She also credits the individual efforts of U.S. senator William Proxmire for helping get the United States to accept that treaty.

**THEORIES OF CHANGE**

Can we develop a summary statement that clarifies the dynamics of activity on human rights at the UN? Can we theorize why this activity has been what it has been? And can we project what directions this activity will take in the future?

Two related views are relevant, and both are topics to which our other subsequent discussions of change return. The first focuses on the notion of knowledge. Ernst Haas argues that if private communities of knowledge come to an agreement on human rights, this agreement eventually will produce a policy consensus in the public sector. When this public consensus emerges, the United Nations and other IGOs become empowered to take important action for human rights. This means complete change in the UN, not just partial change. For example, if most human rights groups could prove that civil and political rights were necessary for economic growth or that socioeconomic rights were necessary for stable democracy, that private agreement would eventually affect public policy through the UN and would lead to dramatic change.

The second and related view emphasizes learning. George Modelski returns to the ideas of Immanuel Kant to suggest that those who speak for states are in the process of learning a commitment to human rights, especially to the civil and political rights making up democracy. In this view, historical evolution shows expanded learning of the benefits of democracy—whether in terms of human dignity or in terms of international peace.

If Haas's view is correct about the state of knowledge in epistemic communities, several generalizations emerge. First, if all or most private groups active on human rights agreed on particulars, this consensus of knowledge should eventually inform public policy in such a way that the United Nations would be mandated by governments to take more authoritative and effective action for human rights. We may see a paradigm shift. Even the World Bank, which long sought to avoid the "political" matter of human rights, now says that economic growth should be pursued with attention to "good governance." The Bank and its supporters have concluded—at least for now—that at least some authoritarian models of economic growth do not work very well. In fact, good governance—rule of law, transparency, market-oriented policies—has essentially been defined as the opposite of what authoritarian Third World and Soviet bloc countries did in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Clearly, these approaches have substantial and positive human rights dimensions.

Knowledge about human rights is not so much scientific knowledge, however, as moral judgment. Achieving widespread agreement on morality is more difficult than on hard data. Even within one country with a dominant culture, private groups differ over such human rights issues as abortion, the death penalty, health care, and adequate nutrition.

Getting private groups to agree that children are better off if vaccinated is not so difficult, as many do not disagree with a vaccination program. Opinion is based on irrefutable scientific knowledge. Getting private circles of opinion to agree that internationally recognized human rights should be applied in all cultures and situations is far more difficult. Not all medical experts agree that health care should be treated as a human right. Not all medical personnel agree that abortion should be legal. They may agree on the technical process of how to perform an abortion, for that is based on science. But they disagree on whether abortion should be legal, for that is based on moral judgment. Moral judgment is greatly affected by varieties of opinion because moral argument cannot be easily proved or disproved.

Not everyone will always, everywhere, be better off if rights are applied. If repressive governments respect civil and political rights, many if not most of them will lose power. This may usher in a period of disorder and economic decline. The former Soviet Union is a clear example, at least in the short run. In repressive China, many persons have been advancing economically, since macroeconomic growth as stimulated by an expanding private sector was around 10 percent per year in the early 1990s. In private circles of opinion, many do not believe that rights, especially political rights, would do anything but interrupt this beneficial process in China. Spectacular economic growth has been achieved in Singapore since the 1970s, but without full civil and political rights. Important religious circles in Islamic nations believe freedom of religion and gender equality would hurt society.

Even actors that generally seek to protect rights do not insist on the application of rights in every situation. Many Western private groups do not press the issue of the practice of human rights in Saudi Arabia, a stable ally in the Middle East. They also defer to a military coup in Algeria that prevented the election of a fundamentalist Islamic party. Some of these groups believe on moral grounds that Western access to oil or blocking fundamentalist Islam justifies repressive governments. We know that elections in places such as Sri Lanka have led to illiberal governments that discriminate against minorities and commit other rights violations. So a commitment to human rights such as democratic political participation is less a matter of scientific proof of inherent progress and more a matter of moral and political choice in context.

Beyond the essential distinction between scientific knowledge and moral judgment in private networks, the public policy consensus across governments at the UN concerning human rights is incomplete, to say the least. The formal consensus is broad, but the real consensus is weak. In other words, human rights treaties are widely accepted in law and widely violated in practice. Learning of "correct" policies has been more formal than substantive.

As long as actual consensus remains weak, human rights activity will not lead to systematic and authoritative protection by the United Nations. New and potentially important steps may happen spasmodically, but these steps will fall short of full change leading to systematic and effective protection. Inconsistency is the hallmark of international organization. The Security Council may authorize humanitarian intervention in Somalia, but at roughly the same time it will fail to sponsor decisive action in similar situations in Liberia or Sudan, Rwanda or Burundi. The council may set the stage for the use of force in Iraq, at least partially in the name of persecuted civilians, but it will be lethargic about similarly appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Human Rights Council is not so significantly different from its predecessor. The latter partial change shows clearly that UN member states disagree on how to evaluate the preceding sixty years of proceedings by the Commission on Human Rights.

_Knowledge, Learning, and Courts_

The issue of the UN and international courts provides a good test of the Haas theory of change, linked to knowledge, and the Modelski theory of change, linked to learning. Under the Modelski theory the question is raised whether states, acting through the world organization, have shown a propensity to learn that international relations must be governed by a humane rule of law. Are states learning that they will be more secure, and their citizens better off, if there is either a permanent UN criminal court or a series of ad hoc criminal courts to deal with particular situations? To use semantics from Haas, have private groups used their knowledge to push states into agreement on the demonstrable truth that just as all national societies have institutionalized procedures for criminal cases, so international relations should too? Or are states just muddling through on this issue with incomplete agreement leading to the piling up of actions at the UN without any clear and firm overall position on authoritative and effective criminal courts?

Such learning—to the extent that it occurred—was clearly not universal. Some member states, especially those that contemplate use of their militaries in armed conflict, are reluctant to create a judicial organ to which they might, as a last step under the principle of complementarity, have to turn over their citizens to face the ICC—for example, for charges of violations of the laws of war. Neither George W. Bush, Barack Obama, nor the U.S. Congress has supported the ICC. The United States has not learned the advantages of having a permanent mechanism for international criminal prosecution, even though it originally proposed such a mechanism after World War II and has called upon the court to render judgments about Sudan and Libya; nor is it clear that knowledge compels movement in this direction.

Emotive or romantic nationalism may trump expert knowledge about the benefits of international criminal justice. So may tough-minded realism. In general, state learning pertaining to international criminal law showed differences and inconsistencies. States approved ad hoc criminal courts now and then, but at the end of 2012 only just over one hundred countries were parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Optimists were buoyed by the extent of state support, while pessimists pointed out that almost half of the UN members were not sure they wanted to be under the jurisdiction of a UN standing criminal court. State actors might feel the need to show a response to mass atrocities by creating ad hoc courts, but some of the same states might still eschew the costs of a decisive involvement that would curtail the atrocities and punish those responsible. States might agree in theory that individual punishment for atrocities is a good idea, but in particular situations they might like the freedom to negotiate and strike deals for impunity with war criminals. Peace and justice can be sought through both diplomacy and criminal proceedings. In places like Yugoslavia in 1995 and immediately thereafter, it was not clear that one could follow both avenues at once. If various political leaders had not been defeated and had retained power, and if one then had to include them in negotiations aimed at stopping the fighting and curtailing human rights violations, pursuing them as international criminals might not have been the wisest course of action.

This type of analysis pertained to criminal leaders like Slobodan Miloševíc in 1995 and Charles Taylor in Liberia in 2003, as well as Mohammed Farah Aideed in Somalia in 1993. In the Balkans, trying to prosecute Miloševíc in 1995–1996 was neither wise nor possible, but by 2002 he was on trial. After four years on trial, he may have cheated justice by dying before a judgment was made, but at least he died in a cell rather than enjoying a comfortable exile or exercising power in Serbia. Having wreaked havoc in West Africa, Charles Taylor agreed finally in August 2003 to go into exile in Nigeria, from where he was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was apprehended trying to flee Nigeria after the new Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, requested his extradition. To avoid further disorder by his followers in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, Taylor was tried and convicted in The Hague for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In writing the rules for the operation of international courts, humane progress through political choice and diplomacy needs to be allowed. Learning in these areas is an imprecise and complicated matter. Scientific evidence about the correct way to proceed is hard to come by. Many experts support different policies in different situations.

Equally complex is the question of whether criminal proceedings contribute to or impede national reconciliation after armed conflict. The theory behind criminal courts, national or international, is that license to commit atrocities has to end in order to clear the air, provide catharsis to the victims and their families, and deter future violations of rights. But one could certainly question whether criminal trials of Hutus in Rwanda while a Tutsi-dominated government controlled the country would achieve the desired objectives. And in many places, from South Africa to El Salvador, national and international officials concluded that the way to advance national reconciliation after brutal internal war was to avoid criminal proceedings as much as possible. A country might utilize truth commissions to establish facts, but only in a few places, such as South Korea, Ethiopia, and Germany, did trials proceed against former repressive rulers. Whether such national trials were, on balance, a good thing is difficult to determine. After dictatorship ended, Spain and Portugal moved toward stable liberal democracy by avoiding both trials and truth commissions. Acquiring human rights knowledge is a complicated affair about which reasonable persons can differ, and the UN's forays into international criminal justice have been carried out in the context of a lack of clear consensus and firm commitment about the legalization of the response to gross violations of human rights.

_Summary, with Reference to Democracy_

The relation between knowledge, learning, and UN human rights activity can be summarized by acknowledging the difficulty in achieving a broad consensus about human rights among private networks because the issue deals more with morality than with science. Without this NGO and expert agreement about human rights specifics, the consensus among governments on human rights and public policy will remain incomplete. The situation is one of varied learning and incomplete change. The UN acts more for human rights now than before, but it still falls short of being fully systematic and institutionalized as well as authoritative and effective.

For example, it is illustrative to examine the question of whether states are learning, on the basis of cumulative knowledge, a commitment to liberal democracy (meaning elected governments that are rights-protective). The UN certainly now advocates democratic development. Some evidence seems encouraging. Immanuel Kant suggested that over time liberal democracies would become more numerous. A wave of democratization from about the mid-1970s to the early 1990s seemed to verify that Kantian view from the eighteenth century. Francis Fukuyama argued in the early 1990s that right-thinking persons had to necessarily conclude that liberal democracy was the best way to respect individuals and limit governmental power. Thus, the development of the norms of liberal democracy represented the "end of history," at least in political theory, and a liberal democrat became the last "political man." If it holds, a historical trend toward liberal democracy would suggest a growing acceptance not only of civil and political rights but of economic and social ones as well. Almost all democracies, except the United States, endorse the latter as well as the former. Thus most liberal democracies are also social democracies that recognize a human right to basic health care and other socioeconomic public goods as provided by the state.

Within the empirical democratic trend, however, there are illiberal democracies that are genuinely supported by majority opinion but are not rights-protective. Serbia under Slobodan Miloševíc and Croatia under Franjo Tudjman were clear examples. The Arab Spring is bringing democracy to illiberal areas of the world with little evidence that liberal notions of human rights are also taking hold. No more than about one-third of UN member states have truly stable or consolidated liberal democracies. Moreover, earlier waves of democracy suffered setbacks, which could happen again. Many states with elected governments still have strong militaries not fully controlled by elected leaders. And the results of elections in some former Soviet republics, as in other parts of the world, might even suggest nostalgia for enlightened authoritarian government.

Over a rather long time, the advantages of liberal democratic government have received increased recognition. Respect for civil and political rights has grown, albeit in a zigzag rather than a linear progression. This learning had been enhanced, at least temporarily, by the various failures of authoritarian communism in Europe and authoritarian models among developing countries.

But in many countries ruled by newly democratic governments, major obstacles to the consolidation—meaning stabilization and maturation—of democracy remain. To state the obvious, elections do not a democracy make, and long-term commitments are necessary to consolidate fledgling states. Perhaps most important, economic growth was slow or nonexistent, and the benefits of the economic system were widely perceived as inequitable. New democratic governments, confronted with particularly daunting economic problems, continue to struggle to create the socioeconomic context that would sustain a new and fragile democracy. Particularly in Latin America, but elsewhere as well, democracy has been created but not necessarily consolidated. Indeed, as Thomas Carothers argues, "Of the nearly 100 countries considered as 'transitional' in recent years, only a relatively small number—probably fewer than 20—are clearly en route to becoming successful, well-functioning democracies or at least have made some democratic progress and still enjoy a positive dynamic of democratization." In a number of countries, something of a hybrid regime—combining democratic practices with enduring authoritarian institutions—has emerged and often appears quite stable. Were civil and political rights being learned systematically, or was democratic learning frequently followed by a relearning of the advantages of authoritarianism?

_A Web of Norms Resulting in Change?_

Most situations in which human rights are respected are produced by national conditions, with only secondary influence from international factors. This axiom contains considerable truth but can be overstated. The relaxation of the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe in the late 1980s was the key factor in unleashing local human rights forces. By 1996, more IGO, NGO, and state policies operated in support of international human rights than ever before. In some cases, as in Haiti in 1994, international factors were decisive—at least in the short run. The international normative context for human rights had definitely changed for the better.

A theory of transnational change and human rights is relevant to our discussion here. According to the often-cited book _The Power of Human Rights_ , a transnational advocacy network, made up of both private and public actors, can definitely bring about progressive change with regard to rights of personal integrity. A merger of international and national actors can, over time, institutionalize human rights norms pertaining to summary execution, torture, and mistreatment and other fundamental civil rights referred to collectively as rights of personal integrity. Hence in this view domestic private groups, acting in tandem with foreign actors of various sorts, can bring effective pressure for rights-protective change on repressive governments. In this theory, UN norms and UN actors play important roles, allowing for considerable variation in which actors in the transnational coalition exert the most influence on behalf of human rights: international NGOs, domestic private groups, officials of international organizations, officials of states. The sum total of the efforts of these various and shifting actors accounts for progressive change.

This rather hopeful theory of change for human rights pertains not only to personal integrity in repressive non-Western countries. Some research suggests that the same analytical perspective, originally developed to explain change regarding rights of personal integrity in repressive non-Western states, might also be helpful in understanding change on minority rights in emerging liberal democratic states in Eastern Europe. In this view, the Czech Republic has come to better protect the rights of the Roma, and Romania has come to better protect the rights of its ethnic Hungarian minority, because of a transnational advocacy process that has grown steadily. In these two cases, it may have been the Council of Europe and the European Union, more than the United Nations, that largely accounted for pulling these governments into practicing what they had promised on minority rights. But in other cases, as in El Salvador in the late 1980s and early 1990s, UN officials like the secretary-general play central roles.

This theory about the importance of human rights norms and discourse over time is linked to transnational pressure, which eventually traps states in their own stated commitments to human rights. If true, it can incorporate incidental knowledge about human rights and help explain change. At the world organization, disagreements about human rights protection abound. We are dealing with moral and political matters more than with scientific knowledge, and particularly states have "learned" a variety of things from past experience. Given the legal starting point of state sovereignty, the international community of states has come a long way in generating respect for the idea of human rights. If we compare international action on human rights at the League of Nations and at the United Nations, the latter changes seem revolutionary. But all three UNs—states, staff, and relevant nonstate actors—still have a long way to go before achieving the systematic observance of human rights as called for in the Charter "without distinction as to race or nationality, sex, language or religion."

**NOTES**

. Marina Ottaway and Thomas Carothers, eds., _Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion_ (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 2000).

. David P. Forsythe, ed., _Human Rights and Comparative Foreign Policy_ (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000).

. John Gerard Ruggie, _Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

. Edward C. Luck, _Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization, 1919–1999_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999).

. Tony Evans, _U.S. Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights_ (London: Macmillan, 1996).

. Thomas G. Weiss, "Moving Beyond North-South Theatre," _Third World Quarterly_ 30, no. 2 (2009): 271–284.

. Soo Yeon Kim and Bruce Russett, "New UN Voting Alignments," _International Organization_ 50, no. 4 (1996): 629–652.

. Quoted by William Korey, _NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "A Curious Grapevine"_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), 9.

. Peter R. Baehr, "The General Assembly: Negotiating the Convention on Torture," in _The United Nations in the World Political Economy_ , ed. David P. Forsythe (London: Macmillan, 1989), 36–53; and Steven Hopgood, _Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).

. Tina Rosenberg, "The Body Counter: Meet Patrick Ball, a Statistician Who's Spent His Life Lifting the Fog of War," _Foreign Policy_ (March/April 2012).

. David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Congress Reconsidered_ (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1988).

. Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., _The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

. Samantha Power, _"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide_ (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

. Ernst B. Haas, _When Knowledge Is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

. George Modelski, "Is World Politics Evolutionary Learning?" _International Organization_ 44 (Winter 1990): 1–24.

. Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams, _Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Aryeh Neier, _War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror, and the Struggle for Justice_ (New York: Times Books, 1998); and Sarah B. Sewall and Carl Kaysen, eds., _The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law_ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

. Martha Minow, _Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence_ (Boston: Beacon, 1998); Ruti G. Teitel, _Transitional Justice_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Priscilla Hayner, _Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity_ (London: Routledge, 2001).

. Rama Mani, _Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2002); and see Patrice C. McMahon and David P. Forsythe, "Judicial Romanticism Meets Network Politics," _Human Rights Quarterly_ 30, no. 2 (May 2008): 412–435.

. Francis Fukuyama, _The End of History and the Last Man_ (New York: Free Press, 1992).

. Amartya Sen, _Development as Freedom_ (New York: Knopf, 1999); and Cass R. Sunstein, _The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever_ (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

. Paul Collier, _Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2009); and Roland Paris, _At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

. Thomas Carothers, "The End of the Transition Paradigm," _Journal of Democracy_ 13, no. 1 (2002): 9.

. Terry Lynn Karl, "The Hybrid Regimes of Central America," _Journal of Democracy_ 6, no. 3 (1995): 73–86; David Collier and Steven Levitsky, "Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," _World Politics_ 49, no. 3 (1997): 434–435; and Larry Diamond, "Thinking About Hybrid Regimes," _Journal of Democracy_ 13, no. 2 (2002): 21–35.

. Jack Donnelly, "Human Rights in the New World Order: Implications for Europe," in _Human Rights in the New Europe_ , ed. David P. Forsythe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 7–35.

. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., _The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

. Safia Swimmelar, "The Making of Minority Rights and the Return to Europe: International Norms and Transnational Actors in the Czech Republic and Romania" (PhD diss., University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 2003).

. David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights in International Relations_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chapter 3.
**PART THREE**

SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

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CHAPTER 9

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_Theories of Development at the United Nations_

POVERTY PLAGUES A SUBSTANTIAL portion of humankind, and the international community of states has come to embrace poverty eradication as a priority for the United Nations in all of its aspects. Development, broadly defined, is central to alleviating poverty and is linked to security interests as well. Over a billion people are going hungry today, and half the population in the Global South is undernourished. Nearly three billion people struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, not to mention the nearly one billion who have less than $1. Dire as these statistics are, the situation is improving. The 2012 Millennium Development Goals Report indicates clear progress toward reducing poverty. "For the first time since poverty trends began to be monitored, the number of people living in extreme poverty and poverty rates fell in every developing region—including in sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are highest." Yet abject poverty persists, and the ongoing financial crisis in the West in particular, which began in 2008, exacerbates the situation.

**THE POLITICS OF CHANGING THEORIES**

"Development" has long dominated much of the discourse and practice throughout the UN system. The notion of development, however, means different things to different people and is contested on many levels. Development may mean economic growth defined in macroeconomic terms as increases in gross domestic product (GDP), import-export figures, and levels of industrialization. Development may include a human element, such as the ability of humans to meet their basic needs through their own initiative. Development may also mean sustainability, in that economic growth and the ability of humans to meet their basic needs should not deplete natural resources to the extent that those resources become unavailable for future generations. Since development has many contested conceptions, the international community is indeed challenged to successfully arrive at strategies for pursuing agreed-on notions of development. The UN role in promoting economic and social development has evolved to include forging compromises, setting agendas, creating norms, and building relative consensus among diverse constituencies. After all, none of these conceptions or definitions of development are mutually exclusive. A certain amount of prosperity is inherent to economic development in macroeconomic terms and necessary for individuals to achieve housing, food, health care, and a basic education. At the same time, healthy and educated individuals are necessary to achieve macroeconomic growth. Table 9.1 highlights UN development milestones from 1943 to 1980.

The complex, changing, and controversial definitions have been mirrored in UN approaches to development. UN organs and agencies also have different conceptions of development and, therefore, different approaches that are not necessarily shared by all other parts of the UN system. We begin by reviewing the historical evolution of the UN's development work in the context of changing theories of development. As Kenneth Dadzie suggests, the world organization has gone through roughly four phases in dealing with the issue of development. In essence, the UN has tried four theories or general approaches to development that reflect the evolution of economic thought since World War II. The transition from one phase to another represents an intellectual shift as to the causes of underdevelopment and the appropriate policies for combating poverty and allowing individuals to fulfill their full potential.

_Phase One: National State Capitalism (1945–1962)_

Development at the inception of the UN system focused on reconstruction and development after World War II. The concept of development, as it has come to be embraced in UN discourse and practice over the past seven decades, entered quickly through the back door in the form of national economic development, which was endorsed by the UN through state-centered economic liberalism. This position was informed by the economist John Maynard Keynes; in this view states would pursue a large, private, for-profit sector based on extensive property rights, while the government would manage the economy at the macro level. This approach recognized the dangers of unregulated capitalism, which gave rise to harsh living conditions everywhere under industrialized capitalism, not to mention the indignities during the Great Depression, and at the same time it recognized the benefits generated by markets and capitalism. It also realized that the immediate postwar world economy was in shambles and that a certain amount of multilateral management was needed to restore stability. This Keynesian synthesis sought to harness markets to the development interests of states while acknowledging the state's role in promoting economic growth and full employment, but with social protections. This synthesis reflected the initial dominance of Western capitalist states in the world organization and the weakness of communist states in voting and other UN arrangements. Most of the Global South still existed as colonies and were subject to the choices made by powerful governments in the West and especially their respective colonial capitals.

**TABLE 9.1** UN Development Milestones with a Strong Economic Flavor, 1943–1980

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1943 | United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)a

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1947 | Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE)a

1948 | Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA)a

1950 | Expanded Program of Technical Assistancea

1955 | Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung/Nonaligned Movementa

1956 | International Finance Corporationa

1958 | UN Special Funda

Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)a

1960 | First UN Development Decadea

Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

International Development Associationa

1964 | United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD I)a

Group of 77a

1965 | United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)a

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO)a

1973 | OPEC price increase

1974 | Sixth Special Session of UN General Assembly Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO)

World Population Conference

Food Conference

Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)a

1975 | Seventh Special Session of UN General Assembly

UN World Conference of the International Women's Year

UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)a

1975–1977 | Conference on International Economic Cooperation

1976 | UNCTAD IV

UN Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT)

UN Decade for Women

1979 | OPEC price increase

UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development

1980 | Independent Commission on International Development Issues (Brandt Commission) Report

UN World Conference of the Mid-Decade for Women

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a Denotes the establishment of the body or commencement of the activity.

Development was thus thought of primarily in national economic terms, and the emphasis was on lending through the World Bank and other types of foreign assistance, through either state bilateral policies or the UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA). The goal was to create national infrastructures that would provide the basis for economic growth led by the private, for-profit sector. Although the EPTA was symbolically important for establishing a role for the UN in the development area, its expenditures were nominal. Beginning with an initial operating fund of $20 million in 1951, the program grew only moderately over the next decade. The United States reduced its contribution from 60 percent downward over the years, and other rich countries failed to take up the slack.

At the UN the global economic situation, at least in the Western world, was seen as neutral or benign, although prone to periodic instability. If proper national decisions were taken, then national macroeconomic growth would eventually occur over time. The role of international organizations centered on international infrastructure, such as agreements on monetary exchange rates, communications, and the like. States were obligated by the UN Charter to cooperate internationally on development matters and to report to the United Nations. But the principal UN organs, including the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), were not seen as having a major operational role in advancing development. ECOSOC and the General Assembly were seen as legitimating and coordinating mechanisms. In part this approach reflected the wariness of the rich Western capitalist states in affording too great a role to UN organizations characterized by broad membership and majority voting.

From the very beginning of the UN, important donor governments preferred the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank (or simply the Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (or simply the Fund, or IMF) were created prior to the United Nations proper at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 by the members of the U.S.-led United Nations alliance. Hence, they are often referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions. These agencies, although officially or technically part of the UN system from 1945, by design make their decisions entirely independently from ECOSOC and the General Assembly, with proportional voting as determined by funding provided mostly by member states. The differences in resources give the reader an idea of donor preferences. While in recent years the rest of the UN system spent some $12 billion to $15 billion annually, the World Bank Group in 2012 managed a loan portfolio totaling nearly $200 billion and committed approximately $30 billion annually in loans, grants, equity investments, and guarantees to over eighty countries.

This arrangement has given the United States and other wealthy states not only control over decisions taken in the name of the Bank and the Fund but also significant influence in selecting the executive heads of these two agencies. The president of the Bank has always been American, and the managing director of the IMF has always been European—a practice that continued in 2012 with the election of Jim Yong Kim to the Bank's presidency and in 2011 of Christine Lagarde as the IMF's managing director. The extent of government ownership of economic enterprises and regulations of the economy has varied. For example, the United States is much less Keynesian than states in Europe; however, most developed countries believe in the core virtues of markets, entrepreneurship, and private property. This was and is true even in Scandinavian states that also believe in extensive economic regulation, with much emphasis on community objectives in addition to personal freedoms.

Among many decisions at the Bank, the major donor countries agreed in 1960 to create the International Development Association (IDA), the so-called soft-loan window for developing countries. In large part this was a response to an early 1950s initiative by developing countries, which had used their growing numbers to vote into being the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED) to augment technical assistance activities with long-term low-interest loans aimed at building infrastructure. The word "special" was added after officials recognized that without it the acronym was UNFED (which actually would have been more accurate, since Western donors never put resources into it). The move to create such a fund was opposed by major donors. Washington first objected on grounds that the American people could not support such a capital fund while underwriting a war in Korea. Besides, the United States had just pumped over $13 billion—approximately $130 billion in 2006 dollars—into sixteen European countries under the Marshall Plan. But even after 1953 and the end of the Korean War, the United States continued its opposition. In the last analysis, SUNFED was stillborn for lack of resources. Developing countries demonstrated that their increasing numbers at the UN could be translated into General Assembly and ECOSOC resolutions, but such initiatives amounted to little without financial resources.

The United States did not trust international agencies that it did not control or heavily influence. Washington and other major donor governments hesitated or refused to contribute significantly to development programs guided by majority voting in a one state, one vote system that had always been the UN's operating style because Charter Article 2 (1) speaks of the sovereign equality of members.

Almost from the beginning, the UN created regional development bodies to encourage economic growth and different approaches in the different geographical areas of the world: the economic commissions for Europe (ECE in 1947); for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE in 1947, which later became ESCAP for "Asia and the Pacific"); for Latin America (ECLA, created in 1948, which later became ECLAC to include the Caribbean); for Africa (ECA in 1958); and for Western Asia (ESCWA, in 1973). Some of these came to be quite important in the evolution of ideas and norms, as was true of ECLA in the Western Hemisphere. Some of these commissions never achieved their promise, and the one in Europe was eclipsed by other regional economic arrangements such as the European Community (EC), which evolved into the European Union. These regional commissions were created within ECOSOC, which had been mandated the responsibility of coordinating the social and economic work of the UN itself and the specialized agencies.

Coordination was vexing, however, as specialized agencies were set up as autonomous organizations, and many preceded the founding of the UN proper. The International Labour Organization (ILO), for example, had been carried over from the League of Nations. Others like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) were even older. But then a host of new agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as the Bretton Woods institutions, were also created as part of the postwar UN system. While de jure part of that system, the Bretton Woods institutions are de facto autonomous. Each of these and other agencies had its own chartering legal instrument, assessed dues system for funding, executive head, and normally a separate headquarters building.

States could join or withdraw from them independently of their membership in the United Nations itself. At one point the United States withdrew from both the ILO and UNESCO to protest certain policies and for ideological reasons in the case of UNESCO. Such withdrawal did not affect its membership in the UN or U.S. voting in the Security Council and General Assembly. Although ECOSOC was nominally to be the coordinator of all UN economic and social organizations, their legal and financial arrangements ensured their independence. Specialized agencies report to the General Assembly through ECOSOC, but the UN's six principal organs do not really control the specialized agencies. So from the beginning, the way the UN was set up ensured a shotgun approach to development. The primary idea (promoting national economic liberalism with minimal international involvement beyond basic infrastructure) was to be accomplished collectively through the work of a constellation of agencies.

Moreover, numerous UN specialized agencies indicated a "theory within a theory." Beyond the UN's central idea of encouraging states to make the "right" decisions to achieve economic growth, the theory of functionalism supposedly explained how to achieve international peace. Functionalism, as developed by David Mitrany, purported to lead to world peace not by a frontal assault on aggression and other "political" questions, but by sidestepping these issues and concentrating on the separate elements of development. A functional approach to development—concentrating on labor issues, children's issues, science, education, culture, agriculture, and so on—would not only advance economic and social development but also build strong operational networks so that states would learn cooperation in these functional areas. This functional cooperation would eventually spill over into other areas, even "political" ones, thereby allowing international agreement on aggression, self-defense, intervention, and the other subjects entailed in international peace and security.

So in this early UN approach to development, the Keynesian theory of economic growth, through state-regulated capitalism and international economic liberalism, gave guidance on economic and social matters. And the theory of functionalism explained how international state capitalism could contribute to peace. Actual attempts to apply the theory of functionalism, and its variant, neo-functionalism, to development, particularly in Europe, led to reconsideration of functionalism as a path to peace. First, development proved to be as political and contentious as any other issue. Building infrastructure through specialized agencies involved both governmental decisions and controversy. Second, "spill-back" as well as "spillover" could occur. The controversies over monetary policy and other technical issues led to such intergovernmental conflict that further advances of an economic nature could be halted or even set back for a time. Third, political issues beyond the immediate development process intruded on policymaking. In Western Europe, Cold War considerations spawned by power struggles between the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries affected decisions about building Europe. Policy decisions about what would become the European Union were not well explained by a functionalist theory that posited regional technical issues as dominant. Global great-power struggles proved as important, or more important, than functionalist theory applied regionally.

The early UN approach to poverty and economic development in many countries was to reiterate for the globe the standard recipe of economic liberalism understood as national state-capitalism informed by the Keynesian compromise. The need for some international institutions did not detract from the central propositions of capitalist theory, namely that the role of public agencies was mainly to provide the infrastructure for private entrepreneurship and manage the economy using regulation and macroeconomic policies.

_Phase Two: International Affirmative Action (1962–1981)_

By 1961, the United Nations had 104 member states, more than double the original 51 members. The increase in membership mostly was due to the decolonization process, which took place, at least in part, under the auspices of the Trusteeship Council, one of the UN's six principal organs. One consequence of decolonization was that the new majority of UN members, most of whom were confronted with an unequal global economic playing field, preferred more transnational public regulation of private economic activity. This regulation was intended to benefit the poorer countries by redressing global imbalances and leveling that playing field. Even the World Bank, which did not completely share the new orientation to development of the General Assembly and ECOSOC, began to rethink the causes of underdevelopment and poverty. The automatic nature of development through traditional capitalist recipes and national economic liberalism was questioned.

The turning point was the beginning of the preparations for the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Beginning in the mid-1960s, UN development activity focused on persistent income inequalities between the rich North and the poor South, between developed and developing countries, between industrialized and Third World countries. The 1960s were also designated the first UN Development Decade. The origins of this reorientation lay primarily in the thinking of Raúl Prebisch and his colleagues in ECLA, who argued that the international capitalist system was stacked against poorer countries. Their economic worldview, which is often mistakenly perceived to have been based in Marxist critiques of capitalism, focused on the structural dependence created and reinforced by the unequal playing field between grossly unequal participants in the capitalist world system. Thus, whereas the Bretton Woods agencies were based on the view that economics and economic development could be largely separated from politics, the postcolonial states saw their economic condition as the product of the colonial policies of the past and the power politics of the present, which created an uneven economic playing field. The charters of the Bank and Fund say they are to be nonpolitical, but the new developing countries saw them as inherently political. On the basis of their experience mainly in the Western Hemisphere, Prebisch and his colleagues saw the countries of the "periphery" trapped in relationships of dependency with regard to the "center"—namely, the wealthy developed countries at the center of world trade and finance. Since, for example, the price of finished goods exported by the rich continued to rise, while the price of most raw materials exported by the poor fluctuated greatly and tended to decline over time, the global terms of trade were inimical to the interests of most countries in the Global South. Those societies caught in conditions of dependency could not accumulate capital and grow without external infusions of capital from the North. This view supposedly explained the growing gap between the rich and poor countries.

Housewives cut and sew traditional farmers' cotton shirts to be sold in local markets and the women's cooperative shop in Mung Mo, Thailand. (UN Photo 150947/C. Redenius)

In the view of critics, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) governed an inherently discriminatory trading system that helped make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The GATT was geared toward liberalizing trade in manufactured goods (exports from the core) but did little to liberalize trade in primary products and agricultural products (exports from the periphery). Developing states were placed at a structural disadvantage, as their exports were discriminated against while at the same time they were forced to abide by liberal trade rules for manufactured goods. This led to deteriorating terms of trade, poverty, and debt—in a word, dependency.

The many variants of "dependency theory" proved attractive, not only to Latin Americans but especially to the growing number of newly independent and former colonial territories that attributed underdevelopment to the legacy of colonialism and the structure of the capitalist system. In 1964, the General Assembly created UNCTAD as a permanent voice of the Third World within the UN system. With Prebisch as its first secretary-general, it advocated a restructuring of global economic relations to the advantage of the poorer countries. The views UNCTAD championed were largely synonymous with the views of the Group of 77 (the major UN caucus of developing countries, which over time has grown to some 130 members but maintains its original label because of its historic significance).

During a series of conferences in the mid-1970s, the G77 formulated its agenda for restructuring the global political economy. The main thrust came during the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly in late spring 1974, at which the Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) was adopted, but with significant reservations by many Western countries and the United States in particular. The demands of the declaration were wide-ranging but can be classified into four broad themes: economic sovereignty, trade, aid, and participation. These issues were raised time and again in various ways and in various settings during the remainder of the decade. The North-South battle lines quickly became unambiguously drawn. A number of "global ad hoc conferences" focusing on specific issues, such as population and food, and the more broad-based Conference on International Economic Cooperation, which met in December 1975 and June 1977 under the auspices of the French government, provided additional forums for expanding at the global level what some called "dialogue" between North and South but would more accurately be labeled "invective." Neither side seemed willing to listen, and neither could hear what the other was trying to say.

The General Assembly majority presented a demand for a New International Economic Order intended to modify the fabric of economic relations between the Global North and South. The NIEO was supposed to be made up of a series of treaties that would greatly regulate transnational economics and redistribute power and wealth. Specific measures on trade, investment, transnational corporations, and official development assistance were informed by the notion that wealth and resources should be authoritatively redistributed rather than allowing the "invisible hand" of the market to determine that distribution. Markets were seen by most governments in the Global South as inherently biased toward and too easily manipulated by the wealthy and the powerful.

The short-lived fate of the NIEO was sealed by changes in the political and economic environment. The majority of states at the UN might call special sessions of the General Assembly and have the votes to create revolutionary new schemes on paper to alter the distribution of economic power. But even with the newly found (and temporary) power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the South was unable to persuade the North of the wisdom of such economic restructuring. In the wake of the 1973 war in the Middle East between Israel and principally Egypt, OPEC was able to implement for a time an oil embargo (to several countries) and a more general slowdown in oil deliveries (to the rest of the oil-importing countries). But in the last analysis OPEC was not able to force the United States and other Western countries to alter their support for Israel, and OPEC was not able to maintain its unity. More generally, OPEC was unable for long to use oil as a weapon in the larger struggle to compel rich countries to radically transform international economics so as to close the gap between the developed and developing countries. On balance, OPEC's actions had an impact more profound in the South, which depended heavily on petroleum to fuel its agricultural and industrial development, than the North. The major international oil companies took advantage of the situation to greatly enhance their wealth, and the United States and the rest of the West maintained the power to resist demands for an NIEO and adapted their economies to the increased price of oil.

The UN had increased technical assistance to the poorer countries through the new UN Development Programme, created in 1965. The UNDP reflected a merger of the earlier EPTA and the stillborn SUNFED. Still, the UNDP and other agencies refused to yield their independence. The so-called Jackson report of 1969, named after its primary drafter, Sir Robert Jackson, called for more centralization of development efforts in the UN system but fell mostly on deaf ears. Funding for the new UNDP was an important factor for improved development in many countries, but its resources remained decidedly meager. With roughly $5 billion, its focus is on technical assistance and pre-investment studies, because donor countries preferred the World Bank and the IMF as the main vehicles for multilateral development finance.

In a significant change, recognizing the importance of sustainable development, the UN increased its activities on behalf of the environment, as indicated in Table 9.2. In 1972 the UN sponsored a global ad hoc United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm out of which was born UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme. This was largely a new initiative from certain developed countries, mostly European and led by Sweden, concerned that the pursuit of economic growth was causing fundamental harm to the environment. This "green movement" was not always welcomed by poorer countries. Many saw a focus on the environment as interfering with their development. As such, the environmental movement was often viewed in the Global South as a form of neocolonialism, because industrialized countries had grown rich without much consideration to environmental destruction, whereas developing countries were supposed to face a different cost structure in pursuing growth while protecting the environment. Thus, some developing countries did not see environmental protection as an inherent part of development but rather as an impediment to a development defined in strictly economic terms. Leaders of the G77, especially China and India, did not lead on development-related issues, unless by "leadership" one means leading the opposition. These states saw environmental damage as being caused primarily by the capitalist development of just seven countries (G7), and now these same countries were trying to pass the cost of their development on to the South. In other words, the G7 caused most of the damage and, therefore, should pay for environmental protection. These and other developing countries could be brought on board only for certain green treaties, such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol on protection of the ozone, with the carrots of compensatory financing for making costly changes.

**TABLE 9.2** UN Development Milestones with a Strong Ecological Flavor, 1948–1982

* * *

1948 | International Union for the Conservation of Nature and National Resources (IUCN)a

---|---

1964 | International Biological Programa

1968 | Intergovernmental Conference on Biospherea

1970 | Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE)/International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)a

1972 | UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) Environmental Forum

Limits to Growth published by the Club of Rome

UN Environment Programme (UNEP)a

1973 | Convention for the Prevention of Pollution by Ships (MARPOL)

1974–1981 | UN Conference on the Law of the Sea

1976 | UN Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT)

1979 | World Climate Conference Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution

1980 | Committee of International Development Institutions on the Environment (CIDIE)a

World Conservation Strategy (IUCN/UNEP)

Convention on Conservation of the Arctic Living Resources

1982 | Convention on the Law of the Seas

* * *

a Denotes the establishment of the body or commencement of the activity.

Meanwhile, the IMF and the World Bank were stymied by the lack of rapid economic progress according to prevailing doctrines in many parts of the Global South. The Bank continued to emphasize export-led development, meaning precisely the emphasis on participation in the world economy that Prebisch and UNCTAD thought so detrimental to the developing countries under the rules of the game established by GATT. So the Bank, in particular, was not on the same page as UNCTAD and the UN's other major development organizations. A number of Asian states, dubbed at the time the "East Asian Tigers," began to make rapid economic gains through, among other policies, emphasis on investment and trade. Singapore, for example, in a period of about twenty years, surpassed Britain, its former colonial master, in per capita income. But these tigers, such as South Korea, also continued various forms of "statism," similar to how agriculture was treated in the rich countries, by protecting key national industries from full global competition. States like Japan had already proved successful at export-led economic growth through an industrial policy that amounted to state subsidies for, and other benefits to, selected national industries. There was extensive trade, but it was not free trade in the sense of pure economic competition. Clearly East Asia was not Latin America. A certain type of authoritarian development worked well in places like China, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan—at least in the short and intermediate term. In the latter two cases, authoritarian development gradually became more democratic.

The East Asian Tigers notwithstanding, the Bank and the Fund continued to press for policy changes in developing countries in light of the low rates of economic growth in Africa and some other parts of the Global South. Increasingly the World Bank was concerned about how noneconomic factors like corruption and cronyism could affect rates of economic growth. According to its charter, as noted, the Bank was a nonpolitical organization, but it came to adopt the policy that it should take into account factors that might not be strictly economic but that did affect economic growth.

Especially after Robert McNamara, former U.S. secretary of defense and head of the Ford Motor Company, became its president in 1967, the Bank began to target poverty within developing countries. McNamara was committed to dramatically increasing the resources available for fighting poverty. Between 1969 and 1973, the Bank provided twice as much assistance as in the previous five years. The Bank's poorest members were given special consideration, and the Bank began to make loans with a view to changing things at the grassroots. Under McNamara's leadership, development became more than just economic growth. Agriculture, population planning, water supply, pollution control, nutrition, and other problems took center stage on the agenda. By June 1972, lending for agriculture became the single leading sector of the Bank's lending. In his thirteen-year tenure as president, McNamara increased World Bank Group lending twelvefold, from $1 billion to $12 billion.

The World Bank still undertook projects designed to promote macroeconomic growth. Some of these projects, such as funding for large hydroelectric dams, proved enormously controversial, given the displacement of people and destruction of the environment that often occurred. But increasingly the Bank focused on pockets of poverty rather than macroeconomic growth pure and simple. The Bank pursued its own version of international affirmative action, but not by focusing on terms of trade and other issues championed by UNCTAD. The Bank made loans at very low interest rates to the poorest of the poor. It made loans and even grants to, for example, poor families in South Asia so that their children could attend schools rather than work as child laborers. Thus, much of the UN system along with the World Bank rethought the prevailing wisdom about economic development—even if they did not necessarily adopt precisely the same revisions. The UN's emphasis was on the overall international economic structure, while the Bank focused more on domestic policies. The Bank's changing views were often seen as progressive, because of the broader focus on social if not political factors, but it was still criticized for a top-down approach and for not consulting enough with the persons affected by its policies.

A slum in São Paulo, Brazil, illustrates the shortage of adequate housing as rural settlements are being abandoned by people moving to the cities. (UN Photo 155212/C. Edinger)

_Phase Three: Return to Neoliberalism (1981–1989)_

Economic thinking evolved with the elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States. They were adherents of the writings of Frederich von Hayek, an Austrian economist who stressed individual freedom and relatively unregulated markets as the path to economic prosperity. An intellectual rival to Keynes, Hayek stressed government regulation and management of the economy as causes of economic stagnation and high inflation. The Keynesian compromise that dominated much of the post–World War II era was replaced with a return to a relatively more laissez-faire, free-market capitalist approach first articulated by Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. Given the power of London and Washington in the world and in the UN system, they also led the charge for a return to classical economic thinking within the world organization. For example, during the 1980s, the United States insisted that the IMF and the World Bank implement structural adjustment programs, conditioning loans on the willingness of developing states to prune back public spending and other public involvement in economic matters. Structural adjustment became code for implementing market reforms and economic liberalization in developing countries seeking multilateral development assistance.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War showed that socialism as practiced by the Soviet Union and its allies was bankrupt. The United States and other Western governments had mostly resisted but on occasion been obliged to accommodate Third World economic demands during the Cold War, but after its end there was no viable alternative to Western views on global capitalism—and no political reason for the West to compromise. Thus, a new packaging of an old vision took place, what World Bank economist John Williamson called the "Washington consensus." The IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. government—hence, the "Washington consensus," although it also could have been called the "Brussels consensus" since many Europeans were on board even if consensus was absent in much of the Global South—stressed that the private sector and unregulated markets, not government, would pave the way to more satisfactory development. The new orthodoxy in international economics represented a return to minimal regulation and maximum private entrepreneurship. This time around, the IMF, the World Bank, and the development agencies of the UN system, at least for a while, were mostly in agreement.

The Global South was in a weakened position both economically and politically. Not only had they already demonstrated the inability to force acceptance of the idea of a NIEO, but suddenly the Soviet Union disintegrated as an ideological partner. The G77 fragmented as an effective political force. So the return of neoliberal economics was complete. After a long silence and toward the end of the period, some UN organizations began to criticize the impact of economic liberalization—the most notable being UNICEF's concern with the impact on children and ECA's with the devastating impact on Africa.

To review and summarize, over the first three UN Development Decades—the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—development thus had taken on various meanings as the global political context shifted. In the early years, development was defined largely in terms of national economic growth as measured in aggregate and per capita income. It also meant seeking national self-reliance for Third World countries. Slowly the added, and somewhat different, value of satisfying people's basic needs while protecting the environment came into mainstream thinking in the 1970s. This definition gradually yielded ground to the incorporation of popular participation and local self-reliance in the satisfaction of basic needs. In this way, development discourse has come to embrace simultaneously three widely shared global values: peace, human security (including human rights), and sustainable human development. And the importance of the private sector became, once again in the 1980s, an essential component of development thinking.

_Phase Four: Sustainable Development (1989–Present)_

The need to simultaneously foster economic development and ensure the availability of resources for future generations, or "sustainable development," was framed by a commission headed by then Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who later headed WHO. The dialectical interchange between those stressing the role of markets and free trade versus those emphasizing public regulation and assistance for both social and economic reasons has yet to yield a new synthesis. These tensions have continued but abated somewhat, as the UN shifted its attention to the idea of sustainable development. In 1994 Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali presented the General Assembly _An Agenda for Development._ Declaring development to be a fundamental human right, he presented a framework within which he highlighted the interdependence of peace, economy, civil society, democracy, social justice, and environment as an indispensable component of the development process. In this regard, he pointed to the special position, role, and responsibility of the United Nations in promoting development in all its aspects but with specific regard to setting priorities and facilitating cooperation and coordination.

The election of George H. W. Bush and then Bill Clinton had much to do with the evolving state of affairs. Both were less ideological, in terms of devotion to free-market orthodoxy, than the Reagan administration had been. The demise of communism and the increase in pragmatism by the Global South also contributed. Still, the tension between regulation, at either the state or the international level, and market-oriented approaches plagued international efforts to promote sustainable development. The same debate occurred within countries. For example, strategies for protecting the environment while achieving economic development could involve market-based solutions. Markets use resources more efficiently and generate the kind of wealth and technologies that in theory could allow societies to concentrate more on environmental protection. From the neoliberal perspective, markets are the solution to environmental problems. From a Keynesian perspective, both government regulations and markets should be brought to bear on environmental problems. From a more engaged "pro-green" environmentalist perspective, unregulated capitalism is the cause of environmental degradation, and the economy must be properly regulated to protect against environmental damage. These competing worldviews about the causes and the solutions to international problems complicate international negotiations and make compromise difficult.

Nevertheless, the intensive series of international conferences in the 1990s led to a reasonably coherent framework of development goals, objectives, and policies for sectors. That framework formed the foundation for the Millennium Declaration and was couched in the language of shared fundamental values: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, shared responsibility. For those who read it even casually, Secretary-General Annan's Millennium Report was reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech. The UN's foundations in liberal capitalist ideology appear not only to be still firmly in place but greatly strengthened by the absence of any potential significant challengers. Like Roosevelt's New Deal, the new international agreement contained elements of social democracy. All of this was entirely consistent with the International Bill of Rights, which includes the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two core covenants, one on civil and political rights and the other on economic, social, and cultural rights, which cumulatively add up to social democracy. Nevertheless, the concept of social democracy was held in bad odor in certain circles of opinion, especially by the right wing of various political systems.

The UN and its associated agencies also began to pay more attention to the role of women and gender in development. Building on the work of feminist economists, UN agencies such as UNCTAD, UNDP, UNICEF, and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as well as the World Bank and the IMF began to research how men and women are positioned differently in the world economy and in poverty. Under particular scrutiny were the structural adjustment programs on women in countries experiencing economic crises. Through an examination of how the policies of governments and multilateral institutions affect the everyday lives of women, strategies could be developed to avoid the ill effects or unintended consequences. The World Bank and the IMF have modified their policies such that structural adjustment loans can now be used, in part, for the alleviation of poverty and not just for market reforms. Furthermore, the World Bank now considers gender equality as fundamental to economic development. While the inclusion of women and gender issues on the development agenda has obvious benefits, it also complicates multilateral diplomacy in that the respective conceptions regarding the status of women and women's rights are markedly different among countries, with many Middle East and Asian countries having views that clash with the accepted views in much of the rest of the world. The UN's focus, and since 2010 the focus of UN Women in particular, is on women's economic empowerment and fostering strategies for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are, in large part, focused on gender equality and improving the health and education of women.

In 2002 at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico, both the North and South agreed that governments of developing countries had an obligation to reform themselves to promote transparency and the rule of law and to end corruption (in addition to market liberalization reforms), while those in developed countries had an obligation to provide meaningful assistance for that improved process of development. The numerical measure of "meaningful" meant the governments of the Global North would commit 0.7 percent of their GDP to overseas development assistance (ODA). Termed the "Monterrey consensus," this approach attempted to reconcile the need for political and structural/market reforms and the need to authoritatively redistribute some wealth of the rich North to the impoverished South.

UNICEF gives the Zarghuna Girls School educational supplies, provides teachers' training, and assists in repairing the infrastructure. (UN/DPI Photo/E. Debebe)

The George W. Bush administration followed with an announcement of a new Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) of foreign assistance to the poorest countries. Recipient countries would have to meet certain criteria dealing with both economic effectiveness and good governance. The MCA would not be a multilateral arrangement but be administered by an independent corporation—the Millennium Challenge Corporation—of the United States. Congressional appropriations for the MCA, however, have consistently fallen short by about half of the administration's budgetary requests. Given the restrictive nature of funding criteria, very few of the world's poorest countries are able to qualify for assistance. Moreover, as illustrated with regard to the February 2006 $11 million Threshold Program to Tanzania to fight corruption, it is not always clear that the MCA guidelines are being implemented according to established criteria. By 2008, with budget deficits and pressing problems both at home and abroad, many observers thought the future of the MCA looked anything but rosy, given that foreign assistance had for a long time not been very popular in Washington. Nevertheless, President Obama continued to devote significant resources to the MCA, requesting nearly $1.5 billion in 2012 and nearly $900 million in 2013.

The Bush administration also initiated the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, which committed $15 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS. Nearly all of the funds were tied to bilateral aid programs in fifteen countries, and of the $1 billion available for multilateral assistance, a substantial portion was restricted to abstinence education. It was estimated that PEPFAR provided antiretroviral therapy to over 1.9 million people, and the program was renewed by Congress in 2008 and increased to $48 billion over the following two years. The Obama administration shifted some resources from PEPFAR to the multilateral Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

The tension between those who favor laissez-faire capitalism and those who see public regulation as a public good accounts for the discontinuities in contemporary approaches to development through multilateral institutions and the lack of coordination between the World Trade Organization and IMF on the one hand and agencies representing ecological and human rights concerns on the other. In 1995 GATT was transformed into the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose rules endorse free trade and minimal social regulation, whether that regulation is to protect the environment, human rights, or any other concern. So single-minded was the WTO's focus on strictly economic matters that U.S. national legislation to protect endangered sea turtles from certain fishing nets was struck down by a WTO dispute settlement panel as an inappropriate restraint on free trade.

Given the numbers of persons—in industrialized as well as developing countries—left behind by the forces of globalization, the unalloyed advantages of freer markets and technology-led specialization were less than obvious. This particular tide did not lift all boats. Globalization signaled new wealth and freedom for some, but to others the process seemed uninvited and cruel. It brought a cornucopia of benefits to many in developed countries, but its wake brought inequality unprecedented in human history. Given such rules, decisions, and emphases within the WTO, its policies received broad and intense negative reactions. The "battle of Seattle" was a highly visible reminder of this reaction, as violent street demonstrations and civil disobedience accompanied the WTO meeting in that city in late 1999. Other kinds of civil disobedience have come to be a feature of WTO and Group of 8 (G8) meetings. The WTO, an important multilateral agency, has approached development in an exceedingly narrow way, as if trade or development are only purely economic processes in which human rights and ecology and culture did not matter. For example, it has said nothing about labor rights.

The creation of the WTO certainly did not mean that UNEP went out of business, any more than the emphasis on free trade meant that the ILO went out of business. But the continuing Washington consensus clearly left unresolved the relationship between trade and other strictly economic processes, on the one hand, and matters like ecology and labor rights that had increasingly been considered part of a broader and legitimate conception of development, on the other hand. To date, no formal link has been established between the WTO, the ILO, and other human rights agencies with the UNEP and other environmental agencies. It is as if at the WTO thinking had reverted to the 1940s and the view that development was an economic and nonpolitical matter.

Nevertheless, at the World Bank, protecting the environment was increasingly seen as a legitimate part of its approach to investing in development. The Bank joined with UNEP and UNDP to create a new UN organ, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through which Bank funding was combined with UNEP and UNDP programming. Thus, the Bank's operations were much more intertwined with parts of the UN system, even if key decision making remained fragmented. Although underfunded, the GEF represented a clear recognition of the relationship between development and the environment. Moreover, in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, states voted into being a new UN coordinating organ, the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), which clearly incorporated ecological concerns and sustainability. The CSD was weak in legal authority, and hence weak in practical coordination, but even its name had symbolic importance. Over time, however, its specific accomplishments have been difficult to establish.

Market emphases notwithstanding, the new broadly shared conception of sustainable human development became the central component in the UNDP's _Human Development Reports._ Started in 1990 by a prominent Pakistani economist, Mahbubul Haq, and then carried on by Richard Jolly of the United Kingdom and others, the annual reports analyzed international cooperation for development in a broad, multifaceted way. The annual report sometimes stressed human rights, sometimes women, sometimes ecology. It ranked countries not just by GDP per capita but by a more complex formula attempting to measure quality of life. Wealth and prosperity loomed large, of course, but so did education and medical care. Various indices sought to measure discrimination against women not only legally and politically but also in terms of basic health and education. In its approach to development, the UNDP dovetailed with the Overseas Development Council (ODC), a private group based in the United States that had pioneered in creating the Physical Quality of Life Index, which sought to measure the quality of all countries according to wealth, medical care, and education. More recently, the UNDP and other organizations, including the World Bank, are making increasing use of the Gini coefficient to measure income inequality with countries. This statistical measure gauges the distribution of wealth within societies and says more about equitable human development of a society than GDP.

The Human Development Report and the ODC Physical Quality of Life Index both treated development in the broad fashion intended by the UN's approach to development in the fourth phase. The controversial nature of the _Human Development Report_ stemmed from several factors. First, a United Nations agency "rated" countries according to debated criteria; states on the bottom disliked the publicity, while states not quite at the top, including the United States, grumbled. Second, many governments resented the fact that poorer neighbors got higher ratings because they were better at making decisions about priorities, having devoted more of their limited resources to education and health instead of spending them on weapons. Third, sometimes the methodology the UNDP used to establish its comparative ratings was, in fact, open to serious criticism, as in the 2000 volume stressing human rights. Accurate statistics are difficult to come by in many countries; moreover, given the subjectivity involved in choosing measures of human development, debates raged about what to include in the Human Development Index as well as how the variables were weighted.

In 2000, member states at the Millennium Summit endorsed human security—the elimination of poverty and the promotion of sustainable development—as the world organization's highest priority. In doing so, member states recognized the link between the UN's work in economic and social domains and its mandate for international peace and security, which emphasizes the promotion of social and economic development and the protection of human rights as indirect approaches to peace. Economic equity, the pursuit of economic growth, and the satisfaction of basic human needs could do more than just improve the material quality of life. They could reduce the likelihood of violent conflict. The causes of violence between and within states could be decreased by reducing gross social and economic inequalities and deprivations. In the oft-cited _An Agenda for Peace_ , Boutros Boutros-Ghali highlighted this link and identified economic despair, social injustice, and political oppression among the "deepest causes of conflict." The conventional wisdom within the UN has more or less come to embrace the proposition that "the concept of security must change—from an exclusive stress on national security to a much greater stress on people's security, from security through armaments to security through human development, from territorial security to food, employment, and environmental security."

Creating the foundation for sustainable human security entails empowering individuals, groups, and communities to become engaged constructively and effectively in satisfying their own needs, values, and interests, thereby providing them with a genuine sense of control over their futures. This was given an additional boost with a report from an eminent group of persons headed by former UN high commissioner for refugees Sadako Ogata and Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen, which focuses on "shielding people from acute threats and empowering them to take charge of their own lives." Sen was certainly interested in traditional notions of development, but along with that focus he was also interested in various "unfreedoms," like lack of education and health care.

The 2000 summit's final document reiterated the Millennium Development Goals (discussed in detail in Chapter 11), which formed the foundation for the United Nations Millennium Declaration. MDGs are eight main development goals and eighteen related targets that guide development policies and assess progress toward poverty reduction and sustainable human development. As such, the MDG process represents a larger strategic vision for mobilizing the international community for action. At the 2005 World Summit, heads of state and governments met in New York to review progress toward achieving the MDGs and to endeavor to agree on reforms to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of the world organization. Their expiration in 2015 will also lead to further discussion of "what's next?"

The diplomats negotiating the final summit outcome agreement in August 2005 were initially stunned when the U.S. permanent representative to the UN, John Bolton, suddenly proposed removing all references to the goals by name and substituting only broad support for development objectives in general. There was a predictable uproar among other UN member states. Within days, Bolton had reversed course and allowed specific references to the MDGs—given their worldwide profile and acceptance—to go back into the final agreement, albeit with language that permitted Washington to maintain a distinction between what states had agreed on in 2000 and the specifics attached afterward by the UN Secretariat. To cap the partial change of heart, credited to the intercession of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary Nicholas Burns, President Bush's address to the summit on September 14, 2005, included this unexpectedly categorical statement: "We are committed to the Millennium Development Goals." Beyond restoring the goals by name, the United States also backed away from other proposed deletions on subjects such as the Kyoto agreement on climate change, which was only slightly fuzzed in the final document to indicate there was not universal agreement. We will see, however, that state fidelity to the MDGs is anything but certain.

The links among poverty, underdevelopment, and violent conflict are hard to ignore, even if the causal link is empirically hard to prove. The poverty and human rights abuses in Afghanistan undoubtedly allowed Al Qaeda to flourish there. This terrorist organization and its leader, Osama bin Laden, also found refuge in Sudan, and Al Qaeda and its offshoots have found havens in places like Yemen and Somalia. Islamic extremism and virulent nationalism have some roots in economic deprivation and the problems of persistent poverty, even if some leaders are wealthy, as bin Laden was in 2001. Leaders from the upper classes often mobilize followers who are frustrated by poverty and unemployment. According to Thomas Friedman, it is often the "stand around guys" from the unemployed ranks who turn out to be suicide bombers and other terrorists. As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen stated, "Even though definitive empirical work on the causal linkages between political turmoil and economic deprivations may be rare, the basic presumption that the two phenomena have firm causal links is widespread. . . . Of course, avoidance of war and eradication of destitution are both important ends, and it is quite plausible that each feeds the other." Discourse and practice among developed and developing countries in the UN continue to reflect the importance of this development-conflict nexus. The lack of development under the Karzai government in Afghanistan, for example, was one of the major factors that allowed the radical Taliban to make a comeback there. When citizens are disenchanted with poverty and corruption, they sometimes may become willing to look favorably on even extremist alternatives.

With UNDP and ILO support, the Rural Artisan Training Centre in Dakar, Senegal, instructs rural artisans, such as this potter. (UN/DPI Photo/Y. Nagara)

With this overview of changing development thinking in mind, we now turn to the UN and international cooperation for development at more specific and operational levels. We look at the record of UN organizations in advancing development and assess the value they add. We also examine the role of the UN in the creation or advancement of norms and the extent to which development efforts respect a right of participation by the stakeholders in the process. We also explore how the UN has pursued sustainable development in the real world of national interests, humanitarian crises, and environmental degradation.

**NOTES**

. _The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012_ (New York: United Nations, 2012), 4, <http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf>.

. Development is a contested notion because it implies progress and other advances that some critics see as dubious, but we do not continue using scare quotes around the term although we are aware of the problems associated with its use.

. Mahfuzur Rahman, _World Economic Issues at the United Nations: Half a Century of Debate_ (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2002); Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss, _Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); and Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Dharam Ghai, and Frédéric Lapeyre, _UN Contributions to Development Theory and Practice_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004). These books are part of a multivolume series from the United Nations Intellectual History Project, which maps economic and social ideas; see <http://www.unhistory.org>.

. Kenneth Dadzie, "The UN and the Problem of Economic Development," in _United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations_ , ed. Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 297–326.

. Olav Stokke, _International Development Assistance: The UN Contribution_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

. Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis, and Richard Webb, _The World Bank: Its First Half Century_ , 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997). The previous history was written by Edward S. Mason and Robert E. Asher, _The World Bank Since Bretton Woods: The Origins, Policies, Operations, and Impact of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Other Members of the World Bank Group_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1973). For the IMF, see, for example, Margaret G. de Vries, _The International Monetary Fund, 1945–1965: The Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1969), _The International Monetary Fund, 1966–1971: The System Under Stress_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1976), and _The International Monetary Fund, 1972–1978: Cooperation on Trial_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1985); and James Boughton, _Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979–1989_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2001). See also Norman K. Humphreys, ed., _Historical Dictionary of the IMF_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2000); Ngaire Woods, _The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and Their Borrowers_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006); Ariel Buira, ed., _Reforming the Governance of the IMF and World Bank_ (London: Anthem, 2005); and Nancy Birdsall and John Williamson, _Delivering on Debt Relief: From IMF Gold to a New Aid Architecture_ (Washington, D.C.: Institute of International Economics, 2002).

. James Raymond Vreeland, _The International Monetary Fund: Politics of Conditional Lending_ (London: Routledge, 2007); and Katherine Marshall, _The World Bank: From Reconstruction to Development to Equity_ (London: Routledge, 2008).

. Yves Berthelot, ed., _Unity and Diversity in Development Ideas: Perspectives from the UN Regional Commissions_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

. Roger A. Coate, _Unilateralism, Ideology, and U.S. Foreign Policy: The United States in and out of UNESCO_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988); and J. P. Singh, _UNESCO_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. See Erskine Childers with Brian Urquhart, _Renewing the United Nations System_ (Uppsala, Sweden: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 1994).

. David Mitrany, _A Working Peace System_ (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966), and _The Progress of International Government_ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933). Later, a "neofunctionalist" school formed around such ideas linked to European integration, including Ernst B. Haas, _Beyond the Nation State_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964).

. Robert O. Keohane and Stanley Hoffmann, eds., _The New European Community: Decisionmaking and Institutional Change_ (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).

. Ian Taylor, _UN Conference on Trade and Development_ (London: Routledge, 2007); John Toye and Richard Toye, _The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance, and Development_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); and Thomas G. Weiss, _Multilateral Development Diplomacy in UNCTAD, 1964–84_ (London: Macmillan, 1986).

. André Gunder Frank, _Development and Underdevelopment in Latin America_ (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, _Dependency and Development in Latin America_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

. See www.g77.org.

. Michael G. Schechter, ed., _United Nations–Sponsored World Conferences: Focus on Impact and Follow-Up_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2001); and Michael G. Schechter, _United Nations Global Conferences_ (London: Routledge, 2005).

. Robert S. Jordan, "Why an NIEO? The View from the Third World," in _The Emerging International Economic Order: Dynamic Processes, Constraints and Opportunities_ , ed. Harold K. Jacobson and Dusam Aidjanski (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982), 59–80.

. Thomas G. Weiss and Robert S. Jordan, _The World Food Conference and Global Problem Solving_ (New York: Praeger, 1976).

. Stephen Browne, _The United Nations Development Programme and System_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. _A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System_ (Geneva: UN, 1969), document DP/5.

. Elizabeth R. DeSombre, _Global Environmental Institutions_ (London: Routledge, 2006).

. Hugo Dobson, _The Group of 7/8_ (New York: Routledge, 2006).

. Richard Benedick, _Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet_ , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

. John Williamson, ed., _Latin America Adjustment: How Much Has Happened?_ (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990); and John Williamson, "The Washington Consensus Revisited," in _Economic and Social Development in the 21st Century_ , ed. Louis Emmerij (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 48–61.

. Giovanni A. Cornia, Richard Jolly, and Frances Stewart, eds., _Adjustment with a Human Face: Country Case Studies_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

. World Commission on Environment and Development, _Our Common Future_ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987).

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, _An Agenda for Development, 1995: With Related UN Documents_ (New York: United Nations, 1995).

. Kofi A. Annan, _We the Peoples: The United Nations in the 21st Century_ (New York: United Nations, 2000).

. Devaki Jain, _Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); Lourdes Benería, _Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All People Mattered_ (New York: Routledge, 2003); Hilkka Pietila, _Engendering the Global Agenda: The Story of Women and the United Nations_ (New York: UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 2002); Suzanne Bergeron, _Fragments of Development: Nation, Gender, and the Space of Modernity_ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); and Jael Silliman and Ynestra King, _Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment and Development_ (Cambridge, Mass.: South End, 1999).

. Center for Global Development, "Foreign Aid to Tanzania to Fight Corruption: MCC Threshold Program Approved," _Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog_ , February 2, 2006, <http://blogs.cgdev.org/mca-monitor/2006/02/foreign-aid-to-tanzania-to-fig.php>.

. Bernard M. Hoekman and Petros C. Mavroidis, _The World Trade Organization: Law, Economics, and Politics_ (London: Routledge, 2007).

. Anthony Giddens, _Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives_ (New York: Routledge, 2000); David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, _Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture_ (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); Joseph E. Stiglitz, _Globalization and Its Discontents_ (New York: Norton, 2002); and James H. Mittelman, _Globalization: Critical Reflections_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), _The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and Resistance_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), and _Whither Globalization? The Vortex of Knowledge and Ideology_ (London: Routledge, 2004).

. Craig Murphy, _The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way?_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Khadija Haq and Richard Ponzio, eds., _Pioneering the Human Development Revolution: An Intellectual Biography of Mahbubul Haq_ (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008).

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, _An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-Keeping_ (New York: United Nations, 1992), para. 15.

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 5.

. Commission on Human Security, _Human Security Now_ (New York: Commission on Human Security, 2003), iv.

. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, "Millennium Development Goals: Why They Matter," _Global Governance_ 10, no. 4 (2004): 395–402, and _Millennium Development Goals: For a People-Centered Development Agenda?_ (London: Routledge, 2013).

. David Hulme and Rorden Wilkinson, eds., _Beyond the Millennium Development Goals: Global Development Goals Post-2015_ (London: Routledge, 2012).

. "Statement of H. E. George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, 2005 World Summit, High Level Plenary Meeting, September 14, 2005," www.un.org/webcast/summit2005/statements/usa050914.pdf.

. Thomas G. Weiss and Barbara Crossette, "United Nations: Post-Summit Outlook," in _Great Decisions 2006_ , ed. Karen M. Rohan (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 2006), 9–20.

. Steve Coll, _Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001_ (New York: Penguin, 2004).

. Amartya Sen, "Global Inequality and Persistent Conflicts," paper presented at the Nobel Awards Conference 2002, reprinted in Commission on Human Security, _Human Security Now_ , 132.
* * *

CHAPTER 10

* * *

_Sustainable Development as Process_

UN Organizations and Norms

THE WORK OF the United Nations in the development arena was born decentralized and today is essentially the same. However, development began largely as an implicit and secondary goal but has become one of the world organization's primary activities. Over the decades, scores of development-related agencies, funds, programs, commissions, and committees have continued to spring up, thereby creating an ever more complex institutional web (see Appendix A). "Unpacking" the complex structure of UN development reveals three main clusters of somewhat autonomous activity. The first cluster centers on the United Nations proper: the relevant principal organs, regional commissions, and central parts that are not specialized agencies (especially UNDP, UNICEF, and UNCTAD) but operate more or less in tandem with the specialized agencies and are as important to the development efforts of the system as a whole. The second cluster focuses on the specialized agencies themselves, especially the IMF and the World Bank, which often go their own way although de jure are parts of the UN system. The third is trade-related and centers on the activities of the WTO. With the issue of development we once again encounter the two United Nations—one of states and one of international civil servants—as these organizations are composed of their governing bodies and their secretariats. These organizations are also complemented by a third United Nations, comprising NGOs and experts.

Beyond the specific contributions by individual organizations, the UN system's collective contribution to development in the longer term is more notable for nurturing agreement on ideas and principles about sustainable human development than for its operational impact. Ideas are a powerful explanation for human progress, and the UN's contribution is not an exception. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote that "the United Nations is the mechanism in place and is best prepared to facilitate the work of achieving a new development rationale."

**UNDERSTANDING THE ORGANIZATIONAL CHART: COORDINATION, AGAIN**

Some observers use the term "UN family" instead of "system"; the former has the advantage of associating the adjective "dysfunctional" to describe the kinds of routine battles and quarrels that occur between and among agencies themselves and between agencies and the member states that compose them. Few would dispute that the so-called system is "punching below its weight." The UN—even for seasoned observers—is a bewildering alphabet soup of semi-autonomous programs, funds, committees, commissions, and agencies, and this reality is most striking in the development arena. A 2012 survey like the ones before it demonstrated that respondents worldwide favored fewer moving parts and acronyms, but the reader for the moment is obliged to come to grips with this complex reality.

At the core of this system is the General Assembly, whose agenda grows longer from year to year. Its influence, however, may be the inverse. Most development issues are dealt with in the assembly's Second Committee (Economic and Financial), which is made up of representatives of all member states (in UN parlance, "a committee of the whole"). The General Assembly, for example, voted in 1983 to create what came to be called the Brundtland Commission, which was an important milestone in changing ideas about development by fusing the seemingly clashing perspectives about economic growth versus environmental protection. Some of the assembly's most important work in the development field has taken place in special sessions or in global, ad hoc conferences convened to consider specific issues or topics, such as women, population, development financing, and HIV/AIDS. Normally the assembly deals with substantive ideas, or the big picture, rather than the details of management, administration, and coordination.

The assembly elects fifty-four of its member states to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which under Article 55 of the Charter is the principal organ mandated with the responsibility for promoting development and coordinating UN activities. The General Assembly, ECOSOC, and other UN governing bodies are composed of states but rely on the UN's administrative branch—the Secretariat—for staffing and support. ECOSOC is made up of five regional and ten functional commissions that cover the gambit of development issues and concerns. It officially coordinates the work of fourteen specialized agencies and eleven UN funds and programs and is serviced by the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). DESA provides substantive support to ECOSOC and UN member states in a variety of areas by collecting data, formulating development policies, and monitoring the implementation of the international agreements. DESA has been on the frontlines in assessing the impact of the global financial crisis on development, poverty reduction, and climate change.

A female work crew builds a road in Lesotho, 1969. (UN/DPI Photo by K. Muldoon)

The alphabet soup thickens when considering the numerous UN development-related bodies for which ECOSOC oversees coordination. These UN bodies include several abbreviations that we have encountered throughout this book: UNDP, UNICEF, UNCTAD, UNFPA, UNHCR, OHCHR, UNEP, and WFP. These UN bodies are also only part of the much larger UN system for which ECOSOC is responsible for facilitating cooperation and coordination. The mandates and work programs of these various agencies overlap, which has made the job of coordination daunting. In an interdependent world, analysts and decision makers see how difficult it is to separate functional specialization. But the UN system reflects that functional specialization and the powerlessness of ECOSOC.

The UN continuously encounters the challenges of coordination. In reality, ECOSOC is something of a mailbox between the General Assembly and the rest of the socioeconomic agencies involved in development. As such, ECOSOC—meaning the states that have representatives there—has developed supplemental coordinating arrangements.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali had focused attention on the role of the United Nations in promoting development in his 1994 _An Agenda for Development._ Yet the world organization was found inadequate for the task. In January 1997, when Kofi Annan assumed the post of secretary-general, he was the first person to hold the office who had spent virtually his entire professional career, nearly three decades, working his way up through the ranks and being exposed to the best and the worst of the world organization. He committed himself and the UN to a reform process. This subject was also important for the United States, which as the largest donor to both the regular and the voluntary UN budgets had long been pressing for administrative and structural reform.

At the heart of Annan's reform program was the reorientation and reorganization of the UN's administration and management. More change has actually taken place than is customarily appreciated, although the remaining organizational chart and decentralization undoubtedly would drive a management consultant to reconsider his or her profession. In his effort to bring unity of purpose to the diverse activities of the UN and provide clear lines of responsibility, in 1997 Annan created—for the first time in the UN's half century—a cabinet structure. This Senior Management Group (SMG) is made up of the various undersecretaries-general, the heads of UN funds and programs, and the deputy secretary-general, a post created in 1998 to oversee the reform process and coordinate development activities. Similarly, four thematic executive committees (Peace and Security, Humanitarian Affairs, Economic and Social Affairs, and UN Development Group) were created and charged with overseeing the coordination of policy development, management, and decision making. The conveners of each of these committees sit on the SMG.

Two of these executive committees are of particular importance for development. The Economic and Social Affairs Executive Committee (EC-ESA) is convened by the undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs and comprises representatives from eighteen UN bodies. Like all the other executive committees, the EC-ESA serves as a consultative body for facilitating decision making, policy development and coordination, and better management.

The United Nations Development Group Executive Committee is convened by the administrator of UNDP and includes the UNFPA, UNICEF, and WFP. This body serves as the secretariat for the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), which also was created in 1997 to provide better coordination among the numerous UN funds, programs, and other bodies that have proliferated over the years in the development area. The UNDG consists of twenty-eight member agencies plus five observers. In addition to its own operational activities, the UNDP administers several special-purpose funds and programs, including the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). And in cooperation with the World Bank and UNEP, the UNDP serves as an implementing agency for Global Environment Facility (GEF), which provides concessional funding and grants for certain environmentally sound development projects.

UN development activities have benefited from enhanced coordination via the Office of the Secretary-General and UNDP. Given that states vote to create all sorts of UN development institutions, it falls to these two parts of the UN system to bring as much order as possible to a multifaceted process that has no real carrots or sticks to coerce cooperation. States get the kind of UN for which they vote and otherwise support financially. Unfortunately, all too often, member states vote for or against a particular UN organization or one of its activities as a diplomatic concession to some domestic group or as part of a compromise with other states. The public display of affection or disgruntlement may or may not have a concrete follow-on in the form of necessary diplomatic and financial backing. As such, the UN record for success in promoting sustainable development is mixed at best.

**PARTICULAR CONTRIBUTIONS TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT**

Many UN agencies and bodies working for sustainable development were given unrealistic mandates, and many overlap with other parts of the UN system. Member states voted to create them but provided them with neither the necessary resources nor sufficient political will to make them effective. Nevertheless, these agencies and bodies play important roles by pushing states to live up to their obligations or develop new ones. They participate in joint efforts that have discernible impacts in setting and advancing development goals. They also bring a modicum of order to what we have already called a shotgun approach to development.

_UNDP_

The UNDP's annual sponsorship of the _Human Development Report_ is an important avocation, but its main purpose is development work in the field. In 2012 it had offices in almost 150 countries. Its most senior official in developing countries, the UNDP resident representative, also acts as the resident coordinator for the UN system. As the primary unit devoted to capacity building for social and economic development, the program was created in 1965 to take the lead in providing technical assistance. In this regard, it works with other UN units in a wide variety of thematic contexts. It works in the security realm to support elections, demobilization and reconciliation initiatives, and human rights. In the humanitarian field, the agency provides support for disaster prevention, mitigation, and preparedness; the reintegration into society of refugees, former combatants, and internally displaced persons; and the implementation of postdisaster national plans for reintegration, reconstruction, and recovery.

The UNDP has prioritized its program activities around four interrelated themes: advocacy, advice, pilot projects, and partnerships. Priority action areas in 2012 included democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, empowering women, growing national capacity, protecting the environment, and HIV/AIDS. Mark Malloch Brown was UNDP administrator until 2005 and argued that the program's annual _Human Development Report_ gives the agency a "special voice and pulpit and authority to develop alternative ideas," a view also favored by his immediate successor, Kemal Derviç and by the current head, Helen Clark. The advisory function focuses on building capacity in a variety of areas, including legal, political, and regulatory frameworks as well as infrastructure for basic social and economic development. Given the agency's limited budget, it concentrates on doing things that can serve as catalysts for mainstreaming particular policy agendas as opposed to taking on expensive, large-scale projects. Technical assistance and pre-investment studies have been in its portfolio since it began operations in 1966.

The UNDP's partnership function is wide-ranging, focusing on integrating diverse elements of society and the private sector into development. The agency sees promoting sustainable development as requiring new forms of cooperation and involving complex interventions from a wide variety of actors: governments at all levels, NGOs, private business enterprises, and local community groups. The focus is on empowering people and creating the conditions necessary for "people-centered" development. The guiding philosophy is that "people should guide both the state and the market, which need to work in tandem, with people sufficiently empowered to exert a more effective influence over both." In brief, the UNDP's underlying theme is getting the product to the poor and empowering them with the capacity for good governance. Priority is placed on democratization and empowerment through participation. This means, among other things, that the UNDP has "mainstreamed" human rights considerations into its development work.

Of course, empowerment, like most development activities, requires resources, especially financial resources and a commitment from the central government. In this regard, the UNDP, working with the UNCDF, has undertaken an initiative to provide what is called microfinance: providing financial services to the poor at the local level. Its Special Unit for Microfinance is devoted to supporting the creation of start-up microfinancial institutions in rural areas in the poorest countries. In the context of the shrinking financial resources for multilateral development assistance over the past two decades, the UNDP clearly adds value to the overall development process. It is both a coordinator of UN development-related activities and a development agency in its own right. Even though the UNDP's core operating budget and the size of its headquarters staff have been cut, it remains at the forefront of promoting sustainable human development through its fieldwork and by building cooperative relationships. Reflecting on his first years in office, Malloch Brown opined: "When I took office the agenda was clear: Reform of UNDP. . . . The message was close to reform or die." By the time he left the agency to become chief of staff for the secretary-general and then the deputy secretary-general, the UNDP was at the forefront of the MDG process. But as Malloch Brown has acknowledged, "in the final analysis, we cannot judge our reform by its impact on UNDP alone, but rather on how we help strengthen the critical role of the United Nations system as a whole in all aspects of development cooperation." The UN has fostered international cooperation by creating and building consensus around the idea that development means human development. What was once a counter-discourse to the Bretton Woods notion of development defined as increases in GDP is now a mainstream concept with widespread global agreement. If the UNDP is supposed to assist in the creation of successful market democracies, then democracy and human rights are as important as efficient markets.

_UNCTAD_

This institution began in 1964 as a debating forum and think tank for developing countries (G-77) and their advocates who sought a counterforum to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. For most of its existence, it largely served that function. The conference itself meets in formal session every four years, but its Trade and Development Board (TDB) meets annually, and the secretariat in Geneva operates continuously. UNCTAD served as the focal point for formulating and articulating NIEO ideas. However, the end of the Cold War brought with it hard times. After the creation of the WTO, UNCTAD adopted a more conciliatory tone by seeking finally to end impediments to trade in agricultural products. UNCTAD remains an important forum in that it continues to articulate the unintended consequences of trade liberalization on development in the Global South. It highlights alternative theories that may be more suitable for impoverished states as they pursue development in a globalized world. UNCTAD is also instrumental in exposing how certain trade rules are biased against developing states especially as it relates to the agricultural subsidies in the Global North.

In important ways, UNCTAD contrasts with the Bretton Woods institutions and often highlights the hypocritical nature of global economic relations in multilateral institutions. Under "the Washington consensus," conditions were harsh for least developed countries needing help from the Bank and the IMF. But when countries like Greece or even the United States got into similar trouble, there was more sympathy for the harshness of austerity and cutting governmental programs. There was more attention to the need for growth as well as need for reduction of public spending. There has been a clear double standard: harsh conditionality for the weak, non-Western nations and more attempts to ease the pain when Western nations need bailouts.

On a more positive note, UNCTAD was also conceived as part of former secretary-general Kofi Annan's initiative of forging innovative partnerships with other international organizations, local governments, NGOs, the private sector, and civil society. UNCTAD's role has taken a wide variety of forms and complexions. In 1999, for example, UNCTAD, along with UNDP and HABITAT (the UN Center for Human Settlements), initiated a global partnership—World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty (WACAP)—with civil society, the private sector, and local governments to carry out the goals of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen. This alliance quickly became formalized and has grown substantially. It seeks to strengthen networks among cities around the world. During the Third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries in Brussels in 2001, for instance, WACAP organized a parallel Mayors Meeting, bringing together representatives from 216 cities around the world. The primary purpose of this conference was action. A "city-to-city solidarity market" was held in which requests of assistance were matched with offers. On the spot, twelve formal agreements of cooperation were concluded between cities in Belgium and cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The requests of 120 other cities from developing regions were tendered and are currently either under consideration or being related to cities throughout the world through the numerous global, regional, national, and city networks that also participated at the meeting.

At a conference in São Paulo in 2004, UNCTAD member states agreed to better integrate the work of civil society, the private sector, and academia into its work. The theme of the 2008 session of UNCTAD XII was globalization and the challenges it poses to trade and development. This builds on its partnership role with civil society, which seeks to capture the benefits of globalization through the "new regionalism" that emerged as a result of the WTO's failure to successfully negotiate further trade liberalization at the global level. UNCTAD sees opportunities for regional trading arrangements to negotiate better rules and terms of trade for poor and impoverished countries. In 2012 a serious threat to end the organization's life was on the table at UNCTAD XIII, but eventually that option was set aside, and governments decided to permit it to focus on development-centered globalization and position itself to play a central role in monitoring the causes and the effects of the ongoing financial crisis.

_UNICEF_

The UN Children's Fund is actually better known by its acronym, and its work ranges from child and maternal health care and basic education to water and sanitation. UNICEF has special initiatives dealing with HIV/AIDS, participation and rights of adolescent girls, tobacco-free youth, adolescent health and development, and hygiene and nutrition. It also initiates specific appeals to meet challenging crises. UNICEF undertook an appeal to deal with a series of overlapping and overwhelming crises in six southern African countries in 2003. Extreme poverty, a severe drought, HIV/AIDS, and an educational crisis put more than 2.4 million children under the age of five and their more than 10 million family members in imminent risk of dying.

The reference to "family members" means that UNICEF focuses as much on women and mothers as on children. Underdevelopment is gendered in that females bear the brunt of poverty, according to UN and other statistics. They are often denied adequate education and health care and are victims of various forms of discrimination. The exclusion of women from key decision-making positions and their lower political and social status have meant that women in underdeveloped countries constitute a "new global underclass." As such, UNICEF also focuses on girls' education in the context of the "education of every child," especially girls, because education is the path to empowerment.

UNICEF led preparations for the 2002 UN General Assembly Special Session on Children, where member states adopted the declaration and plan of action, "A World Fit for Children." It was intended to commit governments to a specific set of goals for youth and an associated timetable for achieving them. In May 2003, UNICEF issued its first report card on attaining those commitments. In the report, _The United Nations Special Session on Children: A First Anniversary Report on Follow-Up_ , the authors noted that "the world's attention and resources have been diverted to crises and war while pressing yet hidden challenges facing humankind—fighting HIV/AIDS, child illness and malnutrition, illiteracy and child abuse—have been sidelined." In 2003, when much of the world was focused on "regime change" in Iraq, UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy voiced this criticism: "The children of Iraq are important, but there are 2.1 billion children in this world, half of them living in abject poverty, 150 million who are malnourished, 120 million who never go to school, and 11 million who die from totally preventable causes every year. These are the things that governments must focus on with consistency and rigor."

In the domain of child welfare, once again states are often quick to approve worthy goals and reiterate them, but they do not always follow through. As Bellamy said, "The global follow-up to last year's commitments has gone forward." Yet UNICEF reported that "most countries have barely begun to implement the targets, with only half of the world's governments even taking the first step of developing an action plan." More promising is UNICEF's partnership work. In September 2007, the International Health Partnership was formed with six European states, UNICEF, the World Bank, and several other UN agencies to improve the delivery of health care to the neediest countries in Africa and Asia in order to help them meet the MDGs. This partnership promises to streamline the delivery of several complementary initiatives and encourage the efficient use of resources.

More than most UN organizations reviewed here, UNICEF is involved across the range of UN activities. Although it began as a temporary emergency relief organization in Europe after World War II, after it became a permanent part of the UN in 1951, that task was also supplemented by a development portfolio, which in many years accounts for about two-thirds of the annual budget. It also now sees itself as a human rights agency, seeking to "mainstream" human rights considerations into its operations, tying itself increasingly to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The assumption is that using the discourse on children's rights will garner more support, and hence effectiveness, for its operations.

UNICEF also educates the first UN (member states) and the third UN (NGOs and other civil society actors) about the humanitarian action needed on behalf of children. In 2011, UNICEF focused on concrete steps and strategies for building resilience among communities as they face catastrophic emergencies such as earthquakes and violent conflict. Teaching children and the community the skills to pick up the pieces and move forward with their lives is a necessary first step in rebuilding and healing society.

_Commission on Sustainable Development_

Growing out of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the CSD was given dual responsibilities for overseeing the implementation of the provisions of Agenda 21, the policy blueprint for the environment, and coordinating the sustainable development activities of the various organizations within the UN system. Agreement did not readily follow, however, on many important details about how this new commission was to be empowered to fulfill its mandate effectively. Although CSD was assigned the role of being the primary mechanism within the UN system for coordinating sustainable development, its relationship to UNEP, the World Bank, and other intergovernmental entities was vaguely defined.

The CSD also has a mandate to strengthen and integrate the role of major societal groups and civic actors as effective participants in sustainable-development decision making at all levels. The text of Agenda 21 specifically addressed the roles of ten major groups: NGOs, indigenous peoples, local governments, workers, businesses, scientific communities, farmers, women, children, and youth. Exactly how this mandate for mainstreaming was to be institutionalized in practice, however, was left undefined. Only 18 NGOs were represented at the first CSD meeting, although ECOSOC had authorized the CSD to consider including all 1,400 NGOs represented at the Earth Summit. As recognized in both Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration, fulfilling this mandate effectively is the fundamental cornerstone for successfully implementing sustainable development programs and practices. The mandate poses a challenge for the CSD as well as for the UN system and multilateral organizations more generally. Establishing an effective relationship between the sovereignty-based world of states and intergovernmental organizations with global civil society within which that interstate order exists was an elusive quest during the first sixty years of the UN's existence.

Yet the CSD has served as a focal point for reviewing and assessing progress toward fulfilling Agenda 21 goals and objectives. In May 2003, the CSD decided to organize its multiyear program of work around two-year "implementation cycles," beginning with 2004–2005 and running to 2016–2017. Each work cycle is to focus on a specific cluster of topics and crosscutting issues. For 2004–2005, for example, the thematic cluster included water, sanitation, and human settlements with a dozen crosscutting issues: poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development, sustainable development in a globalizing world, health and sustainable development, sustainable development of small island developing states (SIDS), sustainable development of Africa, other regional initiatives, means of implementation, institutional framework for sustainable development, gender equality, and education. The second two-year cycle focused on energy, industrial development, air pollution, and climate change, with the same crosscutting issues. Each two-year implementation cycle includes a Review Year, during which time progress toward implementing sustainable development goals will be assessed, and a Policy Year, in which decisions will be made about how to speed up implementation and mobilize additional support.

The efficacy of the CSD remains an open question. The fifteenth session of the CSD in May 2007 proved contentious, as delegates were unable to reach an agreement for implementing commitments, including target dates for increased energy efficiency and reduced air pollution. This session ended with no final outcome agreement; the compromise document was ultimately rejected by the European Union. To complicate matters, CSD members elected Zimbabwe—a development, human rights, and environmental disaster—to chair the commission for 2008. Viewed in a pessimistic light, Zimbabwe's election illustrates the hollow and hypocritical nature of the CSD. But, as the _Economist_ rather cheekily noted, this odd choice might not necessarily be a bad thing. After all, "few things are more dull than a worthy cause run by a do-gooding country. It is a fair bet that if, say, Sweden or Canada were chairing the commission no one outside the aid industry would hear a squeak about its doings over the next year. Zimbabwe's stewardship, by contrast, will attract much scrutiny."

The CSD survived Zimbabwe as chair and planned for the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20 or Earth Summit 2012. While the conference was organized by DESA, which coordinated with the other relevant UN agencies, the CSD was focused on green technology and building the necessary framework for institutionalizing sustainable development. Looming large over the conference was the continuing impact of the global financial crisis and the worldwide quest for any kind of economic growth to stave off recession. The financial crisis and the recession have been major setbacks for making sustainability a priority for states when they face rising unemployment, economic recession, and austerity.

_UNEP_

The UN Environment Programme was created in 1973 to serve as the UN's main mechanism for "policy review and coordination" on environmental issues, including those associated with development. Its Governing Council consists of fifty-eight members elected by the General Assembly, and it meets biennially and reports to the General Assembly through ECOSOC. Its main mandate is to encourage and coordinate environmental activities within the UN system. The work of the program is carried out through a modest secretariat headed by an executive director. The agency is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and is financed through the UN regular budget.

UNEP, like the CSD, was assigned the function of forging interagency cooperation throughout the UN system to promote environmental protection. Since environmental concerns cut across virtually every conceivable area of human economic activity, this was indeed a broad mandate. The problem is that neither UNEP nor the CSD was given primary responsibility to take on operational functions that might interfere with the work of other organizations.

At the same time, both UNEP and the CSD were superimposed on existing interorganizational systems. When UNEP was created, a number of UN agencies—including UNESCO, FAO, WHO, and WMO—were already engaged in environmental work. In addition, several UNESCO-related scientific programs—including the International Oceanographic Commission, the International Hydrological Program, and the intergovernmental Man and the Biosphere project—either were functioning or were in the early stages of development. The CSD was dropped into an even more complex and somewhat chaotic multi-organizational system. Although it possessed the potential to serve as a complement to the coordination work of UNEP, the history of international organizations would seem to suggest that the CSD was just as likely to act as a fierce competitor.

UNEP's most important role is generating international norms and setting standards to protect the human environment rather than concrete projects to help improve air quality or protect forests or enforce norms on the books. The agency has played an instrumental role in the negotiation and adoption of a number of major international environmental conventions, including the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention on Biodiversity. More recently, UNEP consultations in Nairobi cautioned that biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol, were not a panacea for climate change and oil scarcity and could actually exacerbate food insecurity while not significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions or energy costs. Although UNEP does administer certain environmental projects, it is not primarily a project-executing agency in the sense of most other UN specialized agencies. Also, UNEP is not a source of financing, unlike UNDP, the World Bank group, and other multilateral funding agencies. It does disperse modest funds through its Environment Fund, but the waters surrounding its somewhat confused mandate have been muddied further with the creation of the CSD and still more overlapping functions.

Effective project implementation requires coordination at the operational level in the field. Although UNEP itself does not execute country programs, it cooperates with numerous other organizations in overseeing the implementation of projects that are supported by the UNEP Environment Fund. Many of these projects are executed by cooperating agencies (that is, UN system agencies and bodies), primarily FAO, UNESCO, WHO, WMO, and UNCHS (UN Center for Human Settlements, or HABITAT). Other resources from this fund support project implementation by other intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, research institutions, and other civic-based bodies (referred to in UNEP as "supporting organizations"). When projects also include UNDP sources, the resident coordinator in the country serves as the primary point person for orchestrating the UN system's environmental activities in the field. Still, according to the UN Panel on System-Wide Coherence, UNEP relations with other UN agencies, especially UNDP, remain chaotic, which further complicates efforts to improve UNEP's country-level integration without duplicating UNDP fieldwork.

This overlapping jurisdiction on coordination adds a significant degree of complexity and ambiguity to UNEP's functions. The trend toward greater decentralization, regionalism, and involvement of civic-based entities in global governance complicates the already problematic task of making the UN function coherently, for the environment as for other substantive areas. In addition to dwindling funds, a number of major donor governments, including the United States, prefer to bypass UNEP regarding financial matters. In such a position, UNEP remains a technical agency concentrating largely on environmental monitoring and assessment. The importance of this role is seen with UNEP's coordination of scientific information on ozone depletion, effectively becoming an expert lobby backing up diplomatic efforts to produce broad and binding agreement.

So what can UNEP reasonably be expected to accomplish? The short answer is very little, certainly in comparison with the sweeping challenges of its mandate. The task of coordinating the environmental activities of the diverse array of institutional actors and arrangements is a conundrum. Many UN bodies are legally and practically autonomous; many of them were active in environmental work before the formation of UNEP and have access to far more significant technical and financial resources. Once again, the UN appears as the logical choice for coordination, but UNEP has neither the authority nor the organizational wherewithal to coordinate the globe's network of institutions. An important role that UNEP fills in the development area is to remind us that over the years the concepts of development and environment became fused in the global development debate into "eco-development," which provides important insight on UN agencies' approaches to sustainable human development. Moreover, as a kind of global "lobbyist," its role has been substantial in helping to move states toward acceptance of important treaties, such as the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention for the protection of the ozone. Yet UNEP has been largely a non-factor in contemporary debates and developments in regard to the environment.

_Other UN Agencies and Their Roles in Eco-Development_

UNESCO began in the 1960s with a wide variety of other environmental concerns that cut across its main areas of competence: science, education, culture, and communications. Of course, these areas are key to development, however defined. In 1965, a ten-year program, the International Hydrological Decade, was launched to promote the study of hydrological resources, including water pollution. This early environmental focus was strengthened with the hosting of the Biosphere Conference, the 1970 Helsinki Interdisciplinary Symposium on Man's Role in Changing His Environment, and the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. UNESCO has been responsible for creating a number of affiliated bodies, such as the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC). This particular body has been important in promoting international marine scientific research with special emphasis on pollution prevention. Since the late 1980s, the UNESCO secretariat in Paris has emphasized coordination of the environmentally related activities and programs within its various divisions. It has been actively involved in follow-up activities to the 1992 UNCED and the implementation of a variety of related agreements. In recent years, UNESCO's main contributions to the UN system's environmental work have focused on environmental education and its environment-related scientific programs.

In addition to UNESCO, most other organizations within the system have operational mandates linked to eco-development. The environmental relationships of some of these bodies are more obvious and more direct than others. Most, if not all, of the work of the World Meteorological Organization, for instance, focuses on eco-development. Its broad, heavily scientific mandate includes atmospheric pollution, meteorological aspects of water pollution, climate change, the effects of pollution on climate change and vegetation, and the relationship between climate, weather, and agricultural practices. Along with the IOC and ICSU, the WMO cosponsors the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). This joint initiative examines the dynamic aspects of the earth's climate system and stands as a counterpart to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which studies biological and chemical aspects of global change.

The work of the World Health Organization, at its Geneva headquarters and in the field, focuses broadly on the relationship between human beings and their environments with regard to their health ramifications. This institution is concerned with controlling environmental pollution in all forms as well as all other environmental factors that affect health. The agency undertakes pollution surveys and initiates programs for improving methods for measuring pollution and for designing programs for pollution abatement and control. Just as UNICEF has taken more of a human rights approach to its concern for children around the world, so WHO has been trying to get states to view adequate health and health care as a human right. WHO has undertaken a major effort to reduce the use of tobacco in its various forms and has come close to facilitating in many countries a ban similar to those in effect in Europe and many U.S. states. Here again we see part of the UN system collecting and disseminating scientific information, and then trying to advance ideas based on that knowledge—in this case to improve health.

WHO has led the international community frontline response to emerging deadly diseases such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), a rare but deadly respiratory disease. SARS was a powerful reminder of how globalization has enabled disease to spread easily. SARS was the first new major communicable disease to emerge in the twenty-first century, with the first case identified in February 2003 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The disease is suspected to have originated in China, except it was identified as an atypical respiratory disease. WHO was quick to act and in mid-March 2003 issued a global alert about mysterious cases of a severe atypical pneumonia with unknown etiology. Two days later, Canadian health authorities reported two deaths from a similar phenomenon. The following day, WHO elevated its alert, as cases were being reported in Singapore and elsewhere. Within weeks the situation worsened in Hong Kong, and mainland China and WHO took the unprecedented step of issuing travel advisories for Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangdong Province, Shanxi Province, and Toronto (the site of a North American outbreak).

The global response to SARS illustrates how effective international cooperation can be in response to a crisis and how important international organizations and their leadership can be. In this case, WHO, under the leadership of Gro Harlem Brundtland, did not hesitate to confront both a great power (China) and a traditional organizational supporter (Canada). The level of cooperation was unprecedented. The potentially rapid spread of the lethal disease (lethal in an estimated 8–10 percent of cases) was successfully checked.

WHO is leading the world's response to the continuing threat of avian influenza, A/(H5N1), which, if it mutates so that it can be passed from human to human, threatens to be a worldwide pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people, because about half of those infected to date have died. The 2007 outbreak of the disease was largely contained, with two-thirds of all human cases in one country, Indonesia. WHO was instrumental in tracking and isolating the deadly virus and educating governments. Similarly, WHO has taken the lead in addressing the H1N1 flu, declaring a pandemic in June 2009. While the initial outbreak proved to be relatively mild to those infected, WHO and governments are coordinating national and international responses should the H1N1 virus become more lethal.

The FAO focuses on issues related to eco-development from its headquarters in Rome and in its operational projects worldwide. They include sustainable water management through water harvesting, agriculture investment, and addressing radioactive contamination, contamination of food by pesticides, and marine pollution related to fisheries. The agency works to establish criteria for water quality management, soil and water resource management, pesticide control, fisheries management, and general control of pollution. Several important environmental conventions fall under FAO auspices, including the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the FAO International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, and the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

Marine pollution is important to the work of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), established in 1948 as the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization. At the heart of this agency's work in London are concerns about legal liability and the rights of parties to seek redress from pollution by ships and equipment operating in marine areas, as well as how to prevent such pollution. Over the years, the agency has promoted more than two dozen international conventions and protocols, ranging from the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution at Sea by Oil in 1959 to the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness Response and Cooperation in 1990. In fulfilling its environment-related mandate, the IMO has maintained close working relations with UNEP, FAO, ILO, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, UNCTAD, and WHO, as well as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and National Resources (IUCN, also known as the World Conservation Union), the International Chamber of Shipping, and various other nongovernmental organizations.

One of the most important international environmental organizations is the hybrid IUCN. It comprises states, governmental agencies, and international and national NGOs. Although possessing only a small secretariat, it conducts a remarkably wide range of activities through numerous standing commissions and committees. The IUCN helped forge the conceptual link between development and environment. With the World Wide Fund for Nature and UNEP, and in association with FAO and UNESCO, the IUCN launched the World Conservation Strategy in 1980. As a precursor to sustainable development, this initiative set forth principles promoting the sustainable use of the earth's living resources.

Global environmental norms have spread through international conventions and declarations. An extensive codification of international environmental law dealing with marine pollution, for example, has come about in this way since the late 1960s. As discussed, the IMO has played an instrumental role in developing an international maritime pollution regime, with important contributions also coming from UNEP and the multiyear negotiations of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea.

Additionally, the Global Environmental Facility provides grants to developing countries for environment-related projects and facilitates networking and cooperation among donors. It operates in four main issue areas—protection of the ozone layer, international waters, biodiversity, and climate change—and is charged with working with other UN agencies, regional development banks, and bilateral donors in integrated technical assistance and investment projects. This limited coordination role has been complemented in recent years by the work of the Joint Consultative Group on Policy. This body has organized collaborative efforts among five other UN agencies: UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WFP, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Despite such attempts to engender cooperation and undertake coordination within and among the diverse field of actors in this issue arena, fragmentation abounds.

Yet the quest for interorganizational coherence continues. In October 2007, the UN Chief Executives Board initiated the UN Climate Neutral Strategy, which is a system-wide effort to diminish each organization's greenhouse gas emissions. Under this initiative, UN agencies are required to adopt an integrated and comprehensive environmental management approach; implement measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; prepare and communicate regular reports of their emissions inventory, together with any targets or goals for emissions reductions; and document initiatives, data, lessons learned, and best practices. The aim of the strategy is to lead by example and create a new pro-green organizational culture. It covers procurement, renovation, construction, facilities management, and field operations. It encompasses five focus areas (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, technology transfer, finance, capacity building, and adaptation) and four crosscutting areas (scientific assessment, monitoring, and warning; support of global, regional, and national action; public awareness; and a climate-neutral UN).

Of crucial importance is the acceleration of both knowledge and worldwide awareness since the 1988 establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with UNEP's support. The importance of epistemic communities is a key subject for contemporary international relations, and the IPCC is a powerful illustration of how the two thousand world-class volunteer scientists from several disciplines translated scientific findings into language comprehensible by policymakers: in a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent fashion the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information relevant to understanding the risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation were all made clear. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recognized the UN's comparative advantage because this network put to rest the dispute, other than in the minds of ideologues, over the human role in global climate. We have witnessed the emergence of a truly scientific consensus: it has become virtually impossible to ignore not simply record temperatures, storms, and other indicators but also record agreement among knowledgeable experts (90 percent of them) that climate change is a looming threat that requires urgent action to reverse or at least to slow human-induced damage.

The UN Climate Neutral Strategy illustrates how important it is to understand what happens in the formal structures and informal behavior of individual UN organizations. A proper evaluation of particular UN actors requires that we broaden our focus to acknowledge a cumulative impact through joint under-takings. As Robert Keohane, who some believe is the world's most influential international relations scholar, has concluded, it is very difficult to say with precision why any particular international organization succeeds or fails. What is important is the collective impact of the UN system in promoting sustainable human development and human security. In this regard, the story is not complete without examining the work of the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO.

**THE WORLD BANK, IMF, AND WTO**

For most of the UN's existence the Washington-based international financial institutions functioned almost completely autonomously from the UN proper, as noted above. In many depictions of the so-called UN system, including in Appendix A, dotted lines connected to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund suggest their independent status. The Geneva-based WTO is vaguely designated a "related" UN organization and does not even have a dotted line. In terms of resources, however, these organizations are the vehicles through which member states have chosen to pursue development, defined as increases in GDP, imports-exports, and industrialization. Hence, the bulk of their financing for development is geared toward promoting macroeconomic growth, albeit with the assumption that such market-oriented growth can enhance the ability of individuals to meet their basic human needs and promote the efficient use of resources, thereby protecting the environment. In this section, we briefly review the development strategies of the World Bank, IMF, and WTO and conclude with the international efforts to coordinate the work of the UN proper with these important vehicles for pursuing sustainable human development.

_The World Bank_

The Bank comprises the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and four associated agencies or affiliates: International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Development Agency (IDA), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The IBRD functions like a traditional bank. Its funding comes from states as well as financing raised on open capital markets. The first affiliate, the IFC, was created in 1956 to encourage private investment in developing countries. Its principal strategy centers on providing seed money for business ventures and domestic infrastructure, which can then attract domestic investment and foreign direct investment by multinational corporations. The IFC also created its own International Securities Group (ISG) to advise developing states on creating a domestic stock market and helping local businesses to issue stock and list their stock on the major exchanges. The IBRD and the IFC are clearly wedded to economic development in a neoliberal sense, but they also consider environmental impacts of proposed projects and assist states in preparing loan requests with an eye toward sustainable development.

In 1960, the IDA was created to help alleviate poverty by providing soft loans to the poorest of the poor. Soft loans are loans that are made at cost at extremely low interest rates and that have an unusually long repayment period. In 1988, the MIGA was created to help war-torn and/or extremely impoverished states, not by making loans or investments, but by insuring private investors against loss. Through this insurance program, private investment in high-risk states can be encouraged. Finally, the ICSID was created by treaty in 1965. It serves as an impartial forum for resolving international investment disputes among its 143 members. These latter affiliates demonstrate that the Bank is aware of the special situation of extremely poor and postconflict societies; nevertheless, the Bank still prefers to devote a significant portion of its resources to encourage market-based, private solutions.

The World Bank experienced a crisis of leadership in the first decade of the twenty-first century. President Paul Wolfowitz, a former Pentagon neoconservative supported by the Bush administration, left office in 2007 under a cloud of nepotistic allegations relating to his companion's employment at the World Bank. Since anticorruption is a cornerstone of World Bank lending, this made its work more difficult under the next president, Robert Zoellick, the former U.S. trade representative to the WTO. A special commission, headed by Paul Volcker, the former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, recommended that the World Bank work on improving its relations with developing countries and examine its own corruption before pushing its anticorruption agenda. Thus, the multilateral institution that receives and distributes the lion's share of multilateral development assistance was put on the defensive.

Although Zoellick began his tenure under the cloud of his predecessor, governments were more than willing to move ahead quickly and put the divisiveness and bitterness of the Wolfowitz years behind them. Under Zoellick, the World Bank improved its relations with many members of the Global South through a number of measures. It defended the eligibility of middle-income states, such as India and China, to development loans. The Bank also provided assistance to developing countries experiencing food shortages because of the global spike in commodity prices in 2007–2008, partially reflecting the fact that land was being diverted for crops that could be used for biofuels (which were competitive because of increasing oil prices). The World Bank began stressing development programs that would help states achieve a measure of domestic food security, even if it was cheaper and more efficient to import food in the long run.

In 2012 President Barack Obama nominated Jim Yong Kim, the former president of Dartmouth College, to be the next World Bank president. Kim's selection continues the tradition of Washington's selecting the head of the World Bank. His nomination involved a series of firsts. It was the first time that other countries put up nominees, challenging the sixty-six-year-old tradition of U.S. control. The financial crisis called into question American leadership on economic issues at a time when many developing countries were more vocally questioning why the president of the World Bank had to necessarily be an American. Should not the most qualified person, regardless of nationality, be selected? It was also the first time that someone outside of finance and government was nominated. Kim's expertise is in health, and prior to academia, he worked to combat HIV and tuberculosis in extremely impoverished areas. While an American citizen, Kim was born in Korea, which gave the U.S. choice a more global flavor. His credentials as a physician, rather than as a banker or political leader, may mean he is more reform-minded and willing to provide more focus to World Bank lending. Health issues such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis remain a principal obstacle to sustainable development.

_The IMF_

The IMF was also created at the Bretton Woods conference to handle the UN system of national accounts and help attenuate currency fluctuations and balance-of-payments problems in the international monetary system based on fixed exchange rates (which in part explains its de facto independence from the UN). Over time, and with the collapse of the fixed exchange rate system in the 1970s, the IMF reinvented itself as the "lender of last resort." This means that the IMF's role in development has been that of a crisis troubleshooter because it provides financial assistance to otherwise uncreditworthy states. Such states usually experience an economic crisis that also involves a run on their currency, greatly reducing its value. During these kinds of crises, the IMF will work with states and the World Bank to put together loan packages designed to stabilize currency values and stave off economic catastrophe. The loan packages come with strings attached: namely, conditions designed to fundamentally change the underlying conditions that, in theory, gave rise to the crisis in the first place. These structural adjustment loans involve requiring states to implement market reforms, privatize government-owned industries, and reduce government deficits.

The IMF and its structural adjustment programs (SAPs) have other critics, on the left and the right. On the left, critics claim that structural adjustment loans increase poverty and the costs of restructuring the economy are borne by the poor, especially poor women. These critics also claim that Bank and IMF SAPs reinforce authoritarian government, in that only repressive governments can carry out the unpopular cost-cutting programs. For instance, Naomi Klein argues that much structural reform had nothing to do with the origins of some economic problems but was an attempt to advance the ideology of market capitalism. On the right, the IMF is interventionist, bailing out states and investors making high-risk and, ultimately, poor choices. Bailouts like the U.S. ones begun in 2008–2009 could have the effect of rewarding bad behavior, and the same type of reasoning applies internationally. At the same time, governments cannot sit idly by while an economy crashes or the financial system implodes. Most governments and international financial institutions (IFIs) tend to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic in selecting economic policy tools.

Regardless of the criticism, the IMF remains the only mechanism to coordinate multilateral responses to monetary crises. In an interesting twist of fortune, both the IMF and, to a lesser extent, the World Bank are facing an identity crisis. According to the IMF's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Khan, "What might be at stake today is the very existence of the I.M.F. as a major institution providing financial stability to the world, a global public good. . . . In sum, the two main issues are relevance and legitimacy." With globalization and massive financial transfers occurring daily, the IMF can no longer handle a financial crisis like that in Asia in the late 1990s or Argentina at the start of the twenty-first century, let alone the one currently under way. The states it assisted in the 1990s have, for the most part, only partially repaid loans. However, relations between those states have soured given the heavy-handed approach of IMF structural adjustment programs. Former managing director Rodrigo de Rato argues that the IMF should promote transparency, monitor currency manipulations, and otherwise monitor the global economy as well as provide technical assistance in monetary matters. Moreover, the IMF, like the other development-related agencies, is also facing staff and budget cuts.

The IMF and the World Bank are significantly challenged by the ongoing global financial crisis. In November 2008, European leaders sought to hold a major conference seen by many as Bretton Woods II, whereby the IMF and World Bank would be reformed to address the financial challenges of the twenty-first century. The Bush administration resisted any initiative that would lead to a global financial management scheme but then called a meeting of the G20 in Washington because the smaller G8 did not include either the largest potential creditors or sources of possible growth.

By 2011 Europe was in a full-fledged, sovereign-debt crisis. It began in Greece but soon spread to Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy; the borrowing costs for these governments rose beyond their ability to pay and continue to service existing debt. Greece needed a bailout almost immediately, and contagion concerns forced Europe into a multilateral response. Financial crises have happened in the past but never to an advanced industrialized country integrated into one of the world's most important currencies and largest regional economies. The EU (led by Germany and France), the IMF, and the United States were forced into immediate and short-term action. This involved emergency loans (in exchange for some austerity) and building up a firewall both in Europe and at the IMF. This meant having sufficient resources in place to stave off any future speculative runs on the euro. The size of the crisis also meant that the G20 would have to be involved, especially with the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries contributing additional resources to the IMF. In fact, the 2009 establishment of the G20 in the midst of the economic and financial meltdown was an indication that the "rest" (or at least the largest and most important economic powers in the Global South) were essential to the West.

In the midst of the euro crisis, the managing director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was accused of sexually assaulting a maid at a hotel in New York, creating a global scandal. Prior to his service at the IMF, he had served as France's minister of economy, finance, and industry and oversaw the launch of the euro. He was also widely expected to be a strong candidate for the presidency of France in 2012. His abrupt resignation and departure created a critical vacuum, which was filled by Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head the IMF. Lagarde's appointment generated controversy, as developing countries again questioned why the leadership of the IMF should be determined by Europe. Meanwhile, Europeans worried that Lagarde was too schooled in the American version of international finance, which earned her the moniker of "l'Americaine."

In a repetition of the long-standing debate on the virtues of stimulus versus austerity in a crisis period (albeit with a reversal of roles), Germany and northern European states, bolstered by the European Central Bank, insisted on austerity and adjustment in exchange for loans. The U.S. Federal Reserve made dollars more available to European banks, temporarily keeping them solvent. The IMF, which oversaw half a billion dollars in emergency loans, warned against too much austerity. In its 2012 _World Economic Outlook_ , the IMF warned that austerity should not come at the expense of growth, as the resulting social instability threatened the overall economy. The irony of the IMF's calling for a human face on structural adjustment when applied to Europe cannot be lost on many in the Global South.

_The WTO_

Trade and development are linked: trade brings the goods, services, and technology necessary for economic growth and increased standards of living. Moreover, trade promotes the efficient use of resources contributing to sustainability. The development success stories are those of trade-related, export-led growth. In 1995, the WTO was created as the last order of business of the Uruguay round of the GATT to help overcome several problematic trade issues. While the GATT had been quite successful at reducing tariffs, duties, and quotas on manufactured goods, it could not deal with emerging new protectionist measures (known as nontariff barriers or NTBs) and had little success in liberalizing the agricultural and services sectors of the world economy. Also important to many trading states was the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and rules regarding trade-related investment measures (TRIMS). The WTO was created to help member states overcome their differences on these issues through consensus-based rule making and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), a mechanism through which disputes can be authoritatively decided by neutral trade experts and trade rules can be enforced. While DSPs stipulate what trade practices are in accord with WTO rules (or not), it is states that decide whether to impose sanctions—such as, ironically, higher tariffs—against those whose policies have been held to violate the rules.

The differences among member states on trade issues are real and sometimes intractable because free trade may bring many benefits that are distributed unevenly between and within societies. Free trade also brings many problems: local businesses and industries can be threatened, and workers can be displaced. This makes it difficult for states in the Global South, and to a lesser extent the Global North, to ensure the basic human needs of their people and stable sustainable economic growth. Hence, reaching consensus on trade rules has proven difficult and contentious. The 1999 antiglobalization protests at the ministerial meeting in Seattle in part was about the WTO making trade rules without the input of environmental, labor, and human rights groups and the concern that state regulations protecting the environment, labor, and human rights would be undermined by WTO decisions. And as we discuss in Chapter 11, the most recent round of WTO trade negotiations, called the Doha Round, has yet to yield any significant trade agreements because of the North-South divide on trade priorities and rules.

Building bridges between the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and the UN proper is daunting, as each seeks to promote sustainable human development using different rationales and disposing of vastly different means. The World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO see economic liberalization, the private sector, and markets as the means to promote sustainable human development, while the UN remains Keynesian with a view that governments must step in where markets fail or require extensive regulation. This represents a change over time and under pressure, and critics still have their doubts as to the exact impact.

Coordination among these different development mechanisms is not all it could be. Kofi Annan's "Quiet Revolution" sought to redress this situation and bring the UN, the international financial institutions, and the WTO into closer working relations. The subject is essential and goes beyond budgets and finances, because a greater integration of the IFIs, the WTO, and the UN proper is necessary for policy coherence as well. The World Bank, especially in regard to a narrow and rather technical approach to economic growth, leaves out many important human aspects of the development process. At the same time, the UN system manifests a broader and coherent development rationale through the MDGs. The IMF may use structural adjustment programs to reform a state's economy, but UNICEF knows how to put a human face on such conditionality. What has emerged is a reasonably coherent and pragmatic framework to fight poverty and promote human development.

**NORM CREATION AND COHERENCE: A HISTORY OF IDEAS**

The consensual framework of sustainable human development is the product of extensive multilateral development diplomacy and related institutional processes of recent decades and especially the global, ad hoc conferences of the 1990s that are chronicled in Table 10.1. Building on the activities of the UN's first three development decades (1960–1989), international conversations since the end of the Cold War have transformed the global development debate and UN discourse in general. The 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2005 World Summit represent just two—albeit two very important—links in a growing chain of multilateral global conferences and activities focusing on development-related issues and problems.

Capacity building, good governance, and popular participation are all essential ingredients for promoting sustainability. The MDGs lie at the center of this global development agenda. They have been commonly accepted throughout the UN system, and by the IFIs, as a framework for guiding development policies and assessing progress. They are viewed as being mutually reinforcing with the overarching objective being the reduction of poverty and encouragement of sustainable human development. In the following section we review how the international community has arrived at the current synthesis of understanding "development" as sustainable human development.

**TABLE 10.1** Chronology of Selected Development-Related Conferences, 1990–2005

* * *

1990 | World Summit for Children (WSC)

Second World Climate Conference

World Conference on Education for All

Second UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries

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1992 | UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)

International Conference on Nutrition

1993 | UNCTAD VIII: Eighth Session of the Conference on Trade and Development

1994 | Global Conference on Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States

International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)

World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction

1995 | UN Fourth World Conference on Women

World Summit for Social Development

1996 | Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT II)

World Food Summit

UNCTAD IX: Ninth Session of the Conference on Trade and Development

1997 | Special Session of UN General Assembly on Sustainable Development

1998 | World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth

1999 | Special Session of UN General Assembly on Small Island Developing States

Special Session of UN General Assembly on Population and Development

2000 | UNCTAD X: Tenth Session of the Conference on Trade and Development

Special Session of the UN General Assembly on World Summit for Social Development and Beyond: Achieving Social Development for All in a Globalised World

World Education Forum

Millennium Summit

2001 | Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries

Special Session of UN General Assembly on the Problem of Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in All Its Aspects

International Conference on Fresh Water

First Session of the UN Forum on Forests

Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Human Settlement in the New Millennium

2002 | International Conference of Financing for Development

Special Session of UN General Assembly on Children

World Food Summit: Five Years Later

World Summit on Sustainable Development

Second World Assembly on Ageing

2003 | World Summit on the Information Society: The First Phase

International Ministerial Conference on Landlocked and Transit Developing Countries and Donors

2004 | Session of the Commission on Population and Development

2005 | World Conference on Disaster Reduction

World Summit on the Information Society: The Second Phase

Session of the Commission on the Status of Women

Session of the Commission for Social Development

World Summit

International Meeting for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States

* * *

_From Stockholm to Rio de Janeiro_

The process of norm creation began in 1971 in Stockholm with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. During the preparations for this conference, experts in Founex, Switzerland, led by then UNCHE secretary-general Maurice Strong, probed the concept of eco-development, thereby integrating development and the environment. The Club of Rome and others had also put forward similar notions, although these largely intellectual exercises did not carry the same force or impact as the Founex report. Under Strong's leadership, the participants were able to bridge some important political divides, in particular the clash of priorities between developing countries in pursuit of economic growth and developed countries concerned about conservation of natural resources. The clash was captured by India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who opened the Stockholm conference by arguing that in developing countries "poverty is the greatest polluter." By arguing that long-term development was necessary to combat the poverty that contributed to pollution but that such growth also depended on dealing with shorter-term environmental problems, Strong was able to bridge the divergent North-South divide. He also suggested that the governments of industrialized countries help defray the costs of environmental protection that developing countries would be forced to bear. The concept of "additionality," meaning to increase resources in order to apply them to a new problem rather than to subtract them from another use, helped overcome skepticism in the South over global economic inequities.

Two decades later, the issues were revisited. Previously, in 1987, the Brundtland Commission, created by the General Assembly in 1983 to intellectually bridge the divide between economic growth and environmental protection, reframed the debate as "sustainable development." This in turn fed into the preparations for and activities surrounding the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The Earth Summit far exceeded almost all normal conceptions of a conference, as did the extensive documentation. The Rio process was massive. In addition to the intergovernmental conference, which incorporated a summit meeting of heads of state or government during its final days, the Rio gathering included a series of related events, unparalleled in scope and sponsored by civic-based entities that together were referred to as the Global Forum. These parallel activities drew tens of thousands of participants and an estimated two hundred thousand onlookers. A record number of national governmental delegations attended the Earth Summit, and some 1,400 NGOs with approximately eighteen thousand participants were at the parallel Global Forum.

The "road to Rio" was arduous. Participants were engaged in the preparatory process almost continuously for three years. Maurice Strong, who after twenty years was selected to serve again as secretary-general of the conference secretariat, repeated what he had said about UNCHE, namely that in many important respects "the process was the policy." The process of building consensus was regarded by many participants as being just as important an outcome of UNCED as any set of declarations, treaties, or other specific products. However, that process was not always an easy one, and the end products were not satisfactory to a majority of the participants. After three years of laborious and often tedious negotiations, for example, the specification of timetables, qualitative and quantitative targets, and acceptable limits still eluded negotiators as they rushed to finalize agreement on the conventions, statements of principles, and plan of action.

The North-South tensions so evident in many aspects of UN diplomacy were, not surprisingly, evident in the sustainability debate, and they continue today. Southern governments were then and today remain skeptical about the North's push to impose ecological imperatives on the global development agenda. From their perspective, ozone depletion, hazardous waste pollution, and global climate change were products of industrialization and overconsumption in the North, but suddenly the new priority to protect the environment was to come at the expense of development in the Global South. Cooperation from developing countries was conditioned on the North's willingness to pay the bill for at least part of its past environmental sins. If the North wants the active partnership of the South in redressing these problems, northern donor governments should make available additional financial and technical resources.

These North-South tensions were brought into particularly sharp focus during the debate over deforestation. Southern negotiators, led by the Brazilians, Indians, and Malaysians—in an echo of what we heard earlier when sovereignty was under siege in the security and human rights arenas—forcefully resisted any incursion into the principle of sovereignty over natural resources. Similarly, tensions prevailed in drafting the Rio Declaration, which was to guide governments and nongovernmental actors in implementing the many provisions of Agenda 21. With its unmistakable flavor of compromise between negotiators from industrialized countries and those from developing ones, this declaration integrated many of the most important elements of the development and environment perspectives of both sides. Even as the rights to exploit resources within a state's geographical boundaries were reaffirmed, the responsibility of states to exercise control over environmentally damaging activities within their boundaries also was proclaimed. In addition, among the twenty-seven principles embodied in the declaration was one stating that the cost of pollution should be borne at the source and should be reflected in product cost at all stages of production.

Brazilian president Collor de Mello acknowledges the applause of world leaders after he formally closes the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992. (UN Photo 180108/T. Prendergast)

Two legally binding international conventions—on biodiversity and on climate change—were incorporated as part of the larger Rio process. The Convention on Biodiversity requires signatories to pursue economic development in such a way as to preserve existing species and ecosystems. The Convention on Climate Change embodies a general set of principles and obligations aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Largely as a result of the intransigent position of the first Bush administration during the negotiation process, formal intergovernmental negotiations over the creation of these two legal conventions proved to be difficult to finalize. The final documents emerging from the Earth Summit represented "framework conventions." Although these conventions designated general principles and obligations, specific timetables and targets were left unspecified and subject to future negotiations over protocols—that is, additional treaties.

Agenda 21 comprised more than six hundred pages and covered a large gamut of issues. Although most of this text was agreed to before UNCED, a number of contentious items were carried to the Earth Summit itself. In keeping with the general tenor of debates, problems included issues related to biodiversity, biotechnology, deforestation, and institutional and procedural issues involving financing, technology transfer, and institutional arrangements for carrying out the elements of the action agenda.

A number of these issues proved to be intractable and remained unresolved at the close of UNCED. Foremost among them was how to generate the financial resources needed to implement the program of action and associated activities. Estimates varied; the calculations made by the UNCED secretariat put the price tag at well over $100 billion per year for the first decade alone. These figures reflected the massive scope of the components inherent in the marriage between development and environment as they had come together within the Rio process.

Linked to the issue of financing was governance. At the core is the following question: Who decides when and how such resources are to be spent? As the negotiations during the Rio process clearly revealed, some minimal basic agreement about governance is a prerequisite for agreement over financing. Again, North-South tensions fueled the debate. The northern negotiators, led by Washington, pressed to have all such financing channeled through the World Bank group. In that setting, the locus of control would be well established, with the G8 possessing effective veto power. Also, the World Bank and the IMF tended to approach environmental protection through markets. The Global Environment Facility was in place and might be expanded to encompass a broader mandate.

This proposed solution was not acceptable to most southern participants, who preferred what they called a "more democratic" arrangement. These governments proposed the creation of a new green fund, which would operate on more egalitarian voting principles. Most major northern donors found this proposal wholly unacceptable. For them to commit significant levels of funding, some guarantee of control was required. A compromise was achieved to enhance the South's participation while retaining for donor states elements of control. Interim financing for Agenda 21 implementation would be provided under the aegis of the World Bank group. The GEF would be expanded and its rules altered to provide for decision making by consensus among equally represented groupings of donors and recipients. The governance issue has, at least temporarily, been put to rest. But the matter of securing the requisite financial resources remains problematic, with only a very small fraction of the necessary funds actually committed to date.

_Beyond Rio_

In the years immediately following the Earth Summit, two overriding challenges arose. The first was how to generate and sustain effective cooperation. This problem had both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Effective cooperation would be required horizontally across different autonomous organizational domains, legal jurisdictions, and sectors of society as well as vertically across different levels of social aggregation, from individuals in their roles in groups and communities to representative governance in international forums.

The second challenge was how to reorient UN discourse and practice to overcome the constraints inherent in the organization's legal foundations in state sovereignty. The UN's involvement in eco-development rejoins our earlier treatment of its activities in international peace and security and human rights matters. They all highlight the limits of working with a system circumscribed by the concept of sovereignty. The foundations of the UN Charter, especially Article 2 (7) prohibiting the UN from intervening in the domestic jurisdiction of states, and the institutional structures and practices of multilateral diplomacy constrain attempts to incorporate nonstate and market actors into a full partnership in global policy processes.

These challenges seem forbidding, but as the heads of government at Rio pointed out, the costs of not rising to the challenge could be perilous. As they warned in the preamble of Agenda 21, "humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being." The Agenda 21 text argues that only by creating global partnerships and involving all sectors of world society can the world's peoples expect "the fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better-protected and better-managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future." Creating the necessary global partnerships on an unprecedented scale will, in turn, require meeting the twin challenges of cooperating effectively and moving beyond the confines of sovereignty. Before exploring the nature and scope of those challenges, however, we need a better understanding of the dynamic interplay of the forces and tensions that have given shape to the contemporary discourse and practice of sustainable development.

The debate over sustainable development places people-centered development at the core of the UN's work, even if the Bank, the Fund, and the WTO are generally thought to contribute less to this concept than they should. This was also the case in respect to issues such as population, human settlements, health, food, and women. This shifting focus was captured in the names of special organizational campaigns, programmatic slogans, and conference titles reflected in Table 10.1. This evolving emphasis on people-centered development was given enhanced visibility through the reports of a series of special high-level, independent global commissions comprising eminent persons, which had begun with the Pearson Commission in 1969 but shifted away from an almost exclusive focus on governments and economic development toward engaging other actors in the work of the world organization. We have discussed the three most prominent recent ones—on global governance (1995), intervention and state sovereignty (2001), and human security (2003)—as essential contributions to the normative climate, and in each of them the third UN played an essential role.

The role sustainable development played in traversing the turf and ideological divide that otherwise separates actors in the global arena provides insight about the future of the UN's development work. In the Rio process and beyond, sustainability has served as an important bridge in institutional bargaining. The associated political processes have been characterized by bargaining among autonomous and self-interested participants striving for consensus. Operating under a veil of uncertainty about the likely effects of their alternative choices, participants engage in transnational alliance formation and politics that link issues. Many may be associated with specific communities of knowledge, but the political process is a pluralistic one in which groups of participants perceive and act on differing perceptions of problems, values, interests, and stakes.

Despite numerous difficulties, the general ideas articulated at Rio in 1992 on behalf of sustainable development increasingly took hold. In the mid-1990s the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board decision 94/14 adopted "sustainable human development" as a new mission for technical assistance. Like other development concepts before it, sustainable human development was viewed as a prerequisite for creating and maintaining a secure and peaceful world order. The barrage of political discourse over development in the 1990s led most member states to expect the UN to play a meaningful role in realizing such a goal.

The decade of the 1990s witnessed an almost continuous negotiating process. As is obvious from Table 10.1, member states were constantly involved in, preparing for, or actually attending a major international socioeconomic gathering. And this became especially the case when planning follow-up sessions at five-, ten-, and most recently twenty-year intervals. The 2012 United Nations Conference of Sustainable Development (UNCSD) sought a joint endeavor to recommit to sustainable development by focusing on economic development, social development, and environmental protection. This Rio+20 conference identified the priority areas of decent jobs, energy, sustainable cities, food security, sustainable agriculture, water, oceans, and disaster readiness. In a slight shift, Rio+20 applies the norms of environmental protection developed at Rio in 1992 to these priority areas.

Was the gathering in Brazil yet another anticlimax? For those still reading a hard copy of the Sunday _New York Times_ , a small article appeared on page 8, "Progress on the Sidelines as Rio Conference Ends," in contrast to June 1992, when several feature articles appeared over several days, many starting on the front page. Among the summaries cited about the 2012 summit's 283-paragraph agreement were those from CARE and Greenpeace: "nothing more than a political charade" and "a failure of epic proportions."

The presence of more than a hundred heads of state amidst fifty thousand participants led to no new intergovernmental agreement—unlike the 1992 conference, which produced two landmark policies in the form of conventions on climate change and biodiversity and a set of objectives in Agenda 21. Although many judge that these treaties have failed to live up to their promises and publicity, nonetheless these agreed policies indicated a willingness among governments to move ahead at the beginning of the 1990s that had evaporated two decades later. Europe and the United States were distracted by the ongoing financial crisis, and the emerging powers of the South were unwilling to move toward compromise and enforceable commitments on climate change. We are too close to the event at this writing to evaluate it. It is worth recalling that views initially were largely negative toward the outcomes in 1992, but the conference ended up shaping many national policies and actions over the following two decades. In retrospect then, perhaps Rio+20 will resemble Rio 1992 and will have a more positive impact than appears at present.

In its _Human Development Report 1994_ , the UNDP provided a basic framework for focusing discourse. It suggested that the UN's development work should be based on at least five "new pillars": new concepts of human security, new models of sustainable human development, new partnerships between states and markets, new patterns of national and global governance, and new forms of international cooperation. Each subsequent _Human Development Report_ has served to elaborate, extend, and clarify specific aspects of the development-human security nexus: funding priorities (1991), global markets (1992), democracy (1993), environment (1994), gender (1995), growth (1996), poverty (1997), consumption patterns (1998), globalization (1999), human rights (2000), sustainable livelihoods (2001), democracy (2002), millennium development goals (2003), cultural liberty (2004), international cooperation (2005), water resources (2006), climate change (2007/2008), and migration (2009). In 2010, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the first report, UNDP issued a special edition reflecting on the progress the international community had made and reiterating that there is no single pathway to sustainable human development. The 2011 _Human Development Report_ centered on equity and development. This report articulates the causes and consequences of inequity at a time when societies around the world were wrestling with the fallout of the global financial crisis. Issues of justice are also part and parcel of sustainable human development.

Participation and empowerment have been two of the priority themes running throughout these annual reports. Placing the emphasis on people, rather than states and macrolevel growth, was an important rhetorical and actual advance, in particular for the most marginalized elements of society. The emphasis also helped incorporate civil society and the for-profit sector as central elements of the development equation. The way to eradicate poverty, the UNDP reports have argued, is to empower the poor and marginalized elements of society to provide for the satisfaction of their own basic needs and values. The notion of popular sovereignty has come to eclipse older conceptions of state sovereignty: that is, sovereignty of the people, not of the sovereign.

Scene at the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum held in Huairou, China, as part of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, September 4–15, 1995. (UN/DPI Photo/M. Grant)

In a departure from its previous orthodoxy and as a sign of the pendulum's swing, the World Bank's _World Development Report 1997_ emphasized that the state is capable of, and should perform the role of, producing welfare-enhancing outcomes. The report's subtitle, _The State in a Changing World_ , was indicative of a reversal led by Joseph Stiglitz, then controversial chief economist and senior vice president of the Bank. Essentially, in contrast to the wave of economic liberalization programs of the 1980s, various political liberalization efforts of the 1990s gradually came to place a greater emphasis on good government, human rights, the role of law and individual access to justice, and basic freedoms. Stiglitz won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economic Science while at Columbia University, shortly after his resignation from the World Bank over substantive differences.

The UN often has sought to counterbalance or dilute the approaches in vogue since the Reagan and Thatcher administrations—namely, that anything the government can do, the private sector can do better, and that more open markets, free trade, and capital flows are necessarily beneficial to everyone, everywhere. This revisionist view took on added strength after the 2008 economic and financial meltdown, which started with poor decisions in the financial (especially mortgage) private sector. And poor supervision and regulation from the public sector also became evident.

Refugees returning to Cambodia in 1992 under the oversight of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia were offered different forms of UNHCR assistance, including a house plot and house kit. (UNCHR Photo/K. Gooi)

_Good Governance_

The concept of "good governance" came into common use within UN developmental circles in the 1980s and 1990s. The emergence of the idea of good governance can be traced to international concerns with state-dominated models of economic and social development so prevalent throughout the socialist bloc and much of the Third World in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. International efforts, especially since the 1980s, have emphasized support for political democratization (including elections, accountability, and human rights) and economic liberalization. Within many industrialized countries, certainly the United States, a similar debate is taking place about how much regulation and action by public authorities is wise, and how much should corporations and wealthy individuals be allowed to do what they wish.

Today's discussions about good governance stress improving the leadership and management of democracies, including the "deepening" of democracy and more active roles for nonstate actors. Yet the thinking about new patterns of governance remained rather vague and unspecified. Decentralization of power is lauded as one of the best ways to bring about the empowerment of people, but decentralization at whatever level—local, state, national, and global—can result in empowering elites even more rather than empowering people in the sense of popular participation. New participants may lack the time, motivation, and skills to participate, leaving entrenched elites with unchallenged power. This point is important because sustainable growth and development require the active participation of people at all levels of governance. With regard to UN structure, the most difficult choice may be between the traditional focus on the specialized agencies and the growing need to raise environmental concerns in broader, crosscutting arenas and in interagency settings in which turf consciousness usually outweighs cooperative instincts. In the post-Rio era (since 1992 and as reviewed in Rio+20 in 2012), the discourse of environmentalism is clearly moving in the direction of crosscutting themes. The traditional ecosystemic focus on air, land, water, and species is giving way to a social-systems focus on international trade, global finance, sovereignty, development, and other key processes and institutions. The old focus was consistent with the UN's functional organization into specialized agencies and bodies.

In this regard, the special initiatives with system-wide coordination and partnership building discussed above have tended to reinforce the evolving consensus over the UN system development strategy. At both the Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Doha, Qatar, in September 2001 and the summit-level UN-sponsored Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002, for example, donor countries expressed an increased commitment to fighting poverty. In addition to the new spirit of cooperation between the UN and the IFIs noted earlier, the Monterrey gathering for the first time brought together stakeholders representing governments, business, civil society, and international institutions for a formal exchange of views. The Monterrey Consensus, as that conference's outcome document was called, recognized the need to increase official development significantly in order to meet the MDGs. At the same time, the Monterrey Consensus recognizes the deleterious effects of corruption on economic growth and the development process because individuals and groups use public agencies and resources for financial gain.

_Private Sector_

The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg attempted to reinvigorate the sustainable development activities in the wake of deepening poverty and environmental degradation. New targets were set, timetables established, and commitments agreed on. Yet, as the UN website for Johannesburg Summit 2002 made clear, "there were no silver bullet solutions . . . no magic and no miracle—only the realization that practical and sustained steps were needed to address many of the world's most pressing problems." The summit reflected a new approach to conferencing and to sustainable development more generally. It was a dialogue among major stakeholders from governments, civil society, and the private sector. Instead of concentrating primarily on producing treaties and other outcome documents, participants focused on creating new partnerships to bring additional resources to bear for sustainable development initiatives.

Secretary-General Annan and core administrative staff of the UNDP continued to aggressively build an array of partnerships with civil society and the private sector. Predictably, these activities—most especially through the Global Compact with business—have brought with them another dimension of the challenge-to-sovereignty debate. The notion of the Global Compact is predicated on the assumption that development, especially for poorer developing countries, cannot occur through governmental or intergovernmental means alone, even when augmented by assistance from the multitude of nongovernmental development assistance organizations. Neither can it occur through unbridled market forces. Creating local, national, and international enabling environments is essential, and a broad-based partnership involving all relevant "stakeholders" is required.

Of course, this may be deemed inappropriate or unacceptable for some—often of quite diverse and even opposing ideological perspectives—who see various types of stakeholders as being unacceptable or illegitimate partners. Nonetheless, the Global Compact has been steadily expanding since it got under way following the Millennium Summit. By late 2012, over seven thousand corporate partners had joined the agreement. One of its underlying principles is that UN organizations should "undertake a deeper examination of issues related to corporate governance" in the context of developing countries' specific legal, social, and cultural environments "to develop and implement international accounting, reporting and auditing standards." While encouraging information sharing about potential investment opportunities, the UN development framework cautions that "international institutions involved in supporting FDI [foreign direct investment] flows should evaluate the development impact of investment flows in recipient countries, including social development concerns." Similarly, by joining the Global Compact, businesses recognize that they have a responsibility for helping the international community meet the MDGs.

The Global Compact represents only one dimension of the UN system's evolving partnership with the private sector. With the UNDP's priorities focused around the four themes of advocacy, advice, pilot projects, and partnerships, its partnership function is wide-ranging. It begins with the UN and the IFIs, but it expands far beyond the intergovernmental system. It entails building and expanding constructive partnerships with civil society, the private sector, and local authorities. Underpinning this strategy is the belief that "people should guide both the state and the market, which need to work together in tandem, with people sufficiently empowered to exert a more effective influence over both." Critical to this endeavor is creating in these varied constituencies an identity of being stakeholders.

Within the developing world this initiative to forge new partnerships has taken a variety of complexions. The UNDP and other UN agencies have strengthened their direct involvement with diverse elements of society—including NGOs, the private sector, and civil society organizations. Similar efforts have also been made in the IFIs. While active engagement with NGOs has been widely recognized for some time as an essential input into the development process, cooperation with private sector entities at the country level has been less widely publicized. These measures are not without controversy, but in a world with scarce and dwindling financial resources and limited access to technology, the prospects of gaining greater access is difficult to resist, despite many potential stumbling blocks and drawbacks.

A visiting foreign official inspects a solar cooker at a research facility in Gansu Province in China. The Natural Energy Research Institute focuses on new forms of energy-producing products. (UN Photo 150767/D. Lovejoy)

**THE UN'S SUSTAINABLE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT MODEL**

Sustainable human development is part of an overall human security framework that has been in the making since the early 1990s, although many could argue that the combination of security, human rights, and sustainable development in separate streams has constituted the history of international organization. In this regard, UNDP's _Human Development Report 1994_ provides a useful point of departure. Making human beings secure, the approach argues, means more than protecting them from armed violence and alleviating their suffering. If international organizations are to contribute meaningfully to the promotion of human security, security needs to be defined in much broader terms than protection from threats to physical well-being from military violence. It is worth noting, as we did in the first two parts of this volume, that protecting civilians in war zones or from thuggish repression is itself far from guaranteed. Doing both simultaneously, as human security proposes, is logical but hardly easy. The _Human Development Report 1994_ was a precursor to one a decade later from the Commission on Human Security in that both agreed this concept "must stress the security of people, not only of nations." Thus, the way that citizens and their governments, and also scholars and international officials, think about security would be altered: people and their needs would trump such calculations as bombs and bullets, and considerations like access to food would be as important as military budgets. Thus sustainable human development can be viewed as a process of improving and sustaining human security.

A water pump powered by solar energy in Thies, Senegal. (UN Photo 150182/S. Sprague)

Sustainable development, like human security, is a qualitative condition that entails individual and collective perceptions of threats to physical and psychological well-being from all agents and forces that could degrade lives, values, and property. At a minimum, people may be considered secure if they are protected from the threat of the physical destruction of their lives or property as a result of assault from others. At the opposite extreme, maximum human security can be imagined in a totally threat-free environment, where human beings are protected against all threats to their lives, values, and property. Various qualities of human security can be imagined depending on the relative ordering of the priorities that people place on the satisfaction of various needs, values, and interests.

Human security bridges the traditional divisions of international organizational agendas, where questions of war and peace have been largely insulated from economic and social ones. According to this new conceptualization, peace as the lack of direct violence is only one attribute of a secure environment, and international organizational action is the means of establishing this peace. Further, the notion of human security focuses the attention of international organizations directly on individuals and their circumstances, thereby constituting a subtle challenge to state sovereignty. Making people psychologically secure may, under some circumstances, be the antithesis of making the governments of states and their territorial boundaries physically secure, especially when states themselves are the perpetrators of individual insecurities. Pressing international organizations into the service of individually focused human security could therefore constitute an incremental step toward circumventing or marginalizing states and legitimizing supranational governance.

Most important, conceptualizing the mission of multilateral organizations as one of comprehensively promoting human security rather than separately promoting economic and social development, sustainable development, military security, human rights, and a variety of other goals frees the policy imagination to contemplate more holistically the nature and variety of threats to individual environments. Although critics rightly point out that such a blanket concept can lead to fuzzy thinking with little intellectual traction, human security can free the policy imagination to consider how such threats may be removed and to formulate policy prescriptions for how international organizations might contribute to removing them. Because the sources of human insecurity vary from region to region, so, too, will the definition of human security and the missions of international organizations. It may be that in many, if not most, cases multilateral agencies are not very appropriate, efficient, or effective mechanisms for transferring material development assistance. They appear to be relatively better suited to promoting and enhancing human security via policies, programs, and activities that focus on nonmaterial resource transfers and exchanges, including training and the exchange of ideas and information. But such a shift of institutional focus requires rethinking the nature and meaning of sustainable human development.

The foundations for sustainable human development require individuals, groups, and communities to take charge of their own destinies. They thereby themselves become engaged significantly in the satisfaction of their own needs, values, and interests. In short, they control their own futures. "Human development is development of the people for the people by the people. . . . Development for the people means ensuring that the economic growth they generate is distributed widely and fairly. . . . Development by the people [means] giving everyone a chance to participate." Yet the concept of popular participation has proven to be woolly and the debate about its meaning unfocused. In the World Bank, for example, popular participation has at various times and in various contexts been articulated as and associated with the "empowerment" of NGOs and the enhancement of their involvement in making Bank policy; increased Bank accountability and control of the Bank's programs, projects, and activities by "domestic" actors; and the active engagement in project planning of previously excluded individuals and groups with an emphasis on the importance of local knowledge and the satisfaction of local needs.

These aspects of participation are important, but this discourse has so far done little to change the essential course of the Bank's policy so as to enhance its role in promoting some aspects of human security or to construct new models of development focusing on the satisfaction of basic human needs and values. Development models and institutional policies that fail to take adequate account of human needs may actually work to erode human security and inhibit sustainable human development.

In the next chapter, this new global development agenda is examined in the context of the Millennium Development Goals and the challenges posed by globalization. Most world leaders acknowledge that "security" in the twenty-first century includes "human security" and that the UN's development agenda is a necessary component. Nevertheless, is there sufficient international political will to move fast enough to confront and manage the ill effects of HIV/AIDS, extreme poverty, and other social maladies?

**NOTES**

. The WTO is not formally part of the UN system but is considered a UN-related organization. See Bernard M. Hoekman and Petros C. Mavroidis, _The World Trade Organization: Law, Economics, and Politics_ (London: Routledge, 2007); and Rorden Wilkinson, _The WTO: Crisis and the Governance of Global Trade_ (London: Routledge, 2006).

. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, "A New Departure on Development," _Foreign Policy_ 98 (1995): 47. This is the working assumption behind the United Nations Intellectual History Project, which is producing fourteen volumes and an oral history around this theme. For details, see <http://www.unhistory.org>.

. Mourad Ahmia, ed., _The Group of 77 at the United Nations: Environment and Sustainable Development_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

. Bruce Jenks and Bruce D. Jones, "Punching Below Its Weight: The UN Development System at a Crossroads," draft, Center for International Cooperation, October 2011.

. Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss, _Making Change Happen: Enhancing the UN's Contributions to Development_ (New York: WFUNA, 2012). See also <http://www.futureUN.org>.

. M. J. Peterson, _The UN General Assembly_ (London: Routledge, 2006). Each year the UN Association of the United States publishes an introduction to key issues.

. Thomas G. Weiss, "ECOSOC Is Dead, Long Live ECOSOC," _Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Perspectives_ 2010, and "ECOSOC and the MDGs: What Can Be Done?" in _Beyond the MillenniumDevelopment Goals: Global Development Goals Post-2015_, ed. David Hulme and Rorden Wilkinson (London: Routledge, 2012).

. Kofi A. Annan, _Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform_ (New York: UN, 1997).

. Crain N. Murphy, _United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way?_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

. UNDP, Annual Report of the Administrator, June 19, 2003. The _Journal of Human Development: Alternative Economics in Action_ has been published three times a year since 2000.

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

. Stephen Browne, _United Nations Development Programme and System_ (London: Routledge, 2011).

. Mark Malloch Brown, "Opening Statement at the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board," New York, June 10, 2003, 1.

. Ibid., 11.

. Desmond McNeill, "Human Development: The Power of the Idea," _Journal of Human Development_ 8 (March 2007): 5–23; and Desmond McNeill and Asunción Lera St. Clair, _Global Poverty: Ethics and Human Rights: The Role of Multilateral Organisations_ (London: Routledge, 2009).

. Ian Taylor, _UN Conference on Trade and Development_ (London: Routledge, 2007); and John Toye and Richard Toye, _The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance, and Development_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

. Charles Gore, "Which Growth Theory Is Good for the Poor?" _European Journal of Development Research_ 19 (March 2007): 30–48.

. UNCTAD-UNDP-HABITAT, Press Release, May 16, 2001.

. UNCTAD, "UNCTAD and Civil Society," http://www.unctad.org/Templates/StartPage.asp?intItemID=3455&lang=1.

. UNCTAD, Press Release, "Trade and Development Board Holds Annual Hearing with Civil Society," http://www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.asp?docidID=9241&intlItem=16348&&lang=1.

. Yves Beigbeder, _New Challenges for UNICEF: Children, Women, and Human Rights_ (New York: Palgrave, 2001); and Richard Jolly, _UNICEF_ (London: Routledge, 2013).

. Devaki Jain, _Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for Justice and Equality_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).

. Mayra Buvnic, "Women in Poverty: A New Global Underclass," _Foreign Policy_ 108 (1997): 38–54.

. UNICEF Press Release, May 8, 2003.

. UNICEF, _The United Nations Special Session on Children: A First Anniversary Report on Follow-Up_ , May 8, 2003.

. UN News Centre, "Countries Slow to Act on 2002 Summit Goals to Better Children's Lives—UNICEF," May 27, 2003.

. Owen Dyer, "New Partnership Is Set Up to Improve Aid," _British Journal of Medicine_ 335 (September 15, 2007): 532.

. Joel Ostreich, _Power and Principle_ (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007).

. UNICEF, _Humanitarian Action for Children 2011_ (New York: UNICEF, 2011), <http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/HAC2011_EN_030911.pdf>.

. For an overview of the CSD and other institutions, see Elizabeth R. DeSombre, _Global Environmental Institutions_ (London: Routledge, 2006).

. Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mark Kaldor, _Global Civil Society 2001_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Peter Willetts, _Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics: The Construction of Global Governance_ (New York: Routledge, 2011).

. Elsa Tsioumani, "CSD-15 Concludes with No Final Outcome Adopted," _Environmental Policy and Law_ 37 (2007): 288–289.

. "Hot Seats," _Economist_ , May 19, 2007, 19.

. "Africa: Nairobi Meeting Warns of Biofuel Dangers," _Earth Island Journal_ 22 (Spring 2007): 4–5.

. Soledad Aguilar and Elisa Morgera, "Delivering as One for the Environment," _Environmental Policy and Law_ (2007): 274–280.

. Richard Benedick, _Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

. Gian Luca Burci and Claude-Henri Vignes, _World Health Organization_ (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2004); Kelley Lee, _The World Health Organisation (WHO)_ (London: Routledge, 2009); and Sophie Harman, _Global Health Governance_ (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011).

. WHO Press Release, May 22, 2003.

. Norman J. Vig and Regina S. Axelrod, eds., _The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy_ (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1999).

. Nigel Lawson, _An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming_ (London: Duckworth Overlook, 2008).

. Robert O. Keohane, "International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work?" _Foreign Policy_ (special edition) (Spring 1998): 82–96.

. Edward S. Mason and Robert E. Asher, _The World Bank Since Bretton Woods: The Origins, Policies, Operations, and Impact of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Other Members of the World Bank Group_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1973); Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis, and Richard Webb, _The World Bank: Its First Half Century_ , vol. 1, _History_ (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997); Morten Bøås and Desmond McNeill, _Global Institutions and Development: Framing the World?_ (London: Routledge, 2004); and Katherine Marshall, _The World Bank: From Reconstruction to Development to Equity_ (London: Routledge, 2008).

. Howard Schneider, "Jim Yong Kim Named World Bank President," _The Washington Post_ , April 16, 2012.

. Margaret G. de Vries, _The International Monetary Fund, 1945–1965: The Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1969), _The International Monetary Fund, 1966–1971: The System Under Stress_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1976), and _The International Monetary Fund, 1972–1978: Cooperation on Trial_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1985); Norman K. Humphreys, ed., _Historical Dictionary of the IMF_ (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2000); and James Vreeland, _The International Monetary Fund: Politics of Conditional Lending_ (New York: Routledge, 2006).

. Naomi Klein, _The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism_ (London: Macmillan, 2007).

. Steven Weisman, "I.M.F. Faces a Question of Identity," _New York Times_ , September 28, 2007.

. Andrew F. Cooper and Ramesh Thakur, _The Group of Twenty (G20)_ (London: Routledge, 2013).

. Liz Alderman, "Mme Lagarde Goes to Washington," _New York Times_ , September 24, 2011.

. See IMF, _World Economic Outlook_ , April 2012, <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/pdf/text.pdf>.

. Rorden Wilkinson and James Scott, eds., _Trade, Poverty, Development: Getting Beyond the WTO's Doha Deadlock_ (London: Routledge, 2012).

. Robert Wade, "Greening the Bank: The Struggle over the Environment," in _The World Bank: Its First Half Century_ , ed. Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis, and Richard Webb, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1997), 611–734.

. Richard Peet, _Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO_ (London: Zed Books, 2003).

. Kofi Annan, "The Quiet Revolution," _Global Governance_ 4, no. 2 (1998): 123–138.

. Jonathan R. Pincus and Jeffrey A. Winters, eds., _Reinventing the World Bank_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002). As for the IMF, see Devesh Kapur, "The IMF: A Cure or a Curse?" _Foreign Policy_ 111 (Summer 1998): 114–131; and Graham Bird and Joseph P. Joyce, "Remodeling the Multilateral Financial Institutions," _Global Governance_ 7, no. 1 (2001): 75–94.

. UNICEF report, "Structural Adjustment with a Human Face" (Oxford: UNICEF/Oxford University Press, 1987).

. Michael G. Schechter, _United Nations Global Conferences_ (London: Routledge, 2005).

. David Hulme, _Global Poverty: How Global Governance Is Failing the Poor_ (London: Routledge, 2010).

. UNEP, "Development and Environment: The Founex Report—In Defense of the Earth," _The Basic Texts on Environment_ , UNEP Executive Series 1, Nairobi, 1981.

. Quoted by Maurice Strong, "Policy Lessons Learned in a Thirty Years' Perspective," in _Stockholm Thirty Years On: Proceedings from an International Conference 17–18 June 2002_ (Stockholm: Ministry of the Environment, 2002), 18.

. Branislav Gosovic, _The Quest for World Environmental Cooperation: The Case of the UN Global Environment Monitoring System_ (London: Routledge, 1992); Regina S. Axelrod, David Leonard Downie, and Norman J. Vig, eds., _The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy_ , 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2005); Frank Biermann and Steffen Bauer, eds., _A World Environment Organization: Solution or Threat for Effective International Environmental Governance?_ (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005); W. Bradnee Chambers and Jessica F. Green, eds., _Reforming International Environmental Governance: From Institutional Limits to Innovative Reforms_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2005); Pamela S. Chasek, David L. Downie, and Janet Welsh Brown, _Global Environmental Politics_ , 4th ed. (Boulder: Colo.: Westview, 2005); and Pamela S. Chasek, _Earth Negotiations: Analyzing Thirty Years of Environmental Diplomacy_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2001).

. Shanna Halpren, _The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: Process and Documentation_ (Providence, R.I.: Academic Council on the United Nations System, 1992).

. Michael McCoy and Patrick McCully, _The Road from Rio: An NGO Guide to Environment and Development_ (Amsterdam: International Books, 1993). For a more general discussion, see Kerstin Martens, _NGOs and the United Nations: Institutionalization, Professionalization and Adaptation_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). See also the three reports in 2001, 2002, and 2003 by Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor, eds., _Global Civil Society_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 2002, and 2003).

. Maurice Strong, _Where on Earth Are We Going?_ (New York: Norton, 2001).

. Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss, _The Power of UN Ideas: Lessons from the First Sixty Years_ (New York: United Nations Intellectual History Project, 2005), and _UN Ideas That Changed the World_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

. Commission on International Development, _Partners in Development_ (New York: Praeger, 1969); _Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); _The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty_ (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001); and Commission on Human Security, _Human Security Now_ (New York: Commission on Human Security, 2003). This was also a view expressed in oral histories from some of the main participants in Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, Louis Emmerij, and Richard Jolly, _UN Voices: The Challenge of Development and Social Justice_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), part three; for the complete transcripts, see the CD-ROM _The Complete Oral History Transcripts from "UN Voices"_ (New York: United Nations Intellectual History Project, 2006).

. Simon Romero and John M. Broder, "Progress on the Sidelines as Rio Conference Ends," _New York Times_ , June 24, 2012.

. Duncan French, ed. _Global Justice and Sustainable Development_ (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010).

. World Bank, _World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

. Joseph E. Stiglitz, "Redefining the Role of the State: What Should It Do? How Should It Do It? And How Should These Decisions Be Made?" paper presented at the tenth anniversary of MITI Research Institute, Tokyo, 1998, and _Globalization and Its Discontents_ (New York: Norton, 2002).

. Laura Zanotti, _Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post–Cold War Era_ (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).

. Barry Herman, "Civil Society and the Financing for Development Initiative at the United Nations," in _Civil Society and Global Finance_ , ed. Jan Aart Scholte with Albrecht Schabel (London: Routledge, 2002), 162–177.

. Laurence Schwesinger, _Alliances for Sustainable Development: Business and NGO Partnerships_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Deva Surya, _Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business_ (London: Routledge, 2012).

. John Gerard Ruggie, "global_governance.net: The Global Compact as Learning Network," _Global Governance_ 7, no. 4 (2001): 371–378; and Jean-Philippe Thérien and Vincent Pouliot, "The Global Compact: Shifting the Politics of International Development?" _Global Governance_ 12, no. 1 (2006): 55–75.

. Ellen Paine, "The Road to the Global Compact: Corporate Power and the Battle Over Global Public Policy at the United Nations," Global Policy Forum, October 2000, <http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/social-and-economic-policy-at-the-un/un-and-business/32188.html>.

. Catia Gregoratti, _The UN Global Compact_ (London: Routledge, 2013); and Oliver F. Williams, _Corporate Social Responsibilit_ y (London: Routledge, 2013).

. UN document A/AC.257/12.

. See the UN Global Compact's website, <http://www.unglobalcompact.org>.

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993._

. Fen Hampson and Christopher Penny, "Human Security," in _The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 539–557; Susan Pick de Weiss and Jenna Sirkin, _Breaking the Poverty Cycle: The Human Basis for Sustainable Development_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

. Ken Conca, "Greening the UN: Environmental Organizations and the UN System," in _NGOs, the UN, and Global Governance_ , ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Leon Gordenker (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 114–115.

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993_ , 2.

. Sheldon Leader and David Ong, eds., _Global Project Finance, Human Rights and Sustainable Development_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

. S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong, _The UN and Human Security: A Critical History_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); and Roland Paris, "Peacebuilding and the Limits of International Liberalism," _International Security_ 22 (Fall 1997): 54–89.

. Fen Osler Hampson et al., _Madness in the Multitude: Human Security and World Disorder_ (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001).

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993_ , 2.
* * *

CHAPTER 11

* * *

_The UN and Development in a Globalizing World_

GLOBALIZATION, WHICH HAS economic, social, and political dimensions, is not a new phenomenon. Yet the forces and processes associated with it, as well as opportunities and challenges, are ever more apparent in today's world. While economic globalization yields many benefits, especially to some in wealthier countries, or perhaps for many in the upper classes of all countries, it also has brought in its wake unprecedented inequality. Former secretary-general Kofi Annan reflected on this problem in _"We the Peoples": The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century_ : "The benefits of globalization are plain to see: faster economic growth, higher living standards, accelerated innovation and diffusion of technology and management skills, new economic opportunities for individuals and countries alike." Yet these benefits are distributed very unequally and inequitably. They are "highly concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and are spread unevenly within them." Globalization also has a malevolent side, giving rise to different, often criminal, kinds of violence and threats to human security.

The impact of globalization varies dramatically from region to region and case to case. As underscored in an earlier report by Annan, the "actual experience of globalization, to a great degree, varied with the level of development at which a country experienced it." In some cases, where national economies were well positioned in terms of capacity and economic orientation, rapid economic growth has ensued. Elsewhere the result has been much less positive, contributing to increased poverty, inequality, marginalization, and human insecurity—particularly through unemployment. In some places globalization may actually undermine many of the development efforts by UN agencies.

The Millennium Declaration identified several development challenges that have been translated into eight concrete Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It also identified globalization as a key issue confronting the international community of states. UN member states accordingly pledged to act "to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people." But what is globalization? How should we assess the UN system's responses to it? How does globalization affect the MDGs and the recurring tension between state and market-driven efforts to promote sustainable human development and human security? Answers to these questions are at the center of this chapter.

**GLOBALIZATION**

A cottage industry has developed for scholarship on "globalization." On one hand, globalization as a concept is useful for understanding contemporary world affairs. On the other hand, it has no widely accepted definition. At its core globalization refers to the movement of goods, services, ideas, and people across national borders in an ever-shrinking world. In this sense it is related to internationalization, inter-connectedness, interdependence. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, global transactions in foreign exchange markets had reached a level nearly eighty times larger than world trade. The growth in foreign direct investment and portfolio capital flows in developing countries has also outpaced international trade. The expansion of global markets and production and other aspects of the worldwide diffusion of capitalism, however, is only one dimension of the social transformations involved in globalization. The expansion of markets, for example, challenges the state and institutions and has led to the rise of new social and political movements.

Globalization is profoundly changing the face of world politics and the nature of human social interaction and existence, and thus it should also change the face of multilateralism. The nature, structure, geographical pattern, and magnitude of world trade and investment, for example, are in transformation. As the 2008 financial crisis in the United States made clear, globalization also means that serious economic problems in the world's largest economy cause serious economic problems in many other parts of the world. Similarly, the 2012 sovereign debt crisis in Europe threatened to throw the entire world economy into recession, just as the slowdown in China was unsettling for Asian economies in particular.

Economic liberalization has fostered the diffusion of multinational production networks, capital mobility, and new technologies, which has tended in many cases to place downward pressures on wages and working conditions and otherwise make labor in developing societies increasingly susceptible to global forces. The development of financial markets and institutions, along with the tremendous growth in foreign direct investment, short-term portfolio investment, and other transnational capital flows in developing regions, has dramatically transformed the political economic climate there. These changes have had an especially hard impact on poorer developing countries in terms of growth, poverty, and income inequality.

The concept of globalization provides a context within which to frame and understand issues and challenges of global governance and assess the work of international institutions in fulfilling their mandates in promoting human security and sustainable human development. The central challenge facing the United Nations is to find ways to use the opportunities inherent in globalization to help people everywhere better cope with its undesirable side effects. Opportunities are related to increased access to information and communications technology, greater public exposure to and awareness of their interdependence and vulnerabilities, and "real-time" social exchanges. The strategy for implementing the MDGs illustrates both the opportunities and the challenges globalization presents for achieving sustainable human development and security.

**THE MDG STRATEGY**

International gatherings over the past two decades have resulted in a largely consensual strategy for assessing progress toward dealing with the negative impacts of globalization and eradicating poverty. At the same time, these gatherings reflected a tension between states favoring a more authoritative and regulative approach to promoting development and those seeking to harness market forces to this end. This tension has resulted in an ambiguous compromise whereby both strategies are pursued, albeit with asymmetrical resources. The consensual strategy is organized around eight main development goals, the MDGs, and eighteen related targets. Each target has a specific time frame and aim and one or more indicators to be monitored to assess movement toward achievement. The Millennium Development Goals are enumerated in Table 11.1.

Seven of the eight main goals focus on substantive objectives. The eighth MDG deals with creating the capacity to achieve the other seven. Cumulatively, the MDGs can be seen as both mutually reinforcing and intertwined. Eradicating extreme poverty, for example, would most likely drastically reduce infant mortality, improve maternal health, and better ensure environmental sustainability. Similarly, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, empowering women, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases would undoubtedly move forward progress toward eradicating poverty.

A UN system-wide strategy has been designed for mobilizing support and monitoring progress toward achieving the MDGs. The strategy has four main components: Millennium Project, Millennium Campaign, Millennium Reports, and country-level monitoring and operational country-level activities. The Millennium Project sought to mobilize scholars from around the world and focus their collective wisdom and research efforts on achieving the MDGs. The purpose of this initiative was to help member states and agencies develop implementation strategies for accomplishing the MDGs. It endeavored to identify priorities, implementation strategies, and financing means. At its inception, the project was directed by Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs, who served as special adviser to the secretary-general. Ten expert task forces were set up to carry out the needed research and report their findings to the secretary-general and the UNDP administrator. Each task force focused on a specific set of MDG targets. Part of the process was the _Human Development Report 2003_ , which focused on the MDGs. Also, the campaign seeks to promote and reinforce cooperation among UN agencies, the IMF/World Bank, and the WTO.

**TABLE 11.1** Millennium Development Goals and Targets

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**Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger**

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Target 1 | Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day

Target 2 | Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

**Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education**

Target 3 | Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

**Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women**

Target 4 | Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015

**Goal 4: Reduce child mortality**

Target 5 | Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

**Goal 5: Improve maternal health**

Target 6 | Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

**Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases**

Target 7 | Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

Target 8 | Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

**Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability**

Target 9 | Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources

Target 10 | Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water

Target 11 | By 2020, achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

**Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development**

Target 12 | Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system (includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction—both nationally and internationally)

Target 13 | Address the special needs of the least developed countries (includes tariff- and quota-free access for LDC exports; enhanced program of debt relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction)

Target 14 | Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states (through the Program of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly)

Target 15 | Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term

Target 16 | In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth

Target 17 | In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries

Target 18 | In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

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_Source:_ <http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm>.

The final summary report by Sachs's team, _Investing in Development_ , was published in March 2005 as background for the World Summit and noted that the development aid system is still not MDG-based and lacks a coherent approach to poverty. The ten accompanying reports provided statistical backup in some depth for the argument. Although some low-level coordination has taken place, the IMF, the World Bank, and the regional development banks still are not well linked to UN agencies for local projects. In 2006, MDG Support replaced the Millennium Project and works with countries to develop and implement their national development strategies. Two advisory groups were established to assist in implementing the project. The first is the UN Experts Group, consisting of senior representatives from UN agencies to ensure that the ten task forces have access to and fully utilize the relevant knowledge, experience, and capacities of the UN system. The second is an International Advisory Panel of experts in the respective areas of concern. The project officially ended its work in 2006, and in 2007 it was integrated into the UNDP.

The Millennium Campaign was designed to mobilize support for the MDGs. This entailed coaching member states to comply with the commitments already made and convincing them that greater consistency across trade, finance, education, health, development, and other ministries is crucial to MDG success. At least one positive outcome of the campaign at the 2005 World Summit was to garner U.S. support for the MDGs, and it helped recommit and refocus the UN at the MDG Summit in 2010.

The Millennium reports constitute the third pillar of the strategy. The reports are individual country report cards. Country-level monitoring entails collecting and analyzing data on progress toward achieving individual MDGs. UN teams assist countries in designing and implementing policies necessary for successful progress. While not all countries have submitted reports, the vast majority have, and the reports indicated significant progress to meeting the MDGs in 2015. The UN's Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) reported, "The Millennium Development Goals, over a relatively short period of time, have gained tremendous currency, primarily in development circles but increasingly in related trade and finance circles. Many actors are now counting on the goals . . . to galvanize disparate and sometimes competing development agendas and are imagining how they might become a powerful political tool to hold governments and international institutions accountable." The MDGs provide a widely used framework for examining the work of the UN system in response to globalization.

Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, president of the sixty-third session of the General Assembly, joined by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, addresses a high-level event of world leaders, private sector representatives, and civil society partners to discuss specific ways to energize collaboration to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. (UN Photo 196894/Marco Castro)

The financial crisis of 2008 and the continuing economic fallout has caused instability in the world economy, as noted above. Recession in many parts of Europe and little or no growth elsewhere in the advanced industrialized economies has also affected the ability of donors to commit the resources necessary to meet the MDGs. This translated into a dual crisis for many developing states. In spite of initial concerns that the crisis would threaten progress toward the MDGs, the effect has been uneven, with developing countries more integrated into the world economy (such as Latin America) suffering more than states in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) is monitoring and tracking the impact of the crisis. DESA remains concerned that high unemployment, especially among young people and women, coupled with austerity and the threat of a double-dip recession will lead to setbacks in reducing poverty. In spite of these challenges, the UN remains focused on implementing the MDGs, adjusting and adapting along the way.

**IMPLEMENTING THE MDGS**

It is most useful to unpack progress and shortcomings in the implementation of the MDGs through a topic-by-topic evaluation.

_Poverty_

Poverty eradication lies at the core of the MDGs and the UN's sustainable development efforts. The world organization measures extreme poverty by determining the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day (previously the level was $1.00 a day). Given this measure, _The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012_ ( _MDGR 2012_ ) indicated that poverty rates have declined in all regions since 1990. The absolute number of extremely poor in the developing world fell from over 2 billion in 1990 to under 1.4 billion in 2008, and the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from 47 percent in 1990 to 24 percent in 2008. As reflected a year earlier in the 2011 _MDGR_ , "despite significant setbacks for the 2008–2009 economic downturn, exacerbated by the food and energy crisis, the world is still on track to reach the poverty-reduction target." In fact, preliminary estimates for the last several years indicate that the target of reducing extreme poverty to half of its 1990 level "will have been achieved on a global level well ahead of the 2015 deadline."

Although extreme poverty worldwide is in decline, the benefits of growth measures by overall statistics disguise the uneven distribution of such benefits. China continues to make impressive progress and, along with India, is statistically responsible for progress measured globally because the two account for a third of the world's population and even a higher percentage of the MDG developing countries being measured. China is distinctive in having made tremendous strides during the 1990s in reducing the number of extremely poor. This Chinese success correlates highly with its unprecedented economic growth during the same time period, which has accelerated in the twenty-first century. A number of other East Asian and Pacific countries made impressive gains too, cutting by half the number of extremely poor in the region as a whole. The international community overall is on track to meet target 1 in 2015; however, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are not and remain a concern for all of the MDG targets. Eighty percent of those living in extreme poverty reside in these two regions.

_Hunger_

Hunger and malnutrition are highly correlated with poverty. The specific target is to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015. In 1997, the number of chronically hungry people stood at 791 million, which represented a dramatic reduction from 1970, when the figure was 959 million. Yet, in the late 1990s, a strong reversal occurred, and by 2002 the number had risen to 852 million. In 2002, the MDG hunger target was being met in only 3 percent of the countries, and only 46 percent were on track. Of the remaining 51 percent, about half (24 percent of the total) were lagging far behind. On a somewhat more positive note, child hunger is declining in most regions. As of 2008, the figure still hovered at 850 million—over 15 percent of the world's population.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data indicate that over one-third of the people living in least developed countries (LDCs) and 17 percent of people in the developing world as a whole are undernourished, and the rate of reduction reflects that the situation is getting worse, not better in recent years. According to the _MDGR 2007_ , "globally, the proportion of children under five who are underweight declined by one fifth over the period 1990–2005. Eastern Asia showed the greatest improvement and is surpassing the MDG target, largely due to the nutritional advances of China, where child malnutrition was cut in half between 1990 and 2006." The _MDGR 2012_ notes that still nearly 20 percent of the children in the developing world are underweight, with the poorest children in Southern Asia most affected.

Predictably, Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while improving somewhat, are still at unacceptable levels. Yet there are positive stories even there. Faced with famine and the opposition of some of its international donors, for example, the Malawi government in 2005 instituted an aggressive subsidization program for one million smallholder maize farmers. This program has yielded significant results. Not only has the country diverted famine, but it now even exports maize to neighboring countries. Nevertheless, if current trends continue or are worsened by the global recession, the MDG hunger target will remain elusive. The global spike in commodity prices, including food, in 2007–2008 exacerbated hunger not only in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa but also in places like Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. For many developing countries, the food crisis was more unsettling than the global economic and financial crisis. Rising food prices in 2012 again threatened progress toward this goal.

_Education_

The education target (MDG 2) is to ensure that by 2015 "children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education." The record to date, however, indicates lackluster results toward achieving MDG 2.

Developing-country primary-school net enrollment rates average 90 percent. Much progress has been made in many parts of the developing world, including Asian CIS, East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North Africa. There has also been progress toward reducing gender disparities in many regions. Yet 121 million children are being left behind, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Oceania, West Asia, and European CIS countries. With completion rates of around 50 percent, sub-Saharan Africa is at the bottom of the list, followed by South Asia, which stands at around 70 percent. Well over half of the children out of school are girls.

On balance, then, the world is far off target for meeting this MDG. Enrollment is increasing very slowly, having gone up by just 8 percent since 1999. Moreover, most of this increase occurred prior to 2004. Since then, little progress has been registered. Sub-Saharan Africa has made some significant improvements, with an 18-percentage-point gain since 1999, but prospects for meeting the goal by 2015 are dim. At the 2005 World Summit, member states reaffirmed their commitment "that all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality, to eliminate gender inequality and imbalance and to renew efforts to improve girls' education." Moreover, member states committed themselves to support national efforts to implement the Education for All initiatives. But lofty words have been heard before. As the _MDGR 2011_ indicated, "being poor, female or living in a conflict zone increases the probability that a child will be out of school." Population growth plays a major role in facilitating or constraining a country's ability to move ahead. In certain regions, such as East Asia and the Pacific, where the school-age population is projected to decline by some twenty-two million in the next decade, providing universal education is not as daunting as in other developing regions. On the other hand, in sub-Saharan Africa the primary-school-age population is projected to grow by over thirty-four million, adding yet more stress to already overburdened educational infrastructures. Accordingly, sub-Saharan Africa lags well behind the other regions. A large part of that region is unlikely to come anywhere close to reaching the MDG education goal.

Illiteracy remains a major problem, with more than one hundred million people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four unable to read or write. To spearhead the drive for universal literacy, the General Assembly has declared 2003–2012 "The UN Literacy Decade." This UN system-wide effort, coordinated by UNESCO, focuses on extending literacy to all who are not currently literate, children and adults alike. Thus, the poorest and marginalized population segments are key targets for the campaign, which is being conducted under the banner of "Literacy for All: Voice for All, Learning for All." Creating sustainable, local "literacy environments" is a primary objective of the initiative.

The International Plan of Action for the Literacy Decade outlines six primary avenues of effort. First, policy change is required in most countries to provide a framework for increased local participation in literacy programs. Second, literacy programs need to be flexible, use appropriate and culturally relevant materials, respect the needs of learners, and use appropriate languages. Third, attention needs to be paid to capacity building and training literacy facilitators. Fourth, policies and policy actions need to be grounded in sound empirical research. Fifth, broad-based community participation is required to build a sense of community ownership over the literacy programs. Finally, effective indicators of progress are needed, as are enhanced systems for monitoring and evaluation. By at least one measure, the worldwide literacy rate of youths between fifteen and twenty-four increased from 83 percent to 90 percent, with South Asia and North Africa leading the way.

Various UN agencies have been attempting to bolster the global effort to achieve MDG 2. For example, there is a UN system-wide initiative, the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, to assist governments in eliminating gender disparities. The ILO has placed special focus on promoting free and universally accessible education. Member states are being called on to enforce compulsory schooling up to a minimum age for employment. The FAO and UNESCO have spearheaded a partnership—Education for Rural People—with other international agencies, governments, and civil society to reduce rural-urban disparities and improve the quality of rural education. UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, and Education International have launched a program: Focusing Resources on Effective School Health. UN organizations, individually and collectively, can do only so much. Real and sustainable progress depends on commitments and follow-through at the national and international levels by a host of partners.

One of the keys to increasing school enrollment has been abolishing school fees, which has been especially critical in Africa. In one year alone, between 2004 and 2005, public school enrollment in Ghana's most deprived districts increased from 4.2 million to 5.4 million. In Kenya the change was even more dramatic: from 2003 to 2004 primary school enrollment vaulted from 1.3 million to just over 6 million. Other African countries, including Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda, have experienced significant, albeit much less dramatic, results. Considerable progress has also been made in Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, where enrollment ratios increased by 25 percent, with the abolition of school fees being the main driving force.

_Women in Development_

Poor women are the most marginalized of social groups who do not benefit from globalization. MDG 3 focuses on gender inequality and empowering women for development. Globalization can clearly be a powerful force for development, but women are often victims of structural violence, in that they are systematically excluded from the resources necessary to develop their human potential. While promoting gender equality is an important objective in itself, enhancing the status of women in society is also important for a variety of reasons. Reducing gender differences in education may lead to other positive effects, such as increased creation of sustainable livelihoods and increases in productivity, improved maternal health, reduced fertility rates, and higher primary school retention. As the UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown argued persuasively, "Empowering women is not just one of the goals; it plays a critical role in the achievement of the other seven as well." He continued, "Women are the poorest of the poor: disproportionately, women lack access to land, water, and sources of energy; women lack access to education and other social services; and too often women are absent from decision-making, not only at the national, regional, or local level, but even within their own families."

The main target specified for this goal is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. By 2005 a large number of countries appeared to be on track. In East and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the CIS, basic parity had been attained, and despite problems, much progress had been made in South Asia. However, substantial disparities persist in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia. In 2005, 113 countries had failed to achieve parity in primary and secondary education, and at the then-current rates only 18 of these were on track to achieve the target by 2015. The situation with regard to secondary education was bleaker. Only about one-third of the developing countries had attained parity in secondary education.

The _MDGR 2012_ announced that parity had been achieved in primary education in the developing world as a whole. Of the 131 developing countries reporting data by sex, 71 had achieved gender parity. Again, however, sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia lagged behind.

Women lag far behind men in terms of wage employment in the nonagricultural sector. Although women account for half the hours worked worldwide, only about 30 percent of their work is paid, compared to 75 percent for men. Among the notable efforts to reverse the situation has been the UNDP's partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to use low-cost technology to enhance women's productivity and income levels in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal. After just two years, women in the program have tripled their incomes, and evidence suggests that the program has also dramatically improved literacy levels among women.

One area in which women hold the dubious honor of being far ahead of men is HIV/AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV-positive women outnumber HIV-positive men 3 to 1.

A May 2003 UNIFEM report, _Progress of the World's Women 2002: Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals_ , disclosed that "although women have progressed relatively slowly in the last two years in the areas of education, literacy and employment, there have been encouraging signs of improvement in women's legislative representation." The report pointed out that this MDG indicator is the only gender inequality indicator that is not linked to poverty and disparities between rich and poor countries. "The United States, France and Japan, where women's share of parliamentary seats is 12 percent, 11.8 percent and 10 percent respectively, lag behind 13 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which is experiencing the greatest regional poverty in the world. In South Africa and Mozambique, women's share of seats is 30 percent, while Rwanda and Uganda have 25.7 percent and 24.7 percent respectively." As the _MDGR 2007_ noted, the existence of a government-required quota system makes all the difference. In a quota system, women's inclusion in politics is authoritatively mandated by setting aside seats in legislatures and positions in government specifically for women. In 2003, for example, Rwanda adopted a new constitution that mandates a minimum of 30 percent of parliamentary seats go to women. As a result, Rwanda now has the largest proportion of women in parliament in the world.

Underlying the UN's work in this area for the past two and a half decades has been the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The convention binds acceding states to several important obligations. State parties agree to incorporate the principles of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws, and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women; establish tribunals and other public institutions to ensure the effective protection of women against discrimination; and ensure elimination of all acts of discrimination against women by persons, organizations, or enterprises. Although the United States is a signatory, it has never ratified the convention. Some 170 other countries have ratified it.

UN member states' collective commitment to the rights of women was reinforced at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, twenty years after the issue was officially and visibly placed on the international agenda at the first global conference on women in Mexico City. The UN's Commission on Human Rights was another important forum for promoting women's rights. A focal point of the 2003 commission proceedings was an open debate on "integration of the human rights of women and a gender perspective." Commission members addressed a number of critical issues, including eradicating violence against women.

UN Women, which incorporated UNIFEM and merges and builds on its work, plays a key advocacy role in promoting women's rights and the implementation of the convention against the discrimination of women. UN Women is committed to eliminating discrimination against women and girls and to empower women so they can achieve equality as "partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security." The MDGs are a central focus area for UN Women, which employs a three-pronged strategy. First, it places the MDGs at the center of all of its operational programs to ensure they contribute to meeting the goals. Second, UN Women monitors and analyzes progress toward the MDGs and works with governments and intergovernmental organizations to collect data to assess gender gaps. Third, UN Women plays the role of advocate, raising awareness and building support for the MDGs especially as they relate to women and girls. The logic is simple: improving the status and the quality of life of women is the key to meeting the MDGs.

_Transnational Public Health_

Three MDGs deal with various health-related topics: reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. In addition, one of the targets for the eighth MDG calls for a global partnership with pharmaceutical companies to provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries. All of these health-related goals are mutually reinforcing and are highly associated with the overall goal of poverty reduction. Disease and poor health provide a drag on economic growth and development. HIV/AIDS is particularly acute in this regard and threatens to undermine the development efforts of the entire sub-Saharan African region.

The issue of the role of child mortality in development is complex, and reducing infant and child mortality is problematic because of the lack of adequate medical treatment and immunization, unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, civil strife, endemic disease, and malnutrition. Approximately 70 percent of child deaths are associated with some combination of disease and/or malnutrition, with pneumonia being the leading cause of death. "Rapid improvements before 1990 gave hope that mortality rates of children under five could be cut by two-thirds in the following 25 years. But progress slowed almost everywhere in the 1990s, and in parts of Africa infant mortality rates increased." Since 1990 under-five mortality has been reduced by 35 percent. Yet the situation with regard to progress toward achieving the MDG child mortality goal is bleak. More children die from disease and malnutrition than the total number of adults who die from the three great endemic killer diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Still, strides have been made, particularly in Northern Africa, where the under-five mortality rate declined by 68 percent. Unfortunately, the highest levels remain in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malnutrition is a leading cause of child death, and poor, rural areas have a disproportionate number of deaths regardless of geographic location. Malaria and other diseases are also leading causes. In this regard, the "Nothing but Nets" campaign to provide insecticide-treated bed nets in malaria-prone countries has made a real difference. In Kenya, for example, there was a 44 percent reduction in child deaths among those sleeping under insecticide-treated nets compared with children who were not. Measles is another child killer, which strikes some 30 million to 40 million children each year and kills nearly half a million. The Global Measles Initiative to vaccinate children was launched in 2001 and represents another success story: measles mortality declined by 68 percent between 2000 and 2006. In sub-Saharan Africa the results have been even more dramatic, with a 91 percent reduction in child measles deaths. Bangladesh's measles eradication program gained world attention in 2006, when 33.5 million children were vaccinated in twenty days. By 2009, the world witnessed a 78 percent drop in measles death; however, the UN warns that reduced funding could lead to setbacks. Moreover, children in hard-to-reach areas still tend to lack access to the measles vaccine.

MDG 5 centers on improving maternal health care. The target for this goal is to reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio. Maternal health problems are the leading cause of death of women of reproductive age, and every minute a woman dies of complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Nearly all maternal-related deaths occur in developing countries, and most are preventable. Inadequate delivery services and prenatal and postnatal care as well as unsafe abortions account for a large number of such deaths. For every woman who dies during childbirth, twenty more sustain debilitating pregnancy-related injuries. In the context of high-income countries the answer seems simple: adequate prenatal and postnatal maternal health care, family planning, skilled birth attendants, clean birthing facilities with adequate and safe blood supplies, and prevention of unsafe abortions. Unfortunately, in poor countries such luxuries simply are often not available, especially to the poor. Progress toward achieving the MDG target for maternal health is mixed and very disappointing in parts of Asia and nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia account for 85 percent of maternal deaths worldwide. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, a woman has a 1 in 16 chance of dying during pregnancy and childbirth, compared with a 1 in 2,800 chance in developed countries. Adolescent fertility has increased in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, which in itself represents another problem, because girls ages ten to fourteen are five times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than women ages twenty to twenty-four. Part of the challenge is that "no single intervention can address the multiple causes of maternal deaths."

Recently, several reports have indicated that maternal deaths have declined sharply. In 2010, the _Lancet_ issued a report contradicting the perception that little or no progress was being made. The study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation using different data and methods from those used by the UN, found a 1–3 percent annual decline in maternal mortality rates since 1980. While some countries showed an increase, like Zimbabwe, many countries showed substantial progress to MDG 5. The study also found that more than 50 percent of the maternal deaths in 2008 occurred in six countries (India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Congo). The reasons for the overall improvement were lower pregnancy rates, higher income and education for women, and the increasing availability of skilled attendants. The rising rates in eastern and southern Africa were the result of HIV infection and the lack of access to antiretroviral drugs. The findings were initially viewed with skepticism, but the UN confirmed the findings with its own report, _Trends in Maternal Mortality 1990–2010_ , issued in May 2012.

Adequately measuring and assessing maternal mortality is difficult for a variety of reasons. Most countries do not have good vital registration systems, and underreporting is acute in situations where a skilled health attendant is absent. The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel is used as an important indicator because of the high correlation between maternal mortality and the absence of skilled personnel. Within countries, great gaps exist. In India, for example, the rich are seven times more likely than the poor to have access to a skilled attendant, and in Ethiopia the ratio is 28 to 1. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) initiated a Campaign to End Fistula in 2006. Obstetric fistula afflicts many women in developing countries and is highly correlated with maternal death. Obstetric fistula is a complication of pregnancy in high-risk areas whereby the excretory organs attach to the reproductive organs, poisoning the woman. Even if death does not result, the woman often faces incontinence and an inability to control bowel movements. The campaign operates in forty countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Arab states; in late 2008, significant progress was reported in twenty-five of those countries. Several NGOs are also working to combat the problem, most notably the Worldwide Fistula Fund (WFF), which operates primarily in Niger and received attention in 2012 for its success saving women and improving the quality of their lives.

Maternal mortality is also linked to HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other endemic diseases. This connection is one of the reasons why combating these diseases is MDG 6. HIV/AIDS is currently the most devastating health pandemic of our time—or, for that matter, any time in history—that challenges international cooperation. HIV/AIDS has become the fourth largest cause of death in the world. The MDG target related to AIDS is to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. Yet this task seems daunting, especially in Africa and other low-income countries.

According to the _MDGR 2012_ , new HIV infections have declined, and the number of people living with HIV continues to rise. In its 2011 _Global Report on HIV/AIDS_ , UNAIDS reported that 34 million persons were living with AIDS in 2010—up from 33.3 million the year before—and AIDS deaths had declined from 1.9 million in 2009 to 1.8 million in 2010. The number of newly infected persons had leveled off at 2.7 million per year.

These figures show that the number of persons receiving treatment has increased significantly. In low- and middle-income countries, for example, 47 percent of those eligible for treatment were receiving it in 2010. In 2009 the figure was 36 percent. In absolute terms, 1.4 million more persons with AIDS were being covered. Still, in 2010 there were 2.7 million new cases of AIDS worldwide. Seventy percent of these new cases and almost half of all AIDS-related deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa.

The relationship between HIV/AIDS and humanitarian crises in Africa is particularly acute, as extremely high levels of HIV coexist with a severe food crisis. Over fourteen million persons are on the verge of starvation in six southern African countries, including Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, where adult HIV prevalence exceeds 30 percent. "Long-standing, severe epidemics are plunging millions of people deeper into destitution and desperation as their labour power weakens, incomes dwindle, assets shrink and households disintegrate."

The situation in Africa clearly illustrates how the implications of AIDS for development go far beyond economic factors. One of the most significant impacts has been on educational systems. In the most highly infected countries, "HIV/AIDS kills teachers faster than they can be trained, makes orphans of students, and threatens to derail efforts . . . to get all boys and girls into primary school by 2015." Moreover, AIDS has resulted in a widening gender gap. In addition to being more susceptible to infection than boys, girls are more prone to dropping out of school to care for sick family members.

The Sachs Millennium Project report and the HLP report on threats, challenges, and change both stressed the need to commit the resources required to deal effectively and quickly with AIDS. Nearly all the AIDS-related recommendations in these reports found their way into the secretary-general's 2008 report to the General Assembly on Progress Made in the Implementation of the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. One of the secretary-general's key recommendations focused on the need to mobilize the financial resources required to fund a comprehensive response to the pandemic. He argued that an estimated $18 billion above what was currently pledged would be required to fund worldwide HIV/AIDS efforts over three years, including treatment, care, and prevention.

Between 1998 and 2007, there was a tenfold increase in funding for anti–HIV/AIDS programs globally. This amount, however, represented less than half of what is estimated to be necessary annually to make headway in the fight against the disease. Largely as a result of increased funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), in 2007 there was a 42 percent increase in access to antiretroviral therapy. Despite the increase, less than one-third of those needing treatment had access.

In his State of the Union address in 2003, President George W. Bush announced the launch of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to provide $15 billion over five years. Congress responded positively to the plan, yet the White House consistently underrequested the level of funding needed to fulfill the promise. Also, even if fully funded, all but $1 billion of the $15 billion pledged is to be spent on bilateral programs in only fifteen targeted countries. Of the $1 billion pledged for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (a health funding partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector, and affected communities), only 20 percent may be used for HIV prevention, and of that amount a minimum of one-third must be spent on abstinence education. In 2008, Congress increased the PEPFAR program to $48 billion and broadened its mandate.

In the wake of the economic downturn since 2008, the financial situation has darkened. In November 2011, for instance, the Global Fund announced that it had been forced to freeze spending for new programs for three years. Several major donor countries suspended their contributions to the agency in the wake of a scandal over mismanagement of funds and fraud, while other donors had cut back their contributions as a result of the global economic downturn.

The lower status of women has led to the "feminization" of HIV/AIDS. Married women are contracting the disease from their partners and often are not in a position to question their partners' multiple sexual encounters or insist on condom use. As such, women are contracting the disease at a higher rate than men. Compounding the problem is the care of so-called AIDS orphans. As the _MDGR 2007_ highlights, "The care of orphans is an enormous social problem, which will only get worse as more parents die of AIDS." The UN estimated that by 2010 over twenty million will have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Clearly this will challenge local, national, and global efforts to reduce childhood poverty and hunger as well as provide primary and secondary education.

The second target for MDG 6 is to have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases. Malaria is the most prevalent tropical disease in the world, with between 200 million and 500 million cases a year, resulting in nearly 1 million deaths. Although malaria is found in 109 countries, approximately 90 percent of the cases are located in sub-Saharan Africa, with other pockets of prevalence in tropical climates. The death rate from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa is truly staggering. About 90 percent of those deaths are children under the age of five. The UN has pursued a variety of prophylactic measures, the most promising of which is the use of insecticide-treated bed nets. The UN goal was to increase the coverage of people using these nets to 80 percent by 2010. In 2010, 76 percent of the 765 million people at risk in sub-Saharan Africa were covered. While progress is being made, no region is on track for achieving the target of halting or reversing the spread of malaria by 2015.

One-third of the world's population—over 2 billion people—is infected with tuberculosis (TB). Luckily, most such individuals, especially in more affluent countries, will never develop active TB. The developing world is home to about 90 percent of all active cases. In terms of impact, TB is the single most devastating disease among adults in the developing world, and sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the most affected regions. TB and HIV/AIDS are highly associated diseases. In sub-Saharan Africa, three-quarters of those infected with HIV/AIDS develop active TB. No region is on track for achieving the MDG target for TB. At the same time, one of the success stories in international health has been the battle against polio. Only a few small pockets of the disease persist. Of all remaining cases, 99 percent are located in three countries—India, Nigeria, and Pakistan—with most of the remaining 1 percent located in just four additional countries. WHO, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Rotary International announced the new Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 2003. This program focuses its efforts in these seven most affected countries and in six others where there exists significant risk of reinfection. In spite of progress, new cases were reported in 2012, prompting Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make a public appeal for more funding, as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has only half of the $2 billion necessary for vaccines and staff.

_Ensuring Environmental Sustainability_

The MDG 7 of ensuring environmental sustainability centers on integrating the principles of sustainable development in development efforts and reversing the loss of environmental resources. The list of environmental problems plaguing the world's poor is daunting, including access to safe water and sanitation, modern energy supplies, deforestation, and desertification. Global climate change has emerged as a major environmental problem facing the international community. As articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which contributes to the buildup of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. Climate change is also exacerbated by other environmental problems such as deforestation and desertification.

In 1989, the UN held a conference in the Netherlands to map out a strategy for tackling climate change. The three-part strategy that emerged centered on first getting all states to commit to stabilizing and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by a fixed date. Second, only the advanced industrialized states should have binding targets and should pay for new environmentally friendly technologies to be used by developing countries to help them reduce their emissions without compromising their economic development. The third part was to conduct more research to reach a scientific consensus as to the causes and effects of climate change. This strategy served as the basis for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which resulted in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change and the follow-up treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol was innovative in many respects. First, it set binding reductions on greenhouse-gas emissions on developed states whereby the European Union, the United States, and Japan agreed to reduce their emissions by 8 percent, 7 percent, and 6 percent below 1990 levels, respectively. To encourage efficiency and encourage growth, Kyoto also included transferable emissions permits that would allow states to buy and sell the right to pollute. This works by assigning each country a certain amount of emitting rights, determined by their contribution to world GDP and other considerations, and placing a cap on overall global emissions. For example, China, which is experiencing tremendous economic development (and emitting more greenhouse gases as a result), should not have to sacrifice economic growth because it has exceeded its emissions limit. Rather, China could buy the pollution rights of a sub-Saharan African country, which probably emits very little. Under this kind of "cap and trade" arrangement, China can continue its economic development without externalizing the costs, and the sub-Saharan country earns money that can be used to achieve its own development goals. The main drawback of the Kyoto Protocol resulted from a negotiating concession, namely that developing countries only had "voluntary" reduction targets. Despite the drawbacks, the Clinton administration agreed to the protocol but did not submit it to the U.S. Senate, as the prospects for passage were slim. In 2001, the Bush administration rejected the protocol.

With the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter on the sidelines, the international community struggled along with a series of conferences in Marrakech (2001) and Montreal (2005). The United States participated in these conferences but only as a nonbinding member. In November 2006, a framework for UN collaboration in assisting countries to develop the capacity to respond effectively to climate change—the Nairobi Framework—grew out of a climate change conference in that city. In 2007, the theme of the annual opening of the General Assembly was climate change. Bolstered by the Academy Award–winning film by former U.S. vice president Al Gore, _An Inconvenient Truth_ , and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Gore and the IPCC, global warming and climate change are now front and center on the international agenda. Once contested, global warming and climate change are now almost universally regarded as a central problem facing humanity. Prior to leaving office, George W. Bush also recognized the seriousness of global warming, though he sought to approach it in his own way, as evidenced by his decision to skip the 2007 UN meetings on the subject in New York and instead hold his own conference at the same time.

Multilateral efforts on addressing climate change were boosted somewhat in 2007, when Kevin Ruud was elected as Australia's prime minister and agreed to sign on to Kyoto. He also fully participated in the 2007 Bali Conference, which produced a "road map" for producing a binding treaty in Copenhagen in 2009 and replacing Kyoto in 2012. However, these efforts and the election of Barack Obama did not amount to any substantive progress in the UN-based negotiations. Ruud was forced out of office, and Obama has not stressed environmental action; subsequent gatherings from 2010 to 2012 in Cancún and Durban as well as Rio were disappointments.

Closely linked to climate change are deforestation and biodiversity loss. The world's forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide and conserving water and soil resources. Between 1990 and 2005, there was a 3 percent reduction in global forest coverage, with Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa losing 7 percent and 9 percent of their total forest lands, respectively. In twenty-five countries entire forest systems have disappeared, and in twenty-nine others they have been reduced by 90 percent. Such deforestation threatens biodiversity and is a significant factor in worsening climate change.

Over 60 percent of the world's ecosystems are damaged or being degraded, and biodiversity loss is on the rise. Although in 2002 the World Summit on Sustainable Development pledged to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010, loss continues unabated, and over ten thousand species are under threat of extinction. In the marine environment, for example, commercially targeted fish species have declined by 90 percent since 1960.

Although climate change and biodiversity loss loom and receive the lion's share of environmental attention, of much greater immediate concern for the overwhelming number of people are the scarcity of fresh water and a lack of sanitation. By 2010 the MDG target of halving the proportion of the world's population without sustainable access to safe drinking water had been met—five years ahead of schedule—but the challenge is that over 750 million people still have no access to safe drinking water. Worldwide over 2.8 billion people, or about 40 percent of the world's population, are experiencing either physical or economic water shortages.

WHO estimates that half the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-related diseases, and nearly two million people die from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases each year. In many places entire communities are exposed to considerable health hazards as a result of inadequate sanitation facilities. Although sanitation has improved in most developing regions, almost half the people in developing regions lack access to improved sanitation facilities, and 15 percent use no sanitation facilities at all and use open defecation that brings people into direct contact with human waste.

**A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT**

The focus of MDG 8 is on building a global partnership for sustainable human development. In essence, it addresses the steps that the international community needs to take to attain the other seven goals. This goal specifies seven targets: developing an open, rule-based, predictable, and nondiscriminatory trading and financial system; addressing the special needs of least developed countries, including better access to developed country markets, increased aid, enhanced debt relief, and cancellation of official bilateral debt; addressing the needs of landlocked countries and small island states; increasing development assistance; dealing effectively and comprehensively with debt sustainability problems; developing and implementing strategies for youth employment; providing access to affordable essential drugs; and making certain that the benefits of new technologies are available to all. To meet these targets, new forms of cooperation and partnerships are needed among states, markets, the private sector, voluntary and civic organizations, local communities, and other stakeholders. This was noted especially regarding human rights and humanitarian affairs, where the role of NGOs and transnational corporations was discussed. The effort to forge new partnerships for sustainable human development or human security has taken a variety of forms and complexions. In general there has been a move to strengthen UN agencies' direct involvement with diverse elements of society, including NGOs, the private sector, and many other types of civil society organizations. Similar efforts have also been made by the Bretton Woods institutions. UN cooperation with other actors varies from issue to issue, with some examples of close cooperation and some examples of the opposite.

_Business in General_

UN partnership activities with for-profit actors—most especially through the Global Compact—have involved innovative thinking and actions. The main assumption underlying the Global Compact, which we analyzed in detail earlier, is that development cannot occur exclusively through governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations, nor can it be based on unbridled market forces alone. Creating local, national, and international enabling environments is essential, and a broad-based partnership involving all relevant stakeholders thus seems desirable.

Bringing the private sector into the United Nations has brought with it some concerns and opposition. Many governments still hang tenaciously to the tenets of sovereignty and resent actions by multilateral agencies that do not respect the sanctity of that norm. Other governments, including China as the most notable and economically successful, have come to embrace this notion of multistake-holder partnerships. Corporations may also be part of the problem, in that their activities may contribute to environmental degradation and underdevelopment. Corporations can also violate human rights or work in concert with genocidal regimes. In the view of some critics, the Global Compact is too weak to adequately address these issues and may even help gloss over poor corporate behavior. On the other hand, sustainable development cannot rely solely on foreign assistance and loans; it requires substantial financial investment from the private sector—local and international. Moreover, in the wake of the current global economic crisis, it would seem likely that overseas development assistance (ODA) will not significantly increase any time soon and is likely to continue its downward trend. Public-private partnerships thus may be one of the "evils" required to get necessary investment and liquidity into poorer economies.

_Trade and Finance_

The first target under MDG 8 is to "develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system." This goal inherently includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction—both nationally and internationally. However, one of the major problems confronting the UN system almost since its inception has been that the management of trade and finance has seldom, if ever, functioned as the broad and coherent system that may appear on paper. The UN system is but one of a group of interrelated international institutions designed to work toward achieving a set of common ends related to promoting and ensuring international peace, security, and human well-being. Thus, the system was designed to function as a norm- and rule-based system of institutions. A liberal, open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system served as the foundation of this new order. The 2008 financial crisis and the resulting economic instability undermined the foundation, as the principles of free markets and limited government became contested. In what many thought would be a "Bretton Woods moment," the crisis provided an opportunity to remake and clarify the rules of trade and finance. Predictably, the most important member states could not agree as to what those rules should be and on the extent to which there should be national and international regulation. Within important countries like the United States, there was intense disagreement on whether further regulations were needed, and if so of what kind. The _MDGR 2011_ states that while most protectionist measures were avoided, significant challenges remain ahead, as countries respond to little or no growth or fall back into recession. As world trade has been recovering from the crisis, many developing countries have rebounded particularly strongly.

The latest set of trade talks in the WTO is the most complex ever. This so-called Doha Development Agenda round of talks, launched in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, has taken up many of the items that were left unsettled by the Uruguay Round, which lasted from 1986 to 1994, such as agricultural subsidies; special, less stringent adherence to trade rules for poor countries; and access to vital medicines and treatments. Although originally scheduled for completion in January 2005, Doha negotiations have dragged on. The main stumbling block for negotiations centers on a split between North and South regarding trade priorities. Developed countries want greater liberalization of financial and other services as well as an agreement involving trade-related investment measures (TRIMS). Developing countries, on the other hand, clearly linked agreement in those areas to the reduction of agricultural subsidies in the developed countries, especially Europe, whose position has proven intractable. For example, subsidies to farmers in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2003 totaled more than $349 billion. As David Lynch reminds us, "This is nearly $1 billion per day and is approximately the same amount as the combined annual GDP of all Sub-Saharan Africa."

In 2004, the World Bank proposed a "trade for aid" initiative to help incorporate trade into development and poverty reduction. At the 2005 WTO Ministry Meeting in Hong Kong, this initiative was adopted and was officially placed on the WTO agenda in 2007. However, the timing raised questions among many developing states. According to WTO director-general Pascal Lamy, "aid for trade" is designed to "break the shackles that have been holding back the trade potential of many poor countries, such as substandard infrastructure, lack of modern technology and inadequate financing." Yet developing countries see this as the WTO waving carrots in front of them to get them to make trade concessions on services and TRIMS without corresponding concessions related to reducing agricultural subsidies in the advanced industrialized countries. A brief glimmer of hope emerged in June 2007, when trade talks resumed and the G4—Brazil, the European Union, India, and the United States—attempted to hammer out closure on critical issues, but again talks broke down, and agreement failed. Since 2009, with the global financial crisis triggering doubt and protectionist policies, the Doha negations have barely limped along.

As trade has rebounded, the least developed countries have benefited from preferential arrangements in trade with wealthy industrialized countries, which has resulted from the nature of the preferential arrangements themselves that have tended to focus more on exports. As explained in _MDGR 2012_ , "This is because LDC exports benefit from a preference margin in relation to other competing products, which have to pay the most favoured nation (MFN) duty tax." Moreover, there has been a significant decline in tariffs on agricultural products.

_Development Assistance_

Making sustainable human development a reality requires resources, especially financial resources. After nearly two decades of decline, development assistance reached a low point in 1997. But then it turned around and for eight straight years increased. After the 2002 Monterrey Consensus was reached, ODA reached a new high in 2005 of $106.8 billion. In 2006, a downturn again set in, and ODA declined by 5.1 percent, and 2007 continued this pattern with an 8.4 percent drop. Although the G8 had committed in 2005 to double aid to Africa by 2010, ODA to the region (excluding debt relief to Nigeria) increased only 2 percent between 2005 and 2006. Only five donor countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—have reached the 0.7 percent of GNP target. The United States falls at the bottom of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list and devotes a mere 0.16 percent of its GNP to development assistance. It is, however, the largest donor by volume. The European Union collectively provides 54 percent of all ODA, and EU members have pledged to allocate 0.51 percent of GNP to ODA by 2010 and 0.7 percent by 2015.

The ongoing global economic and financial crisis and economic recession have taken their toll on aid flows as everything else. ODA is a tough sell to domestic constituencies in the best of times and even tougher when citizens are suffering at home. According to the _MDGR 2011_ , Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Greece, and Italy fell far short of their .51 percent. The ongoing euro crisis could significantly threaten ODA from Europe. In 2011, core development aid fell in real terms by 2.7 percent of its 2010 high.

_Debt Relief_

More concrete action is to be found in the area of debt relief. A vexing issue for many developing countries is making their debt burden sustainable. In 1996 the World Bank and IMF launched a plan to provide debt relief for the world's poorest, most heavily indebted countries. Under this Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, creditors collectively move to provide exceptional assistance aimed at bringing the debtor country into a position of debt sustainability. By 2005, debt-reduction programs had been approved for twenty-eight of the forty-one eligible countries. The total collective debt reduction as of that date was $33 billion, with the possibility of a cumulative total of $61 billion, should the remaining thirteen countries reach their decision points for receiving relief. About half comes from bilateral lenders and the remainder from IFIs.

At the July 2005 G8 meeting, heads of government proposed a new Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative to supplement HIPC. Under this plan, three IFIs—the IMF, World Bank (specifically the International Development Association), and African Development Bank—would be allowed to provide 100 percent debt relief for countries completing the HIPC process. According to the _MDGR 2007_ , "By April 2007, 22 of the 40 HIPC countries had fulfilled all conditions and had been granted debt relief; eight had completed the first stage of the process and received debt relief on a provisional basis." For the eligible countries, 90 percent of their external debt will be canceled. So important progress has been made, but there is a lot more work to do. Ten HIPC countries are still eligible but need help with the process, while eleven others remain ineligible because of violent conflict and corruption. Indicating the significance of this problem, more than fifty countries spend more on debt servicing than on public health. The global economic and financial crisis and the resulting sharp drop in exports from developing countries in 2009 interrupted progress toward reducing their debt-service ratios. But in 2010, as export earnings rebounded by 23.4 percent, the downward trend of developing countries' debt-service ratios resumed.

_Geographically Challenged_

The MDG strategy also places special emphasis on the situation of landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS). These two groups are challenged by the particularities of their geographical situations and have attracted international attention beginning in the 1970s but especially since the early 1990s. The UN has summarized the special situation of landlocked countries concisely:

Lack of territorial access to the sea, remoteness and isolation from world markets and high transit costs continue to impose serious constraints on the overall socio-economic development of landlocked developing countries. . . .Landlocked developing countries are generally among the poorest of the developing countries, with the weakest growth rates, and are typically heavily dependent on a very limited number of commodities for their export earnings The lack of territorial access to the sea, remoteness and isolation from world markets appear to be the primary cause of their relative poverty.

A few statistics provide some perspective on the situation. The distance to seaports and world trade routes is in many cases extreme. Six LLDCs, for example, are located more than 2,000 kilometers from the nearest sea, with Kazakhstan being situated 3,750 kilometers from the sea. Also, over half of the LLDCs are least developed countries, adding a further dimension to their plight, as discussed earlier.

In 2001 General Assembly resolution 56/180 convened the International Ministerial Conference of Landlocked and Transit Developing States. In preparation for the August 2003 conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the secretary-general issued a report in August 2002 to the General Assembly. He summarized six objectives of the LLDCs with respect to their transit needs: secure unfettered access to the sea, reduce transportation costs and improve services to increase competitiveness, reduce delivery costs of imports, clear trade routes from delays, lessen deterioration and loss of goods during transit, and provide mechanisms for expanding trade.

In comparison, small island developing states tend to have small resource bases, be highly subject to climatic conditions and natural and environmental disasters and deterioration, have limited freshwater resources, depend on conventional energy resources, and have small domestic markets and small populations with rapid growth rates. The situation confronting SIDS was addressed at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and has been an issue continuously before the Commission on Sustainable Development since its creation.

The big push for an international agenda for dealing with SIDS, however, began with the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, held in Bridgetown, Barbados, during April and May 1994. The conference adopted the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA), which set forth specific recommendations and actions for promoting the sustainable development of SIDS. Five years later, at the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly, the UN member states carried out an assessment of the implementation of the action program and called for more concerted action to carry it out. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development recommitted member states to dealing with the special conditions confronting SIDS, and the Johannesburg Plan of Action resulting from the summit called for a ten-year comprehensive review of the BPOA at a high-level international conference. That meeting was held in Mauritius in January 2005, and the assembled member states unanimously adopted a political declaration, the Mauritius Declaration, and a revised plan, the Mauritius Strategy, for further implementing the BPOA. The BPOA remains the principal blueprint, and SIDS have taken tangible steps toward sustainability. One of the more important outcomes of the 2012 Achieving Sustainable Energy for All in SIDS Conference was a commitment to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase investments in renewable energy. The conference also recognized the contributions of the UNDP, the World Bank, Japan, and Norway for helping SIDS finance renewable energy projects and promote energy efficiency.

_Access to Affordable, Essential Drugs_

A key to dealing with endemic diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB is providing affordable access to medicines and treatments. Although the situation in the developed world is far from perfect, access to affordable drugs on a sustainable basis is not available to over one-third of the developing world's population. In developing countries, only 35 percent of drugs classified as "essential" are available through the public sector. In both sub-Saharan Africa and South-Central Asia, less than 50 percent have such access. Of course, the situation is far worse for the extremely poor and marginalized parts of these populations.

Solving this problem is challenging because any solution is bundled with a variety of economic, political, legal, and moral issues. Access to medicines to treat those afflicted with HIV/AIDS has sparked a heated debate between developing and the most developed countries. As discussed above, over 90 percent of the forty-two million persons currently living with HIV/AIDS live in the developing world. Yet nearly all the drugs that have been developed to treat the disease and its symptoms are produced and controlled under license by pharmaceutical companies in the developed world.

At the center of the controversy over the access issue in recent years has been the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Negotiated in the context of WTO, TRIPS represented an attempt to strike a balance between protecting the property rights of the inventor and providing access to the consumer. Article 7 of TRIPS recognizes that the protection of intellectual property contributes to the promotion of technological innovation and to the transfer and dissemination of technology, to the mutual advantage of users and producers of technological knowledge. At the same time, TRIPS attempts to balance the social and human needs of poor countries. TRIPS emerged from a genuine negotiating process in which the need for balance was very much to the fore.

The TRIPS agreement has three main aspects. First, the agreement sets minimum standards of protection and obligations for each member country. Second, it specifies general principles that must be followed in all intellectual property rights enforcement procedures. Finally, all disputes under it are subject to WTO dispute settlement procedures. In the context of international health, TRIPS has meant trying to find a balance between the interests of pharmaceutical companies and their home states, and non–technologically advanced countries that desire greater access to drugs that are essential for public health reasons. Under Article 31 of the TRIPS agreement, members are allowed to exercise "compulsory licensing" without the authorization of the property-right holder under certain conditions, such as public health necessities. However, the nature of this right is ambiguous and subject to dispute. Moreover, many developing countries do not have adequate manufacturing capabilities in pharmaceuticals to enable them even to make effective use of compulsory licensing.

At the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha in November 2001, this issue came to a head. Developing-country governments, seeking greater access to drugs for treating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other endemic diseases, were able to get member states to agree to a compromise. In adopting the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, the member states affirmed that "the TRIPS Agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health. Accordingly, while reiterating our commitment to the TRIPS Agreement, we affirm that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO members' right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all."

The declaration specified that the least developed countries would be given until January 2016 before being required to implement or enforce the TRIPS agreement with regard to pharmaceutical products. The declaration, however, still left unresolved the issue of how to deal with those countries that do not have sufficient manufacturing capabilities in pharmaceuticals to enable them even to make effective use of compulsory licensing. In July 2007, Rwanda became the first country to announce that, because of the lack of local production capacity, it would import cheaper generic drugs made elsewhere under compulsory licensing.

This issue remains contested, with the WTO Council on TRIPS attempting to forge a compromise between the United States and other technologically advanced countries as well as those less technologically advanced member states that are demanding more flexible patent rules for cases of national public health exigencies. The shortage in Europe and the United States of a patented drug that treats the symptoms of avian flu in humans prompted many in the advanced industrialized countries to rethink primacy of intellectual property rights in the face of an epidemic.

_Information and Communication Technology_

Globalization is fueled, in large part, by the continuing revolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The challenge centers on making the benefits of ICTs available to all, especially given the inequalities inherent in the present information order—the so-called digital divide.

According to the _MDGR 2011_ , just over 90 percent of the world's inhabitants were covered by a mobile cellular signal in 2010, with over 5.3 billion subscribers. Still, two-thirds of the world's population does not have access to the internet. Even more startling is the gender disparity, with women and girls having far less access than their male counterparts.

With regard to promoting human development, ICT has a larger context. As suggested in the final report of the UNDP's Digital Opportunity Initiative, "used in the right way and for the right purposes, ICT can have a dramatic impact on achieving specific social and economic development goals as well as play a key role in broader national development strategies." In the highly globalized information age, development cannot occur without such social and economic networks. The UN system has in many ways been energized by the possibilities that ICT presents for promoting human development and achieving the MDGs. As witnessed during the two-year process surrounding the World Summit on the Information Society, many prickly political problems plague the path to creating a common global vision of the norms and principles underlying the information society.

For some years now, UNDP has been working with member states and other agencies to make ICT an integral part of development strategies and policies. Much of this work has focused on helping countries integrate and prioritize ICT planning in their policy frameworks and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Also, UNDP places emphasis on using ICT to improve governance and the capacity of governments to more effectively achieve the MDGs and to help them foster greater participation by civil society and the private sector.

The creation of effective ICT-related partnerships among international institutions, governments, civil society, and the private sector has increased. Some of these partnerships have been initiated by UN agencies. For example, the UN Information and Communications Technologies Task Force (ICT Task Force) was established by the secretary-general in response to a March 2001 request from ECOSOC. The ICT Task Force was given the task of providing overall leadership to the UN and forging strategic partnerships with private industry, foundations, donors, and other relevant stakeholders. The ICT Task Force works in close cooperation with a growing number of other UN-system networking and capacity-building ICT initiatives, including the Digital Opportunity Initiative (launched by UNDP, World Bank, Accenture, and Markle Foundation); the Network Readiness and Resource Initiative (UN Foundation, IBM, Markle Foundation, World Economic Forum, Harvard University, and other partners); the UN Volunteers program's United Nations Information Technology Service; WHO's Health Inter-Network; and Netaid.org. The list alone connotes how wide a net must be cast routinely even to form a task force with relevant expertise and outreach.

**EXPLAINING CHANGE**

The formal consensus about MDGs, as evidenced by the 2005 World Summit, is not universal. But a generally shared orientation, underpinned by shared meanings and shared values, appears to be present. Disagreements center on strategy and commitments. Governments in Zimbabwe or Syria may vote for the MDGs in New York, but their policies and decisions at home reflect anything but a deep commitment to doing what is necessary to enhance human security. Governments in Washington and Paris may also vote for the MDGs, but whether they are prepared to increase their development assistance and make meaningful trade concessions to developing countries is not always evident. The European Union continues to protect European agricultural producers to the detriment of poor countries attempting to sell their exports in Europe.

Progress toward achieving the MDGs is mixed, especially when global numbers are disaggregated. Speaking before the 2002 World Economic Forum, Kofi Annan designated poverty as a major threat to global security. In his first annual report on how member states have followed up the Millennium Declaration, he reflected with disappointment that "the world is falling short. If we carry on the way we are, most of the pledges are not going to be fulfilled." He referred to MDG progress as being a mixed record, with significant differences across the world's regions. The series of reports from the team led by Jeffrey Sachs for the 2005 World Summit also emphasized that the glass was not even half full. The _MDGR 2011_ continued with the "mixed" theme. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon concluded that "between now and 2015, we must make sure that promises made become promises kept. The consequences of doing otherwise are profound: death, illness, and despair, needless suffering, lost opportunities for millions upon millions of people."

The successes and failures in reaching MDG goals and associated targets will lead to new goals, new thinking, and new strategies. In May 2012 Secretary-General Ban announced that Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and British prime minister David Cameron would lead a high-level panel to advise the international community on the post-2015 way forward. As a guide for thinking and policy, the concept of sustainable human development will continue to evolve, and that panel will attempt to embrace Rio+20's recommendations as well. Students of international organization should make an effort to understand how and why processes and structures evolved at the United Nations, and they also should consider what directions development activities might take in the future. In this context, a dispassionate assessment can be made of what the world organization can and cannot reasonably be expected to accomplish.

A traditional starting point for such an assessment is to examine sustainable development activities through the functionalist lenses we discussed earlier. Functionalists argue that "growth of technology and spread and intensification of the desire for higher standards of material welfare" lead to greater international cooperation in search of expanded political authority. Functionalists further suggest that popular interest in sustainable development results from expanded technical cooperation in developmental and environmental concerns. Accordingly, technical cooperation for development has spilled over into the environmental area, and technical cooperation on ecological concerns has come to encompass development issues. The interplay between the two has thus become so pervasive that environment and development are no longer separate concepts.

Proponents of this line of reasoning point to the evolving process, beginning in the early 1970s around the time of the Stockholm conference, whereby the concept of eco-development came onto the global agenda. In attempting to lay the foundations of a global plan of action for dealing with environmental issues, Maurice Strong and other UN officials quickly came to perceive the inseparability of the two previously separate issues. This orientation evolved over later decades as the environmental science community, development assistance practitioners and scholars, international financiers, government officials, and many others came to see their own work to be achievable only in the context of a more holistic eco-development worldview.

Our two explanations for the spread of cooperation in the human rights arena—that is, consensual-knowledge communities and social learning—grow out of this functionalist perspective. The first explanation suggests that the convergence of development and environment into sustainable development and the subsequent convergence of sustainable development, human development, and human security into sustainable human development on the global public policy agenda grow from agreement over eco-development in private communities of knowledge. The second explanation emphasizes the importance of institutional learning and argues that the normative convergence is a product of a process in which state actors have recognized (or "learned") the inherent inseparability of the two issues.

Proponents of the consensual-knowledge approach point to the growth and involvement, at least of civic actors in the North, in sustainable development politics at the global, intergovernmental level. They also point to the evolution of the role of NGOs since Stockholm, to the activities of NGOs in the Rio and subsequent conference processes, and to the influence of knowledge communities on issues such as protection of the ozone layer as evidence that this approach is valid. The same can be applied to global warming and climate change.

The nature of the evolution of NGO involvement in the sustainable human development arena, however, casts some doubt on the validity of this view. There are thousands of opinion communities concerned with sustainable development. Yet the diversity and often outright antagonisms among these communities challenge the notion that some dominant consensual body of knowledge underlies events within global sustainable development processes. The windows broken and the stores looted in such cities as Seattle, Genoa, Montreal, Evian, and Hong Kong (the sites of G8 or WTO summits) attest to this reality. This is not to suggest the absence of a convergence of interests over sustainability issues. Indeed, the concept has come to dominate much of the debate over both development and environment.

Although growing consensus can be observed within specific areas of environmental concern, it has yet to be translated into a coherent global scientific consensus about sustainable development. Moreover, a large gulf still separates basic and applied scientists over many eco-development issues. The notion that some coherent and identifiable social learning process underpins global sustainable development activities is suspect yet may hold somewhat more promise for the future. The idea of sustainable development has served as a common denominator, helping to bridge the turf and ideological divides that otherwise separate the IFIs from other members of the UN family.

In global debates, delegates from the Global North usually define sustainability rather narrowly as environmental protection and resource conservation. Southerners normally define the concept with specific reference to meeting basic human needs and reducing poverty. The focus here is on people, on promoting economic growth that produces employment and encourages the wider participation of people in economic processes. Economists have their own definition. They say sustainable development is "an economic process in which the quantity and quality of our stocks of natural resources (like forests) and the integrity of biogeochemical cycles (like climate) are sustained and passed on to the future generations unimpaired." The feedback from seemingly endless conferences and the ever-evolving closer relationship among previously discordant agencies—especially the Bretton Woods institutions and other members of the UN system—may have well served to create a genuine learning environment. Equally important, the Global Compact (GC) was from its origins a normative exercise designed to create social learning. One of its architects, John Ruggie, pointed out:

Companies submit case studies of what they have done to translate their commitment to the GC principles into concrete corporate practices. This occasions a dialogue among GC participants from all sectors—the UN, labor, and civil society organizations. . . . A research network, led by the Corporate Citizenship Unit of Warwick University, facilitates the dialogue. Its aim is to reach broader consensus-based definitions of what constitutes good practices than any of the parties could achieve alone. Those definitions, together with illustrative case studies, are then publicized in an online learning bank, which will become a standard reference source for corporate social responsibility.

These examples do not provide concrete proof of an effective learning process. However, they do point to the possibility that organizational learning may well be occurring and help to explain the growing convergence around the MDG consensual framework.

Given limited resources and lack of real sustained leadership on the part of its more powerful members, the United Nations nonetheless has done some remarkable things. The world organization has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people and launched a host of ideas that have changed the world. The world is far better off with the United Nations than without it. But the world body could do so much more. Some observers and scholars of international relations have argued that the UN must be at the center of global governance in that it is the only organization uniquely positioned to respond to and manage the forces of globalization. Yet the UN cannot change the priorities of member states so that states also put the UN at the center of global governance. The world organization can suggest priorities, seek commitments, coordinate action, and attempt to bridge divides through norm creation. But ultimately the governments of member states must choose to work through, and with, the UN to manage pressing global problems such as disease, extreme poverty, and environmental degradation. States invest scarce resources into priorities they value, and clearly they continue to value military hardware, subsidies to domestic farmers and industries, and welfare for their own people. Resources provided for the UN in general, and the MDGs in particular, show that the UN and MDGs still do not rate high on the list. Until the priorities of member states change, the UN role in promoting sustainable human development will be, at best, modest.

**NOTES**

. Kofi A. Annan, _"We the Peoples": The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century_ (New York: United Nations, 2000), 9–10.

. Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur, eds., _The Dark Side of Globalization_ (New York: United Nations University Press, 2011); and Laura Westra, _Globalization, Violence, and World Governance_ (Boston: Brill 2011).

. UN document A.AC.253/25, March 22, 2000.

. UN document A/RES/55/2, September 18, 2000.

. David Held and Anthony McGrew, eds., _Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance_ (Cambridge: Polity, 2002); James H. Mittelman, _Whither Globalization? The Vortex of Knowledge and Ideology_ (London: Routledge, 2004); Volker Rittberger, ed., _Global Governance and the United Nations System_ (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2002); Paul Kennedy, Dirk Messner, and Franz Nuscheler, _Global Trends and Global Governance_ (London: Pluto, 2002); Andrew F. Cooper, John English, and Ramesh Thakur, eds., _Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy_ (Tokyo: UN University Press, 2002); Anthony Giddens, _Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives_ (New York: Routledge, 2000); John H. Dunning, ed., _Making Globalization Good: The Moral Challenge of Global Capitalism_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., _The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Tagi Sagafinejad with John Dunning, _The UN and Transnational Corporations: From Code of Conduct to Global Compact_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Georg Sørensen, _A Liberal World Order in Crisis: Choosing Between Imposition and Restraint_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011); and James A. Caporaso and Mary Anne Madeira, _Globalization, Institutions, and Governance_ (London: Sage, 2012).

. David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andrew Wedeman, eds., _American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World_ (New York: Routledge, 2006).

. Dic Lo, _Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization: Studies in the Political Economy of Institutions and Late Development_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Jon Carlson, _Myths, State Expansion, and the Birth of Globalizations: A Comparative Perspective_ (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Natalie Goldstein, _Globalization and Free Trade_ (New York: Facts on File, 2012).

. Ngaire Woods, "The Political Economy of Globalization," in _The Political Economy of Globalization_ , ed. Ngaire Woods (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), 1–19.

. "Impact of Globalization on Social Development," UN document A.AC.253/25, March 12, 2000, 3–8.

. UNDP, _Human Development Report 2003_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

. Millennium Development Project, _Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals_ (New York: UNDP, 2005).

. World Bank, _Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and Millennium Development Goals_ (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2012), <http://www.worldbank.org/mdgs>.

. NGLS Roundup, "MDGs: Moving Forward on the Millennium Development Goals," November 2002.

. Michael Chibba, "The Millennium Development Goals: Key Current Issues and Challenges," _Development Policy Review_ 29, no. 1 (2011): 75–90.

. Joshua Kurlantzich, "An Empty Poor Box at the United Nations," _Newsweek_ , August 16, 2010, 7; Joses M. Kirigia, Benjamin M. Nganda, Chris N. Mwikisa, and Bernardino Cardoso, "The Effects of Global Financial Crisis on Funding for Health Development in Nineteen Countries of the WHO African Region," _International Health and Human Rights_ 11, no. 1 (2011): 1–10.

. Frances Stewart, "The Impact of the Global Economic Crises on the Poor: Comparing the 1980s and 2000s," _Journal of Human Development and Capabilities_ 13, no. 1 (2012): 83–105.

. DESA, _World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012_ (New York: United Nations, 2012), <http://www.un.org/en/development/desa//policy/wesp>.

. David Hulme and Rorden Wilkinson, eds., _Beyond the Millennium Development Goals: Global Development Goals Post-2015_ (London: Routledge, 2012); and Sakiko Fukada-Parr, "Millennium Development Goals: Why They Matter," _Global Governance_ 10, no. 4 (2004): 395–402, and _Millennium Development Goals_ (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

. _The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012_ (New York: United Nations, 2012), 7, <http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf>; hereafter _MDGR 2012._

. _The Millennium Development Goals Report 2011_ (New York: United Nations, 2011), 4, <http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/11_MDG%20Report_EN.pdf>; hereafter _MDGR 2011._

. _MDGR 2012_ , 7.

. Millennium Project, _Investing in Development_ , 13–14. See also "Millennium Indicators Data Base," UN Statistics Division, 2005, <http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Default.aspx>; and Jeffrey Sachs, _The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time_ (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).

. Food and Agriculture Organization, _The State of Food and Agriculture 2007_ , Rome, November 15, 2007, 130–134.

. _The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007_ (New York: United Nations, 2007), 8; hereafter _MDGR 2007._

. _MDGR 2012_ , 17.

. Millennium Project, _Investing in Development_ , 13–14.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 16.

. United Nations General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, A/60/1, October 24, 2005, para. 44.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 17.

. "Education," in _A Better World for All_ , Paris21, 2000, <http://paris21.org/better_world-for-all>.

. "Education: Literacy," UNESCO, <http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/education-building-blocks/literacy>.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 19; and _MDGR 2012_ , 19.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 17.

. Ian Goldin, _Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

. Joia Mukherjee, Donna J. Barray, Hind Satti, Maxi Raymonville, Sarah Marsh, and Mary Kay Smith Fawzi, "Structural Violence: A Barrier to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals for Women," _Journal of Women's Health_ 20, no. 4 (2011): 593–597.

. Mark Malloch Brown, "World's Top Goals Require Women's Empowerment," Message from UN Development Programme, March 8, 2003.

. _MDGR 2012_ , 20.

. UNIFEM Press Release, May 1, 2003.

. UN, Division for the Advancement of Women, "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women," <http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw>.

. UN Commission on Human Rights Press Release, April 9, 2003.

. See UN Women's website: <http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/about-un-women>.

. World Bank, "Millennium Development Goals Promote Gender Equality," _World Development Indicators 2004_ (Washington: International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, 2004).

. _MDGR 2012_ , 26.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 24.

. Ibid., 27.

. _MDGR 2007_ , 17.

. Margaret C. Hogan et al., "Maternal Mortality for 181 Countries, 1980–2008: A Systematic Analysis of the Progress Toward Millennium Development Goal 5," _Lancet_ 375, no. 9726 (May 2010): 1609–1623.

. Denise Grady, "Maternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe," _New York Times_ , April 13, 2010.

. See Nicholas Kristof, "Saving the Lives of Moms," _New York Times_ , May 12, 2012.

. Leon Gordenker, Roger A. Coate, Christer Jönsson, and Peter Söderholm, _International Cooperation in Response to AIDS_ (London: Pinter, 1995); and Peter Söderholm, _Global Governance of AIDS: Partnerships with Civil Society_ (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1997).

. _MDGR 2012_ , 38.

. UNAIDS, AIDS Epidemic Update, December 2011.

. Ibid.

. World Bank, _Education and HIV/AIDS: A Window of Hope_ , <http://go.worldbank.org/QFZ5LJ5K00>.

. Ibid., 20.

. Ibid.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 42–23.

. _MDGR 2007_ , 20.

. UNICEF Press Release, May 13, 2003.

. Steven Lee Meyers, "Bush to Skip U.N. Talks on Global Warming," _New York Times_ , September 24, 2007.

. Eric Helleiner, "A Bretton Woods Moment? The 2007–2008 Crisis and the Future of Global Finance," _International Affairs_ 86, no. 3 (2010): 619–636.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 60.

. Rorden Wilkinson and James Scott, eds., _Trade, Poverty, Development: Getting Beyond the WTO's Doha Deadlock_ (London: Routledge, 2012).

. David Lynch, "Negotiating Between and Across Borders," in _A Global Agenda: Issues Before the 60th General Assembly of the United Nations_ , ed. Angela Drakulich (New York: UNA-USA, 2005), 225.

. "WTO Places Aid for Trade on Its Agenda," _Bangkok Post_ , November 16, 2007, B7.

. Ibid.

. _MDGR 2012_ , 59.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 59.

. Ross P. Buckley, _Debt-for-Development Exchanges: History and New Applications_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

. IMF, Fact Sheet: "Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative," December 2005, <http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/hipc.htm>.

. IMF, Fact Sheet: "The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI)," December 2005, <http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/mdri.htm>.

. _MDGR 2007_ , 30.

. _MDGR 2011_ , 62.

. UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and the Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), "Landlocked Developing Countries," n.d., <http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/lldc/default.htm>.

. UN document A/57/340, August 23, 2002.

. Ibid.

. UN document A/CONF.167/9, part I, Annex I (1994).

. UN document A/S–22/9/Rev.1 and Supplement no. 3 (A/S–22/9/Rev.1), 2005.

. WTO, "Pharmaceutical Patents and the TRIPS Agreement," September 21, 2006, <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/pharma_ato186_e.htm>.

. WTO, "Doha WTO Ministerial 2001: Ministerial Declaration," November 20, 2001, <http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm>.

. John Mathiason, _Internet Governance: The New Frontier of Global Institutions_ (London: Routledge, 2009).

. _MDGR 2011_ , 63.

. Rekha Pande and Theo van der Weide, _Globalization, Technology Diffusion and Gender Disparity_ (Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2012).

. Digital Opportunity Initiative, "Creating a Development Dynamic: Final Report of the Digital Opportunity Initiative," United Nations Development Programme, 2001, <http://3nw.com/doi/index.htm#02_executive_summary>.

. Andrew Chadwick, _Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

. David Held, "Toward a New Consensus: Answering the Dangers of Globalization," _Harvard International Review_ 27 (Summer 2005): 14–17.

. United Nations, "Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of the Millennium Declaration," September 2003.

. _MDGR 2011._

. Harold Jacobson, _Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System_ , 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1984), 62–63.

. Peter Haas, "Banning Chlorofluorocarbons: Epistemic Community Efforts to Protect Stratospheric Ozone," _International Organization_ 46, no. 1 (1992): 187–224.

. Michael Edwards, _Future Positive: International Cooperation in the 21st Century_ (London: Earthscan, 2000), and _NGO Rights and Responsibilities: A New Deal for Global Governance_ (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2000).

. Lynton K. Caldwell, _International Environmental Policy: Emergence and Dimensions_ , 2nd ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), 81.

. Alvaro de Soto, "The Global Environment: A Southern Perspective," _International Journal_ 15, no. 8 (1992): 679–705; and UNDP, _Human Development Report 1993_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

. Anil Agarwal, "What Is Sustainable Development?" _Concordare_ (Spring 1993): 2.

. John Gerard Ruggie, "Global_governance.net: The Global Compact as Learning Network," _Global Governance_ 7, no. 4 (2001): 372–373.

. Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss, _UN Ideas That Changed the World_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

. Yannis A. Stivactis, ed., _International Order in a Globalizing World_ (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007); and Joseph E. Stiglitz, _Making Globalization Work_ (New York: Norton, 2006).
* * *

**CONCLUSION**

* * *

_Learning from Change_

_In a time when winds of change are blowing very strong, we must rest content with knowing that foresight is always imperfect and that choices must always be made in ignorance of their full consequences. That is the price we pay for being able to make the world over by changing our own behavior, individually and collectively, in response to cherished hopes and shared purposes, framed in words. Our capacity to err is our capacity to learn and thereby achieve partial and imperfect, but real, improvement in the conditions of human life._

**—William H. McNeill**

THE UNITED NATIONS AND the broader UN system are interdependent, with their evolution determined by the dynamic interplay of interstate politics and transformations in the global political economy. For the UN to become more central to global governance, states need to transfer more loyalty, power, and authority to the world body. But such a radical change is still distant. World politics continues to evolve and multilateral organizations can and do influence that course. Transnational problems requiring transnational management remain, and in William McNeill's words, it would certainly be nice to know in which direction the winds of change are blowing. Alas, this is not easy. The initial euphoria about the end of the Cold War and optimism about possibilities for democratization have given way to a more realistic, and perhaps normal, caution. The winds of hyper-nationalism and unilateralism that blew from the George W. Bush administration were followed by the election and reelection of Barack Obama and a more friendly attitude toward multilateralism.

**MEASURING CHANGE**

A first analytical concern regards defining what constitutes "change." Kal Holsti's _Taming the Sovereigns_ probes the concept of change and ways of measuring it: "These include change as novelty or replacement, change as addition or subtraction, increased complexity, transformation, reversion, and obsolescence." Qualitative change can be defined as difference in kind. Novelty and replacement are types of qualitative change. The presumption is of rupture, or a clear break between what once was and what currently is. To that extent, we are looking for discontinuities, when new forms replace old ones, which is the story of the United Nations, including, for instance, the creation of peacekeeping and the return to peace enforcement; the introduction of gender and other types of human rights mainstreaming; the change from protecting the environment to sustainable human development.

UN security operations increased rapidly beginning in 1988 and then declined, only to manifest renewed growth. The notion of security has been broadened incrementally, albeit inconsistently, to encompass the idea of human security—a still evolving concept. The demands for global action in the humanitarian affairs and human rights arenas have been expanding. Against the background of clear normative development, discourse certainly has changed, and advances in humanitarian delivery and prevention are evident. Yet the world organization's capacity to respond to violations, even atrocities, has not always kept pace. Budgetary shortfalls hinder effective responses, and the absence of political will is demonstrated by lack of appropriate response to major tragedies in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria. Moreover, some challenges to the predominance of liberal democracy seem to be gaining strength, as we see especially in fundamental political Islamic circles. On the human development front, the world is becoming more polarized between the rich and poor, with some of the poorest—in sub-Saharan Africa especially—losing absolute as well as relative ground. Yet we have also seen growing formal consensus, in the form of the MDGs, about what should be done to advance sustainable human development. The formal consensus in support of the MDGs, however, is rather like the formal consensus on the International Bill of Rights: namely, the agreement about norms is not followed by fully effective implementation.

James Rosenau characterizes world politics by "turbulence," in which basic patterns are not clear, making change difficult to measure or grasp. In this view, world politics can be conceptualized as having "macro" and "micro" dimensions, with "macro" covering the world of states and IGOs and "micro" covering the world of individuals, local communities, and other elements of civil society. Both are in such turmoil that one can only project alternative scenarios for the future, not specifically describe the likely structure or basic features of world politics. Yet in today's turbulent world political climate and the increasingly nonstate character of many threats to global, regional, and local peace, there are mounting pressures to think in terms of human security—as opposed to state security. Thus there is a need to integrate elements and dimensions of civil society into the security sphere where states historically have had a near monopoly on force. In the human rights and sustainable development arenas, NGOs are active in analysis, lobbying, and operations. Hence, the UN of states and of secretariats would not be the same—in either normative or operational terms—without this third United Nations composed of nonstate actors.

The United Nations seemingly is in a perpetual political transition. The old patterns of interaction have broken down or changed significantly, but new patterns have not yet crystallized. Many old norms—such as nonintervention in domestic affairs—are under challenge, but new ones—such as the responsibility to protect—have not yet been adequately specified. Old ways of doing things may prove insufficient for new problems, yet new ways are characterized by mistakes. States may be dissatisfied with the record of the old United Nations but are slow to provide the political will and resources necessary for a new generation of governance mechanisms to manage global problems.

**LEARNING LESSONS?**

The lessons of UN history can be helpful in charting the future direction of the world organization while recognizing that history can be misinterpreted and misused as a guide for political choice. Still, one can separate what is known from what is unknown (or presumed), and when using historical analogies, precision is required when comparing similarities and differences between the past and the present. Above all, one can clarify current options, guard against presumptions, and avoid stereotypes. In the 1990s the UN Secretariat was fairly criticized for not having a policy-planning group able to draw historical lessons from past use of UN force. Certain state bureaucracies, and many academics, were prepared to evaluate UN peacekeeping against the historical background of what had gone wrong with ONUC in the Belgian Congo from 1960 to 1964, or what had gone right in Central America regarding ONUSAL and ONUCA.

The next time the UN takes enforcement action inside a country, whether to deliver humanitarian relief, disarm belligerents, or protect civilians, it will be only natural to try to draw historical lessons from events in northern Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Kosovo, East Timor, or Libya. The lessons from Afghanistan and the 2003 war in Iraq inform UN decisions as it faces the challenges presented by terrorism and the proliferation of WMDs. These lessons include the usefulness of UN diplomacy and inspections, the necessity of more adequate and accurate intelligence, and the need for multilateral stabilization efforts. The political and financial costs of "going it alone" have affected the United States, which is once again considering more multilateral diplomacy to manage potential crises with Syria, Iran, and North Korea.

The task of learning is complicated by the pace of change and the culture of the UN bureaucracy. As Shashi Tharoor, then UN undersecretary-general in charge of the Department of Public Information, put it, we "too often find ourselves steering a rattling vehicle that is moving at breakneck speed, without an up-to-date roadmap, while trying to fix the engine at the same time." Learning lessons is different from adapting, because adapting is more reactive and less comprehensive and is represented by incremental and often ambiguous institutional change. As two of the foremost analysts of institutional learning, Peter Haas and Ernst Haas, have written, "Organizations characterized by irreconcilable disagreements over desirable world orders or ineptitude may not even be made capable of learning to manage interdependence rather than merely adapting to it." The United Nations still has to make a substantial effort to digest the lessons from the recent past in order to formulate a workable strategy for the future. The establishment of lessons-learned units in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Department of Political Affairs, and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is a step in the right direction. There also appears to be a growing thirst for independent research and knowledge.

Against the background of historical lessons, three fundamental political tasks are characteristic of policymaking and problem solving: articulating interests and consolidating interest groups, making rules, and applying those rules. We conclude this analysis of the United Nations with our evaluation of what has been learned. We chart change at the UN before and after the Cold War, and we suggest what these changes portend for an uncertain post–September 11 world.

**ARTICULATION AND AGGREGATION OF INTERESTS**

States have learned that they need the United Nations. After the Cold War many new states wanted to join the UN, and none of the old members wanted to get out. Since 1945 only one state, Indonesia, has withdrawn (soon to rejoin after its quixotic attempt to create a rival organization collapsed). The delegation from South Africa was barred for a time, during part of the apartheid era, from participating in the General Assembly, but the state was still a member of the organization. Even in the doldrums of the 1960s, when the Soviet Union proposed replacing the secretary-general with a troika, or the twenty-first century, when some Washington insiders advocated replacing the UN with a league of democracies, states recognized that they need the universal world organization to build diplomatic coalitions, make rules, and monitor adherence to and enforce those rules. Simply put, the old adage still applies: if the UN did not exist, it would have to be invented. The United Nations may be in perpetual crisis, but it is very much in demand and needs to be fixed. Even those who displayed an initial proclivity to attack it, such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, wound up utilizing it for many major policy decisions.

In our introduction we noted the importance of how states define their national interests and how these definitions affect the UN's evolution. We noted the crucial nature of short-term and narrow interests. As a general rule, "the United Nations is successful over the long haul only if it helps to uncover or develop genuinely shared interests." A dominant state or coalition can control policy for a time, but the UN is likely to be more effective if it is used in pursuit of widely shared interests.

After the Cold War, the United States was the most important state in the United Nations. It was the only state capable of projecting military power globally and had the world's largest economy. The United States had always been the UN's most important member state, and the UN has never undertaken the use of force, for either peacekeeping or enforcement, without genuine U.S. support. The UN had attempted human rights and economic programs in opposition to U.S. policy, but these programs had not achieved much. The rejection of SUNFED and the fate of the NIEO are good examples of the futility of attempting a major program or initiative without U.S. support. However, the survival and even advancement of the ICC and the land-mines treaty in the face of U.S. opposition demonstrates the difficulty of sure generalizations.

To be sure, many UN members were not altogether happy with U.S. influence at the UN. The General Assembly regularly passes a resolution criticizing the United States for continuing its economic pressures against Cuba, and in 2002 the United States failed to be given a seat on the Commission on Human Rights for the first time since its creation. These were visible manifestations of resentment against U.S. power. The lack of U.S. support for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto Protocol to slow global climate change, the diplomacy to restrict the introduction of light arms into conflict zones, and the International Criminal Court led to much criticism of U.S. unilateralism. This criticism became a torrent after the United States led an invasion of Iraq in 2003 without Security Council authorization. Efforts to control U.S. actions often resemble the Roman senate's attempts to control the emperor. UN diplomats almost unanimously described the debate surrounding the resolution withdrawn on the eve of the war in Iraq as "a referendum not on the means of disarming Iraq but on the American use of power," wrote James Traub in the _New York Times Magazine._

While noting U.S. unilateralism, we can recall issues at the UN for which there was genuine shared interest among UN members. Most states were opposed to Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1991. Most states were appalled at human suffering in Somalia in 1992. Most states were in favor of at least diplomatic support for human rights. Most states recognized the need to promote sustainable development. Most states were opposed to Taliban rule and its support for Al Qaeda.

World politics can be thought of as a multilevel game. On the military level, at least in terms of traditional armed conflict, the United States clearly is preponderant, spending more than the rest of the world's militaries combined. (U.S. applied power, on the other hand, can be opposed effectively, at least to some extent, by irregular violence such as roadside bombs, hit and run attacks, and other measures designed to counter U.S. putative superiority in traditional means of warfare.) Even with the presumed primacy of the United States in military affairs, the U.S. quagmires in Iraq after 2003 and Afghanistan after 2001 show that broad cooperation and burden sharing is often the wise course of action in security matters. As Winston Churchill is reported to have said, the only thing worse than going to war with allies is going to war without them.

On the economic level, the expanding European Union and the cumulative weight of Asia (and particularly of China and India) mean that the United States, while very important with close to a quarter of the world's GDP, does not dictate with the same authority as in the military arena. The weak dollar in international currency trading and a downturn in the national economy weakened the U.S. economic position further. Some widely read authors such as Kishore Mahbubani and Fareed Zakaria were already talking about the rise of Asia and the nature of a post-American world even before the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Simply put, the world's major powers need each other. One does not get the relatively important WTO by accident but rather by calculation of national interest.

Beyond the military and economic levels of world politics, the more general diplomatic level reveals many more multilateral elements and the need for compromise. The United States could not block the land-mine treaty or the treaty creating an International Criminal Court. Washington's short list for UN action includes postconflict reconstruction in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia; inspecting energy facilities in Iran; fighting terrorism (sharing information and the fight against money laundering); confronting infectious diseases; pursuing environmental sustainability; monitoring human rights; providing humanitarian aid; rescheduling debt; and fostering trade. Indeed, these very items figured in Bush's opening address to the World Summit on September 14, 2005. As the former head of the National Security Council for George H. W. Bush, Richard Haass, put it, "for all its power, there is virtually nothing the United States can do better without others. The United States needs partners; unilateralism is rarely a viable option."

By naming his confidante Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations and restoring the post's cabinet status, Barack Obama enunciated his "belief that the UN is an indispensable—and imperfect—forum." He announced not only that the United States had rejoined the world and was ready to reengage with all member states but also that the United Nations would be essential to U.S. foreign policy during his administration. Obama acknowledged that "the global challenges we face demand global institutions that work." The UN's universal membership provides legitimacy and is a unique asset that, according to Rice in her confirmation hearing, should "enhance—not diminish—our influence and bring more security to our country and the world." Obama and his administration certainly placed more rhetorical emphasis on the UN and multilateralism than his predecessor. At the same time, Obama authorized many unilateral actions in places like Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden and others who were attacking or planning to attack U.S. personnel and allies. For any government, foreign policy is always a mix of unilateralism and multilateralism. The question is one of balance and reasoned choice in context. The 2012 reelection of Barack Obama signals continuity of U.S. policy during a period of unsettling change in world politics.

The complexity of world politics, the difficulties of extracting precise lessons of history, and the challenge of knowing which way the winds of change are blowing serve as appropriate background. We now provide a final overview of learning for our three main issue areas.

_Security Issues_

In the 1990s the United States was the primary player in the UN campaign to repel Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, to pressure Iraq to comply with various UN resolutions after Desert Storm, to deliver humanitarian relief in Somalia, and to make other UN security operations succeed. In a continuation of past patterns and in light of the veto and military muscle, no UN security operation was undertaken against the wishes of the United States. Other states were also important in UN security affairs. The British and French deployed relatively large numbers of peacekeeping troops in the Balkans. The French mounted operations in Rwanda and the eastern Congo, as did the British in Sierra Leone, and the Australians led the UN force in East Timor. The Russians kept the lid on violence in Georgia, at least until the summer of 2008, and Nigeria spearheaded two ECOWAS missions in West Africa, while Brazil took the lead in Haiti. The European Union took over military responsibilities in Bosnia from NATO, which remained on the ground in Kosovo and Afghanistan. NATO was also front and center in Libya in 2011 after France, the United Kingdom, and the United States had led in enforcing the no-fly zone. France proved key to curtailing violence and honoring elections in Côte d'Ivoire in 2011.

All the permanent members of the Security Council have to at least avoid using their veto for UN decisions in peace and security matters to be made. Apart from permanent Security Council members, numerous states have supported UN peace and security efforts. Japan played a large role in UNTAC's efforts to stabilize and democratize Cambodia. Canada and Norway and some other states are stalwart supporters of UN peacekeeping. Costa Rica and other Spanish-speaking states played important roles in supporting mediation by the secretary-general in Central America in the 1980s.

The United States wants at least the UN's collective approval, and sometimes the UN's more direct help, in managing international peace and security. The George W. Bush administration took its concerns about Iraq to the Security Council in 2002, but then it attacked Iraq in 2003 without UN blessing and without a persuasive case for self-defense. Nonetheless, the Bush administration went back to the council for approval of its plans for occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. The early occupation was directed by the United States, but as difficulties mounted, the Bush team was more amenable to UN involvement. The UN helped in the transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi government in June 2005 and has helped administer elections at several junctures. Despite U.S. unilateral use of force in places such as Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), and Iraq (2003)—along with its almost total exclusion of the UN from the negotiations leading to the Dayton Peace Accord (1995) for the former Yugoslavia—the dominant trend among all states, including the United States, is to involve the UN in managing military security problems. One reason to rely on the UN for the collective management of security issues is that most other regional options offer less prospect of success. Often a "hybrid" is created, as we have seen with the African Union and the UN in the Horn of Africa or the Arab League and the UN in mounting an observer mission in Syria. The Arab League was also important in UN developments concerning Libya in 2012. At a minimum, the world organization is required to be associated with security efforts to make subcontracted states and coalitions more accountable for actions undertaken in the name of the larger community of states. When Nigeria became bogged down in trying to pacify Liberia and Sierra Leone through the use of ECOWAS, this had the effect of increasing, not lessening, demands that the UN become more involved, which in fact is what actually transpired.

Both great and small powers have sought to confer on the UN an enhanced security role after the Cold War. The articulation and aggregation of interests have varied from issue to issue. And states have not always provided sufficient political and material support to enable UN forces and representatives to succeed. Nevertheless, most states seem to have learned that major problems are hardly avoided by the pursuit of unilateral action. Apart from direct threats to a state's existence, multilateral security diplomacy has been the option preferred by most states on numerous occasions, including the long-simmering crises in Iran and North Korea and the ongoing one in Syria.

_Human Rights Interests_

The United States has been less of a dominant or hegemonic leader in human rights than in security and economic affairs. The articulation of human rights interests and the aggregation of human rights interest groups, principally through the Commission on Human Rights, came about less because of the United States and more because of a series of compromises among a large number of states, mostly Western in their orientation. At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, U.S. delegates played the leading role in pushing for reaffirmation of universal human rights. Ironically, UN norms codify economic and social human rights, which Washington in fact rejects. At one point the U.S. delegates circulated an informal list of states dragging their diplomatic feet. The United States was initially supportive of the idea of creating a more businesslike Human Rights Council to restore legitimacy to international efforts to protect and promote human rights, but it then voted against its creation, arguing that it was not sufficiently changed from its predecessor, the CHR. Nonetheless, Washington initially worked closely with the new body and joined it in 2009. And when it came to the matter of delivering humanitarian assistance in situations of armed conflict, the UN took the most decisive steps in northern Iraq and Somalia, precisely where the United States displayed the most interest and commitment. On the other hand, even with the change of administrations from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the United States continued to flagrantly violate the Geneva Conventions and other international human rights norms in its treatment of captured so-called enemy combatants.

Just as most states sought to involve the UN in the management of security issues, so most states sought to use the world organization to promote human rights through international standards and to give at least some attention to their implementation—mostly by diplomacy, at least until 1993. Particularly after the Cold War, human rights were vigorously articulated by many democratic governments that had succeeded authoritarian ones—whether communist or otherwise. The Czech Republic and Uruguay are just two examples of governments that sought extensive UN action on human rights as a result of their own previous and traumatic experience with the denial of most internationally recognized rights.

Some states—for example, Burma, China, Cuba, Iraq, Sudan, Russia, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe—resisted this dominant trend. Others, such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and various states in the Middle East, also opposed UN action on human rights—especially concerning women's reproductive rights and homosexuality—but they found it politically prudent to keep a low profile.

Most governmental officials have articulated either a moral or an expedient interest in internationally recognized human rights. If one takes the statements of states at face value, they have learned that the advancement of such rights is conducive to human dignity or that such rights have politically desirable consequences—for example, international peace, domestic tranquility, and uninterrupted foreign assistance. States have little choice but to use the United Nations for the articulation and aggregation of universal human rights interests. (Of course they can use regional organizations to develop international human rights norms and programs on a regional basis.) In theory universal human rights standards could be developed outside the UN much in the same way that international humanitarian law was developed for human rights in armed conflicts. However, international society needs the United Nations to articulate and aggregate global human rights interests. This is represented by the UN debates about the wisdom of various types of international criminal courts.

Have states learned the wisdom of developing international courts to enforce certain human rights standards, including international humanitarian law in armed conflict? Will hybrid courts, such as those for Cambodia and Sierra Leone, advance the role of international courts in international human rights and humanitarian matters? Is international criminal justice always the correct response after atrocities, compared to other forms of traditional justice, such as truth commissions and apologies? Better answers to these questions will go a long way in assessing the extent of state learning in this arena.

_Sustainable Development_

The UN has been a central forum for the articulation and aggregation of interests regarding sustainable human development and human security. We pointed out how the adoption of the MDGs and their restatement at the World Summit in September 2005 represent a culmination of this long process, which took six decades. The UN network was used mostly by developing countries to articulate, as an aggregate, their views of what should be done about poverty in particular and underdevelopment in general. Some of their demands, such as for SUNFED and the NIEO, did not lead to planetary bargains between North and South, but major compromises have been struck with various UN agencies and personalities playing important roles in facilitating agreements. At the risk of overgeneralization, we would say that over time industrialized countries have come around to the view that UN agencies have important roles to play in bridging the North-South divide and that private markets alone cannot provide all that is necessary to overcome underdevelopment in all its forms.

Ecological protection is fundamental to sustainable human development. The 1992 Rio conference, where the lengthy Agenda 21 was hammered out and articulated as a policy guideline for the twenty-first century, and where treaties on biodiversity and rain forests were negotiated, remains part of the road map. Agenda 21 and various conventions and declarations that emerged from the Rio process are snapshots of an evolving political process rather than static political outcomes. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) were the result of a compromise among states about what the United Nations could do to interject environmental protection into efforts to produce economic growth. In June 2012, more than one hundred heads of state or government convened in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20. The summit produced a 283-paragraph agreement, "The Future as We Want It," but from the perspective of most participants and observers very little was actually accomplished. The U.S. president failed to attend the summit, and no enforceable commitments resulted for dealing with major environmental challenges.

The UN has not exercised a monopoly over efforts to articulate interests related to sustainable development. All developed countries, and many developing ones as well, have individual programs for environmental protection. Regional organizations such as the European Union also have environmental programs that, when added to efforts to ensure economic growth, produce a combined policy on sustainable development. But as with security and human rights issues, the UN has been used by various actors to articulate a vision of how economic growth can be combined with protection of the environment.

**RULE MAKING**

Every society requires collective procedures to establish rules that differentiate between permissible and impermissible behavior. The United Nations plays a central role in this essential rule making for international society—largely through the Security Council, General Assembly, and associated world conferences—but other mechanisms in international society also create rules. Some treaties are made outside the UN system, and regional organizations make rules as well. The murky institution of customary international law, which is greatly affected by the behavior of powerful states, also plays a role. As José Alvarez tells us, "Like the Pope, whose historical influence on states has obviously exceeded the Vatican's military or economic capabilities, IOs' [international organizations'] impact on international law-making actors results from, in substantial part, the moral suasion they exert and not from the law-making powers explicitly." The UN has a major role in rule making for world politics regarding all three of our major issues.

_Security Rules_

Rules relating to international security are vague. Neither the International Court of Justice nor the Security Council has specified the distinction between a breach of the peace and outright aggression. Moreover, the term "intervention" has never been authoritatively specified, even though a 1974 General Assembly resolution attempted to define aggression. The 1998 Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court recognizes this problem, indicating that no charges can be brought against individuals for aggression until that concept is better specified in international law. Questions remain about whether military reprisals are legal in peacetime and whether force can be used to protect human rights. Questions also remain about the scope of state self-defense of an anticipatory or preventative nature.

The Security Council has used a very broad interpretation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter pertaining to enforcement action in response to threats to and breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. It has determined that peace and security issues may arise from human rights, economic, and ecological situations—and even from HIV/AIDS in Africa—not just from the use of force across borders by states. It has even said that humanitarian conditions within a state, even those that do not seem to generate external material effects, may constitute a threat to international peace and security and merit an enforcement action under Chapter VII. It has decided to authorize such action to restore an elected government overthrown by military force. Along the way, the Security Council has specified that individuals in zones of armed conflict have a right to humanitarian assistance and protection and that to interfere with that right is a war crime for which there can be individual prosecution. The council has also authorized member states to seize the property of a state (Iraq) in order to assist in the implementation of binding sanctions. Under Chapter VII the council has created war-crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and approved various hybrid courts. International security rules are likely to remain vague because the competing claims of states are rarely authoritatively reviewed by the Security Council or the World Court. Often world politics is about case-by-case decision making and double standards. Efforts to clearly delineate the conditions under which force may be authorized stalled at the 2005 World Summit. Nevertheless, the council continues to try to distinguish aggression from self-defense and make use of Chapter VII to organize a legally binding response to threats to and breaches of the peace.

_Human Rights Rules_

The UN has been codifying rules on internationally recognized human rights since 1948, when the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also approved the convention on genocide. Since then, there has been sufficient formal or informal consensus (reflecting an aggregation of interests) to produce numerous treaties, declarations, and resolutions.

More particularly, the United Nations has been active in fostering human rights rules since the end of the Cold War. The Security Council has merged human rights and security rules to a great extent, making decisions under Chapter VII pertaining to peace and security that involved such fundamental rights as the one to adequate nutrition (for example, in Somalia) and freedom from repression (for example, in Iraq). Stanley Hoffmann has aptly described "international peace and security" as an "all-purpose parachute." In Haiti, the council voted a binding and comprehensive economic embargo on the country during summer 1993 after military elements deposed an elected civilian president. Moreover, the Commission on Human Rights expanded its rule making even beyond the several dozen treaties and declarations already adopted. The commission took on the complex subjects of the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. The follow-on Human Rights Council adopted new standards on enforced disappearances and indigenous peoples.

The 1993 Vienna conference witnessed tremendous NGO pressure on all states to continue with UN rule making on human rights. A demand was strong for further attention to rules on women's rights. Even states not genuinely committed to personal rights found it difficult to withstand combined NGO and state pressure in support of expanded UN rule making. The political situation was such that it was easier for these dissenting states to formally accept rules that they did not really support than to stand up and try to oppose them directly. The Vienna process also indicated clearly that established principles of human rights might not be as universally accepted as many UN and human rights observers had previously thought.

The plethora of UN rules on human rights is marked also by remarkable state hypocrisy about those rules. The UN treaty monitoring system is plagued by late and superficial reports, not to mention lack of adequate funding to ensure their timely review. The systematic election of rights-violating states to the CHR indicated that many states gave preference to traditional bargaining and geographical considerations rather than to serious respect for the rules. This has been slow to change with the successor Human Rights Council, even though all members are elected by a majority vote of the General Assembly and are subject to having their human rights performance reviewed. The human rights domain at the UN is characterized by extensive codification and other norm development that reflect a formal statement of interests and/or values, but human rights NGOs remain skeptical about state sincerity. This concern remains valid, as the Human Rights Council seems little more than old wine in a new bottle.

_Rules for Sustainable Development_

Many view the Millennium Development Goals as comparable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with specific reference to development. These core principles include a focus on poverty and hunger, education, gender equality, children's and maternal welfare, good health and especially the threat of HIV/AIDS, and such general matters as sustainable ecology and broad partnership for development. The MDGs contain achievable targets for human security, although many states have fallen short and are likely to remain so even as the 2015 deadline approaches.

UN organizations and international civil servants, along with a phalanx of NGOs, press states to take the MDGs seriously. Just as human rights NGOs lobby for attention to the international rules in the domain of human rights and humanitarian affairs, so there will be nonstate actors of various types seeking to follow up the new rules for development, to help make states accountable for their commitments.

**APPLYING RULES**

Most striking about the UN system amidst changing world politics is the extent to which judgments are made about the behavior of states under UN-sponsored rules, which themselves reflect interests articulated and aggregated through UN channels. The past seven decades reveal important lessons for UN rule application within our three thematic areas.

_Applying Security Rules_

The Security Council is the locus of supervisory activity concerning state use of force and other security policies. The Security Council cannot be expected to override the permanent members in any serious way. Each still possesses the veto, which guarantees council paralysis when a permanent member's strategic interest is challenged. This is the result not of poor drafting by the Charter's framers but of a clear recognition of the realities of power. No coalition of states could hope militarily to coerce the United States into changing its policies; it is doubtful that any coalition could do likewise against Britain, France, Russia, or China without enormous disruption to world politics. Avoiding such a major confrontation and thereby making matters worse was a justification for the UN in the first place.

In spring 2003, most of the members of the council were trying to offset U.S. military power, then focused on Iraq, with diplomatic and legal arguments. In a sense this was classic balance-of-power politics, with France, Russia, Germany, China, and others trying to restrain the United States (and Britain and Spain) with diplomatic and legal measures. This balancing failed in the short run, in the sense that the United States and a coalition of willing partners were not deterred in their use of force against Iraq. Indeed, given the preponderance of American power, it is difficult to see how such a diplomatic démarche could effectively constitute a real balance. In the long run, obvious postconflict (if that is the word) difficulties in Iraq may make the United States more cautious about unilateralism in the future, or at least better appreciate the limits of military power and the advantages of multilateral diplomacy.

The United States aside, never before in world history has an IGO sought to pass judgment on states' security policies to the extent that the Security Council has. In historical perspective, this was a major experiment and the outcome has been mixed. Working closely with the secretary-general, the council could count a number of successes in supervising various policies in places such as South-West Africa/Namibia and Central America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The result was both independence for Namibia and significant steps toward regional peace and national reconciliation in El Salvador and Nicaragua. From August 1990 the council successfully countered various Iraqi policies that violated international law, primarily because the United States took a strong interest in resisting aggression against Kuwait and in seeing that council follow-up resolutions were enforced. The council was also successful in ameliorating starvation in Somalia in 1992 and early 1993, again because the United States decided, for whatever reason, that the situation was intolerable.

At the same time, the Security Council passed numerous resolutions pertaining to the former Yugoslavia that were not implemented. The state members of the council were diplomatically engaged in supervising the policies of the various parties engaged in armed conflict: Serbians, Croats, Bosnians, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. Those same council members, however, lacked the will to see that the necessary political and material resources were made available to UN forces and representatives in the field. Multilateral diplomacy was divorced from the threat to use power or the effective use of power, with predictably disappointing results. Serbia's original war aims ended up being the negotiated final solution. Nevertheless, the UN did commendable work in trying circumstances by providing humanitarian relief to many thousands of persons.

In Somalia from May 1993, the council and its field representatives through UNOSOM II tried to accomplish what U.S. forces had been unwilling to do under UNITAF—namely, to disarm the internal factions that had been threatening civilian life and to protect relief officials. But this task proved difficult, given the inadequate training, coordination, equipment, and overall force levels of UN military contingents. Calling the effort an enforcement operation under Chapter VII did not resolve problems in the field, and the UN had difficulty in suppressing factions that had long used force to gain their political objectives.

The situation was similar for UNTAC in Cambodia. General elections were supervised in May 1993, but the Security Council found it difficult to fashion a policy that would control the Khmer Rouge while helping competing domestic factions that supported national reconciliation. The delayed reactions to genocide in Rwanda and to the ouster of the elected government in Haiti also tarnished the UN's reputation. But in these and other security situations, state members of the council tended to pass resolutions that they were not committed to implementing unless the costs were deemed to be reasonable and the duration of an operation short.

The United States led NATO to use military force in modern Yugoslavia during 1999 outside the council, because Russia and China were not prepared to support such action against Serbia's persecution of Albanian Kosovars. Russia saw itself as the historical protector of the Serbs, and China was worried about UN approval of strong action against a government's treatment of its own citizens. Over time, an uneasy equilibrium balancing the territorial integrity of states and the right to self-determination has tamped down on violence in the region. Following the Arab Spring, the Security Council was able to find the will to intervene in Libya while being unable to muster the necessary consensus to act decisively in Syria. This inconsistency is not surprising but the result of changing world politics. How states calculate their interests and how much power they think they can apply both vary from case to case. Action by the UN is dependent on such calculations.

_Applying Human Rights Rules_

Since about 1970 the United Nations, principally via the Commission on Human Rights, has been more or less systematically using embarrassment to pressure states violating UN human rights rules to make corrections. But here, as elsewhere, double standards prevail. Before 1970 the UN sporadically supervised rights performance, but only after 1970 did the world organization make this supervision a regular feature of its actions. The realm of domestic jurisdiction has shrunk progressively, and the realm of international supervision has expanded; but again, consistency is not always a characteristic of UN affairs.

Small and weak developing countries were the most likely targets of UN human rights supervision, but no state could be guaranteed immunity from diplomatic pressure. The Expert Committee supervising the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights took on the Dominican Republic; the UN Committee on Human Rights supervising the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights confronted Uruguay; and the Commission on Human Rights broke new diplomatic ground in supervising Guinea-Bissau. More important states such as China, Iran, Iraq, and Israel were sometimes targeted for diplomatic supervision. Russia has been the only permanent member of the council officially condemned by the CHR; that occurred because of its heavy-handed policies in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. China had intensely lobbied to avoid censure in that commission and succeeded by the narrowest of votes.

Power greatly affects human rights issues at the United Nations. The United States and Japan were not as likely as Israel to be pressured about racial discrimination. Haiti was more likely to be coercively pressured about the denial of political rights than Myanmar (formerly Burma). China could avoid the issue of suppression of Tibetan rights at the Vienna conference, whereas Israel could not so easily avoid the issue of Palestinian rights to self-determination.

In recent years member states created special tribunals to deal with genocide and other human rights atrocities in particular places like Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and then they created the ICC. They also experimented with a hybrid course in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Lebanon. There remained, however, considerable disagreement about enforcing some human rights via international criminal proceedings. The renaissance of international criminal justice since 1993 is a major development in international relations, and the UN has played a central role, even if the ICC is largely (but not entirely) independent of the United Nations. International criminal justice is not a panacea, but the judicial enforcement of major human rights violations is not the moribund subject it was some decades ago.

_Applying Rules on Sustainable Human Development_

The UN's record on supervision is complex regarding sustainable human development. The MDGs only generated general policy statements, and the UN has a mixed record in applying them. The ILO monitored labor conditions (usually treated as a human rights question), WHO watched over health conditions (also treated by some as a human rights issue), and UNESCO kept an eye on educational issues. But on many core issues of sustainable development, the basic rules, as well as the very meaning of the concept, have only recently met with relative consensus. Deciding what specific data will be used is hardly uncontroversial, and many sustainable development concerns are treated outside the official framework of the United Nations. For example, the Montreal Protocol on the ozone and related agreements have been negotiated outside the UN, but with some participation by UNEP.

The UN has never played as definitive and large a role in monitoring state economic and ecological policies as it has in supervising security and human rights policies. International supervision in this arena has been performed more authoritatively by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, de jure but not de facto part of the UN system. Since 1995, the World Trade Organization has handled disputes about trading rules and is totally outside of the UN. Given the wide range of indicators for MDGs, various UN agencies will engage in "naming and shaming" in an effort to prod states into meeting stated targets.

Just how the Security Council, the General Assembly, or some other UN body could impose itself on a fragmented UN system and how such a centralized entity would link to the Washington-based international financial institutions and the WTO are unclear. There undoubtedly will be more cries in the wilderness by visible economists like Jeffrey Sachs and celebrities like U2's Bono before 2015, the target date for the MDGs. Furthermore, and as the Millennium Assembly indicated, sustainable development entails processes and conditions that lie well outside the scope and domain of interstate relations. Sustainable development calls for popular participation in decision-making processes and project implementation. It reaches to the lowest level of social aggregation: local communities, social groups, and individuals. These are elements of sustainable human development and of human security that do not fit well with intergovernmental decision making, UN style, and associated assumptions of national state sovereignty and noninterference in domestic affairs. Indeed, in many ways the worldviews underlying interstate relations, on the one hand, and sustainable development, on the other, are distinct. UN specialized agencies were by and large created to facilitate and promote a liberal-economic (that is, laissez-faire) world order. The resulting tensions and the turbulence that characterizes post–Cold War world politics in this regard will need to be addressed if the CSD is to effectively carry out its various mandates. This task and the way it is handled will foretell much about the future of the United Nations in social and economic areas. Bridging the gap between micro- and macro-phenomena is a key to coping with turbulence and promoting human as well as global security.

**SOME FINAL THOUGHTS**

The primary raison d'être of the United Nations is the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security, whose meaning, however, has evolved considerably since 1945. In this regard, we need to stress the inherent and inextricably linked nature of human security, democratization and human rights, and sustainable human development. The latter is aimed at cumulatively improving and sustaining human security and reducing perceived and actual threats to physical and psychological well-being from all manner of agents and forces that could degrade lives, values, and property. Both sustainable human security and sustainable human development require democracy and the protection of fundamental human rights. In short, enhancing human security is what both development and democracy are about. Nothing could be clearer in the post-9/11 world.

A group photo of the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the sixtieth session of the General Assembly (2005 World Summit). (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

The United Nations has always blended ideals and reality. Its Charter represents the idealistic goals of international society, a world of peace and justice. Its operation represents the reality of state foreign policies mediated by the views of nonstate parties such as NGOs and international civil servants. The UN thus represents both striving for a better world—more peaceful, with more human dignity and equitable and sustainable prosperity—and the failure to fully achieve that world.

The end of the Cold War provided an opportunity for states to cooperate more through the United Nations. The debilitating competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, between capitalist democracies and authoritarian socialist states, disappeared along with the Berlin Wall. States have at least sometimes learned from this post–Cold War opportunity how to cooperate within the security realm (for instance, in the 1991 Gulf War and Somalia), the human rights arena (for instance, in Haiti and El Salvador), and the field of sustainable development (for instance, in the CSD).

But interstate cooperation via the United Nations clearly has its limits. States learned conflicting lessons about the wisdom of projecting the UN into armed conflict in places like the former Yugoslavia or into the human rights situation in places like China, and how to handle sustainable development in both the North and the Global South. How effective UN efforts will be in helping to reconstitute Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia is as unknown as the effectiveness of the U.S.-led war on terrorism and regime change in Iraq. In sum, different states draw different lessons about the desirability of multilateralism via the UN. Yet the organization not only continues but also is asked to take on new problems even as many old ones remain.

In evaluating the successes and failures attributed to the United Nations, we can take a maximalist or a minimalist position. If we compare the real record of achievement to the lofty goals stated in the Charter, the world organization's record is bound to be the subject of criticism or even derision. If we recognize that UN actions depend heavily on state foreign policies, which are ever sensitive to calculations about narrowly conceived national interests, and that much of the time the UN is handed the problems that states have not been able to solve on their own, then criticism is moderated. "SG" is often the abbreviation for the UN's head, but it also stands for "scape-goat," a prevalent function in world politics for the secretary-general and the United Nations more generally.

In this respect we may do well to conclude with words attributed to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld: "The purpose of the UN is not to get us to heaven but to save us from hell."

**NOTES**

. "Winds of Change," _Foreign Affairs_ 69, no. 4 (1995): 162–172.

. This discussion draws on Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, "Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present," in _Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics_ (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), 1–48.

. Kalevi J. Holsti, _Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12–13.

. John Campbell, _Institutional Change and Globalization_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 34.

. James N. Rosenau, _Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990). The implications of this view for the United Nations are found in his _The United Nations in a Turbulent World_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992).

. Ernest R. May, _"Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); and Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, _Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers_ (New York: Free Press, 1986).

. Shashi Tharoor, "Foreword," in _Beyond Traditional Peacekeeping_ , ed. Donald C. F. Daniel and Bradd C. Hayes (London: Macmillan, 1995), xviii.

. Peter M. Haas and Ernst B. Haas, "Learning to Learn: Improving International Governance," _Global Governance_ 1, no. 3 (1995): 278.

. Cindy Collins and Thomas G. Weiss, _Review of the Peacekeeping Literature, 1990–1996_ (Providence, R.I.: Watson Institute, 1997).

. See Michael Barnett, "Humanitarianism as a Scholarly Vocation," and Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, "Humanitarianism and Practitioners: Social Science Matters," in _Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics_ , ed. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), Chapters 10 and 11.

. Harold K. Jacobson, _Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System_ (New York: Knopf, 1979).

. Thomas G. Weiss, _What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It_ , 2nd ed. (London: Polity, 2012).

. Robert E. Riggs, _US/UN: Foreign Policy and International Organization_ (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971), 298.

. Clyde Prestowitz, _Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions_ (New York: Basic Books, 2003); and David M. Malone and Yuen Foong Khong, eds., _Unilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: International Perspectives_ (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2003).

. James Traub, "The Next Resolution," _New York Times Magazine_ , April 13, 2003.

. Kishore Mahbubani, _The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East_ (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008); and Fareed Zakaria, _The Post-American World_ (New York: Norton, 2008).

. "Statement of H.E. George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, 2005 World Summit, High Level Plenary Meeting, September 14, 2005," <http://www.un.org/webcast/summit2005/statements14.html>.

. Richard N. Haass, _The Opportunity: America's Chance to Change the World_ (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005), 199. See also David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andrew Wedeman, eds., _American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World_ (New York: Routledge, 2006).

. Thomas G. Weiss, "Toward a Third Generation of International Institutions: Obama's UN Policy," _Washington Quarterly_ 32, no. 3 (2009): 343–364, and "Renewing Washington's Multilateral Leadership," _Global Governance_ 18, 3 (2012): 253–266.

. "The National Security Team," December 1, 2008, <http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/the_national_security_team>.

. "Susan Rice's Testimony at Her U.N. Ambassador Hearing, January 15, 2009," <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/susan_rices_testimony_at_her_u.html>. Other quotations are from this testimony as well.

. Tony Evans, _U.S. Hegemony and the Project of Universal Human Rights_ (New York: St. Martin's, 1996); and David P. Forsythe, _Human Rights in International Relations_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

. Sarah B. Sewall and Carl Kaysen, eds., _The United States and the International Criminal Court_ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

. José E. Alvarez, _International Organizations as Law-Makers_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 626.

. Remarks made at a symposium on collective responses to common threats, Oslo, Norway, June 22–23, 1993.

. Millennium Project, _Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals_ (New York: UNDP, 2005); and Jeffrey Sachs, _The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time_ (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), which has a foreword by Bono.
_Appendix A: The United Nations System_

_Appendix B: Concise List of Internet Sites Relevant to the United Nations_

_**General Information on International Relations with Frequent Attention to the UN**_

Council on Foreign Relations and _Foreign Affairs_ magazine: www.cfr.org

Carnegie Council on Ethics: www.carnegiecouncil.org

_Foreign Policy_ magazine: www.foreignpolicy.com

International Crisis Group: www.intl-crisis-grp.org

_**General Information on the UN and the UN System**_

The United Nations homepage*: www.un.org

The United Nations University: www.unu.edu

UN Wire: www.unwire.org

Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS): www.acuns.org

UN Association of the USA: www.unausa.org

_UN Chronicle_ magazine: www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle

_**Security Issues**_

_International Security_ magazine: www.harvard.edarticle 545u/publications/cfm

International Institute for Strategic Studies and Survival magazine: www.iiss.org

Center for Strategic and International Studies: www.csis.org

Women in International Security: www.wiis.org

Security Council Report: www.securitycouncilreport.org

_**Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs**_

International Committee of the Red Cross: www.icrc.org

Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org

Human Rights Watch: www.hrw.org

Coalition for International Justice: www.cij.org

Freedom House: www.freedomhouse.org

_**Sustainable Human Development**_

World Bank: www.worldbank.org

Overseas Development Council: www.odc.org

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: www.oecd.org

US Agency for International Development: www.usaid.gov

Center for International Development: www.cid.harvard.edu

* * *

*All of the websites of the agencies, bodies, programs, and funds of the UN system can be accessed through this site. They are not repeated under substantive headings.
_Appendix C: Charter of the United Nations_

_**Preamble**_

**We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined**

• to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

• to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

• to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

• to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

**And for These Ends**

• to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

• to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

• to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

• to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

**Have Resolved to Combine Our Efforts to Accomplish These Aims**

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

**CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES**

**_Article 1_**

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

4. To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

_**Article 2**_

The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.

6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.

7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.

**CHAPTER II: MEMBERSHIP**

**_Article 3_**

The original Members of the United Nations shall be the states which, having participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco, or having previously signed the Declaration by United Nations of January 1, 1942, sign the present Charter and ratify it in accordance with Article 110.

_**Article 4**_

1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

_**Article 5**_

A member of the United Nations against which preventive or enforcement action has been taken by the Security Council may be suspended from the exercise of the rights and privileges of membership by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. The exercise of these rights and privileges may be restored by the Security Council.

_**Article 6**_

A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

**CHAPTER III: ORGANS**

**_Article 7_**

1. There are established as the principal organs of the United Nations: a General Assembly, a Security Council, an Economic and Social Council, a Trusteeship Council, an International Court of Justice, and a Secretariat.

2. Such subsidiary organs as may be found necessary may be established in accordance with the present Charter.

_**Article 8**_

The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.

**CHAPTER IV: THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY**

**Composition**

**_Article 9_**

1. The General Assembly shall consist of all the Members of the United Nations.

2. Each member shall have not more than five representatives in the General Assembly.

**Functions and Powers**

**_Article 10_**

The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on any such questions or matters.

_**Article 11**_

1. The General Assembly may consider the general principles of cooperation in the maintenance of international peace and security, including the principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments, and may make recommendations with regard to such principles to the Members or to the Security Council or to both.

2. The General Assembly may discuss any questions relating to the maintenance of international peace and security brought before it by any Member of the United Nations, or by the Security Council, or by a state which is not a Member of the United Nations in accordance with Article 35, paragraph 2, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations with regard to any such questions to the state or states concerned or to the Security Council or to both. Any such question on which action is necessary shall be referred to the Security Council by the General Assembly either before or after discussion.

3. The General Assembly may call the attention of the Security Council to situations which are likely to endanger international peace and security.

4. The powers of the General Assembly set forth in this Article shall not limit the general scope of Article 10.

_**Article 12**_

1. While the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests.

2. The Secretary-General, with the consent of the Security Council, shall notify the General Assembly at each session of any matters relative to the maintenance of international peace and security which are being dealt with by the Security Council and shall similarly notify the General Assembly, or the Members of the United Nations if the General Assembly is not in session, immediately the Security Council ceases to deal with such matters.

_**Article 13**_

1. The General Assembly shall initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of:

a. promoting international cooperation in the political field and encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification;

b. promoting international cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, educational, and health fields, and assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

2. The further responsibilities, functions, and powers of the General Assembly with respect to matters mentioned in paragraph 1(b) above are set forth in Chapters IX and X.

_**Article 14**_

Subject to the provisions of Article 12, the General Assembly may recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.

_**Article 15**_

1. The General Assembly shall receive and consider annual and special reports from the Security Council; these reports shall include an account of the measures that the Security Council has decided upon or taken to maintain international peace and security.

2. The General Assembly shall receive and consider reports from the other organs of the United Nations.

_**Article 16**_

The General Assembly shall perform such functions with respect to the international trusteeship system as are assigned to it under Chapters XII and XIII, including the approval of the trusteeship agreements for areas not designated as strategic.

_**Article 17**_

1. The General Assembly shall consider and approve the budget of the Organization.

2. The expenses of the Organization shall be borne by the Members as apportioned by the General Assembly.

3. The General Assembly shall consider and approve any financial and budgetary arrangements with specialized agencies referred to in Article 57 and shall examine the administrative budgets of such specialized agencies with a view to making recommendations to the agencies concerned.

**Voting**

**_Article 18_**

1. Each member of the General Assembly shall have one vote.

2. Decisions of the General Assembly on important questions shall be made by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting. These questions shall include: recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international peace and security, the election of the non-permanent members of the Security Council, the election of the members of the Economic and Social Council, the election of members of the Trusteeship Council in accordance with paragraph 1(c) of Article 86, the admission of new Members to the United Nations, the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership, the expulsion of Members, questions relating to the operation of the trusteeship system, and budgetary questions.

3. Decisions on other questions, including the determination of additional categories of questions to be decided by a two-thirds majority, shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.

_**Article 19**_

A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may, nevertheless, permit such a Member to vote if it is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the Member.

**Procedure**

**_Article 20_**

The General Assembly shall meet in regular annual sessions and in such special sessions as occasion may require. Special sessions shall be convoked by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council or of a majority of the Members of the United Nations.

_**Article 21**_

The General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure. It shall elect its President for each session.

_**Article 22**_

The General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions.

**CHAPTER V: THE SECURITY COUNCIL**

**Composition**

**_Article 23_**

1. The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council. The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard being specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable geographical distribution.

2. The non-permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected for a term of two years. In the first election of the non-permanent members after the increase of the membership of the Security Council from eleven to fifteen, two of the four additional members shall be chosen for a term of one year. A retiring member shall not be eligible for immediate re-election.

3. Each member of the Security Council shall have one representative.

**Functions and Powers**

**_Article 24_**

1. In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.

2. In discharging these duties the Security Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations. The specific powers granted to the Security Council for the discharge of these duties are laid down in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII.

3. The Security Council shall submit annual and, when necessary, special reports to the General Assembly for its consideration.

_**Article 25**_

The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.

_**Article 26**_

In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.

**Voting**

**_Article 27_**

1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.

2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.

3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.

**Procedure**

**_Article 28_**

1. The Security Council shall be so organized as to be able to function continuously. Each member of the Security Council shall for this purpose be represented at all times at the seat of the Organization.

2. The Security Council shall hold periodic meetings at which each of its members may, if it so desires, be represented by a member of the government or by some other specially designated representative.

3. The Security Council may hold meetings at such places other than the seat of the Organization as in its judgment will best facilitate its work.

_**Article 29**_

The Security Council may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions.

_**Article 30**_

The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.

_**Article 31**_

Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the Security Council may participate, without vote, in the discussion of any question brought before the Security Council whenever the latter considers that the interests of that Member are specially affected.

_**Article 32**_

Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the Security Council or any state which is not a Member of the United Nations, if it is a party to a dispute under consideration by the Security Council, shall be invited to participate, without vote, in the discussion relating to the dispute. The Security Council shall lay down such conditions as it deems just for the participation of a state which is not a Member of the United Nations.

**CHAPTER VI: PACIFIC SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES**

_**Article 33**_

1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.

_**Article 34**_

The Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.

_**Article 35**_

1. Any Member of the United Nations may bring any dispute, or any situation of the nature referred to in Article 34, to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly.

2. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may bring to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly any dispute to which it is a party if it accepts in advance, for the purposes of the dispute, the obligations of pacific settlement provided in the present Charter.

3. The proceedings of the General Assembly in respect of matters brought to its attention under this Article will be subject to the provisions of Articles 11 and 12.

_**Article 36**_

1. The Security Council may, at any stage of a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 or of a situation of like nature, recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment.

2. The Security Council should take into consideration any procedures for the settlement of the dispute which have already been adopted by the parties.

3. In making recommendations under this Article the Security Council should also take into consideration that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice in accordance with the provisions of the Statute of the Court.

_**Article 37**_

1. Should the parties to a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 fail to settle it by the means indicated in that Article, they shall refer it to the Security Council.

2. If the Security Council deems that the continuance of the dispute is in fact likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, it shall decide whether to take action under Article 36 or to recommend such terms of settlement as it may consider appropriate.

_**Article 38**_

Without prejudice to the provisions of Articles 33 to 37, the Security Council may, if all the parties to any dispute so request, make recommendations to the parties with a view to a pacific settlement of the dispute.

**CHAPTER VII: ACTION WITH RESPECT TO THREATS TO THE PEACE, BREACHES OF THE PEACE, AND ACTS OF AGGRESSION**

_**Article 39**_

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

_**Article 40**_

In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.

_**Article 41**_

The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

_**Article 42**_

Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.

_**Article 43**_

1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

2. Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.

3. The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and Members or between the Security Council and groups of Members and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.

_**Article 44**_

When the Security Council has decided to use force it shall, before calling upon a Member not represented on it to provide armed forces in fulfillment of the obligations assumed under Article 43, invite that Member, if the Member so desires, to participate in the decisions of the Security Council concerning the employment of contingents of that Member's armed forces.

_**Article 45**_

In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military measures Members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action. The strength and degree of readiness of these contingents and plans for their combined action shall be determined, within the limits laid down in the special agreement or agreements referred to in Article 43, by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.

_**Article 46**_

Plans for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.

_**Article 47**_

1. There shall be established a Military Staff Committee to advise and assist the Security Council on all questions relating to the Security Council's military requirements for the maintenance of international peace and security, the employment and command of forces placed at its disposal, the regulation of armaments, and possible disarmament.

2. The Military Staff Committee shall consist of the Chiefs of Staff of the permanent members of the Security Council or their representatives. Any Member of the United Nations not permanently represented on the Committee shall be invited by the Committee to be associated with it when the efficient discharge of the Committee's responsibilities requires the participation of that Member in its work.

3. The Military Staff Committee shall be responsible under the Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Questions relating to the command of such forces shall be worked out subsequently.

4. The Military Staff Committee, with the authorization of the Security Council and after consultation with appropriate regional agencies, may establish regional subcommittees.

_**Article 48**_

1. The action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine.

2. Such decisions shall be carried out by the Members of the United Nations directly and through their action in the appropriate international agencies of which they are members.

_**Article 49**_

The Members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security Council.

_**Article 50**_

If preventive or enforcement measures against any state are taken by the Security Council, any other state, whether a Member of the United Nations or not, which finds itself confronted with special economic problems arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have the right to consult the Security Council with regard to a solution of those problems.

_**Article 51**_

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

**CHAPTER VIII: REGIONAL ARRANGEMENTS**

_**Article 52**_

1. Nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action, provided that such arrangements or agencies and their activities are consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.

2. The Members of the United Nations entering into such arrangements or constituting such agencies shall make every effort to achieve pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them to the Security Council.

3. The Security Council shall encourage the development of pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council.

4. This Article in no way impairs the application of Articles 34 and 35.

_**Article 53**_

1. The Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilize such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority. But no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council, with the exception of measures against any enemy state, as defined in paragraph 2 of this Article, provided for pursuant to Article 107 or in regional arrangements directed against renewal of aggressive policy on the part of any such state, until such time as the Organization may, on request of the Governments concerned, be charged with the responsibility for preventing further aggression by such a state.

2. The term enemy state as used in paragraph 1 of this Article applies to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory of the present Charter.

_**Article 54**_

The Security Council shall at all times be kept fully informed of activities undertaken or in contemplation under regional arrangements or by regional agencies for the maintenance of international peace and security.

**CHAPTER IX: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COOPERATION**

_**Article 55**_

With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote:

a. higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development;

b. solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation; and

c. universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

_**Article 56**_

All Members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth in Article 55.

_**Article 57**_

1. The various specialized agencies, established by intergovernmental agreement and having wide international responsibilities, as defined in their basic instruments, in economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related fields, shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 63.

2. Such agencies thus brought into relationship with the United Nations are hereinafter referred to as specialized agencies.

_**Article 58**_

The Organization shall make recommendations for the coordination of the policies and activities of the specialized agencies.

_**Article 59**_

The Organization shall, where appropriate, initiate negotiations among the states concerned for the creation of any new specialized agencies required for the accomplishment of the purposes set forth in Article 55.

_**Article 60**_

Responsibility for the discharge of the functions of the Organization set forth in this Chapter shall be vested in the General Assembly and, under the authority of the General Assembly, in the Economic and Social Council, which shall have for this purpose the powers set forth in Chapter X.

**CHAPTER X: THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL**

**Composition**

**_Article 61_**

1. The Economic and Social Council shall consist of fifty-four Members of the United Nations elected by the General Assembly.

2. Subject to the provisions of paragraph 3, eighteen members of the Economic and Social Council shall be elected each year for a term of three years. A retiring member shall be eligible for immediate re-election.

3. At the first election after the increase in the membership of the Economic and Social Council from twenty-seven to fifty-four members, in addition to the members elected in place of the nine members whose term of office expires at the end of that year, twenty-seven additional members shall be elected. Of these twenty-seven additional members, the term of office of nine members so elected shall expire at the end of one year, and of nine other members at the end of two years, in accordance with arrangements made by the General Assembly.

4. Each member of the Economic and Social Council shall have one representative.

**Functions and Powers**

**_Article 62_**

1. The Economic and Social Council may make or initiate studies and reports with respect to international economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related matters and may make recommendations with respect to any such matters to the General Assembly, to the Members of the United Nations, and to the specialized agencies concerned.

2. It may make recommendations for the purpose of promoting respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.

3. It may prepare draft conventions for submission to the General Assembly, with respect to matters falling within its competence.

4. It may call, in accordance with the rules prescribed by the United Nations, international conferences on matters falling within its competence.

_**Article 63**_

1. The Economic and Social Council may enter into agreements with any of the agencies referred to in Article 57, defining the terms on which the agency concerned shall be brought into relationship with the United Nations. Such agreements shall be subject to approval by the General Assembly.

2. It may coordinate the activities of the specialized agencies through consultation with and recommendations to such agencies and through recommendations to the General Assembly and to the Members of the United Nations.

_**Article 64**_

1. The Economic and Social Council may take appropriate steps to obtain regular reports from the specialized agencies. It may make arrangements with the Members of the United Nations and with the specialized agencies to obtain reports on the steps taken to give effect to its own recommendations and to recommendations on matters falling within its competence made by the General Assembly.

2. It may communicate its observations on these reports to the General Assembly.

_**Article 65**_

The Economic and Social Council may furnish information to the Security Council and shall assist the Security Council upon its request.

_**Article 66**_

1. The Economic and Social Council shall perform such functions as fall within its competence in connection with the carrying out of the recommendations of the General Assembly.

2. It may, with the approval of the General Assembly, perform services at the request of Members of the United Nations and at the request of specialized agencies.

3. It shall perform such other functions as are specified elsewhere in the present Charter or as may be assigned to it by the General Assembly.

**Voting**

**_Article 67_**

1. Each member of the Economic and Social Council shall have one vote.

2. Decisions of the Economic and Social Council shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.

**Procedure**

**_Article 68_**

The Economic and Social Council shall set up commissions in economic and social fields and for the promotion of human rights, and such other commissions as may be required for the performance of its functions.

_**Article 69**_

The Economic and Social Council shall invite any Member of the United Nations to participate, without vote, in its deliberations on any matter of particular concern to that Member.

_**Article 70**_

The Economic and Social Council may make arrangements for representatives of the specialized agencies to participate, without vote, in its deliberations and in those of the commissions established by it, and for its representatives to participate in the deliberations of the specialized agencies.

_**Article 71**_

The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with nongovernmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.

_**Article 72**_

1. The Economic and Social Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.

2. The Economic and Social Council shall meet as required in accordance with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of meetings on the request of a majority of its members.

**CHAPTER XI: DECLARATION REGARDING NON-SELF-GOVERNING TERRITORIES**

_**Article 73**_

Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:

a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;

b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;

c. to further international peace and security;

d. to promote constructive measures of development, to encourage research, and to cooperate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social, economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and

e. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply.

_**Article 74**_

Members of the United Nations also agree that their policy in respect of the territories to which this Chapter applies, no less than in respect of their metropolitan areas, must be based on the general principle of good-neighborliness, due account being taken of the interests and well-being of the rest of the world, in social, economic, and commercial matters.

**CHAPTER XII: INTERNATIONAL TRUSTEESHIP SYSTEM**

_**Article 75**_

The United Nations shall establish under its authority an international trusteeship system for the administration and supervision of such territories as may be placed thereunder by subsequent individual agreements. These territories are hereinafter referred to as trust territories.

_**Article 76**_

The basic objectives of the trusteeship system, in accordance with the Purposes of the United Nations laid down in Article 1 of the present Charter, shall be:

a. to further international peace and security;

b. to promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, and as may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement;

c. to encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion, and to encourage recognition of the interdependence of the peoples of the world; and

d. to ensure equal treatment in social, economic, and commercial matters for all Members of the United Nations and their nationals and also equal treatment for the latter in the administration of justice without prejudice to the attainment of the foregoing objectives and subject to the provisions of Article 80.

_**Article 77**_

1. The trusteeship system shall apply to such territories in the following categories as may be placed thereunder by means of trusteeship agreements:

a. territories now held under mandate;

b. territories which may be detached from enemy states as a result of the Second World War, and

c. territories voluntarily placed under the system by states responsible for their administration.

2. It will be a matter for subsequent agreement as to which territories in the foregoing categories will be brought under the trusteeship system and upon what terms.

_**Article 78**_

The trusteeship system shall not apply to territories which have become Members of the United Nations, relationship among which shall be based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality.

_**Article 79**_

The terms of trusteeship for each territory to be placed under the trusteeship system, including any alteration or amendment, shall be agreed upon by the states directly concerned, including the mandatory power in the case of territories held under mandate by a Member of the United Nations, and shall be approved as provided for in Articles 83 and 85.

_**Article 80**_

1. Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.

2. Paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of agreements for placing mandated and other territories under the trusteeship system as provided for in Article 77.

_**Article 81**_

The trusteeship agreement shall in each case include the terms under which the trust territory will be administered and designate the authority which will exercise the administration of the trust territory. Such authority, hereinafter called the administering authority, may be one or more states or the Organization itself.

_**Article 82**_

There may be designated, in any trusteeship agreement, a strategic area or areas which may include part or all of the trust territory to which the agreement applies, without prejudice to any special agreement or agreements made under Article 43.

_**Article 83**_

1. All functions of the United Nations relating to strategic areas, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment, shall be exercised by the Security Council.

2. The basic objectives set forth in Article 76 shall be applicable to the people of each strategic area.

3. The Security Council shall, subject to the provisions of the trusteeship agreements and without prejudice to security considerations, avail itself of the assistance of the Trusteeship Council to perform those functions of the United Nations under the trusteeship system relating to political, economic, social, and educational matters in the strategic areas.

_**Article 84**_

It shall be the duty of the administering authority to ensure that the trust territory shall play its part in the maintenance of international peace and security. To this end the administering authority may make use of volunteer forces, facilities, and assistance from the trust territory in carrying out the obligations towards the Security Council undertaken in this regard by the administering authority, as well as for local defense and the maintenance of law and order within the trust territory.

_**Article 85**_

1. The functions of the United Nations with regard to trusteeship agreements for all areas not designated as strategic, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeship agreements and of their alteration or amendment, shall be exercised by the General Assembly.

2. The Trusteeship Council, operating under the authority of the General Assembly, shall assist the General Assembly in carrying out these functions.

**CHAPTER XIII: THE TRUSTEESHIP COUNCIL**

**Composition**

**_Article 86_**

1. The Trusteeship Council shall consist of the following Members of the United Nations:

a. those Members administering trust territories;

b. such of those Members mentioned by name in Article 23 as are not administering trust territories; and

c. as many other Members elected for three-year terms by the General Assembly as may be necessary to ensure that the total number of members of the Trusteeship Council is equally divided between those Members of the United Nations which administer trust territories and those which do not.

2. Each Member of the Trusteeship Council shall designate one specially qualified person to represent it therein.

**Functions and Powers**

**_Article 87_**

The General Assembly and, under its authority, the Trusteeship Council, in carrying out their functions, may:

consider reports submitted by the administering authority;

accept petitions and examine them in consultation with the administering authority;

provide for periodic visits to the respective trust territories at times agreed upon with the administering authority; and

take these and other actions in conformity with the terms of the trusteeship agreements.

_**Article 88**_

The Trusteeship Council shall formulate a questionnaire on the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of each trust territory, and the administering authority for each trust territory within the competence of the General Assembly shall make an annual report to the General Assembly upon the basis of such questionnaire.

**Voting**

_**Article 89**_

1. Each member of the Trusteeship Council shall have one vote.

2. Decisions of the Trusteeship Council shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting.

**Procedure**

_**Article 90**_

1. The Trusteeship Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.

2. The Trusteeship Council shall meet as required in accordance with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of meetings on the request of a majority of its members.

_**Article 91**_

The Trusteeship Council shall, when appropriate, avail itself of the assistance of the Economic and Social Council and of the specialized agencies in regard to matters with which they are respectively concerned.

**CHAPTER XIV: THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE**

**_Article 92_**

The International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It shall function in accordance with the annexed Statute which is based upon the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice and forms an integral part of the present Charter.

_**Article 93**_

1. All Members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the International Court of Justice.

2. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may become a party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice on conditions to be determined in each case by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

_**Article 94**_

1. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party.

2. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court, the other party may have recourse to the Security Council, which may, if it deems necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgment.

_**Article 95**_

Nothing in the present Charter shall prevent Members of the United Nations from entrusting the solution of their differences to other tribunals by virtue of agreements already in existence or which may be concluded in the future.

_**Article 96**_

1. The General Assembly or the Security Council may request the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on any legal question.

2. Other organs of the United Nations and specialized agencies, which may at any time be so authorized by the General Assembly, may also request advisory opinions of the Court on legal questions arising within the scope of their activities.

**CHAPTER XV: THE SECRETARIAT**

**_Article 97_**

The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary-General and such staff as the Organization may require. The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. He shall be the chief administrative officer of the Organization.

_**Article 98**_

The Secretary-General shall act in that capacity in all meetings of the General Assembly, of the Security Council, of the Economic and Social Council, and of the Trusteeship Council, and shall perform such other functions as are entrusted to him by these organs. The Secretary-General shall make an annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the Organization.

_**Article 99**_

The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.

_**Article 100**_

1. In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.

2. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.

_**Article 101**_

1. The staff shall be appointed by the Secretary-General under regulations established by the General Assembly.

2. Appropriate staffs shall be permanently assigned to the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and, as required, to other organs of the United Nations. These staffs shall form a part of the Secretariat.

3. The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.

**CHAPTER XVI: MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS**

_**Article 102**_

1. Every treaty and every international agreement entered into by any Member of the United Nations after the present Charter comes into force shall as soon as possible be registered with the Secretariat and published by it.

2. No party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph I of this Article may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations.

_**Article 103**_

In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.

_**Article 104**_

The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such legal capacity as may be necessary for the exercise of its functions and the fulfillment of its purposes.

_**Article 105**_

1. The Organization shall enjoy in the territory of each of its Members such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the fulfillment of its purposes.

2. Representatives of the Members of the United Nations and officials of the Organization shall similarly enjoy such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions in connection with the Organization.

3. The General Assembly may make recommendations with a view to determining the details of the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Article or may propose conventions to the Members of the United Nations for this purpose.

**CHAPTER XVII: TRANSITIONAL SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS**

**_Article 106_**

Pending the coming into force of such special agreements referred to in Article 43 as in the opinion of the Security Council enable it to begin the exercise of its responsibilities under Article 42, the parties to the Four-Nation Declaration, signed at Moscow October 30, 1943, and France, shall, in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 5 of that Declaration, consult with one another and as occasion requires with other Members of the United Nations with a view to such joint action on behalf of the Organization as may be necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

_**Article 107**_

Nothing in the present Charter shall invalidate or preclude action, in relation to any state which during the Second World War has been an enemy of any signatory to the present Charter, taken or authorized as a result of that war by the Governments having responsibility for such action.

**CHAPTER XVIII: AMENDMENTS**

_**Article 108**_

Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.

_**Article 109**_

1. A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any seven members of the Security Council. Each Member of the United Nations shall have one vote in the conference.

2. Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations including all the permanent members of the Security Council.

3. If such a conference has not been held before the tenth annual session of the General Assembly following the coming into force of the present Charter, the proposal to call such a conference shall be placed on the agenda of that session of the General Assembly, and the conference shall be held if so decided by a majority vote of the members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any seven members of the Security Council.

**CHAPTER XIX: RATIFICATION AND SIGNATURE**

_**Article 110**_

1. The present Charter shall be ratified by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.

2. The ratifications shall be deposited with the Government of the United States of America, which shall notify all the signatory states of each deposit as well as the Secretary-General of the Organization when he has been appointed.

3. The present Charter shall come into force upon the deposit of ratifications by the Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America, and by a majority of the other signatory states. A protocol of the ratifications deposited shall thereupon be drawn up by the Government of the United States of America which shall communicate copies thereof to all the signatory states. 4. The states signatory to the present Charter which ratify it after it has come into force will become original Members of the United Nations on the date of the deposit of their respective ratifications.

_**Article 111**_

The present Charter, of which the Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. Duly certified copies thereof shall be transmitted by that Government to the Governments of the other signatory states.

IN FAITH WHEREOF the representatives of the Governments of the United Nations have signed the present Charter.

DONE at the city of San Francisco the twenty-sixth day of June, one thousand nine hundred and forty-five.
_Appendix D: United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights_

Adopted and Proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of December 10, 1948

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."

_**Preamble**_

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

_**Article 1**_

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

_**Article 2**_

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

_**Article 3**_

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

_**Article 4**_

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

_**Article 5**_

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

_**Article 6**_

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

_**Article 7**_

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

_**Article 8**_

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

_**Article 9**_

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

_**Article 10**_

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

_**Article 11**_

1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

_**Article 12**_

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

_**Article 13**_

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

_**Article 14**_

1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

_**Article 15**_

1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.

2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

_**Article 16**_

1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

_**Article 17**_

1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

_**Article 18**_

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

_**Article 19**_

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

_**Article 20**_

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

_**Article 21**_

1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

_**Article 22**_

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

_**Article 23**_

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

_**Article 24**_

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

_**Article 25**_

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

_**Article 26**_

1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

_**Article 27**_

1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

_**Article 28**_

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

_**Article 29**_

1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

_**Article 30**_

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
_About the Book and Authors_

Heated debates on Iraq in the Security Council. The September 2005 World Summit accompanied by the Oil-for-Food scandal. Resolutions on terrorism. Ongoing peacekeeping in the Congo and the Balkans. Gulf War coalition-building. Humanitarian intervention in Somalia, Kosovo, and East Timor. War-crimes tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. International Criminal Court. A Nobel Peace Prize for Secretary-General Annan and the world organization. Development debates in Beijing, Cairo, and beyond. Environmental regime-building in and after Rio. New attention to women in development. After decades of neglect—and at times ridicule—the United Nations is back, reflecting a multilateral approach to major issues in international relations, despite much talk about U.S. hegemony and a long-lasting unilateral "moment."

In this thematic and synthetic text, the authors bring to life the alphabet soup of the United Nations, moving from its historical foundations to its day-to-day expanding role in an as-yet-unconsolidated new world order. Students at all levels will learn what the UN is, how it operates, and what its relationships are with the universe of external actors and institutions, from sovereign states to the plethora of nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations now playing important roles in world politics.

The authors, all of whom have practical as well as academic experience with the UN, show how it has exerted operational and normative influence on issues in three key areas—security, human rights, and sustainable development—even as they make recommendations for improved UN performance in the future.

Well documented and well illustrated, this substantially revised and updated edition includes the UN Charter and organizational schema, extensive suggested readings through expanded reference notes, and photos of UN activities. _The United Nations and Changing World Politics_ is essential to a comprehensive and contemporary understanding of the world's leading intergovernmental organization—one that, in the words of Dag Hammarskjöld, may not get us to heaven but could save us from hell.

**THOMAS G. WEISS** is Presidential Professor and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where he is co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project. Previously, he was research professor and director of the Global Security Program at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. He has also held a number of UN posts (at UNCTAD, the UN Commission for Namibia, UNITAR, and ILO) and served as research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, editor of the journal _Global Governance_ , and executive director of both the International Peace Academy and the Academic Council on the United Nations System. He has written or edited some thirty-five books about international organization related to North-South relations, peacekeeping, economic and social development, and humanitarian action.

**DAVID P. FORSYTHE** is University Professor and Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His research interests include international law, organization, and human rights. His research in those areas led to the 2003 Quincy Wright Distinguished Scholar Award given by the Midwest Section of the International Studies Association. He is author or editor of numerous publications including recently _The Humanitarians; Human Rights and Diversity_ (with Patrice C. McMahon); _Human Rights in International Relations; Human Rights and Comparative Foreign Policy;_ and _The US and Human Rights._ Among other consultancies, he has worked for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

**ROGER A. COATE** is Paul D. Coverdell Professor of Public Policy at Georgia College and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of South Carolina and has taught at Arizona State University. He has served staff consultant to the U.S. Secretary of State's Monitoring Panel on UNESCO; a member of the U.S. Delegation to the 31st UNESCO General Conference; advisor to the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, U.S. Department of State; a member of U.S. National Academy of Science's Board of International Scientific Organizations; a member of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Panel on Housing Rights; and United Nations Fellow at the UN Centre for Human Rights. His books include: _Identity Politics in an Age of Globalization; United Nations Politics: Responding to a Challenging World; The United Nations and Changing World Politics; International Cooperation in Response to AIDS; United States Policy and the Future of the United Nations;_ and _Unilateralism, Ideology and United States Foreign Policy: The U.S. In and Out of UNESCO._ He was founding coeditor of the journal _Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International._

**KELLY-KATE PEASE** is professor of international relations at Webster University and has been a visiting professor at Samara State University School of Law in Samara, Russia. She has taught at Webster University's campuses in London, England; Leiden, the Netherlands; and Cha-Am, Thailand. She was also the director of international relations for Webster University worldwide. She is author of _International Organizations: Perspectives on Governance in the Twenty-First Century_ as well as articles and book chapters centering on human rights, humanitarian intervention, economic rights, and moral hazard.
_Index_

Afghanistan, , , , 153–154, 277–278

Africa, 41–42,

African Union (AU), , 41–42, 113–114, 114–115

and human rights,

African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), , 114–115

_An Agenda for Development_ (Boutros-Ghali), ,

_An Agenda for Peace_ (Boutros-Ghali), ,

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud,

Ahtisaari, Marti,

Aideed, Mohammed Farah, ,

Akashi, Yasushi,

Allende, Salvador, ,

Amin, Idi,

AMIS. _See_ African Union Mission in Sudan

Angola, , ,

Annan, Kofi, , , , 94 (photo), , , 132 (photo),

and development, , ,

and Global Compact, ,

and HRC,

and human rights, , , , , 206–207

and humanitarian intervention,

and ICC,

and Kosovo, ,

_In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ , ,

leadership of,

and MDGs,

and Rwanda, 86–87

and state sovereignty, ,

and Syria,

and terrorism, ,

and UN reform, ,

and UNHCHR,

_"We the Peoples": The Role of the UN in the 21st Century_ ,

Arab League, , , , ,

Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo,

Arbour, Louise, ,

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, , 87–88

ASEAN. _See_ Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Assad, Bashar al-, , ,

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ,

AU. _See_ African Union

Ayala-Lasso, José,

Bachelet, Michelle,

Balkans, , . _See also individual countries_

Ban Ki-moon, , , , 142 (photo), , 332 (photo)

and Côte d'Ivoire,

and Darfur, Sudan,

and HRC,

and human rights, ,

leadership of,

and Libya,

and MDGs, 354–355

and public health,

and terrorism, 132–133

and UN personnel, safety of,

and UN reform,

and UNHCHR,

Bashir, Omar Hassan al-, 113–114, , ,

Beyani, Chaloka,

Bin Laden, Osama, , ,

Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention,

Blair, Tony,

Bolton, John, ,

Bosnia, , , 80–83,

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, , , , ,

_An Agenda for Development_ , ,

_An Agenda for Peace_ , ,

and development, , 283–284,

_Supplement to "An Agenda for Peace,"_

and UNHCHR, ,

Brahimi, Lakhdar, ,

Bretton Woods institutions, , , 263–264. _See also_ International Monetary Fund; World Bank

Briquemont, Francis,

Brockmann, Miguel d'Escoto, 332 (photo)

Brown, Mark Malloch,

Brundtland, Gro Harlem,

Burma, 123–124

Burns, Nicholas,

Burundi, ,

Bush, George H. W., , ,

Bush, George W., 132 (photo), , , , , , ,

and climate change,

and public health,

and torture and interrogation,

and unilateralism, , ,

Bush (George H. W.) administration,

Bush (George W.) administration, , , , , , 309–310

and climate change,

and development, ,

and ICC, 202–203

and IMF,

and peace and security operations, 369–370

and UNHCHR,

Cambodia, 77–78, 78–79, 79 (photo), , 195–196, 315 (photo)

Cameron, David, 354–355

Capitalism, 258–263

Carlsson, Ingmar,

Carter, Jimmy,

CAT. _See_ Committee Against Torture

CEDAW. _See_ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

Cédras, Raoul,

Central America, , 69–72

CERD. _See_ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Change, learning from, , 365–372

and criminal courts, 248–250

and human rights, 246–252, 370–372

and MDGs, 354–357

and Millennium Development Goals, 354–357

and peace and security operations, 152–154, 364–365, 365–366, 369–370

and sustainable development,

Change, measuring, 364–365

Chemical Weapons Convention,

Chile, , ,

China, , , 120–121, , 140–141, , ,

and environmental sustainability,

and human rights, 198–199, , , ,

and hunger,

and poverty,

and sustainable development, 296–297

CHR. _See_ Commission on Human Rights

Churchill, Winston,

Civil rights, ,

Clark, Helen,

Climate change, 343–345. _See also_ Environment

Clinton, Bill, ,

Clinton administration, 192–193, , ,

Collective security, 26–29

actors in, 31–32

and General Assembly, 30–31

and regional organizations, 38–45

and Security Council, 29–30

and state sovereignty,

and UN Charter, 32–38, 38–40

_See also_ Peace and security operations; Security Council

Commission on Global Governance,

Commission on Human Rights (CHR), 210–212

Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), , 292–293

Committee Against Torture (CAT),

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD),

Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC),

Commonwealth of Independent States,

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),

Conferences on sustainable development, 305–313, 306–307 (table). _See also_ Human development reports

Conflict management, and regional organizations, 38–45

Congo, , 51–53, 53 (photo). _See also_ Democratic Republic of the Congo

Consensual knowledge, 355–356

Consensus, 29–30, ,

and human rights, , , , , ,

and sustainable development, , , , , , , , , ,

Consent, 57–58, , 95–96, 226–227

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,

Cordovez, Diego,

Costa Rica,

Côte d'Ivoire, 44–45, 116–117, 121–122

Council of Europe,

Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government,

Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC),

Counter-Terrorism Task Force (CTTF), ,

CRC. _See_ Committee on the Rights of the Child

Criminal courts, , 248–250. _See also_ International Court of Justice; International Criminal Court

CSCE. _See_ Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

CSD. _See_ Commission on Sustainable Development

CTC. _See_ Counter-Terrorism Committee

CTTF. _See_ Counter-Terrorism Task Force

Cuba, 12–13, , , , , ,

Cyprus, 57–58

Dallaire, Roméo, , 86–87

Darfur, Sudan, 112–116, 115 (photo),

Dayton Peace Accord, , , ,

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,

Debt relief, 349–350

Democracy, 172–173, 250–252,

Democratic Republic of the Congo, , , . _See also_ Congo

Deng, Francis M.,

Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), ,

Dershowitz, Alan,

Derviç, Kemal,

DESA. _See_ UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs

Development

and globalization,

and human rights, 221–222, 277–278

and poverty, 277–278

and related UN institutions, 283–284, 284–287

theories of, 257–278

and UN activities, coordination of, 284–287

and women, , 336–338

_See also_ Development theories; Eco-development; Human development; Human development reports; _individual development-related UN institutions;_ Millennium Development Goals; Sustainable development; Sustainable human development

Development theories, 257–278

and international affirmative action approach, 1962–1981, 259 (table), 263–269, 267 (table)

and national state capitalism approach, 1945–1962, 258–263, 259 (table), 267 (table)

and neoliberalism approach, 1981–1989, 269–271

and sustainable development approach, 1989–present, 271–278

_See also_ Development

Disarmament, 133–134, , 147–148. _See also_ Nonproliferation

Disease. _See_ Public health; World Health Organization

Dobbins, James,

Drugs, affordable, 351–353. _See also_ Public health

Dunant, Henry,

Earth Summit. _See_ UN Conference on Sustainable Development

East Timor, 105–107, 107 (photo), , ,

EC-ESA. _See_ Economic and Social Affairs Executive Committee

ECHA. _See_ Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs

Eco-development, , , , , , 355–356. _See also_ Development

Economic and Social Affairs Executive Committee (EC-ESA),

Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), , 216–217, , , , 284–285

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), , , ,

Economic sanctions, 61–63, , 76–77

ECOSOC. _See_ Economic and Social Council

ECOWAS. _See_ Economic Community of West African States

Education, 334–336

Egeland, Jan,

Eisenhower, Dwight D.,

El Salvador, , 71–72,

Eliasson, Jan, ,

Emergency relief coordinator (ERC), 222–223, 223–224

Enforcement, 72–76,

and human rights, 75–76

and Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, 72–73

and Persian Gulf War, 73–75

Environment, , . _See also_ Climate change; UNCED; UNCHE; UNEP

Environmental sustainability, 343–346

EPTA. _See_ UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance

ERC. _See_ Emergency relief coordinator

Esquipulas II agreements,

European Commission on Human Rights,

European Community, 42–43

European Convention on Human Rights, , 182–183

European Court of Human Rights, ,

European Union, 42–43,

Executive Committee for Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA),

FAO. _See_ Food and Agriculture Organization

Finance. _See_ Trade and Finance

Financial crisis of 2008, 332–333

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), , ,

Fowler, Robert,

Fréchette, Louise,

Fukuyama, Francis,

Functionalism, 262–263,

Gaddafi, Muammar, 117–118, ,

Gates, Robert,

GATT. _See_ General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

Gbagbo, Laurent, 44–45, 116–117

GCC. _See_ Gulf Cooperation Council

GEF. _See_ Global Environment Facility

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), , ,

General Assembly, 30–31, 199–201, 284–285

and terrorism, , 131–132

Geneva conventions, 130–131, , 181–182, ,

Global Compact, , , 346–347, 356–357

Global Environment Facility (GEF), , ,

Global governance,

Global warming, 343–345. _See also_ UNEP

Globalization

concepts of, 328–329

definition of,

and development,

and human rights,

and Millennium Development Goals, 327–328, 329–354

and multilateralism,

and sustainable human development, 346–354

Good governance, 315–316

Gorbachev, Mikhail, , ,

Gorbachev administration,

Gore, Al,

Goulding, Marrack,

Guatemala,

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), ,

Gulf War of 1991. _See_ Persian Gulf War

Guterres, Antonio,

Haas, Ernst, , ,

Haas, Peter,

Haass, Richard, ,

Haiti, , , 87–89,

Hammarskjöld, Dag, , , , , , ,

and human rights,

and Suez Canal,

Hampson, Fen,

Haq, Mahbubul, ,

Hariri, Rafik,

Harun, Ahmad,

Hayek, Frederich von, 269–270

Health. _See_ Public health

High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (HLP), 37–38, , , ,

Hitler, Adolf,

HLP. _See_ High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

Hocké, Jean-Pierre,

Holbrooke, Richard,

Honduras,

HRC. _See_ Human Rights Council

Human development, , . _See also_ Development

Human Development Index, 223 (table)

Human development reports (UNDP), , 275–276, , , 313–314, 318–319, . _See also_ Conferences on sustainable development

Human Freedom Index, 223 (table)

Human rights, 75–76, , 170–172, ,

and change, learning from, 246–252, 370–372

and criminal courts,  ( _see also_ International Criminal Court; International Court of Justice)

and democracy, 172–173, 250–252

and development, 221–222, 277–278

and General Assembly, 199–201

and globalization,

and humanitarian affairs, distinction between, 164–165

improvement in UN action for, 235–237

international, 166–170, 179–184 ( _see also under_ UN Charter; Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

and national interests, 237–240

and nonstate actors, 243–245

origin of, 165–166

and peace, 172–173

and Persian Gulf War,

regional, 182–183

rules for, 374–375, 377–378

and secretary-general, 204–207

and Security Council, 189–199

and state coalitions, 240–242

and state sovereignty, 162–164,

and terrorism, 161–162

and torture and interrogation, 161–162

UN organizational structure of, 190 (fig.)

and women,

_See also_ Commission on Human Rights; Human Rights Council; Humanitarian affairs; Humanitarian assistance; Humanitarian intervention; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; UN High Commissioner for Refugees; Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human Rights Committee, 177–178, 215–216, ,

Human rights conventions, , 180–181 (table), 181–182

Human Rights Council (HRC), 212–215

Human rights law,

Human security, 318–321, , , 364–365,

Humanitarian affairs, 76–77, 164–165. _See also_ Human Rights

Humanitarian assistance, 221–228. _See also_ Human rights

Humanitarian intervention, 93–94, 123–124. _See also_ Human rights; Responsibility to protect (R2P)

Humanitarian law, ,

_Humanity Security Report 2009–2010: The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War_ ,

Humphrey, John P.,

Hunger, 333–334

IAEA. _See_ International Atomic Energy Agency

IASC. _See_ Inter-Agency Standing Committee

ICC. _See_ International Criminal Court

ICISS. _See_ International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

ICJ. _See_ International Court of Justice

ICRC. _See_ International Committee of the Red Cross

ICTR. _See_ International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

ICTs. _See_ Information and communication technologies

ICTY. _See_ International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

IDA. _See_ International Development Association

IDPs. _See_ Internally displaced persons

IFIs. _See_ International financial institutions

Ignatieff, Michael, 161–162

IHL. _See_ International humanitarian law

ILO. _See_ International Labour Organization

IMF. _See_ International Monetary Fund

IMO. _See_ International Maritime Organization

_In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All_ (Annan), ,

Independent Commission on Kosovo,

India,

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), 353–354

Institutional framework, UN as, 14–17

Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC),

INTERFET. _See_ International Force of East Timor

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),

Internally displaced persons (IDPs), , , ,

International affirmative action approach to development, 259 (table), 263–269, 267 (table)

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), , , , 138–139

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD),

International Bill of Rights,

International civil service,

International Commission of Inquiry on Libya,

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), 93–94

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), , , , , , 181–182, , 226–227

financial contributors, 226 (table)

International Court of Justice (ICJ), , , , 236 (photo)

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, , ,

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, , , 216–217

International Criminal Court (ICC), , , , 197–198, , 201–204

in Côte d'Ivoire, 116–117

in Darfur, Sudan, 113–114

and Libya, ,

Rome Statute, , 202–203, 248–249,

International criminal courts, , 371–372

and change, learning from, 248–250

_See also_ International Court of Justice; International Criminal Court

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), 197–198

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, 197–198

International Development Association (IDA),

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, , ,

International financial institutions (IFIs), 299–305. _See also_ International Monetary Fund; World Bank; World Trade Organization

International Force of East Timor (INTERFET),

International humanitarian law (IHL),

International Labour Organization (ILO), , , , , 274–275

International law,

International Law Commission,

International Maritime Organization (IMO), 297–298

International Monetary Fund (IMF), , , , 267–268, , , , 299–300, 301–304,

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, , , ,

International regime,

International Telecommunications Union (ITU), 261–262

Interrogation and torture, 161–162

_Investing in Development_ (Millennium Project),

IPCC. _See_ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Iran, , , 138–139

Iran-Iraq War,

Iraq, , , ,

and human rights, , ,

and Kuwait, invasion of, 72–73, ,

and WMDs, 133–136

_See also_ Persian Gulf War

Islam, Saif el-,

Israel, 55–57, , 111–112

ITU. _See_ International Telecommunications Union

Jackson, Sir Robert,

Japan,

Jolly, Richard,

Kälin, Walter,

Kant, Immanuel, ,

Kellogg-Briand Pact,

Keynes, John Maynard,

Khalilzad, Zalmay,

Killing Fields memorial, 242 (photo)

Kim, Jim Yong,

Kim Jong Il,

Kim Jong Un,

Kirsh, Philippe,

Kony, Joseph,

Korea, , 50–51, 52 (photo)

Kosovo, 102–105, ,

Kuwait, 72–73

Kyoto Protocol,

Lagarde, Christine, ,

Landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), 350–351

Leadership, 140–141

League of Nations, , , , , 168–169,

Lebanon, , 60–61, 110–112, 111 (photo),

Legitimacy, 15–16

Lemkin, Raphael,

Libya, 117–119, 121–122, 122–123

Lie, Trygve, ,

Linas-Marcoussi agreement,

LLDCs. _See_ Landlocked developing countries

Lubanga, Thomas,

Lubbers, Ruud,

Luck, Edward, , ,

Lumumba, Patrice,

Magen David Adom (MDA),

Mahbubani, Kishore,

Malloch-Brown, Mark, 143–144

Marx, Karl,

Marxism, 166–167

MCA. _See_ Millennium Challenge Account

McNamara, Robert,

MDA. _See_ Magen David Adom

MDGs. _See_ Millennium Development Goals

Mehta, Hansa,

Mello, Viera de, , 309 (photo) Military force, authorization of, 146–147

Military operations, . _See also_ Peace and security operations

Military Staff Committee (MSC), 37–38

Military "subcontracting," ,

Millennium Campaign, ,

Millennium Challenge Account (MCA),

Millennium Challenge Corporation,

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), , 276–277, , 327–328, 330–331 (table)

and change, learning from, 354–357

implementation of, 333–346

strategy, 329–333

_See also_ Development

Millennium Development Goals reports, , , , , , ,

Millennium Summit (2000), 276–277,

Milošević, Slobodan, , , , ,

MINUCI. _See_ UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire

MINUSTAH. _See_ UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti

Modelski, George, ,

Montreal Protocol,

MONUC. _See_ UN Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

_A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility_ (HLP),

Moreno Ocampo, Luis, 201–202

MSC. _See_ Military Staff Committee

Mubarak, Hosni,

Mugabe, Robert, ,

Multilateralism,

and globalization,

and Obama, , , , , 368–369

and U.S., , , , , , 368–369,

Namibia, , ,

Nasser, Gamal Abdel,

Nation, 6–7

Nation-state, 6–7

National interests, 11–14, 237–240, 366–367

National state capitalism approach to development, 258–263, 259 (table), 267 (table)

National Transitional Council (NTC),

Neoliberalism approach to development, 269–271

New International Economic Order (NIEO), 265–266,

NGOs. _See_ Nongovernmental organizations

Nicaragua, ,

NIEO. _See_ New International Economic Order

Nobel, Alfred,

Nobel Peace Prize,

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), ,

and human rights, , , 216–217, , 226–227, 227–228, 243–245, 374–375

and sustainable development, , , ,

_See also_ Nonstate actors

Nonproliferation, 133–139, 147–148

Nonstate actors (NSAs), 142–143, 243–245

North Korea, 52 (photo), 137–138

NPT. _See_ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

NSAs. _See_ Nonstate actors

NTC. _See_ National Transitional Council

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), , 138–139

OAS. _See_ Organization of American States

OAU. _See_ Organization of African Unity

Obama, Barack, , , , ,

and Afghanistan,

and climate change,

and development, ,

and multilateralism, , , , 368–369

and torture and interrogation,

and unilateralism, , 368–369

Obama administration,

OCHA. _See_ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ODC. _See_ Overseas Development Council

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 222–223, 224–225

Ogata, Sadako, ,

Oil-for-Food Programme, , ,

ONUC. _See_ UN Operation in the Congo

ONUCA. _See_ UN Observer Group in Central America

ONUSAL. _See_ UN Observer Mission in El Salvador

ONUVEH. _See_ UN Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Haiti

ONUVEN. _See_ UN Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Nicaragua

OPEC. _See_ Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

Operation Restore Hope, ,

Operation Support Hope,

Opération Turquoise,

Operation Uphold Democracy,

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,

Organization of African Unity (OAU), 41–42,

Organization of American States (OAS), ,

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),

Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),

Ortega, Daniel,

OSCE. _See_ Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe

Ouagadougou Agreement,

Ouattara, Alassane, 44–45, 116–117

Overseas Development Council (ODC), 275–276

Owen, David,

Pakistan, , ,

Palestine,

PBC. _See_ Peacebuilding Commission

PBF. _See_ Peacebuilding Fund

PBSO. _See_ Peacebuilding Support Office

Peace, and human rights, 172–173

Peace and security

issues, 369–370, 373–374

rules for, 373–374, 375–377

Peace and security operations, 2–6, , 66–69

and change, learning from, 152–154, 364–365, 365–366, 369–370

during Cold War era, 49–54

completed as of December 2012, 99–101 (table)

and economic sanctions, 61–63

and enforcement, 72–73

1948–1988, 55–57

1978–1988, 60–61

1988–1998, 89–90

1988–present, 67 (table)

1999–present, 98 (table)

and sanctions, and humanitarian affairs, 76–77

_See also_ Collective security; _individual operations;_ Peacekeeping operations; Security; Security Council

Peacebuilding, 148–150

Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), , 148–149

Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), ,

Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO),

Peacekeepers, sexual abuse by, ,

Peacekeeping, 57–60

budget,

definition of,

resources,

Peacekeeping operations

principles of traditional, 57–60

success in, 153–154

termination of,

_See also individual operations;_ Peace and security operations

Pearson, Lester B.,

PEPFAR. _See_ President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier, , , ,

Permanent Court of International Justice,

Persian Gulf War, , 73–75, 76–77, . _See also_ Iraq

Physical Quality of Life Index (ODC), 275–276

Picco, Giandomenico,

Pillay, Navanethem (Navi), , , 238 (photo)

Pinochet, Augusto, ,

Political rights, ,

Poverty, 277–278,

Powell, Colin, , , ,

Prebisch, Raúl, 263–264,

Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization,

President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), ,

Private sector, 314–315, 316–318, 346–347

Proxmire, William,

Public health, , 338–343, 351–353

Putin, Vladimir, 243–244

Ramos-Horta, José, 106–107

Reagan, Ronald, , , ,

Reagan administration, , , ,

Red Cross. _See_ International Committee of the Red Cross

Refugees, 12–13

Regional organizations, and conflict management, 38–45

_The Responsibility to Protect_ (ICCISS), 93–94

Responsibility to protect (R2P), , 93–94, 118–119, 121–124. _See also_ Humanitarian intervention

Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 107–108

Rhodesia, 61–62, ,

Rice, Condoleezza,

Rice, Susan, ,

Rio+20. _See_ UN Conference on Sustainable Development

Robinson, Mary, , , 208–209

Roosevelt, Eleanor, , 175 (photo),

Roosevelt, Franklin D., , ,

R2P. _See_ Responsibility to protect

RUF. _See_ Revolutionary United Front

Ruggie, John, , , 356–357

Rule application, 375–379

Rule making, 373–375

Russia,

Ruud, Kevin,

Rwanda, 77–78, 85–87, ,

SAARC. _See_ South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

Sachs, Jeffrey, , ,

Saddam Hussein, , , , ,

Sanctions, 61–63, , 76–77

Saro-Wiwa, Ken,

Scowcroft, Brent,

SCSL. _See_ Special Court for Sierra Leone

Secretariat, 31–32, 150–151

personnel,

and terrorism, 132–133

_See also_ Nonstate actors

Secretary-general, , 31–32, ,

and human rights, 204–207

role of, 96–97

and terrorism, 132–133

Security

issues, 369–370, 373–374

rules for, 373–374, 375–377

Security Council, 2–3, 29–30,

and human rights, 189–199

Permanent , , 14–15, 29–30

reform, 144–146

and terrorism,

Security operations. _See_ Peace and security operations

Self-defense, , , , , ,

and terrorism,

Sen, Amartya,

Senior Management Group (SMG),

September 11, 2001, attack, , , , ,

Serbia, 80–81, 102–103, 104–105

Sexual abuse, ,

SIDS. _See_ Small island developing states

Sierra Leone, 107–109, ,

Sihanouk, Norodom,

Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, , 354–355

Small island developing states (SIDS), 350–351

SMG. _See_ Senior Management Group

Smith, Ian,

Socioeconomic rights, ,

Solana, Javier,

Somalia, 77–78, 83–85, 83 (photo), 192–194,

South Africa, 61–62, ,

South Asia,

South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC),

South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO),

Sovereignty, 6–7. _See also_ State Sovereignty

Soviet Union, ,

Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), ,

Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL),

Special UN Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED),

Stalin, Joseph,

State, 6–7

State actors, 11–14, 14–17, 142–143, . _See also_ State Sovereignty

State coalitions, and human rights, 240–242

State interests. _See_ National interests

State security, 364–365

State sovereignty, 7–11

and collective security,

and human rights, 162–164,

and humanitarian intervention, 93–94

original version of, 7–8

and responsibility to protect, , , 123–124

_See also_ Sovereignty; State actors

Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 26 (photo)

Stiglitz, Joseph,

STL. _See_ Special Tribunal for Lebanon

Strauss-Kahn, Dominique,

Strong, Maurice, ,

Suez Canal, ,

SUNFED. _See_ Special UN Fund for Economic Development

_Supplement to "An Agenda for Peace"_ (Boutros-Ghali),

Supranational authority,

Sustainable development, 271–278, 355–356

and change, learning from,

conferences related to, 305–313

and good governance, 315–316

and norm creation, 305–318

and private sector, 314–315, 316–318

reframing of debate as,

rules for,

_See also_ Development; _individual sustainable development-related institutions_

Sustainable human development, 318–321, 346–354, , ,

and debt relief, 349–350

and drugs, affordable, 351–353

and financial resources, 348–349

and information and communication technologies, 353–354

and landlocked developing countries and small island developing states, 350–351

and private sector, 346–347

rules for, 378–379

and trade and finance, 347–348

_See also_ Development; _individual sustainable human development-related institutions_

SWAPO. _See_ South-West Africa People's Organization

Syria, 55–57, 119–121, 121–122, ,

Taliban, 277–278

Taylor, Charles, , ,

Territorial state, 6–7

Terrorism, 129–130, 130–133, , , 161–162

Thant, U, , ,

Thatcher, Margaret,

Torture and interrogation, and human rights, 161–162

Trade and finance, 347–348. _See also_ International Monetary Fund; World Bank; World Trade Organization

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, 352–353

TRIPS agreement. _See_ Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement

Truman, Harry S., 26 (photo), ,

Truman administration, 50–51,

Tudjman, Franjo,

UDHR. _See_ Universal Declaration of Human Rights

UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), 114–116

UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVM), , , , ,

UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA),

UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), 77–78, 85–87

UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF),

UN Charter, 32–38, 38–40

Chapter I, Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter (domestic jurisdiction), 35–37

Chapter I, Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter (threat and use of force), 32–34 "Chapter six and a half,"

Chapter V (the Security Council), 29–30

Chapter VI (pacific settlement of disputes),

Chapter VII, Article 43 (MSC and military assistance), 37–38

Chapter VII, Articles 39–51 (threats to and breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression), , 34–35

Chapter VIII (regional arrangements), 38–40

Chapter XV, Article 99 (the secretary-general),

as global constitution,

and human rights, 170–172

signing of, , , 26 (photo)

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), , , , , , , 290–292

UN Climate Neutral Strategy, 298–299

UN Committee on Human Rights, 215–216

UN Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court,

UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), , 308–310, 309 (photo), ,

UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD; aka Earth Summit; Rio+20), 312–313

UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), ,

UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), , , , , , 289–290

UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), , 332–333

UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM),

UN Development Group Executive Committee,

UN Development Group (UNDG),

UN Development Programme (UNDP), , , , , , 286–287, 287–289

and human development and human freedom indices, , 223 (table)

_See also_ Human development reports

UN Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO),

UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), 55–57

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), , 295–296

UN Emergency Force (UNEF), , , ,

UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women,

UN Environment Programme (UNEP), , 266–267, 274–275, , 293–295

UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA), 259–260

UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy,

UN Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP), ,

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), 207–210

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), , , , 218–221, , 225–226

UN Human Rights Committee, 177–178

UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT),

UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), ,

UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), , 60–61, 110–112

UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG), ,

UN Joint Office on the Prevention of Genocide and R2P,

UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP),

UN Millennium Declaration,

UN Mission for Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL),

UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire (MINUCI),

UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), 105–106

UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH), , 87–89

UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS),

UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), ,

UN Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA), 70–71

UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), , 71–72

UN Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC),

UN Observer Mission to Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL),

UN Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Haiti (ONUVEH),

UN Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Nicaragua (ONUVEN),

UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), 116–117

UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC), 51–52

UN Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM), 77–78, 83–85, 83 (photo)

UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), 57–58

UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR), 77–78, 80–83, 80 (photo)

UN Rehabilitation and Relief Administration,

UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),

UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), 133–134

_The UN Special Session on Children: A First Anniversary Report on Follow-up_ (UNICEF),

UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH),

UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities,

UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights,

UN Support Mission in Haiti (UNSMIH), 87–88

UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL),

UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia (UNTAG), ,

UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET),

UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), 77–78, 78–79, 79 (photo)

UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), 49–50

UN Unified Task Force (UNITAF),

UN World Conference on Women, 314 (photo)

UNAMA. _See_ UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan

UNAMET. _See_ UN Mission in East Timor

UNAMID. _See_ UN/African Union Mission in Darfur

UNAMIR. _See_ UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda

UNAMSIL. _See_ UN Mission for Sierra Leone

UNAVM. _See_ UN Angola Verification Mission

UNCDF. _See_ UN Capital Development Fund

UNCED. _See_ UN Conference on Environment and Development

UNCHE. _See_ UN Conference on the Human Environment

UNCSD. _See_ UN Conference on Sustainable Development

UNCTAD. _See_ UN Conference on Trade and Development

UNDG. _See_ UN Development Group

UNDOF. _See_ UN Disengagement Observer Force

UNDP. _See_ UN Development Programme

UNDRO. _See_ UN Disaster Relief Office

UNEF. _See_ UN Emergency Force

UNEP. _See_ UN Environment Programme

UNESCO. _See_ UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNFICYP. _See_ UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus

UNGOMAP. _See_ UN Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan

UNHCHR. _See_ UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

UNHCR. _See_ UN High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF. _See_ UN Children's Fund

UNIFEM. _See_ UN Development Fund for Women

UNIFIL. _See_ UN Interim Force in Lebanon

UNIIMOG. _See_ UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group

Unilateralism, ,

and Bush, George W., , ,

and Obama, , 368–369

and U.S., , , , 367–369, ,

UNITAF. _See_ UN Unified Task Force

United Nations

and authority to enforce peace, 25–26

creation of, ,

financial difficulties of,

first and second, , 16–17

headquarters, 16 (photo), 178 (photo), 239 (photo)

human rights organizational structure of, 190 (fig.)

maintenance of international peace and security as primary purpose of, ,

peacekeeping budget,

personnel, safety of, 141–142

political alliances, coalitions, and blocs within, 17–19

political challenges of, 140–143

reform, 142–144, 144–150

resources,

role of,

and staff, lack of sufficient and qualified,

as state actor or institutional framework, 14–17

successes and failures of, , 380–381

system, 1–2, 25–26

voting patterns,

_See also_ General Assembly; Secretariat; Secretary-general; Security Council; UN Charter

United States

and climate change, 344–345

criticism of, 367–369

and human rights, , , 370–371

and ICC, 202–203

and multilateralism, , , , , , 368–369,

and nuclear proliferation, 147–148

and peace and security operations, 369–370

and unilateralism, , , , 367–369, ,

_See also_ Persian Gulf War; September 11, 2001, attack

Uniting for Peace Resolution, 30–31,

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), , , 174–179

Universal Postal Union (UPU), 261–262

UNMIH. _See_ UN Mission in Haiti

UNMIS. _See_ UN Mission in Sudan

UNMIT. _See_ UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste

UNMOGIP. _See_ UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan

UNMOVIC. _See_ UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission

UNOCI. _See_ UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire

UNOMSIL. _See_ UN Observer Mission to Sierra Leone

UNOSOM. _See_ UN Operations in Somalia

UNPROFOR. _See_ UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia

UNRWA. _See_ UN Relief and Works Agency

UNSCOM. _See_ UN Special Commission

UNSMIH. _See_ UN Support Mission in Haiti

UNSMIL. _See_ UN Support Mission in Libya

UNTAC. _See_ UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia

UNTAET. _See_ UN Transitional Administration in East Timor

UNTAG. _See_ UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia

UNTSO. _See_ UN Truce Supervision Organization

UPU. _See_ Universal Postal Union

Urquhart, Brian E., , 59 (photo)

Van Boven, Theo, , ,

Vance, Cyrus,

Vasconcelos, José Maria, 106–107

Vaz, Ana, 107 (photo)

Violence, reduction in,

Volcker, Paul,

Waldheim, Kurt,

War, risk of, reduction in,

_"We the Peoples": The Role of the UN in the 21st Century_ (Annan),

Weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 129–130, 133–139,

Webster, Daniel,

West Africa, , , ,

WFP. _See_ World Food Programme

WHO. _See_ World Health Organization

Wilson, Woodrow,

Wilson administration,

WMDs. _See_ Weapons of mass destruction

WMO. _See_ World Meteorological Organization

Wolfowitz, Paul, 300–301

Women, , , 336–338

World Bank, ,

and development, theories of, 260–261, , 267–269,

and human rights, ,

and sustainable development, , 299–300, 300–301, ,

and women,

World Conference on Human Rights (1993), 163–164

_World Development Report_ (World Bank),

World Food Programme (WFP), , , ,

World Health Organization (WHO), , , , , 296–297

World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 261–262,

World Summit (2005), 144–150, ,

_World Summit Outcome Document_ ,

World Trade Organization (WTO), , 274–275, 299–300, 304–305, 347–348, ,

World War II,

WTO. _See_ World Trade Organization

Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 354–355

Yugoslavia, 77–78, 80–83, 80 (photo),

Zakaria, Fareed,

Zarghuna Girls School, 273 (photo)

Zimbabwe,

Zoellick, Robert,

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook