NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council

This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, concluding that NGOs are surprisingly underexamined, given remarkable new participatory opportunities in the HRC/UPR and the centrality of NGO information provision to the success of the new body. Empirical analysis of NGO statements from the CHR to the HRC indicates sharply increasing NGO participation, particularly among domestic, regional, and Southern NGOs. The increased volume and changing characteristics of participating NGOs may have important effects on the HRC/UPR and should also encourage further analysis.     

The Potential of the Human Rights-Based Approach for the Evolution of the United Nations as a System

The United Nations (UN), facing increasingly intense challenges in the fulfillment of its mission, also harbors the potential for enhanced effectiveness, relevance, and legitimacy in the form of the human rights-based approach. The human rights-based approach (HRBA) is one model for translating the organization??s values into a more adaptive, inclusive, dynamic, and responsive system of processes and outcomes. In the arena of politics, its meeting with a meaningful degree of receptiveness could signal a growing acceptance of the validity of structural approaches to development and other issues despite traditional defensive positions on human rights. Application of the HRBA in programming is leading to greater appreciation for addressing core disparities and promoting empowerment for sustainable outcomes. It is also cultivating new qualities in development practitioners, advancing creativity, openness and responsiveness in organizational culture. In feeding its evolution in this way, the UN as a system has the potential for deeper, longer-term mission fulfillment and thus ensuring its viability.     

The determinants of election to the United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the foremost international body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. Members vote on issues of global importance and consequently receive perks—election to the UNSC predicts, for instance, World Bank and IMF loans. But who gets elected to the UNSC? Addressing this question empirically is not straightforward as it requires a model that allows for discrete choices at the regional and international levels; the former nominates candidates while the latter ratifies them. Using an original multiple discrete choice model to analyze a dataset of 180 elections from 1970 to 2005, we find that UNSC election appears to derive from a compromise between the demands of populous countries to win election more frequently and a norm of giving each country its turn. We also find evidence that richer countries from the developing world win election more often, while involvement in warfare lowers election probability. By contrast, development aid does not predict election.     

Legitimacy Deficit: Chinese Leadership at the United Nations

This paper examines the likelihood of China’s legitimation as the global hegemon during an era of relative U.S. decline. Using Rapkin’s (1990) legitimacy deficit framework, the author tests China’s prospects for international legitimacy through the analysis of Chinese leadership at the United Nations (UN). While China’s recent exponential increase in contributions to UN peacekeeping and the UN regular budget signal growing Chinese global leadership, their consistent focus on regional interests, as displayed in UN Security Council and UN General Assembly debate and discussion, indicates the absence of an internationally supported agenda. In concluding, this paper asserts that recent Chinese legitimation efforts through UN leadership have been stonewalled by an inability to provide an international agenda with globally held values and beliefs.     

Reform of the United Nations Security Council: equity and efficiency

Rents and political motives are present in many aspects of public policy. This article considers the role of rents, rent seeking, and the political choice of environmental policy. Rents are introduced into the political choice of price and quantity regulation under conditions of uncertainty. The model shows how political-economy aspects affect the choice between price and quantity regulation. The contesting of rents associated with different policies affects the regulatory structure and influences the political choice of an environmental policy target. The primary conclusion is that the political choice of environmental policy depends on the interaction between the efficiency of rent transfer and the size of rent-seeking groups within the economy.     

The United Nations and genocide: Prevention,intervention, and prosecution

Conclusion The UN has to date not been effective in preventing genocide, and has had only a slightly better record in stopping it. There have been occasions when its interventions has occurred only after a genocide has taken place, and even then its major focus has been on facilitating the provision of aid by non-governmental agencies rather than on the task of tracking down the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The exceptions of the ICTY and the ICTR are so stark, in this regard, that they only serve to throw light on the many other genocidal events where the UN has not initiated measures against those responsible for carrying them out. In short, as a body the UN has no—until very recently—even approached the fulfillment of its mandate as articulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and only rarely invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in order to intervene physically for the purpose of countering threats to peace or stopping conflict. Its strengths, so far as there have been any, have focused on balancing great power interests with demands to intervene more forcefully. While in the years up to 1989 this could be seen as a way of maintaining the peace (albeit over the broken bodies of victims of genocide in places such as Biafra, Cambodia, and East Timor), since then the UN has been required to act with greater resolve and purpose. The failures of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo must thus be seen as having been brought on by a transition from one international regime to another; from a Cold War regime in which the UN—s main role was one of preventing a third (and possibly nuclear) World War from breaking out, to a post-Cold War regime which appears increasingly to be characterized by the UN searching for a new role in which humanitarian issues are to assume a higher priority than they once did. Whether or not this will continue, of course, will depend on an extremely wide variety of circumstances—and at this time it is likely that only a few of these can accurately be anticipated.     

Towards a management renewal of the United Nations — Part II

In the first part of this article, the authors examined the historical and structural factors constraining the effectiveness of the Organization's capacity to carry out increasingly critical global mandates. In a second, concluding part of the article, the authors will suggest a strategy for UN reform and a process for carrying forward a ‘renewal exercise’ to equip the Organization for its role beyond the year 2000. Effective UN administrative reform, unlike so many previous attempts that were characterized by tinkering with its structure or taking isolated measures to improve performance, will require a comprehensive overhaul of, inter alia, the following: the professional management environment and culture, personnel, financial and supportive information management and technologies, the establishment of an effective oversight function and the development of operational management capabilities. The proposed post-50th anniversary ‘renewal exercise’ brings together the governmental, senior management and staff levels of the Organization, along with outside experts, to develop a long-term strategy and an integrated and practically implementable action plan for facilitating UN administrative reform. The exercise would also be guided by global experience and look to its success in charting the future by involving both member states and UN staff. Only such an approach will ensure that accountability for results is effectively in-built.     

People Trafficking: Conceptual issues with the United Nations Trafficking Protocol 2000

This paper examines the UN 2000 Trafficking Protocol in the context of international responses to the issue of people trafficking. Attention is drawn to the conceptual flaws in this new instrument regarding the failure to address domestic trafficking, not incorporating the purchasing and selling of people as defining characteristics of trafficking, and the lack of clarity around issues of prostitution. Framing the discussion within feminist theory, the essay concludes that women’s campaigning will continue to be crucial to putting issues such as human trafficking on the international political agenda. This is extended to affirm that people’s struggle against oppressive circumstances will lead the tackling of the underlying causes of trafficking.     

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan: Impartiality in New UN Peace Operations

Abstract

Set within the complex contemporary context of international interventions, UN peacekeeping operations have now evolved into peace operations. The emergence of the concepts of human security and the responsibility to protect have raised expectations that UN peace operations should deal with both macro and micro level insecurity in conflict and post-conflict situations, especially in the case of failed or collapsed states. Reflecting this development, the question of an appropriate framework in which to conceptualize peace operations has also been debated. This essay considers a conceptualization of UN peace operations from a conflict resolution perspective and analyses the case of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), using a framework of conflict transformation. It argues that the impartiality of UN operations has been reconceived in terms of the values of ‘human security’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’, making it vital to explicitly articulate the meaning and implications of ‘value-based’ impartiality.     

Exchange rate evidence on the effectiveness of United Nations policy

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of international interventions through their impact on exchange rates. If a specific intervention actually increases (decreases) a country's economic and political stability, then its currency should appreciate (depreciate). Estimates suggest that peacekeeping forces in Lebanon caused long-run appreciations, while economic sanctions imposed upon South Africa only caused temporary depreciations. In both cases, repeated U.N. resolutions condemning or demanding actions, that were not backed by actual interventions, did not cause changes in the exchange rate. The results in this paper are supportive of predictions from the public choice approach applied to international organizations and policies.