Global Archive

After two weeks of slaughter in South Sudan, UNMISS, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country, faces three possible scenarios: fragile success, prolonged agony and decisive failure. In the first and best scenario, the mission will manage to hold together militarily long enough for more-or-less sincere political talks to end the violence. In the second, it might muddle through in the face of half-hearted negotiations and spasmodic but serious violence, trying to save as many lives as possible. The third, worst-case scenario would involve the fragmentation and rout of UNMISS after repeated attacks on its bases, personnel and convoys. […]

Conflict settlement is a process rather than a singular act. At its most basic, a peace process comprises three phases: the negotiation, implementation and operation of an agreement meant to enable the conflict parties to resolve their disputes by nonviolent, political means. Yet the successful conclusion of a peace process is by no means a foregone conclusion—they can, and do, fail. Sometimes negotiations break down and no agreements are concluded, leading conflict parties back to violence. In other cases, disagreements about the meaning of particular provisions arise after an agreement has been reached. In the absence of effective dispute resolution […]

United Nations peacekeepers have repeatedly been in the headlines through 2013, grappling with crises across Africa. But the year’s single greatest challenge to the U.N.’s strategic credibility—the Syrian military’s large-scale use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in August—took place with no peacekeepers in sight. The best the organization could do in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity was to dispatch chemical weapons inspectors to the scene, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pleaded for time for them to investigate. Yet at the beginning of this year, it appeared quite possible that international peacekeepers would deploy to Syria in the course of […]

Does Ban Ki-moon fall prey to the sin of envy when he thinks of Pope Francis? The two men are arguably the leaders of the two most significant global institutions, and idealists have dubbed the secretary-general of the United Nations a “secular pope.” Ban does not subscribe to this grandiloquent self-description. But he may wish he could communicate moral themes as effectively as the new pontiff. Francis impressed even nonbelievers last month with a deeply felt attack on the rising “economy of exclusion and inequality.” Ban, who hopes to forge a new international deal to end extreme poverty by 2030, […]

Last week, OPEC decided to leave its production ceiling unchanged at 30 million barrels per day (bpd), the target it set two years ago. On the face of it, this decision seems to reflect the self-proclaimed oil cartel’s satisfaction with current high oil prices. Over the past three years, OPEC has thrived with Brent crude averaging above $100 a barrel, boosting members’ revenues to record highs. High prices have even allowed the Vienna-based organization to become sloppy: OPEC stopped publishing individual country quotas five years ago, and most cartel members are producing all the oil they can; meanwhile, Saudi Arabia […]

It is understandable that Japan views China’s “rise” with concern. On the list of Japan’s concerns are China’s rapidly growing military expenditure, its increased economic competitiveness, its geographic proximity to Japan and its historical track record of aggressive territorial assertiveness. The most recent manifestation of the tension between the two great powers was the Chinese declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea, above the Senkaku Islands claimed by Japan as well as China, which calls them the Diaoyu Islands. From the Japanese perspective, China’s behavior is illegal. But this is not the only area of […]

Among the most damning criticisms of human rights law is that when it is needed most, it is nearly impossible to enforce. To understand how this is so, think about someone being detained and beaten by police officers in a police station. This probably happens to thousands of people every day all around the world, and it is a very simple matter in international law. It’s called torture, and it is illegal. Always. That’s the theory, anyway. When a system of law is enforceable in practice, it should be possible to turn a clear legal right into something actionable—say, a […]

This summer in Jordan, I met some of the individuals behind the often anonymous news accounts of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war. In Zaatari refugee camp, I met an accountant who carried his six-day-old daughter across the border in the dead of night after his house was destroyed, and a widow who fled with little more than $11 in her pocket after her husband died. And in a hospital in Amman, I met refugees recovering from torture so brutal that even the healing wounds were painful to look at. Despite the horrors they endured, all the Syrian refugees I met […]

Last month, Uganda sought compensation from the U.N. for three Ugandan helicopters that crashed while in transit to the African Union Mission in Somalia, killing seven crew members. In an email interview, Scott Sheeran, a senior lecturer in international human rights, humanitarian law and U.N. law at the School of Law at University of Essex, explained the rules governing U.N. compensation to states contributing to peacekeeping missions. WPR: What rules govern responsibility for damage to U.N. equipment and harm to personnel during peacekeeping operations? Scott Sheeran: The rules for reimbursement to states providing equipment, personnel or support services to a […]