UN System Research Articles

The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development: Orchestration by Default and Design

The High-Level Political Forum on sustainable development (HLPF) is a central element in the emerging governance architecture for sustainable development. Established at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio 20), the HLPF has a dauntingly expansive mandate, including setting the sustainable development agenda; enhancing integration, coordination and coherence across the UN system and at all levels of governance; and following up on all sustainable development goals and commitments.Yet it has been granted limited authority and few material resources. In these circumstances, the HLPF must rely on the governance strategy of “orchestration”: working indirectly through intermediary organizations, and using soft modes of influence to support and guide their actions. Indeed, the design of the HLPF suggests that states intended it to pursue this approach. We identify potential intermediaries and techniques of orchestration for the HLPF, and consider whether it can satisfy the conditions for success as an orchestrator.

Human security/environmental security

This article offers a genealogy of human security and environmental security set against the background of the 1994 United Nations Human Development Report and its demands for a profound transition in thinking. It shows how these two concepts have intersected and overlapped on the one hand, and diverged on the other. The debates within the UN system about what human security does or should mean have taken some account of the impact of environmental degradation on people and their communities though this has often lacked any analytical depth. The concept of environmental security, on the other hand, has become increasingly divorced from its potentially heterodox and critical roots in human security. Rather it has been captured by an orthodoxy that focuses primarily on non-traditional threats to traditional referents (i.e. the state) and that increasingly perceives ‘environmental security’ as a synonym for the threat multiplier dimensions of climate change. Rather than empowering a people-centred approach that places emancipation at the centre of human/environmental security, the author argues (following Mason and Zeitoun) that this has foreclosed rather than protected human freedom and dignity.

Global Constitutionalism and Global Governance: Towards a Un-Driven Global Constitutional Governance Model

The development of the UN governance process-model provides the basic constitutional framework for an integrated system of global governance that unifies the different legal systems under constitutional principles and procedures that respect pluralism and their overall diversity. It is however evident that any system of global governance requires a broader range of mechanisms to enable the meaningful involvement of new actors in decision-making, given the failure of the inclusion mechanisms implemented thus far in the intergovernmental UN system. It is therefore clear that the new model that is being developed should be seen as only the beginning of a global constitutionalization process.

Politicizing the International Criminal Court: Redefining the Role of the United Nations Security Council in the Age of Accountability

The UN Security Council plays a prominent role in the functioning of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the ICC is a judicial institution distinct from the UN system, the Security Council, through provisions in the ICC’s governing treaty (the Rome Statute), can refer situations to the ICC Prosecutor for investigations or prosecutions. This power, contained in Article 13(b) of the Statute, enables the Council to transcend the nationality and territoriality pre-conditions necessary to trigger the Court’s jurisdiction. Through Article 16 the Security Council can prevent the initiation or continuation of investigations or prosecutions for a renewable period of 12 months following the adoption of a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. In exercising its referral and deferral powers, the Security Council must act under Chapter VII of the Charter, specifically Article 41, which provides that the Council may decide what measures not involving the use of force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions. Between June 2002 and April 2014, the Security Council expressly invoked its deferral powers on three occasions and referred two situations to the Prosecutor: Darfur (2005) and Libya (2011). In this paper I will consider the arguments that this relationship between the ICC and the Security Council has become politicized. I will review the drafting history of the Rome Statute to assess how this relationship was originally envisioned and whether the political undertones of such a relationship were apparent. I then will consider how the Council has applied its powers. Finally I will propose recommendations to redefine the relationship to improve the Court’s effectiveness, with particular emphasis on the Prosecutor’s discretionary powers under Article 53 of the Rome Statute. Ideally a relationship between the ICC and the UN Security Council would serve multiple interests. In drafting the Rome Statute, the International Law Commission (ILC) considered that since the UN Charter confers upon the Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, referral powers would provide the Council with a standby permanent tribunal through which it could adopt international criminal justice as a means

International Law and Effectiveness in the Post—Cold War Era

The ILA/ASIL Gala Dinner was held from 8:00-10:00 pm on Friday, April 11. The speaker was Dr. Danilo Turk, former President of Slovenia. INTERNATIONAL LAW AND EFFECTIVENESS IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA Honorable Professor Ruth Wedgwood, President of the American Branch of the ILA and President-Elect of the ILA, Honorable Lord Manee, Chair of the ILA Executive Committee, Distinguished colleagues, ladies, and gentlemen, It is a great honor and privilege to address this important global gathering of international law specialists meeting at this first-ever joint conference of the International Law Association and the American Society for International Law. The conference has already been described as historical. I am convinced that your discussions over the past days--and the outcomes of these discussions--will fully justify this description. The presence of the great jurists who received awards and honors tonight--Alain Pellet, Cherif Bassiouni, Fatou Bensouda, and the winners of the Certificates of Merit--underscores further the special importance of this evening and of this conference. Let me add my voice to the many expressions of congratulation heard tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, The general, overarching subject of the conference is the question of the effectiveness of international law, a fundamental question always worthy of an in-depth discussion among legal scholars and practitioners. The venue for this discussion could not be more appropriate. Washington, DC is not only the capital of the United States and the seat of great economic, political, and military power. Washington is also a place where some of the most important ideas of international law have been developed and have guided the progressive development of the entire system of international law. Only a few miles away from here, in Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, a comprehensive draft of the Charter of the United Nations was prepared in the summer of 1944, almost exactly seventy years ago. The work accomplished then led to the adoption of the UN Charter, without a doubt the most important instrument of international law of the past century and arguably the most important international treaty ever drafted. It is appropriate that at our meeting, seventy years later, we pay tribute to the drafters of the UN Charter, and in particular to Leo Pasvolsky of the U.S. Department of State, the spiritus agens of that process. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference remains an important source of inspiration for international lawyers today and will remain so in the future. The result of that Conference, the UN Charter, has stood the test of time and remains the centerpiece of the entire international system today. However, its effectiveness has often been challenged, and many of the expectations of its authors unfulfilled. The problem of effectiveness has been a persistent challenge for the United Nations since its early days, particularly in matters of maintenance of international peace and security. Critical commentators have rightly pointed out that even when the organization properly exercised its procedural potential, it was often unable to face the fundamental political issues that had to be resolved. This sentiment has existed from the beginning and grew as the Cold War paralyzed the mechanisms of the United Nations. But this aspect is not the only perspective from which one can assess the effectiveness of the system established by the UN Charter. It is remarkable that in the past seven decades, even at the time of the Cold War constraints, international cooperation and international law steadily progressed and the United Nations served as the most important vehicle of this progressive development. Seen in retrospect, the evolution of the second half of the 20th century has proven right those scholars and practitioners of international law who helped to use the UN system with a view to developing international rules of global cooperation. …

Control de constitucionalidad de los actos de los órganos de las Naciones Unidas: una aproximación desde la perspectiva de la Corte Internacional de Justicia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the International Court of Justice can, in exercise of its jurisdiction, examine the conformity with the Charter of the acts of UN organs —i. e., its constitutionality— and to rule on the matter. To this end, it explores the possibility of judicial review of constitutionality in the UN system, taking into account the li- mits of UN organs competence, the scope and effects of such review, and the convenience of its denomination as “judicial review of constitutionality”; the powers of the Court in the Charter and its Statute are reviewed, and also its case-law, to verify if they are an explicit or implicit source of judicial review; and, finally, it addresses the question of forms that the judicial review can take.

India's response to the 1971 East Pakistan crisis: hidden and open reasons for intervention

Based on recently declassified materials from the Indian government archives and on the private papers of the principal secretary to the Indian prime minister, this article investigates how India formulated its response to the 1971 East Pakistan genocidal crisis that culminated with the third Indo-Pakistani war. India's victory changed the balance of power in South Asia: Bangladesh emerged as a new independent state, while Pakistan was significantly reduced. The 1971 war is cited in the international literature as one of the first cases of humanitarian intervention in world history. The Indian official position, recently reinforced by a new major publication, highlights the ‘humanitarian’ character of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, depicting a reluctant India compelled to intervene by international inactivity towards the atrocity. This article contests this interpretation and argues that humanitarian considerations were only one side of the picture. Clear political interests drove the actions of New Delhi, which autonomously formulated a specific strategy aimed at making capital out of the dramatic humanitarian crisis. In advancing this argument, this article contributes to the complex debate about humanitarian intervention by observing that the inability of the UN system to intervene is bound to open the way to two possible outcomes: one is the continuation of the genocidal massacres; the other is the unauthorized humanitarian armed intervention by a regional power, which is likely to act according to its own interests. The specific case under review demonstrates that unauthorized armed intervention cannot per se always be branded as deplorable, since in certain cases such a scenario is better than no intervention at all.

Advancing the Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Getting UN Attention via the Universal Periodic Review

Having been neglected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),1 minority rights, and even more so, the rights of indigenous peoples, have developed in quite an ad hoc and indolent manner. The rights of minorities were recognised in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)2 in 1966, but as yet no binding UN instrument on minorities exists. Indigenous peoples fared worse under the UN system as their rights, apart from labour rights,3 were not codified in a legal instrument until the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)4 in 2007. Over the years a complex framework of mechanisms was established within the UN to support the rights of these groups,5 but their concerns and entitlements were still sidelined to an extent due to the lack of binding instruments and the absence of comprehensive and compulsory State reporting requirements on these issues. However, in 2007 the newly created Human Rights Council developed a novel method of overseeing the implementation of universal human rights standards in the form of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR allows for discussion on all human rights issues and is not bound by the subject matter limitations of the UN treaty body regime, thus encompassing minority rights and indigenous peoples' rights within its rubric. This article seeks to analyse how the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples were dealt with during the first cycle of the UPR and to assess the impact of this mechanism on these rights.

Financing the UN development system and the future of multilateralism

This article seeks to accomplish four tasks. It explores the historical relationship between the financing instruments that dominated different phases of the evolution of the UN development system and the understanding of the concept of multilateralism. Bearing in mind this historical context, it seeks to analyse the defining characteristics of multilateral finance in the context of the UN, in particular the characteristics that make a financial instrument more or less multilateral. It then explores a number of new financial instruments and their possible impact on the future shape multilateralism takes in the UN system. The article concludes with some thoughts on financing for a new multilateralism. In order to go beyond the core/non-core stalemate, it is necessary to develop a new variable geometry based on function, which brings into play assessed, negotiated pledges, voluntary core and non-core instruments.

Making M&E More ‘Impact-oriented’: Illustrations from the UN

In international development, impact evaluation (IE) is becoming more and more an institutionalised practice. This article starts out by addressing the question of what institutionalisation of IE means and how it could work. Subsequently, the article explores common challenges in monitoring and evaluation functions in the UN system related to the supply of (and to a lesser extent demand for) evidence on impact. Rather than looking for solutions to these challenges in the practice of IE, the article explores the issue of how to improve non‐IE monitoring and evaluation practices. On the basis of the identified challenges three categories of solutions are discussed: improving the quality of impact‐related evidence at activity and project level, strengthening the causal logic underlying interventions, and strengthening the aggregation and synthesis of evidence. Finally, the article presents some illustrative examples of the latter two categories of solutions.

Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together: Human Rights Advocacy and the History of International Human Rights Standards Website

Human Rights Advocacy and the History of International Human Rights Standards ( http://humanrightshistory.umich.edu ) explores the development and evolution of international human rights policy. This website is a useful teaching tool for instructors and a resource for practitioners interested in the standard setting work of the human rights movement and the intellectual history of human rights policy. It is organized around five thematic areas where human rights organizations have significantly contributed to policy: identifying human rights problems, promoting policy mechanisms within the UN system, establishing accountability for human rights abuse, developing research methodologies, and setting the agenda for future standard setting and advocacy work.

Britain, India, and the United Nations: colonialism and the development of international governance, 1945–1960

AbstractThis article argues that the manner by which colonial societies achieved independence as sovereign states in the late 1940s and 1950s fundamentally shaped the parallel emergence of ideas and institutions of international governance, particularly at the newly created United Nations. Using Anglo-Indian relations as its primary focus, it argues that the internationalization of imperialism was particularly evident in two areas: postcolonial states’ negotiation of relations with their former colonial power within the UN system; and the influence of colonialism on international governance, particularly through the idea and practice of planning. The article assesses these developments through an analysis of British debates about United Nations membership for postcolonial states, India's role at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 where the United Nations was formed, India's campaign for a seat on the Security Council and its engagement with ECOSOC, the applicability of existing international conventions to postcolonial states, and the transfer of the ideal of planning from colonial to international governance.

Identifying Beneficiaries of the UN Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership (UNIPP): The Case for the Indigenes of Nigeria's Delta Region

The UN launched the Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership (UNIPP), its first global inter-agency initiative, on 20 May 2011 to promote and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples worldwide. The Initiative is a collaboration of several UN agencies. The Partnership was created in furtherance of the provisions of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and ILO Convention No. 169 that aim to promote indigenous peoples’ rights by the UN systems through mobilisation including financial cooperation and technical assistance. These include promoting indigenous peoples’ full participation in governance and policy processes at the local and national levels, including conflict prevention in regard to ancestral land and use of natural resources. The UNIPP proposes to achieve its primary objective by providing support to capacities of multiple actors, in particular governments and indigenous peoples and organisations, to establish effective dialogue processes, mechanisms and partnerships aimed at guaranteeing indigenous peoples’ rights. UNIPP’s operations at the country level comprise two complementary priority lines of support. The first is capacity development for the realisation of indigenous peoples’ rights in line with the UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169 in one or more of five key thematic areas of intervention. They

The UN System for Environmental-Economic Accounts for Water (SEEA-W) and groundwater management: the experience of the Arno River Basin Authority within the PAWA project

The Pilot Arno Water Accounts (PAWA) project was recently funded under the Call “Preparatory Action on Development of Prevention Activities to Halt Desertification in Europe” of the Directorate- General for the Environment of the European Commission to promote preventive actions to manage water scarcity and drought phenomena and to meet one of the main goals under European environmental legislation: the effective and sustainable management of water resources. The partners involved in the implementation of the PAWA project (ISPRA, Arno River Basin Authority, SEMIDE/EMWIS) will carry out a pilot initiative in the Arno River Basin, an area severely affected by water scarcity and droughts phenomena and characterized by water withdrawals and land use changes. In the area a large experience about water balance application was already performed, for example in the context of the Water Framework Directive Common Implementation Strategy. Moving from this knowledge, the objective of the project is the definition of water accounting processing based on the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounts for Water, with the final goal to optimize a list of effective measures to face water scarcity phenomena. By the end of project (March 2015) the PAWA partnership aims at preparing physical water stock accounts, using the best available data resulting from field measurements or models, on a monthly step for the period 1999–201. The quality of each dataset will be assessed; tables, maps and graphs will be produced as outputs of the projects in cooperation with local stakeholders and players of the water sector. Furthermore, water accounts will be used to assess the potential impact of various measures related to water resource efficient exploitation in the most vulnerable sub-basins; their tolerability will be tested during workshops with stakeholders. Finally, water efficiency targets for potential future integration into Arno River Basin Management Plan will be identified.

Indigenous activism in Bangladesh: translocal spaces and shifting constellations of belonging

Taking the movement for the rights of indigenous people in Bangladesh as an example, this article elucidates how recent attempts to institutionalise the concept of indigenous people at the global level relate to local claims. These attempts are intrinsically interlinked to identity politics targeting the national political arena, and by adopting the conceptual offerings provided by the UN system as well as those from other parts of the world, activists seek to promote more inclusive approaches. Contemporary translocal indigenous activism, however, is prone to contradictions. On the one hand, identity politics rely upon old-established images of indigenous people with essentialist connotations. On the other hand, it can be observed that the activist configuration, thought in ethnic terms, becomes increasingly porous, for a variety of reasons. After providing an overview of the way indigenous activism in Bangladesh has unfolded recently, the conditions under which the boundaries of belonging to the activist movement are stretched or confined will be discussed. The final part deliberates the findings in relation to the ways in which the social order of the movement may change over time.

Evaluation Capacity Development through Cluster Evaluation

Background: The term “cluster evaluation” was first coined in 1988 by W. K. Kellogg staff in an evaluation of a Foundation-funded initiative; the concept was further developed and practiced by the Kellogg Foundation evaluation consultants and other practitioners in the evaluation community Setting: Cluster evaluation was a model used to evaluate the programming of a small specialized UN agency in three countries (Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) of the Arab States. Purpose: The article explains how cluster evaluation, as originally conceived by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, was adapted to the realities of the UN system. Subjects: NA Research Design: The authors present a case study of an evaluation of a cluster of programmes from the Arab States region (Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) that was conducted by a small, specialized agency of the UN. Data Collection and Analysis: The evaluation was designed as a series of programme reviews. Information from the reviews was to be aggregated in order to understand collective contributions to the region. Findings: The case study demonstrates the potential benefits of the model as well as some of the challenges. Conclusions: Analysis of the data leads to a number of interesting conclusions. First, in the philanthropic sector, cluster evaluation is a programmatic intervention. That is not the way that the model was used in the context of this evaluation. Instead of evaluation as intervention, it was evaluation as capacity development. This evaluation took place in the Arab States, a region in which evaluation capacity is perhaps not as institutionalized as other parts of the world. The purpose of using a cluster evaluation in this context was to strengthen the capacities of the national evaluators. Each of the national evaluators who were contracted had different areas of strength and weakness. By establishing a strong network amongst themselves, they were able to leverage each other’s strength and to compensate for any weaknesses. The consultants developed each other’s capacity and that greatly benefited the evaluation. The higher capacity went on to benefit the collective evaluation capacity of the region. The national evaluators have all gone one to be leaders in the formation of their respective regional and national evaluation organisations.

Peripheral Hegemony in the Quest to Ensure Security Council Accountability for its Individualized UN Sanctions Regimes

A demand for strengthened Security Council accountability has been put forward quite vigorously in the context of individualized UN sanctions regimes. This accountability gap was effectively created when the heavily critiqued Security Council policy to impose comprehensive sanctions transmuted into designs of targeted sanctions regimes in the 1990s. The traditional procedures and accountability mechanisms that controlled the comprehensive sanctions against states were overall political and diplomatic in nature and not considered fit for the new sanctions paradigm which had the individual rather than the state as its core focus. The shift to targeted sanctions thus required fresh thinking about and new approaches to Security Council accountability. This article examines issues of Security Council accountability in relation to individualized UN sanctions regimes. It particularly assesses and appraises the role of external forces in bringing about change within the UN system, with a focus on the ECJ and its Kadi case. While acknowledging the multiple positive effects that the Kadi case has had in terms of triggering innovations at UN level, the article presents the argument that peripheral litigation may not always be sufficiently sensitive to intricacies and limits of a more global and centralized organization and it may not take full account of the systemic implications of its judgment beyond the concrete confines of the case that is being adjudicated. More concretely regarding the external effects of the Kadi II judgment, it is posited that the ECJ’s principled, or perhaps hegemonic, approach and its non-negotiable commitment to high standards of judicial review might actually have negative repercussions for broader attempts to foster accountability processes across all UN sanctions regimes. By way of conclusion, some afterthoughts are offered regarding the focus that is needed in ongoing and future sanctions accountability discussions which go beyond Kadi and the 1267/1989 Al Qaeda counter-terrorism sanctions regime.

Dialectical Reflections on Transformations of Global Security during the Long Twentieth Century

Drawing on the synthetic, open-ended dialectical approach developed in the Dialectics of World Orders Project, this article explores three global doctrinal debates (fusing ideas and policy practices) in three different periods that have shaped global security in the twentieth century. The article focuses first on a detailed examination of the system of great power balancing that opened the twentieth century, with special attention to its internal logic, inner workings (rules and practices), its internal contradictions, and how they generated a demand for greater institutionalization and the establishment of a system of collective security. The breakdown of collective security under the League is considered, and its re-emergence within the UN system (in a transformed state), and its subsequent marginalization by superpower Cold War power balancing in the post WWII period is described next. Again, the internal logic, inner workings (rules and practices), and internal contradictions of the security system of Cold War bipolarity are described, as well as how its collapse generated space for a more effective collective security system in the post-Cold War period. The current contestation over norms of intervention, the redefinition of sovereignty, power transitions, responses to transnational threats, and emergent elements of the contemporary security order are also identified. The article concludes with some reflections on insights gained from looking at global security debates through dialectical lenses.

‘Doing some things’ in the Xi Jinping era: the United Nations as China's venue of choice

A more powerful China under the seemingly confident leadership of President Xi Jinping has committed to a more activist global policy. In particular, this commitment has influenced Beijing's policy towards UN peacekeeping operations, with a long-awaited decision to add combat forces to the engineering troops and police and medical units that have been features of its past contribution. In addition, Beijing has doubled the size of its contribution to the UN peace operations budget. This article explains why the UN is a key venue for China to demonstrate its ‘responsible Great Power’ status and expressed willingness to provide global public goods. The main explanatory factors relate to the UN's institutional design, which accords special status to China even as it represents a global order that promotes the sovereign equality of states. Moreover, there are complementarities between dominant Chinese beliefs and interests, and those contained within the UN system. Especially important in this latter regard are the links that China has tried to establish between peacebuilding and development assistance with the aim of strengthening the capacity of states. China projects development support as a contribution both to humanitarian need and to the harmonization of conflict-ridden societies. The Chinese leadership has also spoken of its willingness to contribute to peacemaking through stepping up its efforts at mediation. However, such a move will require much deeper commitment than China has demonstrated in the past and runs the risk of taking China into controversial areas of policy it has hitherto worked to avoid.

Improving UN planning for a humanitarian response to a nuclear detonation

The United Nations has consistently supported the elimination of nuclear weapons, frequently referring to the effects of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Despite awareness of the severe effects of the use of nuclear weapons on targeted or adjacent populations, at a practical level the UN system has not specifically planned how it would respond to assist the victims of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the current humanitarian system is largely unprepared for the special challenges of such an event. This is significant for three reasons: First, the probability of the explosion of a nuclear weapon in populated areas may be low, but such an event is not impossible; there are many ways nuclear weapons might be detonated, either deliberately or inadvertently, with severe humanitarian consequences. Second, in assisting the victims, the UN-coordinated humanitarian system could put its own personnel at risk. Third, although any humanitarian response would at least in part be only palliative, and prevention remains the only adequate response, organizations within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have already begun considering these issues and the UN needs to be ready to work with them. There are many ways in which the humanitarian system could better prepare for the challenges that even a single nuclear explosion would pose, and such preparation is consistent with the UN’s mission and the secretary-general’s recent call for all feasible steps to be taken to avoid systemic humanitarian failures.