Knowledge management in the United Nations human rights program is a relatively recent phenomenon. It may be said to be symptomatic of the evolution of human rights activities over the years since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This evolution may be classified into three distinct phases. The first phase was the phase when the United Nations system was busy setting standards. The second phase is that when the system was seeking ways and means of obtaining the implementation of the standards, and the third phase is that when the system started to look at the ways in which it could apply its experience towards creating conditions that would enable governments to prevent negative situations of human rights from further deteriorating or from developing. The first phase takes us till roughly around the second half of the seventies, the second phase would take us to somewhere around the mid-eighties, and the third phase brings us to today.
In the first phase the characteristic of the flow of information was more or less outward: we had a core or nuclear idea which needed to be shared and developed into international standards of human rights. These standards would be universal standards and would apply to all persons. This first phase took about 25 years, and consisted very much of the process of defining where the sum total of the national values met around a common denominator, which was reflected in the standards of the Universal Declaration. So, this was a period of reflection, consultation, negotiation and formulation, and was dedicated to the immediate process of setting of standards. But it really never touched people; it really never touched the individual.
In the second phase we started to get close to realities. It was the time when we were first authorised by the Commission on Human Rights and later by the General Assembly to gather information; to go to countries to meet individuals. We were able to inform ourselves directly of realities in human rights situations and we started to bring that back and apply it to testing the standards that had been developed over the previous years. Of course, the situations that we tested were the very denial of the situations that were envisaged by those standards. So the gap was immediately apparent; seemingly impossible to bridge. This was the time when it was fashionable to call human rights situations, situations that were anything but human rights situations since, in fact, they were situations of violations of human rights. So we went around in a number of countries, all impossible human rights situations. This period taught us a lot in terms of the gap that we had to bridge between those realities and those standards and also it taught us the need to reflect on ways in which this gap could be bridged.
The second phase was interesting also because at this time we experienced a dramatic increase in information emanating from local groups, non-governmental organisations, both international and local. They were not all the most objective of sources, but the quality of the information was generally authentic, and in any event most useful in re-constructing the factual situation when direct access was denied us. To some governments, these were subversive or opposition groups, and hostile sources. We did not really let the terminology affect our work, because for all we knew, both sides were right. What interested us at this phase was trying to record and to get an idea of the experiences that were actually being made by people on the ground, and the reasons for those experiences.
This led us to the third phase, where we started to apply this knowledge that we were deriving from the information we were collecting, in order to try to find ways and means of addressing or redressing these phenomena. It should be understood that what was happening was an all around evolution and not an invention of the international bureaucracy. It was the international political consensus, if you like, the intergovernmental common denominator that was enabling us to move from the earlier stages of discussing theory to the testing of these standards against realities.
It is at this third phase, with the procedures that had developed over the years, that knowledge management became a necessity. These procedures all depend on the receipt and application of information. Since they had been developed over a number of years and through different processes, it was necessary to provide a common pool where this mass of information generated by these procedures could be located in order to facilitate its use.
What are these tools and where are these information sources? At the core is the human rights programme of activities and at the core of these activities are those necessitated by the six main international conventions. Of these conventions, we have the two covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The fact that there are two covenants—as distinct from one Universal Declaration is, of course, the result of an aberration that took place in the fifties, the division—artificial division—of civil and political rights from economic, social and cultural rights, a division that never reflected realities.
In addition to these two covenants, we have four conventions: the Convention on Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The two covenants and the other four conventions each have their own treaty monitoring body, consisting of a group of experts elected by the States Parties. These treaty bodies review information contained in reports presented by States Parties and other sources; they are intended to conduct their work through dialogue with representatives of States submitting reports and in certain cases, with inter-governmental bodies and non-governmental organisations. They meet at regular intervals throughout the year and from time to time issue General Comments or make Observations intended to aid with the interpretation of provisions of the international instrument in question.
In addition, there are extra-conventional procedures, which are heavily dependent on information since they are fact-finding in nature. Today there are something like 50 such procedures, also known as ad-hoc mechanisms, that consist of Special Rapporteurs or Working Groups, some dealing with situations in specific countries, and others looking into certain phenomena. These have thematic mandates, so they look into such allegations as those of disappearances and arbitrary detentions, etc. They are intended to buttress the conventional implementation that I have just described.
The third procedure developed over the years, and most recently, is that of technical cooperation, under which the United Nations provides assistance to governments directly through the human rights programme, and less directly, through the rest of the United Nations system, to create conditions, build institutions, and strengthen institutions within their society for addressing potential negative human rights situations. Technical cooperation is, like the other procedures, heavily reliant on information and analysis.
It is relevant to mention here the developments that led to change in the support of these three principal procedures. These developments may be summarised by referring to four decisions, all of which were taken in the mid-eighties.
The first is the decision of 1986 to adopt the Declaration on the Right to Development—you would have heard a lot about it and some of you who are more familiar with human rights will wonder why on earth I am mentioning this one. Then there was, in 1987, the decision to set up a Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation, which permitted the possibility of applying extra-budgetary resources to institution building. In 1988 came the decision which authorised for the first time the undertaking of human rights education and training. This decision enabled us to develop the tools by which we could deliver the technical cooperation support. The fourth decision was in 1989, to convene the World Conference on Human Rights that took place in 1993, the second World Conference on Human Rights that had taken place in the history of the UN.
The reason for the convocation of a World Conference was the need for agreement on the priorities to be set in the search for the realisation of international human rights norms. The international community, having finished with the formal Conventions, having more or less saturated the potential for extra-conventional mechanisms, having tried technical cooperation, found the need to see where the international system was going; and during the three years of my life between 1990 and 1993 when I had the doubtful honour of coordinating the World Conference, we saw emerging around various regions this energy, as it were, to do something about human rights standards. In Asia, for example, the regional meeting in preparing for the World Conference in 1993 was the first meeting ever of the Asian Governments around a human rights agenda. The African regional meeting spun off some of the richest non-governmental organisations in human rights that we had not seen before. The same may be said with regard to the Americas; the regional meeting in Costa-Rica.
The preparation of the World Conference was a process which took the shape of a pyramid, consisting not just of intergovernmental meetings, not mere statements and declarations, but which took place through a very hard fought blow by blow process around the world in various manifestations. By 1993, when the World Conference adopted its Declaration and Programme of Action, it had in it a number of elements that enabled us to turn to a wider, more meaningful implementation of human rights standards. This was essentially inspired by the fact that by that time the knowledge of the realities was such around the table that nobody anymore could deny that these issues could be seen as something that they were not. So you had a situation where, for instance, an inter-governmental body like the Commission on Human Rights took up issues which a few years earlier were unheard of. When I started as Secretary of the Commission on Human Rights in 1978, it was my duty to advise the Chairman to stop a speaker, to cut the microphone for any speaker who mentioned a country by name. Today, virtually any human rights situation, any situation that has a human rights aspect to it, one way or the other is taken up in the same body: it is not solved, but it is addressed and the governments concerned respond on the merits. Even though some issues may not lead to decisions of substance because of procedural preferences they are on the table and they are addressed in substance.
The World Conference produced a clear priority for democracy, development and human rights. Governments gave themselves an agenda—whereby they could now address human rights in a much wider, a much more total context. What was missing was the institution and that was taken care of a few months later when the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was set up, in December 1993. This created the vehicle which would clear the way for this process to realise itself.
As soon as this institution was set up, it became necessary to re-structure the secretariat to enable it to support the High Commissioner’s mandate in addition to carrying out its earlier functions. It was possible for us to start examining that information and that knowledge that we had acquired over the preceding years with a view to applying it in a constructive and forward looking manner.
In order to do that we devised this tool called “Huricane”, which stands for Human Rights Computerised Analysis Environment. Huricane was set up in order to enable us to marshal the information that we had been accumulating over the years; to set up a system for receiving information in order to create a common pool to serve all the activities of the human rights program. Moreover, it is intended to serve as a tool for monitoring the status of realisation of the right to development.
Huricane consists of eight databases serving as baskets for storing information. These eight databases, once Huricane is complete, will be interrogated by a search engine that we are developing, that would enable us to re-construct the picture in regard to the situation of civil, cultural, economic, political or social rights. This would enable us to assist governments in their efforts to create the conditions to enable them to meet their international human rights obligations. (The order of the rights—alphabetical—that I have just used is, in itself, significant, since it underlines the integral nature of the five groups of rights. It is worth mentioning here, by way of parenthesis, that the resolution establishing the High Commissioner for Human Rights was the first in several decades that used this order. In the last decades it has become accepted to refer to human rights in two distinct groups: civil and political rights on one hand and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. The significance in the use of the alphabetical order is in the fact that this was symptomatic of the change of culture of human rights that was taking place—the return to the “integrated” approach to human rights.)
Huricane is made up of two types of information. One is the information that exists on the public media, such as the World Wide Web and the other public sources, and the other one is the information on our Intranet, the internal web where we store our own information. The idea was to try to bring the information more or less on the same manageable level. So we had to identify the common attributes, such as the human rights subject, the mandate or legislative authority, and the country concerned. In order to obtain a first list of relevant subjects, we examined the work of the Commission on Human Rights over the preceding 20 years and drew up from the work of the Commission what we felt were the key-subjects that the Commission had taken up over that period. Hence you will find a wide range of subjects like asylum, internally displaced persons, fair trial, right to food, etc.
Having done that, we then identified its components. Component number one was our Treaty Body system. It should be kept in mind at all times that the raison d’être of the United Nations human rights programme is the international legal regime of the International Bill of Human Rights. Governments ratify conventions and undertake obligations under which they have to report, and it is our duty to make sure that we make this process fair and feasible for governments. Now, during the early years, when the treaties were still in their post-adoption stages, the focus was on ratification by governments. There was therefore a need to provide governments with the knowledge and means to meet the obligations that they undertake when they ratify an international human rights treaty. Thus, this first database in Huricane contains all the information relating to the status of these treaties, such as details on each of the ratifications, including reservations, reporting status, and so forth. The full text documents are then included whenever they make reservations etc.
The next database contains the second component. This is made up of documents prepared for the so-called charter-based bodies, viz. the Commission on Human Rights and the General Assembly. This one is designed in three languages and it has the possibility to incorporate internal documents such as reports that we get from our field offices (there are 22 such offices), reports from evaluation missions, and other such internal reports.
The third component is our digital registry. This contains incoming mail and copies, or evidence of the follow-up that is given to this mail. This is done by scanning in the hard-copy mail, which enables it to be accessible to everyone on his or her screen. So far this covers mail coming in through the mail-room. Correspondence coming in through fax lines will be integrated through the installation of a central electronic fax server that will receive messages and direct them into the registry system. This will also have the advantage of avoiding the diffusion of multiple copies of hard copy of the fax traffic. It ensures monitoring of correspondence for follow up and continuity. It also makes it possible to follow correspondence attributed to others; these views are organised by the date of the registry, by registry number (the date and number are entered electronically), by the date that it was sent, by sender, by country or by mandate (subject).
The fourth component is the News/Statements Database where we have selected certain news sources which are relevant to the subjects making up the menu that I referred to earlier. The other components are:
- Communications Database. This is the database where individual complaints received under the established procedures are stored. These are confidential procedures that governments have devised either in the Commission on Human Rights, or in a human rights treaty.
- External Sources Database. This is a bibliographical source which we use in order to make sure that we also have outside material that is, in some cases, also retained in full text.
- Thematic Mandates Database. This database contains the material that comes in from the so-called Athematic mandates. These are procedures established by the Commission on Human Rights to look in to allegations of violations of certain rights, and include allegations of enforced and involuntary disappearance, arbitrary detention, summary or arbitrary execution.
The sum total of information stored in these databases embraces human rights standards across the board. The multiple database search engine makes it is possible to draw up a profile that enables a reconstruction of the sum total of the human rights picture.
The search engine enables two types of searches, one by country or human rights subject and the other one permits full text retrieval.
Now you see, in fact, what we are doing is simply organising and applying the experience that we had made over the years. I will wind up with one example. In developing our tools for training—we were only authorised to do so as of 1988—we had to start with those sectors of society that were more likely, by virtue of their office, to be in contact with larger groups of people. So we started with the Administration of Justice sector, and specifically, law enforcement. In this group, we also had to address the human rights training of the armed forces. This was in 1994. This represented a formidable task, knowing full well how difficult the military culture, the armed forces culture, had been for us traditionally to assimilate to the respect for human rights. Thus, in order to overcome this barrier, the first thing we did was to look at the experiences that had accumulated over the preceding twenty years, which would show what we considered as negative situations of human rights resulting from or attributable to, in one form or another, armed forces behaviour. Having done so, we brought together twenty or so military persons, of various ranks and backgrounds, for a week to Geneva and we shared these experiences with them. From these discussions there emerged three types of situations where military behaviour was directly related to human rights situations, and which could form the basis of a human rights training program for armed forces personnel. The first was the situation illustrated by the Chile case. Chile was a very good case history because you had a government that was taken over by the military and substituting the government structure. You had generals who were government department ministers. This was hypothesis number one. Hypothesis number two was when the armed forces were called in to perform what were normally considered as police duties, like crowd control, where, being trained as soldiers, they applied their training and caused loss of life and limb. And the third sector was the behaviour of armed forces in peace-keeping operations, where, even though the colour of the cap had changed, the training had not—and therefore the resulting behaviour was still not very different from what it would have been during normal service, at least in some instances.
This exercise consisted of—no more and no less—simply sharing with them what we knew from the preceding twenty years. And they did not like that, since their military training and culture was intended to prepare them for loftier goals. Since that time we started working on developing a module for training. What had seemed impossible became very likely, simply by the application of facts; letting the facts speak for themselves.
This is the philosophy behind Huricane. Its purpose is no other except to enable governments to ascertain for themselves the relationship between a given situation and the international standards to which they have adhered, not in an accusatory or punitive sense, but in the sense of prevention, of enabling the creation of conditions to address and redress negative situations of human rights.
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Changing with the World: UNDP Strategic Plan 2014-17
With the changing world as the backdrop, and building on our core strengths, our vision is focused on making the next big breakthrough in development: to help countries achieve the simultaneous eradication of poverty and significant reduction of inequalities and exclusion. This is a vision within reach, with the eradication of extreme poverty and major reductions in overall poverty feasible within a generation. It should be possible as well to make significant inroads against income and non- income measures of inequality and exclusion within this time frame.
Modern Diplomacy – Opening address
Opening address of the Honourable Dr. George F. Vella, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Environment of Malta.
Summitry as intercultural communication
In one of his last essays before his premature death in 1972, Martin Wight described international conferences as ‘the set pieces punctuating the history of the European states-system, moments of maximum communication’.
Reforming the Working Methods of the UN Security Council: The Next ACT
ACT is a new group of 22 UN member states that is pressing for reform of the working methods of the UN Security Council in order to improve its accountability, coherence and transparency. To achieve its aims, ACT will have to avoid being caught up in the stalled debate over Council membership reform. The group, currently dominated by small states, will also need new partners from different geographical regions, and with more political weight. Moreover, if ACT wants to involve the permanent members of the Security Council, it may have to limit its emphasis on the role of the veto. ACT aim...
Work Programme on Electronic Commerce
Reform of the United Nations Security Council
Mainstreaming Development in the WTO
The UN and the world diplomatic system: lessons from the Cyprus and US- North Korea talks
In Bourantonis, D. and M. Evriviades (eds), A United Nations for the Twenty-First Century(Kluwer Law International, 1996), pp. 105-16
Old diplomacy in New York
Small States at the United Nations
The proliferation of small states in the past few decades has brought small and larger states on the same playing field. Their increase in number triggered a wave of studies, raised concern by 'realists' and some powerful states, and led to an affirmation that at the United Nations, all states are equal, regardless of size.
Searching for Meaningful Human Control. The April 2018 Meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (Briefing Paper #10)
In this briefing paper, Ms Barbara Rosen Jacobson analyses the debate of the April 2018 meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). The group was established to discuss emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).
United Nations-Sponsored World Conferences: Focus on Impact and Follow-up
Multilateralism and the End of History
International Relations and Global Climate Change
The Reform of the United Nations
What’s the World Health Organization For?
Global Health, Aid Effectiveness and the Changing Role of the WHO
Negotiating and Navigating Global Health: Case Studies in Global Health Diplomacy
From U Thant to Kofi Annan: UN Peacemaking in Cyprus, 1964-2004
2004 marked the fortieth anniversary of the United Nations presence in Cyprus. Since March 1964, the UN has been responsible for addressing and managing both peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts on the island.
The Role of Diplomacy in the Challenges to Maritime Security Cooperation in the Gulf of Guinea: Case Study of Nigeria
There is presently a pervading feeling that the West and Central African states are long overdue to take control of their maritime environment. However, these expectations show no indication of materialising in the short term.
Use of language in diplomacy
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Ambassador Stanko Nick takes a practical approach, examining issues such as the choice of language in bilateral and multilateral meetings, the messages conveyed by language choice, difficulties posed by interpretation, and aspects of diplomatic language including nuance, extra-linguistic signalling, and understatement. Language, according to Nick, is not a simple tool but "often the very essence of the diplomatic vocation."
Security for small states
The New Economic Diplomacy
Power: The nexus of global health diplomacy?
The European Union and the Latin American and the Caribbean Dialogue: Building a Strong Partnership
Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006
Book review by Geoff Berridge
Ten theoretical clues to understanding United Nations reform (Briefing Paper #6)
Strengthening Regional Management: A Review of the Architecture for Regional Co-operation in the Pacific
Security Council reform: Why it matters and why it’s not happening
Regional water cooperation in the Arab – Israeli Conflict: A case study of the West Bank
The conflict between Israel and Arab countries, with several devastating wars, is about territory and land, and maybe just as crucially on the water that flows through that land. This dissertation, an analysis of the management of water in the West Bank, as a case study, seeks to underline the possibility of using soft power diplomacy, in addition to mediation and water cooperation, for a more collaborative kind of approach to the conflict.
Ambiguity versus precision: The changing role of terminology in conference diplomacy
Part of Language and Diplomacy (2001): Of central concern in the field of negotiation is the use of ambiguity to find formulations acceptable to all parties. Professor Norman Scott looks at the contrasting roles of ambiguity and precision in conference diplomacy. He explains that while documents drafters usually try to avoid ambiguity, weaker parties to an agreement may have an interest in inserting ambiguous provisions, while those with a stronger position or more to gain will push for precision.
China is waking up to the benefits of good diplomacy in Asia
Reforming the United Nations: The Challenge of Working Together
UN Conferences: Media events or genuine diplomacy?
Humanitarian intervention and international society
Global health diplomacy: How foreign policy can influence health
Ilona Kickbusch argues that public health experts need to work with diplomats in order to achieve global health goals.
Global Health and Foreign Policy
International Diplomacy Volume II: Diplomacy in a Multicultural World
Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today
As the world confronts new and ongoing challenges of globalization, international terrorism and an array of other global issues, the United Nations and its key attribute-multilateral diplomacy-are more important now than ever before. With new and updated essays that detail the experiences of a diverse group of practitioners and scholars who work in the field of diplomacy, this new edition covers in even greater breadth and depth the quintessential characteristics of multilateral diplomacy as it is conducted within the United Nations framework. Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Toda...
Multilateral Conferences and Diplomacy: A Glossary of Terms for UN Delegates
Perspectives on Africa’s Integration and Cooperation from OAU to AU
21st century health diplomacy: A new relationship between foreign policy and health
Diplomacy on a south-south dimension
Building international diplomacy requires understanding ourselves, others, and how we relate together. It also involves understanding how others relate among themselves. In efforts to internationalise and build a truly global future, the consideration of contacts among all parts of the world becomes critical. The sustained diplomatic cooperation that has taken place in the last 50 years between China and African nations is an instructive example. This major phenomenon is the focus of this paper.
The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations
The Hypocrisy Threatening the Future of the Internet
Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Multilateral Aid 2015: Better Partnerships for a Post-2015 World
Return to the UN: United Nations diplomacy in regional conflicts
‘… lively … persuasive … careful analysis… This is a very readable study, combining narrative strength with political acuity, and informative on the years of disappointment … Much has changed since the UN’s annus mirabilis, but Berridge’s conclusions still stand’, Nicholas Sims, London School of Economics, Millenium.
Multilateral Negotiations: From Strategic Considerations to Tactical Recommendations
Enhancing Global Governance: Towards a New Diplomacy
The future of (multilateral) diplomacy? Changes in response to COVID-19 and beyond
The year 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN). It is also the year that the world was faced with responding to the emergence of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, an unprecedented global challenge that has left no area of society and no individual life untouched.
How should the WHO reform: An analysis and review of literature
Multilateral Institutions: Building New Alliances, Solving Global Problems
The mountain of global problems, viz. the list of world tasks that can be solved only collectively by the international community, continues to grow. At the same time, the multilateral institutions find themselves in the midst of a difficult process of change, one marked by a high degree of mistrust and fragmentation in the international community as well as by a low level of willingness and ability to tackle global tasks in the multilateral framework. This trend has been due to certain unilateral reflexes that emerged when the Cold War drew to a close and above all to the experiences th...
Prenegotiation and Mediation: The Anglo-Argentine Diplomacy after the Falklands/Malvinas War (1983-1989)
This paper studies the process of prenegotiation and the role of mediators during the negotiations between the Argentine and British governments about the dispute over the sovereignty of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands from immediately after the war of 1982 to 1990. In this period, the relationship between both governments evolved from rupture and no-relations to the agreement on the conditions to negotiate the renewal of full diplomatic relations concluded in early 1990. In a preliminary process of prenegotiation, the governments of Switzerland, initially, and the United States played a ro...
Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century
Global Health Diplomacy: Concepts, Issues, Actors, Instruments, Fora and Cases
The Clash of Globalizations: Essays on the Political Economy of Trade and Development Policy
Modernising Dutch Diplomacy
Climate for Change: Non-state Actors and the Global Politics of the Greenhouse
European Union external action structure: Beyond state and intergovernmental organisations diplomacy
This dissertation analyses the organisation of the external action structures of the European Union. As an international actor which is beyond a state, but also different to traditional international organisations, the EU has created a “diplomatic constellation” in which diplomacy from member states is not substituted but complemented by EU external action.
Innovation in Diplomatic Practice
The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations
Negotiating Public Health in a Globalized World: Global Health Diplomacy in Action
How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance
We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century
The world did celebrate as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, in one time zone after another, from Kiribati and Fiji westward around the globe to Samoa. People of all cultures joined in—not only those for whom the millennium might be thought to have a special significance. The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Giza were lit as brightly as Manger Square in Bethlehem and St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Tokyo, Jakarta and New Delhi joined Sydney, Moscow, Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro and hundreds of other cities in hosting millennial festivities. Children’s faces ref...
Facing the challenges of an Africa-wide ICT strategy
'There is a need to address these challenges to enhance the capacity of the AU organs, institutions and member states to better respond to instances of ICT policy in Africa. As part of the evolving African governance architecture, there is a need to formulate an ICT strategy...' - Eliot Nsega from Uganda
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Hanging Together: Cooperation and conflict in the seven power summits
The Environmental Movement in the Global South
Managing Global Chaos
Multistakeholder Diplomacy – Challenges and Opportunities
This book is a collection of papers from Diplo’s February 2005 conference in Malta and from research interns involved in our Multistakeholder Diplomacy internship programme.
The Roads from Rio: Lessons Learned from Twenty Years of Multilateral Environmental Negotiations
International Diplomacy Volume I: Diplomatic Institutions
The inertia of Diplomacy
Diplomacy is used to manage the goals of foreign policy focusing on communication. New trends affect the institution of diplomacy in different ways. Diplomacy has received an additional tool in the form of the Internet. In various cases of interdependence and dependence interference in a country’s affairs is accepted. Multilateral cooperation has created parliamentary diplomacy and a new type of diplomat, the international civil servant. States and their diplomats are in demand to curb the excesses of globalization. The fight against terrorism also brought additional work for diplomac...
Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga
Question: When is a diplomatic victory not a diplomatic victory? Answer: When it is achieved by means of a veto in the Security Council of the United Nations. Nowhere is this maxim more tellingly illustrated than in the Council's meeting in New York in November 1996 which voted on the issue of whether or not to give a full second term (five years) to the Secretary-General, the University of Paris educated Egyptian scholar-diplomat, Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Of the 15 members of the Council, 14 voted in favour and one voted against. Since that member was the United States this represented a vet...
Global Environmental Politics
Activities of the Department of Public Information: Strategic communications services
The Role of Small States in the Multilateral Framework
The current world geopolitical configuration shows how after the end of a bipolar world set by the top superpowers (United States and the Ex Soviet Republic) along with other major players (such as Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan and China, the P5 United Nations Security Council members + 1 with the full capacity of veto power in all world top decisions and procedures) set up a new world reconfiguration that has emerged since the end of the twenty century and mainly in the beginning of this 21th century standing driven from some centers of power and in parasailed with the political and e...
Our Global Neighbourhood
Multilateral Conferences: Purposeful International Negotiation
International Diplomacy Volume III: The Pluralisation of Diplomacy
Regionalism versus Multilateralism
The literature on regionalism versus multilateralism is growing as economists and political scientists grapple with the question of whether regional integration arrangements are good or bad for the multilateral system. Are regional integration arrangements "building * blocks or stumbling blocks," in Jagdish Bhagwati's phrase, or stepping stones toward multilateralism?
The Grand Decade for Global Health: 1998-2008
The IberoAmerican System and its Influence in the Ibero-American Regional Summit Diplomacy
Negotiating the Balkans: The Prenegotiation Perspective
The issues, the activities and the relations preceding the formal international negotiations have increasingly become an area of a special theoretical interest.
Securing the Future of Multilateral Development Finance: Time for Europe to take the Initiative
A New Wave for the Reform of the Security Council of the United Nations: Great Expectations but Little Results
The reform of the Security Council of the United Nations (UNSC) has been an elusive issue at the United Nations (UN). While practically all Member States agree on the need to change the structure of the most powerful body of the world organization, so far there has been no agreement about what elements of that reform or about the substance of the reform itself.
The Greening of Machiavelli: The Evolution of International Environmental Policy
Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad
The United Nations: An Introduction
Strengthening the region’s participation
‘Witnessing the open community policy development process at the AfriNIC community led me to further appreciate the importance of the Policy Research Phase of the Diplo IGCBP. AfriNIC-13 was an eye opener...’ - Maduka Attamah from Nigeria
Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges
Ideas and concepts are arguably the most important legacy of the United Nations. Ahead of the Curve? analyzes the evolution of key ideas and concepts about international economic and social development born or nurtured, refined or applied under UN auspices since 1945. The authors evaluate the policy ideas coming from UN organizations and scholars in relation to such critical issues as decolonization, sustainable development, structural adjustment, basic needs, human rights, women, world employment, the transition of the Eastern bloc, the role of nongovernmental organizations, and global govern...
United Nations, Divided World, 2nd ed
Digital Diplomacy as a foreign policy statecraft to achieving regional cooperation and integration in the Polynesian Leaders Group
Established in 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Groups serves to fulfill a vision of cooperation, strengthening integration on issues pertinent to the region and to the future of the PLG. Its nine – American Samoa, French Polynesia, Niue, Cook Islands, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Tonga and Wallis Futuna, is argued to have strength in numbers, resources and diversity, and a positive addition to the growing regional diplomacies in the South Pacific.
The United Nations and Development: From Aid to Cooperation
Preference-Dependent Economies and Multilateral Liberalization: Impacts and Options
The challenge of regionalism
A United Nations for the Twenty-First Century
Multilateral Diplomacy for Small States: The Art of Letting Others Have Your Way
Multilateral Diplomacy for Small States: The Art of Letting Others Have Your Way
Decision-Making in the UN Security Council: The case of Haiti, 1990-1997
Question: 'When is a "Foreword" not a "Foreword"? Answer: When it is written by Adam Roberts. This book started life as an Oxford doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Roberts, and the former supervisor has done both the former student and readers of this book a great service by prefacing it with a seven-page essay in which he underlines its importance in convincing detail. So this, unlike ninety-nine per cent of examples of the same genre, is a Foreword that should not be ignored.
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: Mapping the GGE Debate (Briefing Paper #8)
The Procedure of the UN Security Council
