United Nations & UN agencies

I am about to be left in charge of the office. I'm not sure I am ready for the responsibility, so I double-check with my boss. 'I'm not backing out on you,' I say, 'but I'm having doubts about my ability to do this.' He reassures me. 'You'll be fine, Marianne.

Democratic Peacebuilding considers the evolution of international peacebuilding since the cold war and why, in particular, international peacebuilders frequently face difficulties in spreading democratic practices and the rule of law in war-torn societies.

This book examines the UN Security Council's experience with sanctions since the Cold War, and, in particular, the regimes adopted for particular types of conflict. From the Cold War, with South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, to the post-9/11 era, with Afghanistan, Iran, North Kor...ea, and Eritrea, sanctions have been a key tool of the UN Security Council's efforts to deal with conflict. The focus of this study is the UN Security Council and the sanctions regimes they adopt given a particular type of conflict. The goal of the book is twofold: first, to track and establish the wide-ranging sanctions measures applied by the UN Security Council, and second, to explicate and examine the objectives sought, the targets chosen and the measures applied given a particular type of conflict. The rationale for publishing such a book is that the number of sanctions regimes warrants an analysis in toto. The question of sanctions application is approached by classifying all 29 mandatory Security Council sanctions regimes into four conflict types: (1) interstate; (2) intrastate; (3) international norm-breaking states; and (4) nonstate support to terrorism. All of the sanctions regimes within each conflict type are analysed for: i) the objectives sought by the Council through the application of sanctions measures; ii) the targets chosen, and iii) what measures are applied and in what sequence compared to other Security Council tools (such as peacekeeping missions or peace negotiations). This analysis sheds new light on how the Security Council approaches international peace and security beyond the application of force. This book will be of much interest to students of international organisations, peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution, security studies and IR/politics in general.
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One million people in the UK alone demonstrated against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A crucial element of the opposition to the war was the lack of a clear legal basis. This is the first book to analyze the lawfulness of the use of force against Iraq on the basis of formerly classi...fied material made public by the official UK inquiry into the war.
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Cordovez and Harrison provide the definitive account of the Soviet blunders that led up to the invasion and the bitter struggles over the withdrawal that raged in the Soviet and Afghan Communist parties and the Reagan Administration. The authors are particularly well-suited to th...eir task: Cordovez was the United Nations mediator who negotiated the Soviet pullout, and Harrison is a leading South Asia expert with four decades of experience in covering Afghanistan. Their story of the U.N. negotiations is interwoven with a gripping chronicle of the war years, complete with palace shootouts in Kabul, turf warfare between rival Soviet intelligence agencies, and the C.I.A. role in building up Islamic fundamentalist guerrilla leaders at the expense of Afghan moderates. Cordovez opens up his diaries to take us behind the scenes in his negotiations, and Harrison draws on interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and other key actors. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was one of the pivotal events of recent history. Out of Afghanistan destroys many of the myths surrounding the Afghan war and will have a profound impact on the emerging debate over how and why the Cold War ended.
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