What Is The United Nations Strategic Framework

Thesis: The role of the United Nations has changed from being primarily an international peacekeeping force to primarily a humanitarian organization.

Thesis: The role of the United Nations has changed from being primarily an international peacekeeping force to primarily a humanitarian organization.

Another specific conflict area that this paper will examine is Syria. The area, today known as Syria, is in a unique location which has made it subject to many empires, including the Roman and Ottoman. Since the area has been at the center of history for thousands of years it is home to a diverse ethnic and religious culture. Currently the country is home to “Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis, the last of who make up a majority of the Muslim population,” (BBC). Prior to World War I, the area was under control of the Ottoman Empire, after the war the empire was broken up and France took control of the area. In 1946, France granted Syria independence, and the country has been dealing with political instability ever since. From 1958-1961, Syria joined up with Egypt to create the United Arab Republic. The following years brought about a succession of upheavals within the government. In the 1960’s the Arab-nationalist group, Baath, took over power, and in 1970 one of their leaders, Hafiz al-ASAD, took control, which brought about political stability. In 1967 there was a war taking place between Israel and Syria, which resulted in Israel occupying a southwestern region of the country. In 1970, Syria’s neighbor of Lebanon broke out into civil war and Syria extended their military power into that country. The Baath government has been known to be a strong authoritative power and has powerful anti-western policies in place that

Sierra Leone had been considered a fragile state even before its civil war from 1991-2002, this is because it had “weak capacity and will to provide security and deliver services to its population” (Pickering, 2009, p20). The decade during the civil war was overwhelmed by huge human rights abuses, lack of coherent governments, weak social security structures and masses of violence (Evoe, 2008, p2).. A number of peace efforts were generated by international institutions, none of which were extensively effective throughout all of Sierra Leone. Despite these difficulties, the intervention in Sierra Leone is considered a noteworthy success for the United Nations peacebuilding mission. The main objective of peacebuilding missions is to ‘rebuild’ failing and weak states (Cubitt, 2013, p91) and to “prevent violence from recurring in countries that are just emerging from civil conflict” (Paris, 2002, p637). The UN mission in Sierra Leone is widely regarded as an example of successful peacebuilding in a war torn country. The mission facilitated a transition from, a failing state to a moderately peaceful state. This mission is held as an example of successful intervention, and is often used as a means to justify the benefits of UN peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions.

I will shed the light on the Security Council which is the keystone of the United Nations system of collective security, and its role in maintaining international peace and security by settling disputes pacifically under chapter VI of the UN Charter and by taking action regarding threats, breaches, and acts of aggression under chapter VII. I will then discuss the several options that Nation states had resorted to in the past to intervene in order to protect civilians. And I will finally highlight the notion of the responsibility to protect which emerged in 2001 and its implication on populations under

There were many difficulties which arose as there were many questions which occurred such as ‘who has the right to authority?’ to authorize military intervention for humanitarian purposes? (Heywood, 2011) This is usually referred to the UN security council, this emphasises on the power in which the security council holds and how much responsibility they have, to protect and maintain peace and security. Secondly, Kofi Annan tried to reconcile the tension between sovereignty and human rights, by arguing that, in a context of globalization and international cooperation’s, the state should be viewed as ‘the servant of people and vice versa’ (Annan,1999) . Changing attitudes towards the norm are reflected in the growth in the influence of such doctrines of intervention as the responsibility to protect is that there is an onus on the international community to intervene in situations, where the lives of a country’s civilian population are threatened by the actions of government (Guelke, 2012) However, this can be seen as a disadvantages towards ‘responsibility to protect’ as stated above people’s lives and safety are in the hands of governments which in some occasions cannot be good, as not all civilians agree with government verdicts. Finally, Russia is regarded as a weak rival of the west in geo-strategic terms, its capacity to project power remains very limited (Guelke, 2012). Another example includes; Iraq, they do not follow the human right law, which shows that they are in need for protection to prevent waste of supreme court time and funding. Iraq has one of the most corrupt governments in the world, due to lack of human rights, which is defining the lives of civilians within their country. It is evident that there is a significant need for the right to protect in countries such as

Syrian refugee crisis threatens the beginning of the upcoming school year in Lebanon.Lebanon, with a population of around four million and a territory smaller than Maryland, is hosting over a million Syrian refugees. The arrival of such a number of refugees has shaken Lebanon, and made its education and health system particularly unstable. According to UNHCR, 172,000 refugee and vulnerable local children will not receive any kind of education during this school year in Lebanon. Furthermore, as UNHCR predicts, the quality of the education will diminish due to the over-crowding of schools, as past experience shows. And if this situation was not enough, the refugees that managed to integrate into the Lebanese schooling system will have to face a large linguistic barrier, since 93% of public schools in Lebanon teach classes in French, whilst in Syria they are taught almost exclusively in

The Hezbollah warfare stems back to the establishment of the Israel as a nation and its retaliation against Arab rivalry (Levy & Thompson 6). Through Hizballah, Arabians from Syria and Iran, engaged Israel in combat. Evidently, the acquisition and possible notion of distribution of weapons among the states surrounding Lebanon, acted as catalysts of the Hezbollah warfare. Additionally, as indicated by Levy & Thompson (5), the conflict of interests over power, territory and resources emerged among states and civil societies with the aim of controlling the sovereignty of Lebanon. Consequently, the warfare had a political background because of the confessional system of government in Lebanon which highly favored the Christians more than the Muslims (Tür 109). As a result, the

Redefine the importance of economic sanctions and collective diplomacy of UN and regional organisations : Targeted sanctions to deter or end violence, expert panels to monitor the effectiveness of targeted sanctions on peace spoilers, and an increase in the use of special envoys and special representatives to the secretary-general. Actively support EU, AU , OAS, ASEAN in promoting regional peace Although conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan consumed the majority of international attention and resources over the past decade, there has been success involving multilateral conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and peace-building

In the destructive wake of WWII, it was general consensus that a world peace organization be formed. That organization came in the form of the United Nations, an institution once notorious for its peacekeeping abilities. From corner to corner of the globe, peacekeeping troops were deployed in attempt to relieve conflict in disputed regions. These troops once served as a beacon of hope for impoverished families in times of war, but, as time progressed, the quality of peacekeeping operations have degraded, and such, civilians became more wary of their presence. What UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon now calls “a cancer in our system” has been highly disputed. With the future of both civilians and entire countries at stake, it’s important to ask “What can be done to improve the U.N. peacekeeping force?”

The following essay takes a realist approach to the issue of Israel's refugee problem. The essay addresses the security issue of the 'Right of Return 'where more than 4 million Palestinian termed refugees clamor to return to their homes that they were displaced from during the 1948 war. Whilst Palestinians demand the right to return to their Israeli-located homes under the right of United Nations General Assembly article 11 of Resolution 194, Israelis fear the displacement of their state by a huge and exponential number of Palestinian refugees returning. The essay summarizes historical points that constitute the problem. Analysis of the problems shows that the traditional definition of 'refugee' has been corrupted to suit UNRWA agenda where the refugee number has grown and will continue to grow to absurd lengths. One policy therefore recommends that the UN amend this definition to reflect a more solid reality. An alternate policy recommends that the UNRWA be replaced by its more affective predecessor, the UNHRCA. The essay, too, recommends that America work in amending this change since by so doing America will be assisting her own terrorist problem.

Limitations of UN Peacekeeping have been exposed time and again. The alterations caused by these limitations have now been incorporated in the operational structure. The influence of a UN Peacekeeping Operation, too, depends on extent of involvement of various actors, whose conduct depends greatly on assessment of strategic interests. So, the characterization of United Nations as an international authority which could issue directives to enforce its mandate would be an overstatement as previous missions have demonstrated. There have been calls for overhauling the UN Peacekeeping structure. A High-level independent panel on peace operations was appointed by Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of United Nations in October, 2014 to review the state of UN Peacekeeping Operations. A major concern shared by all panel members which was also earmarked as an essential shift in the future process was the emphasis laid on striving towards a political solution rather than an attempt to diffuse the crisis by military means alone. Political instability has been at the roots of many conflicts, which the UN has sought to defuse by deployment of peacekeeping missions. Most missions failed to address the larger issue of restoring stability, on account of the fact that military interventions change the dynamics of regional security forever. Also, removal of a regime could lead to further deterioration of the conflict as political vacuum created by such removal and facilitating the creation of an interim proxy regime has challenges of its own. Taking out governments/rulers is perceived as the most effective immediate response to any call for intervention. The real challenge for international community arises after a successful throw over, as it pushes the country towards a political crisis. It is this situation that world/regional powers are keen on exploiting by appointing ‘friendly’ rulers, with an eye on strategic interests, which is why a concerted political solution should be the primary objective of the international community to avoid complications. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley recently hit out at the UN peacekeeping operations, calling for a clear demarcation between

Despite the hope for democracy and political stability in the last two decades, crises and armed conflicts remain a serious impediment to development in many countries. Moreover, if some specialists say that the end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s spelled the end of conflicts created through the East-West confrontation, the following years have shown the predominance of intra-state crises, thus forcing the United Nations (UN) to review its strategies for peace and security. In extremely complex internal conflicts, the peacekeeping operations seem unable to reach their objectives. The failure is a shared responsibility between the major powers, the peacekeepers and the UN.

Over the last 15 years peacekeeping operations have changed substantially at the behest of the UN Security Council. Authorization for the use of force conducted by peacekeepers have been granted more frequently, and in particular the method of peacekeeping operations have been reorganized to relinquish the root causes of the instability within a nation that is riddled with political or economic turbulence.

The United Nations, with its rigid moral and political limitations against force, has become a benchmark of peace and a social achievement of modern times. From war torn Europe, the United Nations developed from five major powers with an initial goal to prevent the spread of warfare through peaceful means and to establish and maintain fundamental human rights. Through the past fifty years, this organization has broadened its horizons with auxiliary organizations from peace keeping missions to humanitarian aid, to economic development. However, in a modern example of ethnic cleansing, the UN faces new a new role as a bystander as its power is bypassed by NATO forces. The UN, however, promises to be an