Part One Historical and Legal Foundations, I A Historical Overview of the Palestinian Refugee Question

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albanese Francesca P ◽  
Takkenberg Lex
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Arab Population ◽  
Defining Moments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Palestinian Territory

This chapter traces the history of the Palestinian refugee question and discusses the main events that created the conditions that enabled the mass displacement of most of the Arab population of Mandate Palestine. The events that befell Palestine between 1947 and 1948, i.e. the decision of the United Nations to partition Palestine and the resultant war, are defining moments of the Palestinian refugee question. Its roots, however, are to be found in the events that preceded and enabled it–starting with the socio-political and economic transformation that occurred in Palestine during the Ottoman Empire (1808–1917) and intensified during the thirty years of the British control over Palestine (1918–1948). It can also be found in the way the League of Nations first, and the United Nations after, attempted to resolve the dispute over Palestine. This historical account is crucial to understanding how international law was central to early attempts at resolving the refugee issue, and how it subsequently became effectively side-lined. The chapter also identifies some elements of continuity between the original displacement (in 1948 and 1967) and the current situation of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and beyond.

Part One Historical and Legal Foundations, II Palestinian Refugees: A Distinctive Normative and Institutional Regime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albanese Francesca P ◽  
Takkenberg Lex
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Durable Solutions ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Set Up

This chapter examines the foundation of Palestinian refugees’ status in international law, as well as the characteristics of their distinctive institutional and normative regime compared to other refugees around the world. This distinctiveness stems from special arrangements the United Nations (UN) has made for them. This includes ad hoc UN agencies mandated to protect and assist Palestinian refugees, namely the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as well as, under certain circumstances, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The chapter then considers both the genesis and meaning of Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the provision specifically included with the Palestinian refugees in mind, including its recent interpretation and application, and various defintions of Palestine/Palestinian refugee offered for various purposes (i.e. assistance and relief, protection and durable solutions). It shows how the special arrangements for this group of refugees, put in place due to the circumstances of their displacement, were meant to ensure continuity of protection and how, the lack of durable solutions has made the arrangements set up for them, inclreasingly looking as an anomaly.

The world’s repository at 75: a history of the United Nations Archives*

Comma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Gelfand
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Records Management ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Administrative Structures

Seventy-five years ago (1945), the United Nations (UN) was founded in San Francisco by 50 nations. There, a small archives unit served to assemble the first records of the organization; this was the first iteration of today’s Archives and Records Management Section (ARMS). Throughout its history, the fortunes of the UN Archives have waxed and waned, while its role has continuously evolved. Trying to carve out a place for itself within the largest international organization in the world, its physical and administrative structures have undergone profound changes, as has its mission, number of staff, the type of records it holds and its users. This paper examines significant events in the development of the UN Archives, the challenges it has faced and what may be learned from them.

scholarly journals BRICKS, BRANDING, AND THE EVERYDAY: DEFINING GREATNESS AT THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA IN SAN FRANCISCO

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Georgia Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Public Space ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations

After over a decade of reports, designs, and public outreach, the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco was dedicated in 1976. Using historical documents such as government reports, design guidelines, letters, meeting minutes, and newspaper articles from archives, I argue that while the construction of the UN Plaza has failed to completely transform the social and economic life of the area, it succeeds in creating a genuinely public space. The history of the UN Plaza can serve both as a cautionary tale for those interested in changing property values purely through changing design, and as a standard of success in making a space used by a true cross-section of urban society.

scholarly journals «A New Global Ethic»: A History of the United Nations International Environmental Education Program, 1975-1995

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Education Program ◽  
Environmental Ethic ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Natural Resource Conservation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

In 1975, the United Nations, under the auspices of its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Environment Program (UNEP), established the International Environmental Education Program (IEEP). For two decades, IEEP aimed to accomplish goals ascribed to it by UNESCO member states and fostered communication across the international community through Connect, the UNESCO-UNEP environmental education newsletter. After reviewing UNESCO’s early involvement with the environment, this study examines IEEP’s development, beginning with its conceptual grounding in the 1968 UNESCO Biosphere Conference. It examines the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, moves on to the UNESCO-UNEP 1975 Belgrade Workshop, and continues with the world’s first intergovernmental conference dedicated to environmental education held in Tbilisi in 1977. The paper then uses Connect to trace changes in the form and content of environmental education. Across two decades, environmental education shifted from providing instruction about nature protection and natural resource conservation to fostering an environmental ethic through a problems-based, interdisciplinary study of the ecology of the total environment to adopting the concept of sustainable development. IEEP ultimately met with mixed success. Yet it was the primary United Nations program assigned the task of creating and implementing environmental education globally and thus offers a particularly useful lens through which to analyze changes in the international community’s understanding of the concept of the environment over time.

scholarly journals Narrative Strategies of Decolonisation: Autoethnography in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samrita Sinha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Culture Of Impunity ◽  
Right Of Self Determination

According to John Quintero, “The decolonisation agenda championed by the United Nations is not based exclusively on independence. It is the exercise of the human right of self-determination, rather than independence per se, that the United Nations has continued to push for.” Situated within ontologies of the human right of self-determination, this paper will focus on an analysis of The Legends of Pensam by Mamang Dai, a writer hailing from the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, to explore the strategies of decolonisation by which she revitalizes her tribe’s cultural enunciations. The project of decolonisation is predicated on the understanding that colonialism has not only displaced communities but also brought about an erasure of their epistemologies. Consequently, one of its major agenda is to recuperate displaced epistemic positions of such communities. In the context of Northeast India, the history of colonial rule and governance has had long lasting political repercussions which has resulted not only in a culture of impunity and secessionist violence but has also led to the reductive homogeneous construction of the Northeast as conflict ridden. In the contemporary context, the polyethnic, socio-cultural fabric of the Northeast borderlands foregrounds it as an evolving post-colonial geopolitical imaginary. In the light of this, the objective of this paper is to arrive at the ramifications of employing autoethnography as a narrative regime by which Mamang Dai reaffirms the Adi community’s epistemic agency and reclaims the human right towards a cultural self-determination.

scholarly journals Diplomatic protection in international law and the United Nations

2013 ◽  
pp. 667-681
Author(s):  
Bojan Milisavljevic
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Diplomatic Protection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International Law Commission ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Law Commission

The paper deals with the issue of the diplomatic protection in international law and its development through the history of the international community. In this sense, the author investigates the practice of states regarding the application of diplomatic protection and the steps taken by the International Law Commission of the United Nations on the codification of this area. In 2004 International Law Commission adopted at first reading a full set of draft articles. In this paper is presented judicial practice, especially of the International Court of Justice, in the field of diplomatic protection in order to evaluate whether the approach of the Court to diplomatic protection has become more human-rights oriented in the last few years. Author presents the development of customary law rules relating to diplomatic protection and its transition into a whole system of rules through the work of the International Law Commission. In this sense, these are the basic stages in the codification of rules on diplomatic protection and the United Nations contribution to the protection of the rights of foreign nationals. This article points the development of universal and regional mechanisms to protect human rights and highlights the impact of those mechanisms on traditional measures of diplomatic protection.

On Behalf of the United Nations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Falk
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Special Rapporteur ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
Occupied Palestinian Territory ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Palestinian Territory

This chapter reflects on the role as special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), which investigated the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The chapter first provides an overview of the role and office of special rapporteur, noting that UN concerns about Israel and responses to Palestinian grievances are highly politicized within the organization, before discussing some of the characteristics that distinguish the mandate established by the HRC and made applicable to Occupied Palestine. It also explains what was accomplished in six years as special rapporteur of the HRC and details the controversies and pressures attached to that job. It shows that the “UN” comprises different layers, agendas, and interests. The chapter claims that while the United Nations secretary-general in New York permitted personal attacks against the special rapporteur, the leadership and professionals of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva strongly supported his efforts in what the chapter calls the “legitimacy war”.

Origins and History of the United Nations

2017 ◽  
pp. 34-76
Author(s):  
John Allphin Moore ◽  
Jerry Pubantz
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations

1. The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN

2015 ◽  
pp. 8-25
Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations

The International Peace Conference in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration as the first medium for international disputes, but it was the League of Nations, established in 1919 after World War I, which formed the framework of the system of international organizations seen today. The United Nations was created to manage the world's transformation in the aftermath of World War II. ‘The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN’ shows how the UN has grown from the 51 nations that signed the UN Charter in 1945 to 193 nations in 2015. The UN's first seven decades have seen many challenges with a mixture of success and failure.

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