Cyber Peacekeeping: Critical Evaluation of Digital Blue Helmets Program

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Fahad Nabeel
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Threat Detection ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Future Potential

In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the Digital Blue Helmets (DBH) program under its Office of Information and Communications Technologies (OICT). The launching of DBH was a continuation of a series of steps that the UN and its related agencies and departments have undertaken over the past decade to incorporate cyberspace within their working methodologies. At the time of inception, DBH was envisioned as a team capacitated to act as a replica of a physical peacekeeping force but for the sole purpose of overseeing cyberspace(s). Several research studies have been published in the past few years, which have conceptualized cyber peacekeeping in various ways. Some scholars have mentioned DBH as a starting point of cyber peacekeeping while some have proposed models for integration of cyber peacekeeping within the current UN peacekeeping architecture. However, no significant study has attempted to look at how DBH has evolved since its inception. This research article aims to examine the progress of DBH since its formation. It argues that despite four years since its formation, DBH is still far away from materializing its declared objectives. The article also discusses the future potential roles of DBH, including its collaboration with UN Global Pulse for cyber threat detection and prevention, and embedding the team along with physical peacekeepers.

scholarly journals International Schools for Young Astronomers (ISYA): a programme of the International Astronomical Union

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (SPS5) ◽  
pp. 221-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michèle Gerbaldi
Keyword(s):  
International Schools ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Data Access ◽  
International Astronomical Union ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Data Archives ◽  
International Astronomical ◽  
Communications Technologies

AbstractThis paper outlines the main features of the International Schools for Young Astronomers (ISYA), a programme developed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1967. The main goal of this programme is to support astronomy in developing countries by organizing a school lasting 3 weeks for students with typically a M.Sc. degree. The context in which the ISYA were developed has changed drastically over the past 10 years. We have moved from a time when access to any large telescope was difficult and mainly organized on a national basis, to the situation nowadays where data archives are established at the same time that any major telescope, ground-based or in space, is built, and these archives are accessible from everywhere. The concept of the virtual observatory reinforces this access. However, the rapid development of information and communications technologies and the increasing penetration of internet have not yet removed all barriers to data access. The role of the ISYA is addressed in this context.

Information Technologies and the Global Political Economy

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Hart
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Consumer Electronics ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Past ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Telecommunications Services

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) constitute a potentially transformative force in world politics. The industries associated with these technologies are growing rapidly, and some have argued that their importance in the overall economy at both the national and global levels increased in recent decades. ICT industries include both goods producers and service providers. ICT manufacturing includes all the goods-producing industries that use semiconductor components, such as consumer electronics, the computer industry, the telecommunications equipment industry, and industrial and military electronics. Within each of these groups, there are sub-industries that specialize in particular segments of the market. The services side of ICTs is also very large in terms of revenues and employment, and is growing rapidly. ICT services include, among others, the software industry, telecommunications services, data processing, and web-based information services. Many scholars argue that the importance of ICT industries goes beyond the revenues and employment generated in the industries themselves, however. ICTs may also be transformative in that they reduce transaction and communications costs in the overall economy. They make possible new forms of organization of human activity, especially as globalization and digitalization is progressing rapidly in the recent decades. Such processes have attracted the attention of international relations scholars, as they have been focusing on international regimes governing ICT-related activities in the past decade.

scholarly journals Digital inequality in provincial China

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (10) ◽  
pp. 2179-2182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haimeng Liu ◽  
Chuanglin Fang ◽  
Siao Sun
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
The West ◽  
Digital Inequality ◽  
The Past ◽  
Development Tool ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
Scant Attention

The rapid spread of information and communications technologies is accelerating the development of our economy and society. While information and communications technologies have become an important development tool that reshapes many aspects of the world’s activities, digital inequality emerges on a worldwide scale due to difference in access to and use of information and communications technologies. Digital inequality, which is a new phenomenon in the current information era, will widen the gap between developed and developing countries/regions. China has witnessed rapid informationization along with its booming economic growth over the past decade. However, digital inequality, as an important aspect of social inequalities in China, has received only scant attention currently. Based on the technique of cartogram, Figures display provincial information and communications technologies development index (IDI) values in 2010 and 2015 in China, exhibiting high inequality. Regions of the highest information and communications technologies levels are distributed along China's eastern coast. On the contrary, the provinces in the west present very low information and communications technologies levels. The coefficient of variation of IDI values dropped from 0.30 to 0.18, indicating declining digital inequality in China. A causal bidirectional relation probably exists between the economic development and information and communications technologies levels.

scholarly journals Historical forms of the journalistic communication style in Slovakia

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-132
Author(s):  
Milos Horvath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Citizen Journalism ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Negotiation Style

The work is based on the presumption that the journalistic (publicistic or newly mass communication) style is an integral part of the communication universe of people in the 21st century, and its importance has increased in direct proportion with the rise of the influence of media. In the specific conditions of Slovakia, the evolution of journalism was closely related to the issue of language emancipation of the Slovaks and the strengthening of their national awareness. In later phases, it was considered partially a hybrid style of public communication that was created by a mixing of the official (also referred to as the administrative style and the negotiation style in the past) and the scientific style as well as the belles-lettres style with the aim to not only inform, but also educate, influence or persuade dispersive, heterogeneous addressees in regard to the most current events having a broader social meaning. In the current era that is influenced by the massive use of information and communications technologies, the stylistic characteristics of texts in media significantly changes prevalently towards colloquialisation which is closely related to the deprofessionalisation of the journalistic profession and the creation of citizen journalism.

Provision of Remedies for Violation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Comparative Study of the United Nations, Inter-American and African Human Rights Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-318
Author(s):  
Roman Girma Teshome
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Regional Monitoring ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Receive

The effectiveness of human rights adjudicative procedures partly, if not most importantly, hinges upon the adequacy of the remedies they grant and the implementation of those remedies. This assertion also holds water with regard to the international and regional monitoring bodies established to receive individual complaints related to economic, social and cultural rights (hereinafter ‘ESC rights’ or ‘socio-economic rights’). Remedies can serve two major functions: they are meant, first, to rectify the pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage sustained by the particular victim, and second, to resolve systematic problems existing in the state machinery in order to ensure the non-repetition of the act. Hence, the role of remedies is not confined to correcting the past but also shaping the future by providing reforming measures a state has to undertake. The adequacy of remedies awarded by international and regional human rights bodies is also assessed based on these two benchmarks. The present article examines these issues in relation to individual complaint procedures that deal with the violation of ESC rights, with particular reference to the case laws of the three jurisdictions selected for this work, i.e. the United Nations, Inter-American and African Human Rights Systems.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

The Palestinian Refugee Camps In Jordan: Between National Identity and Socio-economic Integration

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ala Al-Hamarneh
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Spatial Integration ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Distinct Character ◽  
Palestinian Refugee

At least 50 per cent of the population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin. Some 20 per cent of the registered refugees live in ten internationally organized camps, and another 20 per cent in four locally organized camps and numerous informal camps. The camps organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) play a major role in keeping Palestinian identity alive. That identity reflects the refugees' rich cultural traditions, political activities, as well as their collective memory, and the distinct character of each camp. Over the past two decades integration of the refugees within Jordanian society has increased. This paper analyses the transformation of the identity of the camp dwellers, as well as their spatial integration in Jordan, and other historical and contemporary factors contributing to this transformation.

Land of Blue Helmets

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Member States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Mediation

Born in 1945, the United Nations (UN) came to life in the Arab world. It was there that the UN dealt with early diplomatic challenges that helped shape its institutions such as peacekeeping and political mediation. It was also there that the UN found itself trapped in, and sometimes part of, confounding geopolitical tensions in key international conflicts in the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, such as hostilities between Palestine and Iraq and between Libya and Syria. Much has changed over the past seven decades, but what has not changed is the central role played by the UN. This book's claim is that the UN is a constant site of struggle in the Arab world and equally that the Arab world serves as a location for the UN to define itself against the shifting politics of its age. Looking at the UN from the standpoint of the Arab world, this volume includes chapters on the potential and the problems of a UN that is framed by both the promises of its Charter and the contradictions of its member states.

ROLE OF LIBRARIANS IN TEACHING INFORMATION LITERACY IN ZIMBABWEAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Mousaion ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tinashe Mugwisi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
University Libraries ◽  
Information And Communications Technologies ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Information Skills ◽  
The University

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the Internet have to a large extent influenced the way information is made available, published and accessed. More information is being produced too frequently and information users now require certain skills to sift through this multitude in order to identify what is appropriate for their purposes. Computer and information skills have become a necessity for all academic programmes. As libraries subscribe to databases and other peer-reviewed content (print and electronic), it is important that users are also made aware of such sources and their importance. The purpose of this study was to examine the teaching of information literacy (IL) in universities in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and the role played by librarians in creating information literate graduates. This was done by examining whether such IL programmes were prioritised, their content and how frequently they were reviewed. An electronic questionnaire was distributed to 12 university libraries in Zimbabwe and 21 in South Africa. A total of 25 questionnaires were returned. The findings revealed that IL was being taught in universities library and non-library staff, was compulsory and contributed to the term mark in some institutions. The study also revealed that 44 per cent of the total respondents indicated that the libraries were collaborating with departments and faculty in implementing IL programmes in universities. The study recommends that IL should be an integral part of the university programmes in order to promote the use of databases and to guide students on ethical issues of information use.

UN Peacekeeping Operations and Successful Military Diplomacy: A Case Study of Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bakare Najimdeen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Policy Objective ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Military Diplomacy

Few years following its creation, the United Nations (UN) with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided to establish the UN Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), as a multilateral mechanism geared at fulfilling the Chapter VII of the UN Charter which empowered the Security Council to enforce measurement to maintain or restore international peace and security. Since its creation, the multilateral mechanism has recorded several successes and failures to its credit. While it is essentially not like traditional diplomacy, peacekeeping operations have evolved over the years and have emerged as a new form of diplomacy. Besides, theoretically underscoring the differences between diplomacy and foreign policy, which often appear as conflated, the paper demonstrates how diplomacy is an expression of foreign policy. Meanwhile, putting in context the change and transformation in global politics, particularly global conflict, the paper argues that traditional diplomacy has ceased to be the preoccupation and exclusive business of the foreign ministry and career diplomats, it now involves foot soldiers who are not necessarily diplomats but act as diplomats in terms of peacekeeping, negotiating between warring parties, carrying their countries’ emblems and representing the latter in resolving global conflict, and increasingly becoming the representation of their countries’ foreign policy objective, hence peacekeeping military diplomacy. The paper uses decades of Pakistan’s peacekeeping missions as a reference point to establish how a nation’s peacekeeping efforts represent and qualifies as military diplomacy. It also presented the lessons and good practices Pakistan can sell to the rest of the world vis-à-vis peacekeeping and lastly how well Pakistan can consolidate its peacekeeping diplomacy.

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