The History and Nature of Sexual Misconduct in Peace Operations

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-54
Author(s):  
Jasmine-Kim Westendorf
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sexual Misconduct ◽  
Transactional Sex ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations

This chapter traces the history of sexual exploitation and abuse in peace operations globally, including the various forms it takes (only some of which are criminal) and the range of international interveners who perpetrate it. Sexual exploitation and abuse first emerged as an issue in peace operations during the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1993, when the number of prostitutes in the country grew from six thousand before the United Nations arrived to more than twenty-five thousand in 1993. The data available on sexual exploitation and abuse perpetrated by interveners suggests that the range of misconduct is diverse, encompassing opportunistic sexual abuse, transactional sex, networked sexual exploitation, and extremely violent or sadistic attacks. The chapter presents an account of how and why these behaviors occur in peace operations by investigating the local, international, normative, systemic, and structural factors that give rise to them. It also addresses the connections between sexual misconduct by interveners, conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated during wars, and the sexual harassment and abuse that is perpetrated by interveners against their colleagues in peace operations.

Legitimacy in Crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-133
Author(s):  
Jasmine-Kim Westendorf
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Sexual Misconduct ◽  
International Community ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Institutional Level ◽  
Political Implications

This chapter focuses on the macro- and institutional-level impacts of sexual exploitation and abuse. It shows that sexual misconduct in individual missions has far-reaching impacts that reduce international capacities to engage effectively in peace operations and diminish the perceived legitimacy of the international community engaged in peacekeeping and peacebuilding, thereby undermining the international community's capacity to pursue the broader aspirational goals that animate peacekeeping. Sexual misconduct also seeds conflict between different organizational or peacekeeping units as a result of perceived misbehaviors and undermines the morale of peacekeepers and humanitarians. This can result in reduced financial and other support for peace operations and related work and provide fodder for anti-intervention campaigners. Tracking the international responses to the 2015 peacekeeper sexual abuse scandal in the Central African Republic and the 2018 Oxfam sexual exploitation scandal in Haiti, the chapter also explores the global political implications of such scandals.

scholarly journals Due Diligence and UN Support for African Union Security Forces

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-61
Author(s):  
Róisín Burke
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Peace Operation ◽  
And Control

Complicity by UN military peacekeepers in sexual abuse and sexual exploitation (‘SEA’) has been in the lime light in academic, practice and policy circles for many years now. Recent scandals involving sexual violence and abuse by peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and failures to respond are proving the catalyst for major reforms being discussed and implemented currently at UN level. There are numerous legal complexities, difficulties and flaws with the legal framework, policies and systems presently in place. Less considered are the parallel regulatory frameworks operative, or not operative, in the context of peacekeeping done beyond the remit of the United Nations or by those not deployed under its command and control. The fact remains that SEA is also prevalent across these peace operations but very little focus has been placed on these by academics or practitioners alike. Increasingly the UN is likely to rely on regional bodies in conducting peace operations falling outside its SEA regulatory framework. This may leave local populations vulnerable to unregulated or poorly regulated acts of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers. This paper seeks to address a gap in the literature in examining this regulatory space, focusing on the African Union’s (‘AU’s’) policy and regulatory frameworks governing its personnel deployed to peace operation environments in so far as they appear to exist. In doing so, it will reflect on the relationship this has to the UN’s Human Rights Due Diligence Policy on United Nations Support to Non-United Nations Security Forces, and the increasing reliance on AU regional peace operations, and re-hatting of forces.

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.

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