The Protective Shields

This chapter examines the various roles undertaken by civil society organizations (CSOs), or nongovernmental organizations, in the Arab region and their implications for collaboration between CSOs and the United Nations, with particular emphasis on how CSOs figure in policy debates and the human rights movement. CSOs in the Arab region, mainly those working on policy and legislative issues, have been engaged with UN-led processes and conferences since the 1992 Earth Summit, and including the 1995 Summit on Social Development and the 2000 Millennium Summit. However, as some UN agencies, driven by a quest for funding, have moved into programmatic interventions, tensions have sometimes emerged between CSOs and UN agencies when some UN agencies have ended up potentially competing with CSOs for funding or crowding out the space available for CSOs. This chapter first traces the history of CSO-UN interactions in the Arab region before discussing the new challenges and possibilities raised during the period of the Arab uprisings.

The Syrian Refugee Crisis in the Middle East

This chapter examines the response of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East. The Syrian displacement crisis that began in 2011 has been a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding during one of the most tumultuous and complex times in contemporary Middle Eastern history. The Syria crisis has been a transformational development, a “game-changer,” on a number of levels, including the impact on local and regional dynamics, the scope and nature of the international response, and the challenges to the global refugee protection regime it has triggered. This chapter first provides an overview of the complex displacement patterns involving Syrian refugees before discussing the international community's response to the crisis. It also considers the policy challenges arising from the Syrian displacement crisis and suggests that a qualitative and quantitative shift in approach to dealing with displacement in the region seems to herald the way forward, with a pressing need for innovative outlooks and meaningful partnerships that give primacy to refugees' own perspectives.

The Politics of the Sanctions on Iraq and the UN Humanitarian Exception

This chapter examines the politics of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations four days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The UN Security Council's decision to impose sanctions for Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was justified. However, these should have been accompanied by a carefully crafted humanitarian exemption to ensure that the civilian population would receive what they needed for a dignified survival, especially food, medicines, clean water, and electricity. The UN's failure to do so eventually led to the successive resignations of Denis Halliday and the this chapter's author as Baghdad-based UN assistant secretaries-general and humanitarian coordinators. The chapter recounts how the UN sanctions on Iraq during the period 1990–2003 were implemented in “an iron-fist and an inhuman” way at the expense of the Iraqi civilians. It also considers how the humanitarian exception to these sanctions—via the Oil-for-Food program—was overshadowed by powerful Western interests for regime change in Iraq. The chapter suggests that the UN was caught between geopolitical considerations and its humanitarian mission.

Libya: A UN Resolution and NATO’s Failure to Protect

This chapter examines whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) intervention in Libya was predicated on an “ulterior motive exemption” that actually put civilians at greater risk and violated international law. On February 25, 2011, the United Nations Security Council held its first formal meeting on the situation in Libya. The following day, the Council adopted Resolution 1970, which referred to “widespread and systematic attacks…against the civilian population” that may constitute crimes against humanity. Resolution 1973 was adopted to authorize member states “through regional organizations or arrangements…to take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” This chapter considers NATO's violations of international humanitarian law and its complicity in crimes committed by the rebels in Libya during the civil war, including their summary execution of Muammar Qaddafi.

On Behalf of the United Nations

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”.

Palestine, the Third World, and the UN as Seen from a Special Commission

This chapter examines the United Nations's engagement with Palestine through its Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories (“Special Committee”) in a broader Third World context of “global war against the forces of imperialism and neo-imperialism.” It first discusses the history of Palestinian commitment to UN special commissions as a means to the just resolution of the conflict with Israel before turning to the symbolic aspects of UN politics. It then provides a background on the UN Special Committee, whose stated mission was to investigate human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In particular, it considers the key challenges faced by the committee, such as the refusal of the government of Israel to cooperate with it. The chapter suggests that UN special commissions came and went in Palestine, but little progress was made in terms of an emancipatory politics.

Peacekeeping, Development, and Counterinsurgency

This chapter examines the function of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon's (UNIFIL) post-2006 “Quick Impact Projects” (QIPs), small-scale and short-term development projects carried out with local municipalities. More international interventions were carried out in the name of “peace” in the decade following the end of the Cold War than in the previous four decades put together. In the era of United States unipolarity, following the demise of its Soviet rival, the budget of United Nations peacekeeping missions has increased from a total of US$3.6 billion in the year 1994 to US$8.27 billion in the year 2016. After providing a brief background on the history of UNIFIL, the chapter suggests that QIPs illustrate the mission's contradictions and its frequently thorny relations with the local population, who welcome UNIFIL's economic development efforts but reject their underlying political objective of constructing a rival authority and influence to Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.

The United Nations, Palestine, Liberation, and Development

This chapter examines the United Nations's involvement in the economic development of the Palestinian Authority. It begins with an overview of the key stages of the UN involvement in Palestinian development, focusing on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and various UN development agencies. It then considers cracks in the UN's development mission, architecture, and resources amid the rising swell of globalization and liberalization. It also explains how and why the Palestine Liberation Organization bought into neoliberalism and concludes with an assessment of why the UN still matters to Palestine. The chapter offers suggestions for ensuring a better future for the Palestinian people as compared to the past twenty years, as well as for realizing Palestinian efforts at achieving statehood.

The UN, the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, and Development in the Arab World

This chapter examines the development of the United Nations in three different time periods in the postwar era in the Arab world. The first was from the 1950s to the 1970s, which witnessed the rise of the developmental state in several parts of the Arab world and coincided with the rise of the Third World Movement in the Global South, when developing countries came together to demand political and economic reforms as well as nuclear disarmament. The second period spanned the late 1970s to 2010, which witnessed state retrenchment and rising poverty and inequality alongside persistent authoritarianism and increased imperial intervention. The third period is marked by the dawn of the Arab uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa region. In each of the three eras a different UN report is referenced: the 1949 “United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East,” the 2002 Arab Human Development Report, and the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia's Arab Integration report.

Constructing Security Council Resolution 1701 in Lebanon in the Shadow of the “War on Terror”

This chapter examines how the “war on terror” gave global meaning to the 2006 Lebanon-Israel War and to the construction of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which authorized a more robust mandate to the long-standing peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon: the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). After providing an interpretative framework showing how the “powerful discourse” that emerged after 9/11 linked Hizbullah and its assumed patron, Syria, with global terrorism, the chapter considers the construction of a UN-legitimated international regime, centered on Resolution 1559, that translated this war on terror discourse into domestic Lebanese terms. It then analyzes the construction of Resolution 1701, arguing that it made further violence in Lebanon inevitable. It also shows how the discursive contest over interpretations of Resolution 1701 transformed the conflict in Lebanon from an international to a domestic one and how the production of a hegemonic national discourse emerged following the signing of the 2008 Doha Agreement that precipitated the formation of a national unity government.