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The Failure of Reform: Crisis at the UNSC?
Despite Kofi Annan’s warning that ‘the United Nations is passing through the gravest crisis of its existence’ and a burst of diplomatic activity at the World Summit in 2005, reform of the UNSC has not been easy to achieve. This essay will explore the reasons behind the impasse as well as briefly considering possible alternatives. It will critically analyse the notion that failure to reform represents a ‘crisis’ at the UN.
‘Short term pain for long term gain’; in your opinion, is this an accurate description of structural adjustment programmes?
The spectre of a debt crisis, the first signs of which were seen in the Third World in the 1970s, and the fear of world finances’ disintegration, led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) to propose Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to the developing world. This essay will start with a description of the long term advantages of SAPs, as advocated by the IMF and the WB (including elements of the neo-liberal philosophy presented as an ideological basis for the programmes) before assessing the short term disadvantages of SAPs – largely revolving around unsustainable growth.
‘Regional organisations are the most useful “friends” of the UN Secretary-General when he is engaged in mediation’. Discuss.
Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead’[1]. In An Agenda for Peace, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali set out visions for preventive diplomacy and strategies to strengthen the United Nations’ (UN) capacity to maintain the peace. The collapse of Cold War bipolarity has seen a surge in demand for UN involvement. The UN has cast its net wide, beyond narrow conceptions of collective security, into human rights, environmental politics and human security. The response from the Security Council, General Assembly and member states to An Agenda for Peace was cautiously optimistic; the rhetoric, asserts Chesterman, ‘was euphoric, utopian, and short’.
The growth of the United States into the World’s preponderant power in the second half of the twentieth century precluded the involvement of other regional powers in the affairs of Latin America. Discuss with reference to the European Economic Community
The end of the Second World War saw the United States consolidated in its position as the preponderant power in the Western World, with none but the Soviet Union able to come close to matching its economic, military or political might, nor its capabilities of global power projection. It would be natural, then, to assume that due to the increasing nature of its power, and the concurrently increasing universality of its interests, the United States would adopt more global policies, and seek both to control its allies and to curb its enemies more completely. Whilst this process came to fruition in the formation of NATO and the United Nations, as well as the larger united position of Western states against the socialist bloc, the second half of the twentieth century also saw a marked, but less noticed, attempt by the traditionally US-dominated countries of Latin America to become increasingly independent of their customary patron.
What are the main challenges to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)?
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) came into being in 2004 after the last round of accessions where decided. As the EU’s borders went eastward and southward, the EU came more and more into contact with areas of instability. The ENP thus is the policy aimed at stabilising the EU’s new neighbours through a normative agenda. This essay will look at the historical and institutional context in which the ENP appeared, what the ENP is and then assess the challenges that it faces.
The Leverage of the OSCE and EU on Romanian and Estonian Minority Policies
This article applies and discusses a historical institutionalist approach and a contextual approach to domestic receptiveness in Estonia and Romania on minority issues to leverage applied by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union. It concludes that in this case a historical institutionalist approach provides a better explanation of receptiveness and offers more predictive power. The historical dimension of the country and its minority issues is better discussed by this structural approach.
¡Viva Pacha Mama!* NAFTA’s Role in Mexico’s Indigenous Crisis
The paper will proceed in four parts. First it, will briefly explore the general situation of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples. This will be followed by a discussion of the effects of NAFTA on the agricultural sector, paying close attention to the case of corn as it relates to the plight of Indigenous peoples. Third, it will explore the connections between the degradation of the agricultural sector, migration and Indigenous communities. Finally, it will conclude with a brief examination of the major resistance movement that opposes NAFTA in the name of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) of Chiapas, and look at the human rights abuses that have occurred in connection with this uprising.
NAFTA’s Chapter 11
When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was negotiated between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, Chapter 11 of the treaty was included to protect investors from state appropriation or ‘taking’ and, in theory, requires that the same treatment be given to foreign companies as domestic companies. In American law, the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights prevents the government from seizing private assets without due compensation. A ‘taking’, also referred to as eminent domain in Californian law, is a legal principle that governs how and why the federal, state, or local government can ‘take’ private property.
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