EU-UN relations: Articles

Studies of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs) typically give scant attention to an important aspect of host states’ development: their external affairs. This article identifies ways in which UN PKOs can shape the external affairs of host states, focusing on UN peacekeeping in the post-Cold War period. awing on documentary analysis and original interview data, it illustrates the conceptual framework through an exploration of the impact of peacekeeping on the external affairs of two countries that have hosted large-scale UN-led peacekeeping missions in recent decades: Timor-Leste (East Timor) and Liberia.

Comment les vertus pacificatrices du droit, mis en œuvre par les institutions publiques, peuvent-elles prévenir la guerre civile et le déchirement du pacte social qu’elle cause inévitablement ? La guerre civile – ce « conflit armé non international », selon la qualification du droit international humanitaire – est toujours une défaite : celle de la communauté humaine d’un État à vivre ensemble de manière paisible ; celle du gouvernement (au sens que lui donne le droit international) à proposer un projet social inclusif, fondé sur des valeurs partagées ; celle des mécanismes constitutionnels à permettre l’expression non violente de la contestation utopique. Prévenir la guerre civile, c’est d’abord anticiper la survenance des facteurs belligènes, par une action publique résolue dans tous les domaines de la société (éducation, justice, élections, etc.).

This article traces the evolution of intelligence in United Nations peacekeeping through a practice-based assemblage lens. We address a gap in the literature by transcending the focus on ‘peacekeeping intelligence’ as merely an evolving policy instrument.

Peacekeeping and development assistance are two of the United Nations' (UN) defining activities. While there have been extensive studies of UN engagement in each of these areas, respectively, less attention has been given to the relationship between peacekeeping and development. We examine that relationship in this article.

International organizations’ ability to respond promptly to crises is essential for their effectiveness and legitimacy. For the UN, which sends peacekeeping missions to some of the world’s most difficult conflicts, responsiveness can save lives and protect peace. Very often, however, the UN fails to deploy peacekeepers rapidly. Lacking a standing army, the UN relies on its member states to provide troops for peacekeeping operations.

Le principe des sanctions décidées par l’ONU s’applique à l’UE. Les mécanismes d’adoption sont complexes et passent par de subtiles négociations entre les membres permanents du Conseil de sécurité dont les intérêts divergent. Le retrait du Royaume-Uni de l’UE laissera la France en situation d’assumer une lourde responsabilité.

The policy documents of the European Union underline its self-image as a leader in promoting and protecting human rights in multilateral fora. The leadership claims are based on the EU’s example in domestic human rights protection and willingness to promote externally the same set of values and norms. However, drawing on interactionist role theory, this article emphasises the extent to which the roles depend on recognition by others. Hence, leadership claims need acceptance from other stakeholders. The article studies external perceptions of EU’s leadership in the Human Rights Council framework using data from interviews of Geneva-based, non-EU diplomats and human rights experts.

To overcome the current challenges and reinvigorate multilateral human rights diplomacy, the most powerful states – including, but not limited to, those in the Global North – must engage in more diverse coalitions and support leadership by smaller states to advance new agendas arising from the Global South. — The multilateral system itself also needs to be reinforced through more sustainable funding for the human rights pillar of the UN and an ongoing commitment by the UN leadership and member states to engage meaningfully with civil society organizations.

The UN human rights treaty body system will again be under scrutiny for reform in 2020, after more than a decade of fruitless attempts to strengthen it. This column explores some proposals for how the treaty bodies and the process of State reporting can become more effective. The central idea is that treaty bodies need to be more selective and avoid duplication to stop the current negative vicious circle and evaluation fatigue. To make the dialogue more constructive, the number of issues discussed should be limited to a handful and treaty bodies should consider smaller review panels and face to face seating.

Does hosting UN Peacekeeping Operations (UN PKOs) increase multilateral foreign aid inflows into civil war-affected countries? Under what conditions do UN PKOs make multilateral foreign aid effective, enhancing governance quality? Multilateral foreign aid agencies increasingly focus on good governance as an allocation criterion. However, multilateral aid assistance faces dilemmas when allocating aid since it undermines the credibility of government commitments to good governance. This study argues that UN PKOs mitigate such uncertainty by initiating democratization, capacity-building, and political participation while mitigating political violence, thereby increasing the multilateral aid inflows.

During emergencies humanitarian supply chains need to respond swiftly, very often without time for good planning that may end up in excessive waste and emissions. This short‐term focus on saving people's lives during disaster responses may harm communities and the planet in the long‐run. Even long‐term (development) focus on improving the life conditions of the poor may be either unsustainable due to the lack of community involvement or inequitable due to lack of resources. At the same time, countries closer to fulfilling the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) suffer less from disasters but still struggle with issues such as social equity. There appears to be an important link between humanitarian operations and SDGs. This special issue focuses on this interaction through a rich variety of contributions using different methodologies, data and lenses, while proposing ways to advance the SDGs. The special issue clearly shows the value operations management can bring to short‐term and long‐term problems society faces.

Amidst increasing geopolitical tensions between China and the EU, China’s growing humanitarian engagement opens an opportunity for the EU to engage with China in the humanitarian sector. A dialogue that takes both parties’ different approaches towards humanitarian aid into account and searches for common ground could open the door towards possible cooperation. This Briefing Paper maps out the characteristics of Chinese humanitarian aid and outlines two areas on which the EU’s tentative steps towards a dialogue with China could focus.

Policymakers and governments increasingly frame climate protection in terms of green growth, arguing that continued economic growth and climate protection are complementary and mutually beneficial. With such framing, governments hope to overcome the global common goods problem associated with climate change and to enable higher ambition on climate action within and across states. Yet, no empirical evidence to date has been provided on how widespread the support for green growth is in international climate politics. This paper, therefore, investigates which countries employ green growth framings at UNFCCC negotiations, and whether this relates to domestic factors, in particular economic structure, level of development and climate impacts.

Geopolitical rivalries (e. g. among authoritarian and democratic states) and competing national and regional regulations (e. g. on decarbonisation, digitalisation, and securitisation of economies) increasingly undermine UN and WTO legal restraints and judicial remedies. The more globalisation is perceived as creating vulnerabilities justifying national security restrictions (e. g. against spread of viruses, weaponisation of interdependence), the more democracies resort to plurilateral second-best responses like trade, investment and environmental agreements conditioning market access on respect for human rights and greenhouse gas reductions. This contribution explains why regulatory competition, ‘authoritarian alliances’, and their influence on plurilateral agreements (e. g. in Asia) render ‘constitutional UN/WTO reforms’ and realisation of the SDGs unlikely.

Complying with the requirements of sustainability development is a very high priority for the business community. The United Nations' 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (UN_SDGs) pose new challenges for firms, which have to adjust their operations and strategies to the requirements of SDGs. In this context, this paper aims to develop a methodological framework for evaluating the level of alignment of corporate sustainability reporting practices with the scope of UN_SDGs.

This thematic issue addresses the question whether and how the SDGs set off processes of societal transformation, for which cooperation between state and non-state actors at all political levels (global, regional, national, sub-national), in different societal spheres (politics, society, and economy), and across various sectors (energy, transportation, food, etc.) are indispensable. In this editorial, we first introduce the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs by providing an overview of the architecture of the agenda and the key challenges of the current implementation phase. In a second step, we present the eleven contributions that make up the thematic issue clustering them around three themes: integration, governance challenges, and implementation.

The Secretary-General issued a report entitled “Our Common Agenda” on 5 August 2021, which, among others, reinforces the role of the United Nations as a place of choice for the development of international law, also putting in context the role and specific prerogatives of the Secretary-General in the promotion of international law. The declaration and “Our Common Agenda” have also presented an opportunity to counter sentiments regarding a supposed general decline in respect for international law.

On September 21, 2020, the Member States celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. In the Declaration marking the occasion, world leaders recounted the achievements of the body, including catalyzing decolonization, promoting and protecting human rights, working to eradicate disease, helping mitigate dozens of conflicts, and saving lives through humanitarian action. They also enumerated challenges the world faces, such as “growing inequality, poverty, hunger, armed conflicts, terrorism, insecurity, climate change, and pandemics.” These challenges, the Declaration said, are interconnected and can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism, which, it emphasized, “is not an option but a necessity as we build back better for a more equal, more resilient and more sustainable world.”

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research about the implementation of international law. However, there has been almost no empirical research about implementing decisions of international human rights institutions. The decisions of those institutions are usually regarded as soft law, and states do not have a clear legal obligation to implement them. This article brings original empirical data about how and when states implement decisions of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) in individual communications.