R2P and the UN
More than a decade has passed since Nelson Mandela, in his capacity as President of the Republic of South Africa, addressed the Heads of State and Government of the then Organization of African Unity (OAU). In his speech, he focused on one of the biggest dilemmas the world had been facing since the end of the Cold War: should outside forces intervene in the internal affairs of a state when the civilian population is suffering massive violations of human rights and the state is unable or unwilling to fulfil its responsibility to protect its own people? Although his message was conveyed to those present in Ouagadougou, its essence can be extended to the entire international community.
The Role of Women in Making and Building Peace
Last June in Suai, a small town in Timor-Leste, I held an open day with local women and men to mark the tenth anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security. This resolution recognizes the unique impact of conflict on women's lives and highlights their often overlooked contributions to resolving and preventing conflict. It also calls on the international community to involve women fully in every aspect of our work for peace and security.
Conflict Resolution and Human Rights in Peacebuilding: Exploring the Tensions
Preventing wars and massive human rights violations, and rebuilding societies in their aftermath, requires an approach that incorporates the perspectives of both human rights advocates and conflict resolution practitioners. This is easier to assert than to achieve. These two groups make different assumptions, apply different methodologies, and have different institutional constraints. As a result, they tend to be wary of one another.
Global Civics and Hammarskjöld
The broad manifestations of our epic global interdependence are increasingly better appreciated. Financial engineering in the United States can determine economic growth in every part of the world; carbon dioxide emissions from China can affect crop yields and livelihoods in the Maldives, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, and beyond; an epidemic in Viet Nam or Mexico can constrain public life in the United States; and a nuclear leak in Japan can have a bearing on public health all around the world. The inherent difficulties of devising and implementing solutions to global problems through nation-states have become increasingly apparent.
Securing our Future: A Decade of Counter-terrorism Strategies
Terrorism did not begin on 11 September 2001, but that terrible day did change the world. The attacks on the United States that claimed the lives of nearly three thousand innocent people showed us that terrorism had morphed into a global phenomenon that could cause massive pain and destruction anywhere. The magnitude of the attacks meant that no one could stand on the sidelines anymore. The fight had become global because the impact of terrorism was being felt everywhere.
Negotiating to Save Lives
In November 2008, former President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, searching for ways to ease a catastrophic crisis in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), came under intense criticism for calling the Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, my brother. Nkunda was accused by the DRC Government of war crimes and was under investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. At the time, I led the Great Lakes Team in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York and was responsible for oversight of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), and the United Nations Integrated Office in Burundi (BINUB). Nkunda occupied much of my thoughts.
First Ãå±±½ûµØArt to Reach the Summit of Everest: The Uniting Painting
On 26 May 2011, I celebrated my seventy-ninth birthday, and it seemed to me as if only two weeks had passed since I had turned sixteen years old.
But time has indeed flown by, measured by the more than eleven thousand political cartoons that I produced on a daily basis during those two weeks.
Preventive Diplomacy at the United Nations
The idea of preventive diplomacy has captivated the United Nations ever since it was first articulated by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld nearly half a century ago. Preventive diplomacy was presaged by Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, which allowed the Secretary-General to bring to the Security Council's attention threats to international peace and security. From the outset of the United Nations, Secretary-General Trygve Lie used the competence under this Article to gather information about situations, to establish contacts with those concerned, to send emissaries to look closely at situations, and to do whatever he could to head off or contain crises of international concern.
Legality, Legitimacy, and Multilateralism
The pursuit of peace has been omnipresent throughout history, and given the omnifarious nature of the concept, the ideas and means for its realization have been as diverse as can be. Some fancied simply subjugating by force; others emphasized the effectiveness of international arbitration or adjudication; some found it useful to establish international organizations, possibly with a collective security system; some even thought of creating a regional integration body so that state sovereignty could be tamed; still others held that guaranteeing human security in order to eradicate abject poverty and other everyday menaces should be the way. Today, some assert that the contemporary imperative is to win the war against transnational terrorism.
The Tears of a Brave Mother
He went to school. That's why he died. If he wouldn't have studied so many years he'd still be alive, helping me around and raising his children, says Eudochia Motco, his mother. She is eighty-three years old and in about four hours her youngest son, Filaret, a Ãå±±½ûµØstaff from Romania, is going to be buried. He was killed when the Ãå±±½ûµØcompound in Mazar-i-Sharif was attacked on 1 April 2011.
Microbicides: New Hope for HIV Prevention
HIV/AIDS is particularly severe in Africa, where women bear a disproportionate burden of the epidemic. One of the most crucial challenges in HIV prevention in Africa is to reduce the high infection rates among young women. Worldwide, just over half of all people living with HIV are women, and 70-90 per cent of all HIV infections among women are through heterosexual intercourse.1 In sub-Saharan Africa, women aged fifteen- to twenty-four years with HIV represent 76 per cent of the total cases in that age group, outnumbering their male peers by as much as eight to one.1 Although the majority of new HIV cases in the United States are through male-to-male sexual contact, heterosexual contact accounts for 84 per cent of new infections among women.
The Imperative for Faith Communities: Overcoming the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Through Stigma Reduction
The world faith community has made some good progress against the spread of HIV/AIDS by using individually-focused, informed messages, such as the ABC strategies, Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condom Use, as well as policies, programmes and budgets that are simple, morally appealing, politically convenient, financially lenient and scientifically relevant. For greater and more sustainable success against HIV/AIDS, these messages and programmes must be expanded, and the epidemic tackled with a multi-sectoral, multi-level, and multi-dimensional ethic that simultaneously reduces the Stigma, Shame, Denial, Discrimination, Inaction and Mis-action (SSDDIM) still attached to HIV, while promoting the SAVE model: Safer practices, Available medicines, Voluntary testing and Empowerment through education, at the individual, family, local community, national, regional, and global level. This must be accomplished if we are to significantly halt, reverse, and eventually overcome new infections related to AIDS before the virus triumphantly and devastatingly celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2031.
Interfaith Response to HIV/AIDS
The story of interfaith response to HIV/AIDS is one that moved from initial doubt, denial and moral hesitation -- even direct denunciation -- to one of global reach and scale. This is a story that demonstrates both the power and challenges that come from specific beliefs, morals, and theology. It also points to greater possibilities for bridging divides in faith and culture through the power of common action on so great an issue of shared concern.
HIV/AIDS and Education: Lessons from the 1980s and the Gay Male Community in the United States
Knowledge is power: If we learned anything in the gay male community during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, it was that. No one knew what had hit us, and people were dying in huge numbers all around us. The community lost friends, colleagues, and intimate partners. Initially mislabeled gay-related immune deficiency (GRID), valuable time was lost in responding to the crisis because most felt safe in the belief that they were not at risk. Since early victims were predominantly gay men, the stigma attached to homosexuality in the medical, governing, law enforcement and ecclesiastical institutions became a barrier to understanding, prevention, and treatment.
Individual Global Responsibility
My primary impulse to write an article on HIV/AIDS came from my fundamental desire to contribute and to collaborate. I realize that my behaviour is founded upon a deeply-rooted sense of duty, a strong commitment, and a profound necessity. Psychologists refer to attitude as the disposition of a person confronting the world (the psychological view), which, once transported to a social setting, becomes values (the sociological view).
In this respect, therefore, allow me to coin the term individual global responsibility: a concept which embodies the attitude of an individual who, as a global citizen, demonstrates a profound sense of respect for human rights and dignity. Indeed, acting with individual global responsibility implies feeling an intense ethical and moral obligation to take positive action, starting with the understanding that in the world there are fellow human beings who are suffering and who have a right to be helped and supported. To be a global citizen means being aware of this obligation and this right.