Beni territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered from some of the most brutal violence in the country’s recent history. However, the massacres around Beni, which began in October 2014 and have killed more than 1,000 people, have been shrouded in mystery. No group has officially claimed responsibility for the killings; research by Congo Research Group (CRG) and the UN Group of Experts suggests that many actors, including the Congolese government, have been involved.
On the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are pleased to share some of the work we are most proud of from July 2017-June 2018 — work that we believe has contributed to advancing effective multilateral action to prevent crises and build peace, justice, and inclusion.
In 2012, recognizing that the United Nations (UN) system was at a crossroads with respect to its fragmented, sometimes duplicative, and often competitive efforts on rule of law assistance in post-conflict countries, the Secretary-General took steps to incentivize cooperation and collaboration across a highly siloed structure. The Global Focal Point for Police, Justice, and Corrections Areas in the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict and Other Crisis Situations (the GFP) was thus born.
On 11 June 2014, the UN Secretary-General, speaking in the UN Security Council, expressed his concerns about what he perceived as unprecedented violence and complexity facing present UN peacekeeping operations around the world. He suggested a thorough review of all UN peace operations was necessary; this paper is intended to make a contribution to this review. The Secretary-General’s concerns were triggered by a number of recent setbacks in peacekeeping operations and by repeated attacks on UN peacekeeping operations that resulted in the deplorable deaths and injuries to a number of peacekeepers. He gave three problem areas as the reasons for this adverse situation: (i) UN peacekeeping was increasingly mandated to operate where there is no peace to keep; (ii) some UN peacekeeping operations are being authorized in the absence of clearly identifiable parties to the conflict or a viable political process and (iii) UN peacekeeping operations are increasingly operating in more complex environments that feature asymmetric and unconventional threats.
Topic:
Political Violence, United Nations, and Peacekeeping
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a game-changer because they channelled aid and developing countries’ revenues into a discrete package of priorities for eradicating extreme poverty. Undeniably, significant progress was made across peaceful developing countries against the eight MDGs (see box). According to the World Bank, absolute poverty has been halved (although not evenly in each country and region). In 1990, 43.1 per cent of the population in developing countries lived on less than 1.25 US dollars (USD) a day; by 2010, this rate dropped to 20.6 per cent. The world is close to attaining universal primary education too – 90 per cent of children in developing countries are completing primary education (although sub-Saharan Africa is behind at 70 %) (World Bank, 2014).
Topic:
Education, Human Welfare, Poverty, World Bank, Children, and Millennium Development Goals