Increasing attention is being paid to the involvement and the relative influence of international private sector actors in the political economy of countries and regions experiencing violent conflict. This expert workshop was convened in order to assess the nature of business activity as it relates to violent conflict, to delineate areas where further research is needed, and to consider what policy responses may be needed to mitigate the potentially destabilizing effects of private sector activity in war-torn countries.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Human Rights, International Law, International Organization, Migration, and United Nations
There is no single “developing world” perspective on UN peace operations — nor, indeed, a single perspective from each of the regions that took part in the consultation. Nevertheless, some broad themes emerged in the course of discussion, conditioned by particular regional experiences with such operations. Each of the meetings emphasized the importance of the Brahimi Report and took note of the timing and resource constraints that limited the scope of the Report essentially to peacekeeping. All meetings in the developing world, where people feel marginalized from UN decision-making, rued the lateness of the consultative process, noting that building a constituency for UN peace operations requires more extensive, deeper, and earlier consultation with a broad range of regional and local actors. At the New York meeting one permanent representative observed that, returning to the organization after a fifteen-year absence, he saw that the UN, too, was now being affected by the global demand for transparency and accountability.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Human Rights, International Law, International Organization, Migration, and United Nations