New Book from the United Nations University and
the International Peace Research Association, IPRA,
edited by Chadwick F. Alger
All desiring to be challenged to think creatively about potential for coping with a growing array of global problems will find this volume to be stimulating reading. Penetrating analyses of past and present experience in a broad array of “laboratories” in the UN system are pointed toward illuminating future potential.
Twenty-two scholars from all continents contribute twelve chapters thatencompass prevention of violence, creating economic and social structures that sustain human fulfillment, sharing and protecting the commons and peace education. The search for future potential, based on experience in these twelve “laboratories”, leads to sixty-six recommendations for new institutions and programs on issues that include controlling weapons, humanitarian intervention, collaboration between UN peacekeepers and NGOs, human rights, economic policies, advancement of women, refugees, ecological security, communications, and peace education. These recommendations are brought together in a concluding chapter and summarized in an appendix.
The recommendations include proposals for the Bretton Woods Institutions, IAEA, ILO, ITU, the Trusteeship Council, UN Centre for Human Rights, UNCTAD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNU, and WIPO. Suggested new institutions include a UN Institute for Mediation and Dispute Resolution, NGO Rapid Response Teams, an Early Warning Information Service, a UN Peace Education Fund, a World Court for the Environment, enhancement of UN capacity for institutional memory, continuing education for UN staff, and wider participation of local governments and organizations.
Most of these recommendations do not require amendments to the UN Charter or to the treaties establishing the UN Specialized Agencies. Instead, their implementation would require creative efforts of member states, secretariats, NGOs and dedicated individuals that are pointed toward attainment of multilateral capacity for coping with an array of global problems that increasingly threaten the quality of human life throughout the globe.
The volume concludes: “There are tasks here for everybody.”
Raimo Väyrynen, Robert C. Johansen, Elise Boulding and Jan Oberg are either TFF associates or collaborators with the foundation.
C O N T E N T
Introduction
Chadwick F. Alger
Part I
Overcoming and Preventing Violence
1.Controlling Weapons in the Quest for Peace: Non-Violent Defense, Arms Control, Disarmament, and Conversion
Hans Gunter Brauch, Bjorn Moller and Czeslaw Mesjasz
2. Enforcement and Humanitarian Intervention: Two Faces of Collective Action by the United Nation
Raimo Vayrynen
3. Enhancing United Nations Peacekeeping
Robert C. Johansen
4. United Nations Peacekeeping and NGO Peacebuilding: Toward Partnership
Elise Boulding and Jan Oberg
5. Coping with Internal Conflicts: Teaching the Elephant to Dance
Kumar Rupesinghe
Part II
Peacebuilding: Creating Economic and Social Structures that Sustain Human Fulfillment
6. Moving Norms to Political Reality: Institutionalizing Human Rights Standards Through the UN System
Clair Apodoca, Michael Stohl and George Lopez
7. The Struggle in the UN System for Wider Participation in Forming Global
Economic Policies
Ho Won Jeong
8. The UN System in the Vanguard of Advancement of Women: Equality,Development and Peace
Hilkka Pietila and Jeanne Vickers
9. Generating Political Will for Protecting the Rights of Refugees
Lucia Ann McSpadden and Ayok Chol
Part III
Sharing and Protecting the Commons
10. Ecological Security and the UN System
Pat Mische and Mauricio Andres Ribeiro
11. Communications in the Future UN System
Tapio Varis
Part IV
Developing the Foundations: Peace Education
12. The United Nations’ Role in Peace Education
Betty Reardon and Sanaa Osserian
Conclusion
Future Potential of the United Nations System
Chadwick F. Alger
Appendix: Recommended New UN Institutions and Programs
“The United Nations System: Potential for the Twenty-first Century”
Edited by Chadwick F. Alger for the International Peace Research Association.
United Nations University Press, Tokyo, New York, Paris
ISBN 92-808-0973-3450 pp, around US$ 30
