Comment & Analysis - August 22, 2011

Book Review: Why Should We Help People in Need Beyond Our Borders?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s the rise of globalization and an evolving human rights regime inspired a proliferation of work dedicated to cosmopolitan theory. Attention to the concept of cosmopolitanism never completely waned, but the muscular foreign policy of the Bush years and the re-emergence of assertive nation states such as China led to a sense that the cosmopolitan moment had passed.  

General Announcements - August 15, 2011

Somalia: Drawing the Right Lesson From “Black Hawk Down”

[This article by John L. Hirsch, senior adviser at IPI, was first printed in the online version of Foreign Policy on August 13, 2011.]

This month has seen some of the grimmest news in years out of Somalia, a country that has become shorthand for despair. Since a famine began sweeping the war-torn country in July, tens of thousands of Somalis have died of starvation, and many more have sought refuge elsewhere.  

Comment & Analysis - July 06, 2011

Engaging Somalia’s Al-Shabab to Allow the Delivery of Humanitarian Aid

In the last few months, the humanitarian situation in the entire Horn of Africa region has been steadily deteriorating owing to a drought caused by the climatic phenomenon La Niña. The situation is all the more worrying in Somalia where a decades-long conflict has driven some 250,000 Somalis out of their homes since May in the capital Mogadishu alone, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 

Comment & Analysis - May 24, 2011

The Case for a “Humanitarian Pause” in Libya

Recent efforts to get emergency assistance to civilians in the midst of the battle for Libya point to an ongoing debate at the United Nations and beyond—how to reconcile the urgent goal of bringing immediate assistance and protection to civilians with the imperative of keeping humanitarian aid neutral and impartial.