Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights

Making Sanctions Smarter: Safeguarding Humanitarian Action

There have been ongoing efforts to ensure that UN sanctions are more targeted and do not affect the livelihoods of the general population. Yet in some instances, UN sanctions along with national sanctions regimes have unintentionally impeded principled humanitarian action. The impact of sanctions on impartial humanitarian aid is often indirect and diffuse, reverberating across the humanitarian supply chain and involving numerous stakeholders, including member states, humanitarian organizations, financial institutions, and donors. De-risking by the private sector, restrictive clauses in donor agreements, and chilling effects on humanitarian workers are some of the challenges having an impact on principled humanitarian action.

Building on IPI’s 2019 report on sanctions and humanitarian action, IPI will develop concrete measures to proactively and preventively limit the impact of UN sanction regimes on principled humanitarian action. IPI will examine a set of sanction regimes and address the systemic issues they pose for principled humanitarian action. A series of four roundtables (virtual or in-person) will gather key stakeholders and technical experts to review the impacts of these sanctions regimes on the delivery of humanitarian assistance. These roundtables will foster engagement between humanitarian and sanctions stakeholders, contributing to a shared understanding of the challenges faced by the humanitarian sector in effectively delivering humanitarian aid under sanctioned regimes. The roundtables will analyze the dynamics at play and identify specific and actionable solutions. This series of roundtables, complemented by research, will foster the development of a range of general and regime-specific options for the UN Security Council to consider. The research and recommendations will be reflected in a policy paper.

Peace and Health in Pakistan and Afghanistan

In 2021, IPI will continue its strategic partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on issues related to peace and health. This includes research on the security situation in polio-affected regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan to reduce risks and increase the effectiveness of the campaign to eradicate polio. IPI will also advise BMGF more broadly on issues related to peace and development in Pakistan.

Policy and Programming on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the UN

In September 2015, twelve UN entities issued a joint statement calling for an end to violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people. This came after more than twenty years of efforts by civil society organizations and UN member states to put issues related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) on the agenda at the UN. But what are these UN entities actually doing, and when and how did they start doing it?

In 2020, IPI set out to answer these questions through research on UN policy and programming on SOGIESC—the first in-depth, system-wide mapping of the work of UN agencies, funds, and programs on this topic. Contingent on funding, in 2021, IPI will continue engaging with the UN’s LGBTI focal points and other relevant staff, representatives of member states from the LGBTI Core Group, and LGBTI activists to share the findings of this research and consult on next steps. A second phase of the project will focus on one or more of the following topics:

  • UN programming on SOGIESC at the regional or country level (e.g., in Latin America, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, or Eastern Europe);
  • The intersection between SOGIESC and gender at the UN, including the extent to which UN gender experts, trainings, reports, and policies look beyond the gender binary; and
  • UN internal policies and practices on the inclusion of LGBTI people.

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