“The prevention of grave human rights violations must be an immediate and urgent priority for the international community,” said Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende at IPI on September 26th. “Governments have the primary responsibility to promote and protect human rights.”Mr. Brende spoke at the Seventh Annual Trygve Lie Symposium organized jointly by IPI and the […]
Read moreHumanitarian 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.
News, Events, Publications
-
-
The human rights situation in Ukraine is deteriorating, with the number of unlawful detentions, casualties, and enforced disappearances increasing across the country, according to the latest UN report released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva and at IPI on June 18th.Ivan Šimonović, UN Assistant Secretary-General on Human […]
Read more -
This report assesses the United Nations Security Council’s current approach to drawing down sanctions in intrastate war situations. After examining broader questions surrounding the UN’s authority to impose sanctions and the corresponding limits on these powers, the report assesses criteria used by the Council to terminate sanctions.
Read more -
It is the responsibility of UN member states to implement sanctions adopted by the Security Council, but the council plays an important role in facilitating and promoting effective implementation.
Read more -
As sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council have become increasingly sophisticated and targeted, they have also become more and more difficult to implement effectively. Currently there are fourteen active UN sanctions regimes. Among them are the sanctions regimes on Iran and North Korea.
Read more -
Despite newly promised constitutional protections, there are many challenges facing the human rights community in Zimbabwe, according to Beatrice Mtetwa, a prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer. She spoke on advancing the rule of law in Zimbabwe during an African Leaders Series event at the International Peace Institute on December 19th.Highly contested, Zimbabwe’s national elections on […]
Read more -
Human rights has become such an integral part of UN peacekeeping missions over the last decade that it is “part of our DNA,” said Ameerah Haq during a policy forum at the International Peace Institute on December 11th. At the event, Ms. Haq, Under-Secretary-General at the UN Department of Field Support, joined other experts to […]
Read more -
North Korea’s underground nuclear test on February 12, 2013, was the latest in a series of provocations that form part of a slow-motion proliferation strategy. As the UN Security Council responded with sanctions in early March, the world body again contributed to a pattern of action, reaction, trust, and mistrust with the recalcitrant state.
Read more -
Roger Nash spent two years in 11 countries gathering over 400 interviews for a book-length report that examines the work and influence of the UN’s Human Rights presence on the ground. He presented his report at an IPI event entitled “Making Human Rights Real” on November 7, 2012. “The work that happens in the field […]
Read more -
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights respects the rights of all individuals without bias to ethnicity, gender or religion, but Iran has abandoned this compact, explained Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Iran, at an IPI event on October 22, 2012.Dr. Shaheed is the author of a 23-page report […]
Read more