“If you are going to deny Iran its legitimate rights to enjoy peaceful technologies—chemical, biological, and nuclear—then what would be the reason for Iran to stay a member of chemical, biological, and nuclear conventions? Only commitments, no rights?” asked Seyed Hossein Mousavian, at a Beyond the Headlines event at IPI on June 26, 2012. Mr. […]
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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
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On November 1st, IPI hosted a one-day workshop, co-organized with the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to review the UN Security Council’s efforts at enhancing accountability for better protection of civilians in armed conflict.Entitled “Accountability and Fact-Finding Mechanisms for Violations of […]
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Jack Lang, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Legal Issues Related to Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, said at an IPI event on January 25, 2011, “We have to attack piracy at the head.”Mr. Lang referred several times to piracy “masterminds,” and asserted, “Each time that we know a mastermind, we have to apply […]
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IPI held a roundtable on a new report prepared by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, co-hosted by the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN.
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Following on the publication of The Sanctions Decade – lauded as the definitive history and accounting of UN sanctions in the 1990s – David Cortright and George Lopez continue their collaboration to examine the changing context and meaning of sanctions and of the kinds of dilemmas that the Security Council now faces.Cortright and Lopez note […]
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This report draws upon insights shared at two meetings on sanctions convened by the International Peace Academy [now International Peace Institute] in Paris in November 2001 and London in March 2002.
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This book, based on more than two hundred interviews with officials from the UN and sanctioned countries, and other involved actors, provides the first comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of UN sanctions during the 1990s.For more information about this book by Lynne Rienner Publishers, please click here.
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