While the wide-ranging impacts of COVID-19 are being felt in all countries and communities, the pandemic is having a disproportionately large impact on vulnerable populations, such as people living in areas affected by fragility, conflict, and violence. Vaccines hold enormous promise to mitigate these impacts, but the complications inherent to armed conflict make accessing vaccines […]
Read more
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the UN Security Council has developed two main streams of work related to counterterrorism: the sanctions regime established by Resolution 1267 and measures under Resolution 1373. However, these resolutions and related sanctions regimes have been criticized for failing to safeguard and facilitate impartial humanitarian action. In response, […]
Read more
In his 2020 Call to Action on Human Rights, UN Secretary-General António Guterres committed to developing an “Agenda for Protection.” The agenda provides an opportunity for the UN to reaffirm that the protection of crisis-affected populations is fundamental to its purpose and values. To be effective it should address the lessons learned from previous efforts […]
Read more
On June 24th, IPI and the Permanent Mission of Germany, with the co-sponsorship of the Missions of Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Spain and Switzerland to the UN, cohosted a virtual event entitled “Safeguarding Humanitarian Action in Counterterrorism Contexts: Addressing the Challenges of the Next Decade.”This virtual policy forum was convened as an official side-event on the […]
Read more
Bangladesh Ambassador to Bahrain Dr. Md. Nazrul Islam, joined by speakers from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), launched an urgent appeal to the international community for a lasting solution to the Rohingya crisis, and urged the multilateral system to facilitate the voluntary, safe and sustained repatriation […]
Read more
Sanctions can end up hindering humanitarian assistance and the provision of life-saving medical care in armed conflict, and forestalling that outcome was the subject of a January 28th policy forum at IPI, co-hosted with the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations.The discussion centered on a new IPI report, Making Sanctions Smarter: Safeguarding Humanitarian […]
Read more
In recent decades, sanctions have increasingly been used as a foreign policy tool. The UN Security Council has imposed a total of fourteen sanctions regimes alongside those imposed autonomously by the EU, the US, and other countries. Despite efforts to institute more targeted sanctions regimes, these regimes continue to impede or prevent the provision of […]
Read more
There are currently fourteen UN sanctions regimes, which member states are legally required to implement. Many of these are implemented in the context of armed conflict, where international humanitarian law outlines obligations to protect the provision of and access to principled humanitarian action. But despite efforts to make sanctions regimes more targeted, they continue to […]
Read more
The subject of the June 21st Speaker Series event at IPI was “The Risks of Politicizing Humanitarian Action: The UNRWA Perspective,” and the speaker, Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), focused his comments on what he said was the most misunderstood of […]
Read more
The growing number of attacks on humanitarian workers and the provision of health care in armed conflict has become what Christoph Heusgen, the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, called “a weapon of warfare. The situation is very dire,” he told an IPI audience. “We must not accept that this becomes the new […]
Read moreThe European Union is capable of decreasing its dependence on Russia, but also of weakening the Kremlin’s ability to wield energy as a weapon…
The UN counterterrorism architecture was written broadly though its application has been largely focused on…
Last week, at least 15 people died in protests demanding UN peacekeepers leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The week before, the military junta ruling Mali halted troop rotations for the UN mission there and ejected the…
Member states agreed to an overall increase in the peacekeeping budget for the first time in…
Looking at green water, the rainwater available to plants, shows that freshwater’s ability to sustain a stable Earth system is even more threatened than…
The UN Security Council does not have the luxury of choosing between normative imperatives associated with preventing…
Despite the instability it faces, Guinea-Bissau—alongside countries like Madagascar, Chad, or the…
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult for…
Without a corresponding political process, UN protection activities are an ineffective bandaid in situations of…
United Nations
Middle East Regional Office
51-52 Harbour House,
Bahrain Financial Harbour
Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain
Phone: +973-1721-1344
The International Peace Institute is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank with a staff representing more than 20 nationalities, located in New York across from United Nations headquarters. IPI is dedicated to promoting the prevention and resolution of conflicts between and within states by strengthening international peace and security institutions. To achieve its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, convening, publishing and outreach.
The Global Observatory provides timely analysis on trends and issues related to global security.
777 United Nations Plaza, New York
