On July 28, 2022 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted—by a count of 161 in favor, with 8 abstentions—that living in a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right. Building on the similar declaration by the UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC)...
Laurie Nathan In 2015, Nigeria held elections that were widely expected to lead to large-scale violence. The risk derived in part from the country’s severe regional tensions, which included the religious and political cleavage between the North and the South, as well...
Laurie Nathan, Adam Day, João Honwana and Rebecca Brubaker From its inception, the United Nations (UN) has engaged in preventive diplomacy in situations of conflict in order to prevent the outbreak of large-scale violence. Preventive diplomacy has recently been given...
Ernesto Verdeja This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by a world traumatized by the horrors of World War II....
Maryann Cusimano Love The nuclear weapons ban is the latest example of resurrection politics. Peace advocates, scientists, and churches have been trying to ban the bomb for over 70 years, with few successes. Resurrection politics takes issues thought previously “dead...
David Cortright Critics of the UN treaty banning the bomb argue that nuclear weapons have helped to prevent World War III and are essential for international security. A world without nuclear weapons, they say, would be a world of greater war and military aggression....
Melanie Greenberg is President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. In her work on international conflict resolution, she has helped design and facilitate public peace processes in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the Caucasus. In September 2015, the...
Robert Johansen Robert Johansen is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He specializes in issues of international ethics and global governance, the United Nations, and peace and world order...
Sara Sievers Sara Sievers is Associate Dean of Policy and Practice at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and former Senior Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. She has extensive experience in advocacy, policy, and governance issues pertaining...
Lisa Schirch and David Cortright In recent decades, international peacekeeping missions have become more robust and multi-dimensional, involving diverse civilian and military actors. In many cases, civilian peacebuilding and development actors are on the ground...
Ellen Laipson The election of President Hassan Rouhani has augured in a wave of hopefulness that conflict between Iran and the U.S. could be avoided. But the escalating crisis in Syria has cast a shadow over prospects for improvement. The August 21 use of chemical...
George A. Lopez Much attention is paid to noncombatant casualties caused by military strikes and terrorist bombings, but few observers have focused on the impact of non-military actions, such as economic sanctions, on civilians. The shift more than a decade ago from...