In this article, I discussed four important challenges to the involvement of UN peace operations in international criminal justice: its effects on host state relations, peace and justice dilemmas, its effects on impartiality, and the problems with capacity and training.
The UN support for youth in disarmament affairs has grown over time. Although Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon increased the relevance of disarmament within the UN agenda, the UNSG Antonio Guterres finally achieved consolidating the importance of youth in disarmament affairs and promoted programs to support and widen the youth involvement in the discussion of disarmament. With that, the main aim of the UN has been to promote the education of younger generations in matters related to peace and security, such as disarmament, and with that contribute to the fourth Sustainable Development Goal, which is quality education.
The role of women in peacekeeping has for long been neglected in a world where women have a unique role in their local and national environments to handle and solve conflicts. Several UN organs have actively contributed to the training and inclusion of women in peacebuilding and developed reports to highlight their contributions. The UN must therefore learn from best practices both from its own organs and the historical role of women as peacebuilders in countries such as Yemen in order to develop mechanisms to ensure gender parity in peacekeeping.
In this article, I will examine how the SDGs address SRHR (sexual health and reproductive rights) and what areas still face challenges. The SDGs as they are do address SRHR in terms of maternal health, access to universal sexual and reproductive healthcare, and HIV treatment. However, I ultimately argue that there are two areas that need to be improved for the SDGs to better address SRHR: explicitly covering SRHR in the targets themselves and addressing context-specific barriers to promoting SRHR. Addressing these issues should make promoting SRHR and setting goals and collecting data on SRHR easier.
The latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas raised the spectre of the simmering conflict in the Middle East before the international community again. Whenever the situation escalates as it did in May 2021, analysts and politicians alike ask, “What is the UN doing about it?” The answer is that the UN is constantly working to resolve this conflict, albeit with mixed results.
Torchbearers and architects are how the UN describes young people when discussing the 2030 Youth and Sustainable Development agendas. From this perspective, young people are recipients, partners, and participants in the development, implementation, and review of the 2030 agenda. This article focuses on a subgroup of non-state actors who can mobilize sectors of society the UN is unable to reach directly.
The articles in this dossier, drawn from a selection of established academics and younger scholars, highlight the expanding array of issues and challenges the UN faces as its competencies increase in the face of multiplying threats to the global system.