Panel Discussions - Friday, June 19, 2009
Special Representatives Discuss Legitimacy, Impartiality, and Safety in UN Field Missions
On June 19th, IPI convened a full-day meeting of UN member states and Special Representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs), with the goal of sharing lessons learned from UN field missions. The dialogue featured Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and speakers drawn from the highest levels of the UN Secretariat and was held under the Chatham House Rule.
The Secretary-General delivered keynote remarks on the role and importance of SRSGs, describing them as “the vanguard of the United Nations.” Subsequent panel topics included legitimacy, impartiality, and safety on the ground; peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict; developing smart mandates in the Security Council; and implementing complex mandates while maintaining impartiality.
Read the full meeting note on this event.
Areas for improvement in UN missions, among member states, and at UN headquarters were identified in the meeting, including the need to:
- distinguish between the concepts of “neutrality” and “impartiality,” and reinforce a perception of the UN’s impartiality among all stakeholders;
- creatively overcome bureaucratic hurdles in securing the safety of mission staff and obtain more resources––political and financial––from member states;
- put additional focus on the security needs of national staff, who are often overlooked;
- work from the very outset of a peace operation to build national capacity, rather than as an exit strategy;
- place greater emphasis on conflict prevention and early-warning systems, which would cost less than, and reduce the need for, peacekeeping operations;
- create a forum for more informal and inclusive discussions among member states leading up to Security Council decisions; and
- prioritize or suggest a sequencing for the plethora of tasks required of a peace operation when developing mandates in the Security Council.
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Slide show: Image 1 of 9
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Photos by Elliot Moscowitz
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen, and Adam Smith, IPI Senior Program Officer
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The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
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Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
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“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.