Summer 2013

What is the UN track record in promoting and protecting human rights? This intense six-week course will examine the UN human rights standards, mechanisms, institutions and procedures established over the past sixty years and question their effectiveness. With a particular focus on the actions (or lack thereof) of the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council and diverse international judicial institutions like the International Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court, the course will illustrate, through practical case studies, the inherent challenges associated with the protection of human dignity, the enforcement of human rights and the fight against impunity.

Does the United Nations matter? The course will offer a broad assessment and analysis of the place, performance and potential of the United Nations within the nation-state system. It will assess the world body based on a range of distinct expectations through the prism of global threats, global norms and global responsibilities. Increasingly the world is confronted with phenomena - related to both security and development - which require global responses; the question this course seeks to answer is to what extent can we rely on the UN to act as a global instrument for constructive change?

Do sanctions work? This six-week intensive course will examine the history and use of multilateral sanctions as an instrument of coercion in the restoration and maintenance of international peace and security. Students will analyze the logic behind the imposition of international sanctions, explore specific factors that enhance and impede sanctions effectiveness, including their perceived credibility, the role of monitoring and enforcement, and challenges to sanctions legitimacy. The course will emphasize practical case studies and perspectives and students will benefit from regular guest speakers who have participated in various Security Council sanctions episodes.

The objective of this course is to develop a shared understanding of the theory and practice of post-conflict peacebuilding within the context of the evolving nature of UN peace operations and as part of ongoing efforts to improve the international community's collective ability to facilitate sustainable peace processes in countries emerging from conflict. Current Security Council-mandated peace operations, the challenges and dilemmas they face will be used as case studies to help attain the above objective. Because Africa has been the most important regional setting for these peace operations and has had a critical impact in defining their limitations and possibilities, the case studies will be drawn primarily from UN peacebuilding engagement in Africa.

This six-week course will provide an analytical framework with which to understand the transformation that has characterized development thinking and practice at the United Nations over the last twenty years. It will familiarize participants with the key UN reports and resolutions that define the UN's contribution and reflect on the evolution in development cooperation in practice through the prism of one UN institution in particular, in this case the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It will also analyze current debates about the future of development cooperation and the evolving shape of multilateralism. The course will provide practical examples and draw from the extensive practical experience of the instructor.

The World Bank's 2011 World Development Report found that criminal violence and conflict are increasingly intertwined around the world. Criminal groups - from drug traffickers in Afghanistan and Mali, to gangs in Haiti and pirates off the coast of Somalia - are posing increasing threats to international security, and to UN missions. Yet the role of the UN in responding to criminal violence remains uncertain. The impacts on criminal groups of different tools within the UN - from mediation, to sanctions, to development assistance, to international criminal justice - remain poorly understood. And the skills needed to analyze and develop strategic responses to these groups remain rare in the UN system. Through strategic analysis of cases in which the UN system has grappled with criminal violence over the last two decades, students in this course will develop skills in strategic analysis of organized crime and contemporary conflict, in-depth area or country knowledge, and policy lessons for the international community.