Amidst a rise in sexual violence in the world’s war zones, the United Nations has begun appointing women to head some of the key political and peacekeeping missions in conflict areas - and also created Gender Advisers as a second line of defence.
Western analysts all too often take a distorted and reductionist approach to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says Kai Koddenbrock, who analysed more than 50 policy papers for a study published in the journal International Peacekeeping in November 2012.
Despite existing local expertise and strategies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to build peace-supporting structures at the community level, official debates and media coverage continue to focus predominantly on military interventions.
When M23 rebels tried twice to arrange a protest march against a United Nations resolution to deploy an intervention brigade with an offensive mandate to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, they had to postpone it because the local population would not participate.
As the first of South Africa’s troops are expected to begin arriving in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the United Nations intervention force at the end of April, governance experts have welcomed the world body’s new mandate in the Central African nation.
The United Nations has come under heavy political fire for its decision to deny compensation for thousands of victims of cholera in Haiti - a deadly disease spread by U.N. peacekeepers in the troubled Caribbean nation.
Canada’s military buying binge under the current Conservative government has hit a financial brick wall in these austere times, but there is no nostalgic return in sight for Ottawa's once robust participation in United Nations-led peacekeeping missions.
U.S. legislators are appealing to the United Nations to take a greater role in addressing Haiti's cholera outbreak, now in its third year and which has has left thousands dead.