The United Nations, the Sudanese Government, the African Union (AU) and the League of Arab States (LAS) have agreed to deploy a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force to Darfur in an effort to end violence in the region.

During a meeting in Riyadh last night chaired by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the participants agreed to play their part to try to accelerate political reconciliation inside Darfur, where rebel groups have been fighting Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias since 2003.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, AU Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konaré and LAS Secretary-General Amr Moussa, later told reporters that, "I think we made progress where there had been an impasse."

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From Riyadh, Warren Hoge reports that King Abdullah gave Ban Ki-moon an important boost in a discussion with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir.

The president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, came under pressure Thursday from Arab leaders to end the crisis in Darfur.

Mr. Bashir spent an hour and a half in a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and a two-hour session with him lasting into Thursday morning that included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia; Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League; and Alpha Oumar Konaré, chairman of the African Union.

"I think we made progress where there had been an impasse," Mr. Ban said. "The king’s intervention very much supported my position."

A United Nations official with experience in the region said: "These Arab discussions on Darfur are significant. There was a time when it was very difficult to raise the subject, but that's no longer the case."

In a speech to the opening session of the League of Arab States summit meeting, the usually defiant Mr. Bashir sounded a defensive note in trying to justify Sudan's continuing resistance to the dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur.

That a regional power like Saudi Arabia would take interest in the issue and help Ban make progress in negotiations with Bashir should be welcome news. Until now, many member states from the middle-east have been relatively silent on the crisis in Darfur.

Of course, we still have a very long way to go.

A new report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the right mix of government regulation, energy saving technologies and behavioral change can reduce global-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the building sector. The building sector, the report notes, accounts for 30 to 40 per cent of total energy use.

"The savings that can be made right now are potentially huge and the costs to implement them relatively low if sufficient numbers of Governments, industries, businesses and consumers act," UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said of the measures that range from revamping ventilation systems to replacing the traditional incandescent light bulb.

"By some conservative estimates, the building sector worldwide could deliver emission reductions of 1.8 billion tonnes of C02. A more aggressive energy efficiency policy might deliver over 2 billion tonnes or close to three times the amount scheduled to be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol," he added, referring to the pact setting legally binding emission reduction targets for 35 industrialized countries in the 2008-2012 period.

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As Matt reported below, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formally approved Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's nomination for United States Ambassador to the United Nations. During his hearing two weeks ago, Khalilzad offered welcome testimony affirming the centrality of the United Nations to American foreign policy objectives. You can read Khalilzad's full statement here and UN Foundation President Tim Wirth's enthusiastic endorsement of Khalilzad here.

Highlights from Khalilzad's testimony are below the fold.

The Vital Role of the UN

The United Nations is an important and valuable institution. Historically, the challenge of creating an effective collective security organization has bedeviled mankind. The United Nations, which was a signal achievement in the great period of international institution building after the Second World War, stands as the most successful collective security body in history. No other such organization has been able to undertake peace enforcement actions comparable to the one in Korea in 1950, to lead scores of peacekeeping missions over the course of decades, to achieve consensus on endorsing such strong actions as the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 or the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. In light of this record, I agree with the view of the Gingrich-Mitchell report that an effective United Nations is in America’s interest. As one of the principal architects of the United Nations, the United States placed at the foundation of the U.N. certain fundamental purposes and values – preserving peace, promoting progress, and advocacy of human rights. It is therefore vital for the United States to enable this institution to make the greatest possible contribution to advance those founding objectives.

[snip]

At the same time, the United Nations has limitations, resulting from the nature of the U.N. Charter, the failure of the members of the Security Council to come to agreements on all issues, and the unwillingness or inability of the U.N. system to confront the problems of corruption and inefficiency. When members of the Security Council cannot come to agreement, action is stymied or watered down. The organization, formed at a time when direct aggression was the principal security concern, has not always found effective means to deal with aggression undertaken through insurgency or terrorism. It has also struggled to cope with new realities that put respect for state sovereignty in tension with the imperative to address security threats emanating from failed states or transnational networks or the humanitarian consequences of massive violations of human rights inflicted by governments on their own peoples. The U.N.'s actions have sometimes been driven by coalitions with a myopic focus on a single issue or applying double-standards in judging the actions of states, particularly in the area of human rights. Also, the United Nations itself has had recent internal failures, including the Oil-for-Food scandal, instances of peacekeeping forces sexually abusing members of the local populations that they are supposed to protect, and weaknesses in management and accountability.

The challenge for the international community is to strengthen the United Nations in those areas where it has proven effective and to address the shortcomings in areas where its performance has been poor. If confirmed, I will put the weight of U.S. influence toward this end. Working with the representatives of other countries and the Secretary General, I will seek to increase the contribution of the United Nations to addressing the central security issues of our times and to make the U.N. itself a more effective institution through needed reforms.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today approved the nomination of Zalmay Khalilzad to be U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

The Sudanese government, which has been accused of holding up aid in the Darfur area, signed an agreement yesterday with the United Nations pledging to give humanitarian groups better access to the region.

Under the deal, the Khartoum government would speed up visas for humanitarian workers and take other measures that the United Nations has been pressing for.

...The Sudanese government reiterated it would adopt "fast track" measures to help aid groups with their work, a term it has been using since the first of such agreements was signed in 2004.

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The aphorism, "America cooks, Europe does the dishes," became a popular way to describe the transatlantic relations in the late 1990s. At the time, the saying referred to Europe's lead role in Balkan reconstruction efforts. It was not used pejoratively, but reflected the honest division of labor between allies following the American led humanitarian interventions in southeast Europe.

If the saying were updated today and applied to the Afghan war perhaps "Europe" would be replaced by "The United Nations." To be sure, this is not to diminish Europe's important contributions in Afghanistan. Rather, it speaks to the outsized role that the United Nations has played in reconstruction efforts there.

Yesterday, the Security Council acknowledged the centrality of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and extended its mandate by one year. Since inception in 2002, UNAMA has taken the lead in critical rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts, ranging from the repatriation of refugees to election assistance and life saving of humanitarian work. When Afghanistan becomes a self-sustaining government, it will be due in large part to the availability and expertise of UNAMA workers.

Partnering with governments and non-governmental organizations, the United Nations launched The Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking yesterday.

"Slavery is a booming international trade, less obvious than 200 years ago for sure, but all around us," UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa told a ceremony in London today, which is also the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.

"Perhaps we simply prefer to close our eyes to it, as many law-abiding citizens buy the products and the services produced on the cheap by slaves," he added, noting that most victims of this modern-day slavery are women and young girls, many of whom are forced into prostitution or otherwise exploited sexually.

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Writing in the Washington Post, Carlos Pascual, formerly of head of the interagency office of reconstruction and stabilization at the State Department and now a vice president at Brookings, sketches out the possible role of the United Nations in brokering a political settlement to Iraq's civil war.

The March 10 international conference seeking peace in Iraq should be applauded. If those with a stake in Iraq are talking, they might at least find common rhetorical ground in their opposition to terrorism. But dialogue does not mean peace. Focused international mediation, ideally by the United Nations, will be needed for peace and stability.

[snip]

[I]f the parties to the conference want a serious chance for peace in Iraq and stability in the region, they need an honest broker to help them turn contentious issues into meaningful options. The United Nations is not magical, but there is no other actor with comparable neutrality. In Iraq, U.N. special adviser Lakhdar Brahimi brokered agreement on the interim government in spring 2004 when the United States could not.

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As expected, the Security Council approved on Saturday a tougher set of sanctions against Iran. The council unanimously agreed to an asset freeze and travel ban on 28 government and military officials, a ban on arm exports from Iran, and sanctions on the state owned bank, Sepah. The resolution also makes clear that if Iran complies, and suspends its uranium enrichment program, sanctions will be lifted and a previous offer of economic incentives will be made available.

Nicholas Burns, a firm international relations pragmatist in the US government, spoke to the press following the Security Council vote:

"It's a significant international rebuke to Iran and it's a significant tightening of international pressure on Iran," said Nicholas Burns, undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department. If Iran does not comply, "there's no question" that the United States will seek a third and tougher resolution, he added.

[snip]

Burns said that because of a "tumultuous political environment" in Iran "we believe there is a faction inside that government that wishes to accept this offer to negotiate."

And from the Washington Post:

"We got more than we thought we were going to get" in this resolution, said Nicholas Burns...He also said that it criminalizes Iran's military support for Middle East extremists and exposes its political isolation. "If Iran has Qatar, a gulf Arab state, and Indonesia, a Muslim state, and South Africa, a leading member of the nonaligned movement, voting for these sanctions, Iran is in trouble internationally."

Security Council votes have consequences. The Iranian government has long been considered a pariah-state in the West. But now, by defying the Security Council, it risks gaining an ignominious reputation in other parts of the world. The council vote also made some of Iran's larger trading partners key stakeholders in the successful implementation of last summer's Security Council resolution 1696, which calls for the suspension of Iran's nuclear enrichment activities. Prior to the vote last week, Russia even suspended construction of a nuclear plant in Bushehr in southern Iran.

The previous set of sanctions, approved in December, exposed fissures inside Iran. The government now must choose between cooperating with the demands of the international community or enduring isolation. The Security Council has raised the cost of Iran going nuclear. This is the way that diplomacy is supposed to work.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously decided to tighten sanctions on Iran in response to the country's uranium-enrichment activities.

Following the adoption of resolution 1747, Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, immediately rejected it as illegitimate, maintaining Teheran's longstanding claim that the country's nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and therefore outside of the Council's brief.

He also charged that the sanctions were not being imposed in response to the nuclear programme but were rather "schemes of the co-sponsors" carried out "for narrow national considerations aimed at depriving the Iranian people of their inalienable rights."

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Mark Lagon, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, has teamed with the Stanley Foundation's David Shorr in a paper that addresses American expectations of the United Nations. The joint report, titled How to Keep from Overselling or Underestimating the United Nations is part of the Stanley Foundation's new series Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide. You can read the pdf here.

A new United Nations human rights report on Liberia says that violence against women persists in the country.

Covering the period between August and October 2006, the report pays particular attention to the fact that the Rape Amendment Act is not yet adequately implemented by the national authorities charged with the investigation, prosecution and trial of suspects, despite clear legislative provisions.

The report says that "the very small number of cases indicted and tried to date is an indicator that far more needs to be done to ensure that the various institutions of justice coordinate to address rape as a crime and as a human rights violation."

The report also notes that women and girls in some areas of Liberia remain at risk of female genital mutilation.

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Secretary General Ban Ki-moon traveled to Iraq today to discuss ways to expand the UN's on-the-ground presence there. In Baghdad, a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was interrupted when a rocket struck an adjacent building. No one was hurt, but the video is fairly compelling.

Following up on Cordell's post below, the scarcity of water in western Sudan is often cited as a catalyst of the conflict there. Over the past twenty years, desertification in western Sudan had increasingly pitted historically nomadic Arab tribes in competition for water and arable land with the so-called "black African" tribes of Dafur. The ruling elite in Khartoum used this underlying tension to its advantage when it hired militias from the ethnic Arab tribes to crush rebellious "black African" militias in Darfur.

Even today, as the UN plans for a possible peacekeeping force in Darfur, the scarcity of water sources in western Sudan presents a huge logistical problem. If the force ever gets off the ground, water must either be imported, or else a number of water bores must be drilled to sustain the peacekeepers.

Today the world observes World Water Day, a moment dedicated to a widespread, but often-overlooked issue. The UN's 2007 World Water Day website delivers some sobering statistics:

In an industrialized city with plenty of water, flushing the toilet in an average household can send up to 50 litres of water down the drain every day. Yet more than one in six people worldwide -- 1.1 billion -- don't have access to 20-50 litres of safe freshwater daily, the minimum range suggested by the UN to ensure each person's basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Two people in five lack proper sanitation facilities, and every day, 3,800 children die from diseases associated with a lack of safe drinking water and proper sanitation.

Both water use and the world population are growing, which means that water will only grow more scarce. And, the implications of that scarcity are not limited to humanitarian concerns, though those concerns are great (guaranteeing water security is central to achieving the Millennium Development Goals).

It is a vital resource, and there isn't enough to go around. As such, nations and groups will take action to ensure access. For example, this Guardian article gives an overview of water as a central security issue and a vital component of posturing in the Middle East. Two of the issue's many facets:

[R]elinquishing control of the [Golan] Heights could cost Israel about one-third of its fresh water if the flow into the Sea of Galilee becomes contaminated, deliberately or otherwise.
---
The Palestinians accuse Israel not only of plundering their water but polluting it. Some Jewish settlements pump raw sewage into the streams of neighbouring Palestinian villages, contaminating water once used for drinking, cooking and irrigation.

For those of you who are interested, our sister site, The People Speak, is hosting a video contest, asking for submissions focusing on water conservation.

Yesterday marked the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, commemorating March 21, 1960 when police in apartheid South Africa fired on peaceful demonstrators.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that while the world has made strides in fighting against racial discrimination, there is still work to be done.

"Racist practices hurt their victims, but they also limit the promise of entire societies where they are tolerated...They prevent individuals from realizing their potential and stop them from contributing fully to national progress. They perpetuate deeply embedded social and economic inequalities. Where unaddressed, they can cause social unrest and conflict, undermining stability and economic growth."

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In the new issue of the World Policy Journal, Ian Williams offers the final word on the often discussed, but little understood, Oil For Food program. The article is a study in how a small number of determined right-wing pundits in the United States turned their vendetta against Kofi Annan into an easily swallowed media narrative about rampant corruption at the UN.

You can read the entire piece (as a pdf) here. Some highlights are below the fold. And as always, for more information on the program, visit Oil for Food Facts.

For most of the UN staff, the OFF program was about feeding Iraqis. For Washington it was about starving the regime of funds for rearmament. It needs reiteration that in both contexts it was hugely successful. By the end, the program was providing essential food and medical supplies for over 80 percent of the Iraqi population, and, as was subsequently proved by both Hans Blix's UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission inspectors and their American successors, it was also successful in stopping Iraqi rearmament…

How Success Turned to Scandal
Within a year of the Iraq invasion, the anti- UN media in the United States began to trumpet the "UN Oil for Food Scandal," which was, according to the neo-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, "the biggest financial scandal in the history of the world." Some of the wilder pundits claimed it involved the mismanagement o "hundreds of billions of dollars." The real target of the attacks was the United Nations itself, and, especially, the reputation of the secretary general…

The chorus grew louder following the leak of a letter in which Annan cautioned the U.S.-led coalition against a frontal assault on Fallujah. Fox television's Bill O'Reilly declared that "it's becoming increasingly clear that UN chief Kofi Annan is hurting the USA." On November 24, 2004, the National Review declared "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not." And, on December 1, 2004, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Senator Norm Coleman called for Annan's resignation...

[snip]

[Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker's] team found no evidence that the Secretary General had in anyway been involved in the procurement scandal but held that he had not treated these allegations seriously enough. Annan had asked for the advice of his(U.S.- appointed) undersecretary general for management, and of his undersecretary general for legal affairs, who told him that since he had no contact with the procurement process, he did not need to take further action. And, though Volcker countered that he should not have believed his son and authorized a major inquiry, the published report effectively cleared Annan and the UN of the vast majority of the corruption charges leveled by the conservative media.

The UN has started to seek sites for new camps for displaced persons in Darfur after UNICEF reported that the existing camps were filled to capacity.

The most recent UN humanitarian update from Darfur noted the need to locate a site for a new camp in the vicinity of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur province. A new site has been identified near Zam Zam camp, which is nearing maximum capacity.

Last week, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that IDP camps were sheltering 50,000 to 100,000 people apiece. "We simply cannot absorb any more displaced," UNICEF country representative Ted Chaiban said on his return from a visit to Darfur.

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John Bolton, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, will appear on the Daily Show tonight, Comedy Central at 11pm.

Jane Holl Lute, UN Assistant Secretary-General of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, recently gave a short, but compelling, view of the logistical difficulties inherent in peacekeeping and the difficult mandates given to UN peacekeepers. (Earlier we posted video from the same address on the role of women in post-conflict environments.) Having fought in the U.S. Army during the First Gulf War and lectured at West Point, Lute is thoroughly familiar with the security benefits that UN peacekeeping imparts to the American public and the rest of the world.

Although Lute doesn't make the connection in these videos, Mark Leon Goldberg, in a recent UNF Insights piece, discussed how growing U.S. arrears to UN peacekeeping are making the already difficult jobs of UN peacekeepers even harder and how "if this trend is sustained, ongoing missions will suffer, and some of the newly proposed missions, such as Darfur, could starve before they ever get off the ground." As the U.S. continues to face significant global security threats, it would be wise for Congressional appropriators, as they tackle the supplemental and look toward FY08 appropriations, to consider UN peacekeeping's benefits to U.S. security, the difficulties inherent in maintaining the peace in 18 conflict zones around the world, and the debilitating effects of denying proper funding. For those of you who are interested, the Better World Campaign has created tailor-made letters that you can send to your member of Congress.

A police workshop in Italy is the UN's latest effort to attract more women into the force. The 4-day conference at the UN Training Centre will bring together 30 gender experts from the UN and elsewhere to strategize on ways to encourage Member States to provide more female officers.

Progress has been made over the last two years in attracting more female officers into the UN Police, including the recent introduction into Liberia of an all-female specialized unit, but while the Peacekeeping Department's (DPKO) Police Adviser Mark Kroeker is full of praise for all his officers worldwide - both men and women, he says the current figure of just 6 per cent of the force made up of female officers is unacceptable.

The Peacekeeping Department's (DPKO) Police Adviser Mark Kroeker said, "I am extremely gratified by the increase in the numbers of women who serve in police components in UN missions. But this is way too few. Our attempts at getting our Members States to contribute police are difficult but the attempts in addition to add women to their contribution, this is almost impossible: we need to have women police officers so that we send the signal that women are co-equals in police work and that's the way it should be because they're available for every assignment as every man is in policing."

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Various news agencies are reporting that the on-going six party talks in Beijing were able to resolve the thorny issue of the $25 million of North Korean assets frozen in a Macau bank at the behest of the United States. Until yesterday, this hiccup threatened to derail the talks. But after receiving assurances that the funds will be used for humanitarian purposes, the United States relented. For now, the negotiations are proceeding slowly, but steadily.

However, one of the next issues to be tackled in the six party framework will likely be the most difficult of them all. According to the New York Times, negotiators are trying to set up a working group to investigate claims that North Korea has(or had)a secret uranium enrichment program separate from the well-known plutonium facility in Yongbyon.

First, some history: In 2002, the United States alleged that North Korea was pursuing a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of 1994's Agreed Framework. Tensions between the two countries reached a boiling point and the Agreed Framework, which put North Korea's plutonium reserves under IAEA supervision, was effectively declared dead. The North then resumed plutonium production in Yongbyon, and in the summer of 2006 detonated a plutonium-based nuclear bomb.

Because allegations of a separate, secret uranium enrichment program led to the abandonment of the Agreed Framework (which, in turn, provided conditions favorable the development of a North Korea plutonium program) investigating the existence of these alleged programs is particularly important to the United States. But now, there are new questions over the verity of the allegations in the first place. Last month, an intelligence official testified in the Senate that the intelligence community was less than certain about North Koran uranium enrichment back in 2002; in intelligence jargon, the official said the intelligence community was only "mid-confident" about the existence of a uranium enrichment program.

So now that the Six Party talks might result in nuclear inspectors returning to North Korea, the hard line critics of diplomacy with North Korea are beginning to squirm. If it turns out that the North never had a uranium enrichment program active in 2002, these critics will have much egg to clean from their faces. One prominent critic, AEI Senior Fellow John Bolton, has urged the administration to reject the deal out of hand. On CNN last week, he actively rooted for North Korean non-compliance, saying, "I'm hoping that, in the case of North Korea, they will come through, as they always do, and violate this agreement…And that will give the president a chance to repudiate the agreement."

As the Six Party talks progress over the next few weeks, the chorus of critics of engagement may grow louder. But it may be useful to keep in mind that a number of critics hope for failure precisely because success may prove embarassing to both them personally, and to the hard-line approach they represent.

In January, Dispatch reported on inflated allegations that United Nations Development Program funds were being converted widely into hard currency to the benefit of the North Korean government. In response to these allegations UNDP moved swiftly, responsibly, and comprehensively to review the concerns expressed by member states. Ultimately, these efforts led to the suspension of certain operations in North Korea.

UNDP's handling of the situation has been widely praised, but that hasn't stopped some from reraking the muck in an attempt to discredit the agency.

On March 11, an article written by Bay Fang in the Chicago Tribune (picked up by Redstate, Right Wing Nut House, and Reject the U.N.) and containing quotes from a number of anonymous sources insinuated that the UNDP "quietly suspended operations in North Korea," because "it could not operate under guidelines imposed by its executive board in January." Moreover, it suggests that the action was taken to "hamstring" an external audit that was initiated by the Secretary-General. It is laughable to say that UNDP quietly suspended operations, given global press coverage. In fact, UNDP announced publicly that it had suspended its operations because the North Korean government was unwilling to meet the new terms imposed by the UNDP, including the suspension of the use of hard currency. Fang's article also claims that the amount of hard currency in question could reach as much as $150 million, despite the fact that the total amount spent by the UNDP in North Korea over the past decade doesn't even reach $48 million.

There are other misstatements and inaccurate insinuations in the article, but what's truly problematic is that it suggests that, in response to concerns by member states, the UNDP hasn't done exactly what member states should want it to do. In December 2006, the U.S. raised concerns about the UNDP's operations in North Korea, in response to which the UNDP immediately stopped hard currency payments and the acceptance of staffers sent by North Korea. At a meeting in January, the UNDP Executive Board, which includes the U.S., initiated a set of conditions that had to be met for the UNDP to continue its mission in North Korea. When it became evident that those conditions wouldn't be met, the UNDP suspended its mission. The results of the external audit are still yet to be seen, but the UNDP's response from the announcement of concerns to this point appears to be exactly what it should have been -- swift and substantial.

A high-level mission to Darfur--led by Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-landmine campaigner--has told the Human Rights Council that the abuses in Darfur continue.

[She] told the Council that ineffective justice mechanisms, the free flow of weapons and a climate of impunity meant Darfur had become a stranger to the rule of law.

She said civilians had become the main target in the conflict, which has also exacerbated the underlying social and economic deprivation in Darfur.

More than 200,000 have been killed and 2 million displaced since 2003.

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Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced yesterday Jan Egeland's return to the United Nations. From 2003-2006, Egeland was the high profile undersecretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and now it seems his experience will be put to use in a new initiative to bolster the UN's conflict mediation services. The position is a project of the Department of Political Affairs, now run by the American former ambassador to Indonesia, Lynn Pascoe, and is intended to create a team of peace negotiators and technical advisors that can be quickly dispatched around the world.

More.

UNICEF has issued a warning that camps for displaced persons in Darfur are filled to capacity, some with 50,000 to 100,000 people apiece.

After a visit to the region, UNICEF country representative Ted Chaiban said that "it's absolutely critical that [a settlement to the conflict] happens now because we simply cannot absorb any more displaced...it's been very difficult for humanitarian workers in Darfur. I think we should be very proud that we've held the line, that we've kept malnutrition levels down and mortality levels down, that we've been able to vaccinate so many children and that we've been able to get children in to school in the camps."

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In today's confirmation hearing for Zalmay Khalilzad, nominated to be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations, a number of senators pointed out a problematic contradiction of American policy toward the UN. At the Security Council, the United States and other members advocate sending more and more UN peacekeepers to global hot spots. But back in Washington, the White House is proposing to slash its financial contributions to UN peacekeeping operations.

At the hearing, the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, explained this dilemma well:

...the United Nations remains a key component of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, U.N. peacekeeping missions are a cost-effective method of enforcing peace and helping shattered societies re-build. The ability of U.N. peacekeeping missions to be a force-multiplier was underscored by a 2006 General Accounting Office analysis of the U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in Haiti. The GAO concluded: "The U.N. budgeted $428 million for the first 14 months of the mission. A U.S. operation of the same size and duration would have cost an estimated $876 million." The report noted that the U.S. contribution to the Haiti peacekeeping mission was $116 million - roughly one-eighth the cost of a unilateral American operation.

With this in mind, I was perplexed to see that the Administration's FY 2008 budget request asks for approximately $300 million less for peacekeeping than in the previous year. Little evidence was presented to explain why the current sixteen missions would suddenly require less funding than in previous years. Moreover, additional peacekeeping missions may arise in Chad and Darfur, further straining the peacekeeping budget.

Something has to give. In the past year the United States and other members have voted to increase UN peacekeeping operations around the world by over 50%. If the United States does not pony up cash for these peacekeeping operations (which it could have vetoed) future peacekeeping operations, including a potential deployment to Darfur, will have a hard time getting off the ground.

Fast on the heels of the report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council on Darfur, the United Nations Foundation today published "UNF Insights: Darfur and Beyond," an essay written by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Lee Feinstein on a revolutionary principle adopted by the United Nations -- the "responsibility to protect" -- and the steps that could be taken to translate that principle into action -- both in Darfur and in preventing future mass atrocities.

Darfur and the Responsibility to Protect
One year ago the United Nations formally endorsed a principle known as the "responsibility to protect," the idea that mass atrocities that take place in one state are the concern of all states. The universal adoption of this principle at the United Nations World Summit in 2005 went relatively unnoticed. Yet it was a turning point in how states define their rights and responsibilities....The question now is whether this pledge was humanitarian hypocrisy, or did they have something serious in mind? Read more...

The United Nations-sponsored International Compact for Iraq (ICI) will hold a meeting in New York this Friday.

Michele Montas says that the meeting of the ICI--which seeks ways to consolidate peace and promote political, social and econoic development--"offers an opportunity to involve the larger international community in a discussion on how best to support the Government of Iraq," and that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "looks forward to the participation of the broader international community at Friday's meeting to help put Iraq on a credible path towards sustainable development and economic prosperity."

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The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has appealed for $1.7 million to feed 30,000 of the poorest Iraqi refugees who have fled to Syria.

"Those leaving Iraq are doing so in greater haste and either have had no time to sell their belongings, or cannot find buyers," WFP Country Representative in Syria Pippa Bradford said. "As a result, people arrive in Syria with far less cash, only to find there are fewer opportunities to cope than for those who came before them."

There are 1.8 million Iraqi refugees estimated to be scattered around the Middle East.

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This is a bit beyond our normal UN coverage, but one agency that rarely gets the recognition it deserves is the World Intellectual Property Organization (or WIPO), which is dedicated to developing common international intellectual property rights mechanisms. This includes arbitrating so-called "cyber squatting" complaints. For those not in the know, cyber-squatting is "registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else." For example, (and this was a real case brought to arbitration) if one were to register the domain name Madonna.com in Tunisia, then market it as an "adult entertainment site," one would be accused of cyber-squating. Cyber squatting is illegal in the United States and many other countries.

This is all coming to my attention today because WIPO just announced that there has been a 25% increase in cyber squatting complaints in 2006. Who knew? Could this be the start of a trend?

The Human Rights Council opened its fourth session yesterday, kicking off with a video message from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and an address by High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.

In his statement, Ban said that "the pursuit of human rights lies at the heart of the mission of the United Nations...It underpins the hopes of millions of people for a life in freedom, security and prosperity."

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Watch a live webcast of the session here.

The new Human Rights Council has just issued its first report on Darfur. The results are devastating: "The Mission...concludes that the Government of the Sudan has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes. As such, the solemn obligation of the international community to exercise its responsibility to protect has become evident and urgent."

Jody Williams, who won a Nobel Prize for her campaign against land mines, headed the Human Rights Council mission to Sudan. But like many other international investigators, NGO workers and journalists, her team could not secure visas to conduct their work in Sudan. According to the report, the mission asked for visas twelve times in a twenty day period. Even Secretary General Ban Ki-moon personally appealed to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, but to no avail.

Denied entry to Sudan, the team conducted most of its work from refugee camps in eastern Chad. Still, the new Council showed its utility by collecting evidence of war crimes and making a number of recommendations to the international community. Interestingly, one such recommendation asks the General Assembly request that the Council compile a list of foreign companies that "have an adverse impact on human rights in Darfur."

For now, the report is a tool that member states can use to pressure Khartoum into reversing course in Darfur. Whether or not member states decide to follow though with the recommendations included in the report will ultimately determine how much impact it will have.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the European Union decision to establish targets for energy efficiency in the battle against global warming.

"In the face of rising greenhouse gas emissions, committing to a substantial decrease for the next decade is ambitious...but ambition and leadership are just what is needed to respond to climate change, one of the greatest challenges facing humankind."

The EU agreement, made on Friday, that would make Europe the world's leader in the fight against climate change.

Issuing a challenge to the United States, China and India to match European ambitions in the battle against global warming, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called on the world to follow the European Union's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020. She said the bloc's 27 members would commit to a 30 percent reduction if other nations followed suit.

The plan goes beyond the 35-nation Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrial nations to reduce the emission of global-warming gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Major European Union economies had already committed to do better than that, promising to decrease greenhouse gases by 8 percent in that time.

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UN Assistant Secretary-General of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Jane Holl Lute, spoke candidly about women, peacekeeping, and the role of women in post-conflict areas yesterday at a lunch celebrating International Women's Day. The event was hosted by the UN Foundation, the UN Information Center, and the Women's Foreign Policy Group. More videos are available after the jump.

On Wednesday, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns testified before House Committee on Foreign Affairs on US policy toward Iran. His submitted testimony essentially reiterates the administration's commitment to confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy at the Security Council. But according to an eyewitness to the hearings, some members of Congress expressed skepticism about this route, particularly when it came to the utility of the Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran last December.

To this, the eyewitness reports that Burns responded:

"Iran is in a position where it is one now of only 11 countries in the entire United Nations -- out of 192 -- that are under sanction. And it's been that spotlight -- and here I would just have to disagree, very respectfully, with some of the comments made -- it's those sanctions that have worried the Iranian government...

So I would argue to you that this diplomatic process of trying to use the United Nations and trying to use a multilateral framework for negotiations is the right path for the United States...When the Security Council resolution passed on December 23rd, I will tell you that I felt perhaps it wasn't strong enough too...And we have been pleasantly surprised to see the impact it's had inside Iran. I think the Iranians are less concerned with the specific aspects of those sanctions than they are with the isolation that it's brought them and the international condemnation that it's brought them. And I think they were surprised that Russia and China joined us."

With this comment, Burns adds himself to the growing, but under acknowledged, number of commentators and policy makers who believe that the UN sanctions regime is starting to show its intended effect inside Iran.

True, the sanctions are not as tough as they could be. Just this week the Security Council began a new round of negotiations discussing how to strengthen the sanctions package, including expanding the number of individuals slapped with a travel ban and asset freeze. Still, as Burns, and others like the Hoover Institution's Abbas Milani have argued, it's not the actual sanctions package so much as the prospect of further international isolation that has Tehran worried.

Among the many difficult issues the UN is managing, the situation in Kosovo has been one of the most intractable. The Security Council has slated the much anticipated March session on Kosovo for the 19th, at which time it is expected that Secretary-General Ban’s Special Envoy for Kosovo's Future Status, Martti Ahtisaari, will deliver the final draft of his proposal on the status of Kosovo. On March 2, Mr. Ahtisaari issued a statement saying that the two parties, Serbia and the ethnic Albanian government of Kosovo, remain “diametrically opposed” on the UN’s February proposal for the province, which would grant Kosovo the right to govern itself and conclude international agreements, including membership in international bodies, but would stop short of full independence. Mr. Ahtisaari continues to meet with the parties and has invited them, along with the so-called "Contact Group" of the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, to a high-level meeting on March 10.

The UN, through its Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and along with NATO forces, has worked tirelessly to maintain peace and security in Kosovo since the world body began running the province in 1999 after Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops amid ethnic fighting. Mr. Ahtisaari, working in parallel with UNMIK, has gone to extraordinary lengths to bring the parties to agreement on Kosovo's future. All indications are that this will not happen, not now and probably not anytime in the near future. Without an agreement it will be up to the Security Council to develop a workable strategy, likely leaving one or both sides unsatisfied. However if the Security Council doesn’t act and retains the status quo under Resolution 1244 enacted in 1999 (which, unlike nearly all other Security Council Resolutions authorizing UN Missions, remains in force until the Council "decides otherwise"), the impatient Albanian Kosovars will likely declare independence, threatening renewed upheaval and bloodshed. This was foreshadowed during street demonstrations protesting the current UN plan.

The UN has always been in a difficult position in Kosovo, caught between two parties that refuse to budge, with a Security Council divided as to how and when to divert from the status quo, and with critics on all sides. Facing two seemingly intractable positions, the Security Council must send a strong message supporting the UN's work in Kosovo, along with delivering a stern warning that violence will not be tolerated. While UN efforts in Kosovo have not been perfect, the organization has done very well under the circumstances. The parties, members of the Security Council, and all other nations and interests, need to support its long-standing work and ensure that the region moves forward in peace.

Yesterday, on International Women's Day, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the UN must spearhead efforts to eradicate violence against women.

"Violence against women and girls makes its hideous imprint on every continent, country and culture...It is a threat to all women, and should be unacceptable to all humankind."

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In celebration of International Women's Day, The People Speak asked 16 prominent women, including Her Majesty Queen Rania, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman, about the women who have inspired them. The site also includes an interactive feature where you can write about an inspiring woman from your own life.

Apropos of today's International Women's Day theme, "Ending Impunity for Violence against Women and Girls," let me highlight the work of the Women's Initiative for Gender Justice, a Hague-based group that advocates using established international organizations, specifically the International Criminal Court, to protect the interests of female war crimes victims. Learn more about the group's important work here.

Today is International Women's Day! Observed since the early 1900s, March 8th is now an official holiday in many countries and the inspiration for thousands of events worldwide held to celebrate women and their accomplishments.

Today in Cambodia, for example, women are holding a photography exhibit to showcase women's contributions in rebuilding the country and in India women are using the day to hold a seminar on the law and domestic violence.

Unfortunately, not all governments are too happy about International Women's Day. As previously reported, over 30 women in Iran were arrested this week, which according to Amnesty International, was a deliberate move to deter women from organizing IWD events.

The United Nations, its agencies and regional offices are commemorating the day through various events, including a discussion today on eliminating violence against women in Afghanistan.

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Last week, the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development released their final report, facilitated by the United Nations Foundation and the distinguished scientific society Sigma Xi. The report is a roadmap for global climate change and promotes a two-pronged strategy: avoiding the unmanageable (mitigation) and managing the unavoidable (adaptation).

The scientific state of play, similarly outlined in the IPCC's report earlier this month, is sobering. In fact, a large section is dedicated to adapting to the effects of climate change that we can not feasibly avoid at this point. The global-average surface temperature is 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit) above what it was a little over 250 years ago. And, if carbon dioxide emissions grow according to relatively reserved calculations, that temperature will continue to rise by 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.36 to 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade over the next 100 years. The g