Sebastian Mallaby says:

Delegates from around the world will meet next month in Bali, supposedly to launch negotiations on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. But there is no consensus on what these negotiations should accomplish. Should they aim to create some kind of global cap-and-trade system? Should they go for a series of narrower agreements on biofuels, forest conservation and so on? Should they help countries adapt to global warming, since some warming is inevitable, or emphasize efforts to stop the warming in its tracks? The first task in Bali will be to negotiate what to negotiate about.

Meanwhile, the United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, one of the many small island states that bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, gives us a peak into US talking points in advance of the meeting. To be sure, the United States still opposes binding emissions reductions targets. But writing in the Trinidad and Tobago Express, the US Ambassador, for example, offers a litany of the administration's accomplishments on climate change and re-affirms American support for the promotion of clean energy technology. Technology development and deployment, it would seem, is becoming a key bargaining chip for the developed world to help coax the cooperation of rapidly developing economies like India and China.

Director-General Koichiro Matsuura of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has spoken out against the murder of Pakistani journalist Zubair Ahmed Mujahid, who was shot in the southern province of Sindh.

Matsuura called the journalist someone "who gave a voice to the poor showing how important the media can be in promoting transparency and rule of law."

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The United Nations Development Program released its annual Human Development Index rankings...and Iceland comes out on top. Here is a link to the full report, which ranks countries based on variables such as life expectancy, per capita GDP, and educational levels.

This year's report also includes a number of animated and interactive charts on carbon emission data, such as this line graph in which you can compare the carbon footprint of two specific countries or regions by the "carbon intensity" of their economic growth.

See what happens when you compare Vanuatu to the OECD.

Under duress and with their resources exhausted, Iraqi refugees are returning home from the relative safety of Syria. From the UN News Center:

A convoy of buses carrying an estimated 800 Iraqis has left the Syrian capital of Damascus and crossed the border on its way to Baghdad, according to the United Nations refugee agency, which said most are returning because their resources are exhausted.

Staff of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the Al Tanf border point saw at least 15 buses, each carrying 30 to 35 people, pass through Iraq immigration later Tuesday and said they had heard that others had arrived earlier.

The other week I warned that the Darfur mission may not (forgive the pun) get off the ground for lack of 24 helicopters to support the mission. According to Reuters, it seems that shortages of helicopter capacity is not limited to Darfur, but part of a distressing global phenomenon.

A shortage of top-end machines needed for tropical conditions plus a reluctance of countries to bear the costs of deploying them are being exacerbated by a procurement logjam that means a major renewal of Western fleets is years off.

[snip]

[A] mixture of tight purse-strings at defence ministries and a genuine lack of capability afflicts even big European military powers such as Britain and France.

Tim Ripley, defence analyst at Jane's Defence Weekly, said the real cost of helicopters was in maintaining and operating them -- especially in the hot and dusty conditions where many conflicts are played out.

"Every 500 hours of flying time you have to take them apart, and put them together again. It is an open-ended cheque book issue and most countries have finite money to spend on this."

[snip]

Asked by reporters this month whether the United States could help plug the shortfall in Darfur, Pentagon chief Robert Gates said there had been no formal request but that the U.S. fleet was "pretty pushed" between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given this shortfall, where to deploy the limited number of helicopters in circulation seems to become a question of priorities. Among member states with excess capacity, I shudder to think where Darfur fits on this hierarchy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled halfway across the country yesterday to give a speech in which he urged that State Department funding be increased relative to the Pentagon's budget. Really!

Funding for non-military foreign-affairs programs has increased since 2001, but it remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military and to the importance of such capabilities. Consider that this year's budget for the Department of Defense -- not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion -- less than what the Pentagon spends on health care alone. Secretary Rice has asked for a budget increase for the State Department and an expansion of the Foreign Service. The need is real.

Despite new hires, there are only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers -- less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group. And personnel challenges loom on the horizon. By one estimate, 30 percent of USAID's Foreign Service officers are eligible for retirement this year -- valuable experience that cannot be contracted out.

Overall, our current military spending amounts to about 4 percent of GDP, below the historic norm and well below previous wartime periods. Nonetheless, we use this benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense. We lack a similar benchmark for other departments and institutions.

One generally does not hear the head of a large bureaucracy argue in such forceful terms for more parity in spending between his agency and others. This is all the more stunning given the historic rivalries between the State Department and Department of Defense. The new thinking, however, is borne out of necessity.

As Hans Binnendijk of the National Defense University wrote earlier this month in a Washington Post Op-ed: "America's civilian agencies are unprepared to contribute adequately to 21st-century global security challenges. Defense Department resources, missions and institutions have multiplied as counterpart civilian agencies stagnate or disappeared...It is not born of a Defense Department power grab but of an inability by civilian agencies to adjust to new missions. The Defense Department is at war while the State Department still suffers from the post-Cold War notion of a peace dividend. One is on steroids, the other on life support."

One could extend Gates' and Binnendijk's logic even further to include American financial support for UN Peacekeeping, which also comes out of the State Department's stagnant budget. As peacekeeping operations have proliferated, US financial support for missions around the world has not grown commensurate to the need. Still, it is heartening to see that a renewed focus on the civilian instruments of national security has permeated the top echelons of the national security establishment.

In keeping with the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, check out Salon's Broadsheet on how to help women affected by rape in the Congo.

[A]sk your reps to support the International Violence Against Women Act (S.2279), introduced by Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) in an effort to increase U.S. commitment to ending gender-based violence in Congo and worldwide. The IVAWA would implement -- among other things (PDF) -- training, reporting mechanisms, and other emergency measures for those working with refugees and other vulnerable populations.

Have an idea to take blogging to the developing world? Global Voices Online, the excellent site that aggregates blog posts from all reaches of the globe and translates them intomany languages, is looking for you. From our friends at Global Voices:

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, is now accepting project proposals for the second round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for citizen media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, and podcasting on their own.

In July we funded five projects out of the 142 applications we received from over 60 different countries. The first five Rising Voices grantees are based in Bangladesh, Colombia, Bolivia, India, and Sierra Leone.

The application deadline is fast approaching. Hurry on over to Rising Voices to learn more.

This weekend not only marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, but it also kicked off a fantastic campaign: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

Founded at Rutgers Univeristy's Center for Women's Global Leadership, the campaign begins on the International Day Against Violence Against Women and ends on December 10, International Human Rights Day, "in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights."

Since its inception in 1991, over 2,000 organizations in 154 countries have participated in the campaign.

Get Involved: Check out campaign's action kit and if you have a blog, get involved in the Carnival Against Violence Against Women, which Black Looks is hosting.

Last week, the head of the UN Peacekeeping warned that the proposed mission to Darfur, UNAMID, may fail should Sudan not ease its restrictions against admitting non-African units to the peacekeeping force. Khartoum's response? To dig in its heels even deeper. Over the weekend Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir held a news conference to restate his government's opposition to non-African units. From Reuters:

At a news conference, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said his original agreement with the AU and the U.N. was for a force made up of African troops, backed up from logistics and technical units from the UN."

"When they told us that they wanted to bring other troops from other countries, we rejected them."

Offers from all other non-African countries, apart from China and Pakistan, had also come in "too late", after Sudan had signed its agreement with the U.N. and the AU over the force.

"These Swedish and Norwegian troops are not acceptable. We shall not accept them," said Bashir.

Speaking about a proposed Thai infantry battalion, Bashir added: "Even if there is a shortage of troops from the African continent, we are not going to accept those people. Because we were not consulted about it."

Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group released a disturbing new report (pdf) today warning that unless the political reconciliation process gets back on course, the conflict risks spreading to the neighboring region of Kordofan. "Failure to respond appropriately would leave the international community an unwitting accomplice to the beginnings of Sudan's next war," says the ICG's Africa Research Director Daniela Kroslak.

From the ICG Report:

The Darfur conflict has changed radically in the past year and not for the better. While there are many fewer deaths than during the high period of fighting in 2003-2004, it has mutated, the parties have splintered, and the confrontations have multiplied. Violence is again increasing, access for humanitarian agencies is decreasing, international peacekeeping is not yet effective and a political settlement remains far off. The strategy the African Union (AU)/UN mediation has been following cannot cope with this new reality and needs to be revised. After a highly publicised opening ceremony in Sirte, Libya, on 27 October 2007, the new peace talks have been put on hold. The mediation should use this opportunity to reformulate the process, broadening participation and addressing all the conflict’s root causes.

Read the full summary.
(photo credit, AFP)

Yesterday marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in which governments, UN agencies and NGOs raise public awareness on the issue. To mark the day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged increased efforts by the United Nations to end all forms of violence against women.

"Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world...[The UN is] stepping up its activities at all levels -- from new initiatives by the regional commissions to better coordination and programming at the country level."

Ban also announced that he will "spearhead a system-wide campaign through 2015 for the elimination of violence against women" which will focus on global advocacy; United Nations leadership by example; and strengthened partnerships at the national and regional levels.

For more information on how the UN is combating violence against women worldwide, click here.

Joseph Nye, author of Soft Power, explains how the United Nations fits into his theory on power and politics.

Power is the ability to affect others to produce the outcomes one wants. Hard power works through payments and coercion (carrots and sticks); soft power works through attraction and co-option. With no forces of its own and a relatively tiny budget, the UN has only as much hard power as it can borrow from its member states...Despite those limits, the UN has considerable soft power that arises from its ability to legitimize the actions of states, particularly regarding the use of force. People do not live wholly by the word, but neither do they live solely by the sword. For example, the UN could not prevent the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the absence of its imprimatur greatly raised the costs to the American and British governments.

[snip]

The UN has impressive power -- both hard and soft -- when states agree on policies under Chapter 7 of the Charter. It has modest but useful soft power when great powers disagree but are willing to acquiesce in a course of action. And it has very little power when the great powers oppose an action, or repressive member governments ignore the claims of the new "responsibility to protect." In such cases, it makes no sense to blame the UN. Soft power is real, but it has its limits. The fault lies not with the UN, but with the lack of consensus among member states.

Read the whole thing.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is sending relief in the wake of Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh—the organization is sending food to feed 400,000 people in the affected areas.

“We have to move as quickly as possible to get food to the most vulnerable,” said WFP Bangladesh Representative Douglas Broderick, pointing out that the biscuits are critical “when there is a scarcity of clean water for drinking and cooking.”

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A new report released by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that the number of people living with HIV worldwide is about 33.2 million.

The data in the report, 2007 AIDS Epidemic Update, shows that HIV prevalence has leveled off and the number of new infections has fallen, but that in 2007, 2.5 million people were newly infected and 2.1 million people died of AIDS.

"These improved data present us with a clearer picture of the AIDS epidemic, one that reveals both challenges and opportunities," said UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot.

"Unquestionably, we are beginning to see a return on investment - new HIV infections and mortality are declining and the prevalence of HIV levelling. But with more than 6,800 new infections and over 5,700 deaths each day due to AIDS we must expand our efforts in order to significantly reduce the impact of AIDS worldwide."

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The United Nations refugee agency has pledged $11 million to help care for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan.

Under a funding agreement signed in Amman today, the money will help the Ministry of Health enhance public medical services and primary health centres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a news release.

"For a long time there was not enough attention given to the burden on Jordan and we continue to try to help in alleviating this burden," UNHCR Representative in Jordan Imran Riza said after signing the agreement.

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In its annual update on worldwide trends in the AIDS epidemic, UNAIDS announced today that the number of people living with HIV is lower than previously thought. New sampling techniques used for this year's report show that about 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, compared with last year's estimate of around 40 million. Also, the new techniques yield an estimate that 2.5 million people will be infected with AIDS this year--which is a 40% drop in last year's estimate.

The number of people living with AIDS each year is still increasing--but at a much slower rate than previously thought. This is excellent news, but far from a declaration of victory. From the Los Angeles Times:

Dr. Roger Detels, a UCLA epidemiologist, cautioned that the reduced numbers should not be used as an excuse to dismiss concerns about the pandemic.

"Even though the estimates are lower than we had previously thought, they're still pretty significant," Detels said. "You're still talking about prevalences in sub-Saharan Africa where you've got over 20% of adults infected with HIV...I think the danger here is to say: 'Oh my Lord, you know they overestimated. It's not a very serious epidemic.' I would say 33 million is a pretty serious epidemic."

Indeed, the report shows that 5,700 people die each day from AIDS-related conditions. That's like losing the population of Miami every two and a half months.

There's been extensive coverage of the newest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Like the three reports proceeding it, this one warns of dire consequences should action not be taken immediately to combat climate change. The timing of the release is no accident. Next month, delegates from hundreds of UN member states will meet in Bali to discuss a new climate change convention to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The contents of the report, says the Washington Post, is "key ammunition" for negotiators at Bali.

Lest people have unrealistic expectation from what will come out of the talks, the negotiations in Bali will be what they call a "process meeting." There will be no document to point to after the delegates go home which spells out specific obligations under a post-Kyoto climate change framework. Rather, the significance of the meeting is that it will lay out the entire road map for how negotiations over the next three years will proceed.

The path set forth in next month's meeting will be how the climate change debate is framed over the next three years and beyond. So what to do if a member state is somewhat cold to the idea of say, an emission reduction target of 80% for developed countries by 2050, with a 1990 base year? At least for now, disputes over specific proposals should not make much of a difference to the outcome of Bali, which is more a discussion about future discussions than actual substantive policy negotiations.

Still, the process questions are hugely important. And UN Dispatch will be in Bali, covering the discussion from the ground with frequent updates throughout the two week long meeting, which begins December 3.

Matthew Lee and I square off once again. In the newest installment of Blogging Heads, we discuss the challenges facing UN peacekeeping in Africa, the bizarre Zoe's Ark scheme in Chad, the Secretary General's climate change efforts, Ambassador Bolton's new book, Kosovo and more. You can also listen to the pod cast.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced his concern at the devastation and increasing death toll left by Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh.

Media reports say that more than 2,000 people have been reported killed as a result of Cyclone Sidr, which struck the southwest coast of Bangladesh late on Thursday local time, bringing winds of more than 240 kilometres per hour and a water surge that created waves up to five metres high. The death toll is expected to climb further.

Thousands of homes have been damaged or destroyed, large tracts of cropland have been wiped and hundreds of thousands of people have had to evacuate their home villages and towns and now depend on aid for basic necessities.

Ban expressed "his profound condolences to the people and Government of Bangladesh for the many deaths and the destruction involved, and the full solidarity of the UN system at this time of crisis."

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The International Atomic Energy Agency released a report (pdf) yesterday on Iran's nuclear program. Nearly all reports about the report called it "mixed," which I tend to think is more of a comment about how various constituencies reacted to the report, than descriptive of the content of the report itself. The big question on everyone's mind at the United Nations is whether or not this report provides justification for pursuing a third round of Security Council sanctions against Iran. And as you can see, the reactions to the "mixed" report are, in fact, mixed.

Chinese UN Ambassador Wang Guangya: "I don't like to see this issue being discussed here [in the Security Council]. We already have two resolutions on the sanctions, and what do we have?"

American UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad: "For diplomacy to succeed, it needs widely supported, broad and biting sanctions to affect the calculations of the regime in Iran. I don't believe the Chinese would want to take responsibility for the failure of diplomacy by not cooperating with the effort at additional sanctions."

UK UN Ambassador John Sawyers: "The IAEA showed that they can't even resolve questions about Iran's past, that knowledge of present activities is diminishing, and they cannot clarify Iran's future intentions because of the lack of cooperation. That is really worrying."

Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili: "All the claims that Iran's nuclear activities have a military agenda and are deviant are not true. The report says clearly that most of the ambiguities...have been removed.”

Former UN weapons inspector David Albright: "The main issue is that Iran now has 3,000 centrifuges. The report doesn't even judge the quality of the information being offered, but it's clear it is giving minimal answers."

Meanwhile, hot off the presses, the Washington Post is reporting that Beijing canceled a Security Council meeting on Iran scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving. So at least for the time being, it looks like there will be no third round of sanctions.

Yesterday, Scott Paul railed against the inaccuracies found in this Washington Times editorial about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Apparently, Scott wasn't the only person to raise an eyebrow. Captain Patrick J. Neher, director for international and operational law of the Judge Advocate General's Corps at the Pentagon, wrote the following letter to the editor in today's Washington Times.

LOST will enhance security

The editorial "Defeat the Law of the Sea Treaty" (yesterday) contained four errors.

First, President Reagan supported the convention except for six specific objections to Part XI on deep seabed mining. Those objections were fixed in the 1994 agreement formally modifying Part XI, to which the United States is a signatory. Mandatory technology transfer was rescinded outright in Section 5, paragraph 2 of the agreement annex.

Second, the convention's provisions on "peaceful purposes" do not constrain U.S. military activities. They restate binding obligations we already have and support under the U.N. Charter. The negotiating history on this point is clear.

In 1976, Ecuador attempted to turn the "peaceful purposes" provisions into arms control obligations. They went nowhere. Why does The Washington Times raise today a long-discredited and failed socialist argument from the 1970s?

Third, the convention not only supports the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), but not being a party hinders efforts to recruit PSI countries.

But you don't have to believe me: As then-Under Secretary John Bolton testified before the Senate in 2005, "the PSI statement of interdiction principles says very clearly that any actions taken pursuant to PSI would be done in accordance with existing national and international authority. And of course all of our other core group members of the PSI are states party to the Law of the Sea Treaty."

The PSI interdiction of the vessel BBC China, which broke the back of Libya's weapons of mass destruction program, was conducted in accordance with the Law of the Sea Convention.

Fourth, our maritime interdictions as well as all our military activities will be exempt from dispute resolution. Article 298.1 of the convention expressly provides that it is the right of a state, and solely the state, to pre-emptively and completely reject all the dispute resolution procedures for activities it determines are military activities.

All permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (except us) and numerous other countries have taken the military activities exemption. They, like us, would never accept a court or tribunal acting ultra vires beyond the limits of the convention itself. And by the way: Iran is not a party to the convention; like us, North Korea, Libya and Syria they are on the outside.

Also, the Senate resolution will reject the World Court and International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and instead choose arbitration for dispute resolution of nonexempt issues.

The Times should know better than to repeat myths on important national security matters. We are at war. The president, his war cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commandant of the Coast Guard agree that joining the Law of the Sea Convention will enhance our national security.

CAPT. PATRICK J. NEHER
Judge Advocate General's Corps
Director, international and operational law

Pentagon

Washington

The head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, warns of possible mission failure should 24 helicopters -- including six attack helicopters -- not be made available for UNAMID, the joint AU-UN Darfur mission. The United Nations has been asking member states to provide these important "force multipliers" for weeks, but so far those pleas have fallen on deaf ears. In a not-so-subtle jab to stingy member states, Guehenno says, "I think it tells a sad story on the commitment for Darfur, frankly."

Why are attacks helicopters so important? First, peacekeepers deployed to Darfur will likely be subject to attack themselves -- out gunned and out manned, the African Union lost ten soldiers in an attack last month. "If [UNAMID] was to know humiliation in the early stage of its deployment," warns Guehenno, "then it'd be very hard to recover."

Second, the extent to which the joint AU-UN Darfur mission will be able to deter attacks on civilians is reliant on the availability to superior firepower. Attack helicopters can be decisive in deterring attacks on civilians, especially when the attackers are using supped-up Toyotas and horses; it is widely acknowledged that a key turning point for UN peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the deployment of Indian air force attack helicopters, which were then used to proactively target militias that attacked civilian enclaves. A similar dynamic will likely occur once peacekeepers are deployed to Darfur. "Peace enforcement," the euphemistic term for aggressively deterring spoilers, will be a critical to the success of the Darfur mission. But without the right equipment, peace enforcement would be nearly impossible. This why Guehenno is warning that UNAMID might fail if member states do not supply the UN with the helicopters.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has nominated Belgian criminologist Serge Brammertz as the new chief prosecutor at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Brammertz’s candidacy became known informally this summer, but he had to complete his mandate as the head of the United Nations inquiry into the killing in 2005 of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. Mr. Ban also nominated Daniel Bellemare, a Canadian prosecutor, to take over the Lebanon investigation. Both appointments require the approval of the Security Council, which is likely.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing yesterday on the upcoming climate negotiations in Bali. While many have noted that the prevailing idea seems to be that the world is in a holding pattern for the next U.S. President to see how the post-Kyoto agreement will shake out, we shouldn't give up hope that there can be significant forward movement in the short term, at least according to two former climate negotiators who testified.

The post-Kyoto framework will be divided into four broad efforts -- mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology. While pushing for substantive change on mitigation and finance might not be this Administration's cup of tea, Jonathan Pershing, director of the Climate, Energy, and Pollution Program at the World Resources Institute, and Tim Wirth, a former Senator and U.S. climate negotiator, found hope in Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula J. Dobriansky's testimony (video) on the other two fronts. Pershing sees hope here:

Adaptation is an increasing priority both at home and internationally, and we are promoting effective planning as part of broader development strategies. The United States is leading efforts such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which gives communities early warning of natural disasters, and improves decision-making for agriculture, coastal development and other economic sectors that are affected by climate variability and change.

And Wirth notes this as positive:

And, to accelerate the uptake of clean energy technologies around the world, President Bush has proposed a new international clean technology fund. Secretary Paulson is working with international partners in developing a new approach for spurring investments in the global energy infrastructure that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Only time will tell whether these initial actions will grow into worthwhile efforts.

In the meantime, as Senator Wirth noted, the Senate has a responsibility to help maintain proper expectations on the Bali negotiations. The final post-2012 agreement will be the most complex and, arguably, most important ever forged, and the process, in order to work, must be appropriately long and thorough. Senator Wirth stressed that Bali is a meeting "not of substance but process," in that it sets up the next meeting, which eventually leads to the final agreement. The Secretary General's High-Level Event in September served a similar purpose. Matt Yglesias explains the process well.

Ibrahim Gambari, The United Nations Special Envoy to Myanmar, called for immediately begin talks to between the Government and the opposition, stressing that dialogue was the only way forward to address the country's ongoing crisis. From the UN News Center:

"In today's world, no country can afford to stay outside the irreversible trends towards stability, prosperity and democracy, and it is the responsibility of every government to listen to its people, respond to legitimate popular demands and respect in full the human rights of its citizens," Ibrahim Gambari told the Security Council today.

[snip]

Mr. Gambari said that although his mission did not produce all the results he had hoped for, there were a number of positive outcomes.

Among them was the fact that, for the first time since she was last put under house arrest in May 2003, Ms. Suu Kyi was allowed to pronounce herself publicly through a statement read by the Special Adviser on 8 November. Following that statement, she was also allowed for the first time in four years to meet with members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

In addition, the Government assured the Special Adviser that it would release more detainees and that no more arrests would be carried out, and it agreed in principle to consider establishing a broad-based poverty alleviation commission.

Read more.

The United Nations Foundation released the results of a major survey of Americans' foreign policy attitudes today. Americans, the poll finds, are virtually unanimous (86% of all voters) in the belief that working with allies and through international organizations is a wiser strategy for achieving America's foreign policy priorities.

The poll also finds that 73% of all voters are more likely to vote for a candidate for President who understands that "solutions to world problems require international cooperation, whether they are economic problems, environmental problems, or problems of peace and war and that international cooperation is a better way of solving some of the world's key problems." Voters also show a strong preference for a candidate who can put an end to anti-Americanism and "restore trust in America through strong diplomatic efforts and cooperative partnerships with other nations around the world."

One interesting caveat to all this is that young voters reflected stronger preferences toward isolationism than older Americans. The poll finds "young people, disillusioned by the war in Iraq, are "new isolationists." GOP primary voters, on the other hand, were increasingly open to the idea of international cooperation. "Overall," says the poll "a sharp generational difference has opened in the United States, with older Americans more inclined to support U.S. involvement in international affairs."

To view the survey data, click here. For those in the Washington, DC area, the data will be released during an event at the National Press Club at 1:30 this afternoon, featuring UN Foundation President Timothy Wirth, Brookings Institution President Carlos Pascual, Geoff Garin, President of Peter D. Hart Research, Bill McInturff, President of Public Opinion Strategies and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ivo Daalder.

The second meeting of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro tackled internet resources, access, how to use the internet to assist in development.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "The United Nations does not have a role in managing the Internet...But we do embrace the opportunity to provide, through this Forum, a platform that helps to ensure the Internet’s global reach."

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The government of Kosovo has threatened to declare independence unilaterally on December 10 should the Security Council not come to a final decision on Kosovo's status as a sovereign country. With the clock ticking, UN Dispatch talks to Daniel Serwer of the United States Institute of Peace who catches us up with the current state of the negotiations, and lets us know what the world might look like on December 11 should Kosovo make good on that promise.

What is the current state of play of the negotiations over Kosovo's final status?

We have been through a period of intense negotiation under the auspices of former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari. [In March 2007] Ahtisaari presented his plan--which provides for an independent Kosovo under intense international supervision and with robust requirements for the protection of Serbs and other minorities--to the Security Council. But the council decided this fall that rather than act on the proposal, it would ask for another 120 days of negotiation.

It is a little bit hard to tell what is going on inside the negotiations, which are being overseen by the Kosovo "troika" of the United States, Russia and Germany (on behalf of the EU). There is no indication of any significant progress on the fundamental issue -- which is whether Kosovo's sovereignty will reside in Pristina or Belgrade. The United States and most of the European Union--as many as 22 of the 27 EU countries--have decided that sovereignty should reside in the future in Pristina. Belgrade, which had been the sovereign power until its sovereignty was suspended in 1999, wants to preserve sovereignty, even if it gives up any pretense of governing the territory. It is important to remember that in Kosovo, there are perhaps 1.8 to 1.9 million Albanians, and probably 120,000 Serbs.

And the Kosovo Government has said that it will declare sovereignty unilaterally on December 10 should the troika not reach a conclusion?

What they have said is that this current round of negotiation is the final round. They haven't said exactly what they will do on December 10—actually December 11 more likely. In fact, on December 10 something rather un-dramatic will happen: the troika will report to the Security Council. What happens then is the big question mark in my mind.

If I were in charge, I would want a Security Council resolution at that point, and want it badly enough that I would be prepared to take it to a vote--even if Moscow has indicated it would veto. The reason I say that is that from my point of view, and this also true from Moscow and Belgrade's point of view, it is really much better to settle this on the basis of a Security Council resolution than without a resolution. You want to do whatever you can to have a Security Council resolution.

What would the fallout be from a Security Council resolution that is blocked by Russia?

My reading is that the Americans are not prepared to bring it to a vote if they think it will be vetoed by the Russians. They don't want a clear defeat for a Security Council resolution because that would make it difficult for the Europeans to deploy the civilian presence that is required for the peace implementation process.

I am not exactly sure what the Kosovo government will do on December 11, but I don't think anything should be done unilaterally. What has to be done is that the countries that want to recognize an independent Kosovo as a sovereign state have to confer with Pristina on a roadmap. That road map has to include accepting the Atisaari plan. And in exchange for Pristina accepting that plan, the international community—that is, the United States plus as many EU members as possible—agrees to deploy a civilian presence to implement that plan. This is quite different than a "unilateral declaration of independence" which is being talked about in the press.

If they Security Council route is stalled, how much patience do you expect from Pristina to remain in this pre-final status limbo?

Little. These guys have gone through over a year of negotiations. The relative moderates who control the government in Pristina today went out on a limb because they have said to their people that they were going to have independence this year. From a political point of view, therefore, they are pretty exposed. Also, there are nasty people in Kosovo, as there are in most places, some of whom are vets and impatient young people who will launch attacks on Serbs if they feel independence is not forthcoming.

What would happen, then, if Kosovo's government on December 10, or sometime soon thereafter, simply declares independence?

What is the fallout? It could be bad. You could have efforts by Belgrade to grab the northern piece of Kosovo, which has a Serbian majority, and declare its own independence. And perhaps even Republika Srpska (the Serbian half of Bosnia) as well. Belgrade is in a position to make a lot of trouble in the aftermath of a Kosovo declaration of independence.

Moreover, a declaration of independence isn't worth the paper it is written on unless you get international recognition. That is the key issue: how many countries will recognize a sovereign Kosovo?

Which countries do you expect would recognize that?

The United States has made cleat that it will recognize a sovereign Kosovo.

And the European Union?

The European Union is split. A number of countries, for their own reasons, are very hesitant to recognize Kosovo absent a Security Council resolution. The European Union has also agreed to deploy a civilian presence to Kosovo, the primary purpose of which would be strengthening the rule of law in a newly independent Kosovo. And insofar as it is a rule of law issue that affects minorities, the focus would be on the Serbian communities and protecting their rights.

It is ironic that by blocking a Security Council resolution, Russia -- acting on behalf of Belgrade--would be effectively blocking a peace implementation force that would be deployed to protect Kosovo's Serb minority.

The conflict raging in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most brutal wars in the world today. Four million people are thought to have perished in a civil war that raged throughout Congo from 1998 to 2002. And while peace has been restored to most of the country -- which is the size of western Europe -- the conflict lingers on in the east. Rape, as this report from The Guardian explains, is a preferred instrument of war and terror used by all sides to the conflict. How bad is it?

Rape has been used to terrorise and punish civilians in Congo who support the "wrong side", and it is perhaps no coincidence that it was also a tool of genocide in the mass murder of the Tutsis. Sexual violence is now so widespread that the medical aid charity, Medecins sans Frontieres, says that 75 percent of all the rape cases it deals with worldwide are in eastern Congo. Darfur is a distant second.

But those are just statistics. One victim provides us the dismal perspective from the ground.

"Every woman in the village leaves at night to sleep in the bush because of the raping. They still loot but if they can't find us they can't rape us," [a rape victim] said.

Augustin Augier [of Medecins Sans Frontier] said that women in many villages dare not sleep in their own homes. Others are too afraid even to go to the outskirts of their communities to tend to crops because so many women have been seized in the fields, contributing to the rise in malnutrition and disease that has claimed so many lives.

"People live in fear so they live in the bush. They expose themselves to diseases: malaria, gastro-enteritis. It's cold at night. All of this claims lives," he said.

Terrible. But there is a bit of positive news coming from the region today. The DRC and the government of Rwanda -- an instigator of conflict in Congo's east -- have agreed to join forces to disarm a Hutu militia, which is one of many armed groups ravaging the east. Rwanda has also agreed to tighten its border and prevent arms shipments to a Tutsi militia that is battling DRC government forces in the east. To be sure, this is a step in the right direction. But given the misery of the place, progress should ultimately be measured by the relative improvements of the quality of life of the people, especially women, living in eastern DRC.

During Ban Ki-moon's visit to Antarctica, the UN Secretary General said warming temperatures on the continent mark dangers of climate change.

"It is here where our work, together, comes into focus...We see Antarctica's beauty – and the danger global warming represents, and the urgency that we do something about it."

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Though UN Envoy Ibrahim Gambari was barred this week from meeting with the Burmese junta leader Than Shwe, it does seem that Gambari was able to secure a key concession from the Burmese regime. For the first time in three years, Suu Kyi will be able to meet with members of her party, the National League for Democracy. As Colum Lynch reports, "Thursday's developments provided a relatively upbeat conclusion to a U.N. diplomatic mission to Burma...Only Wednesday, U.N. delegates voiced concern that Gambari's six-day visit might end in failure because the Burmese leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, had refused to meet with him."

There does, however, seem to be a limit to the Junta's beneficence. Than Shwe still refuses to meet face to face with Suu Kyi. And according to Maggie Farley, the junta leader even refuses to call Suu Kyi by name, referring to her simply as "the lady."

Next week, Gambari is expected to brief the Security Council on his trip. Sanctions seem to be off the table though, because China has already threatened a veto. Still, it seems the junta is beginning to respond to international pressure.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is sending aid to 70,000 people affected by floods in the Mexican state of Tabasco.

"We are moving as swiftly as possible to bring critical help to the people of Tabasco, who are suffering the worst crisis in their recent history," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

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Since the outbreak of fighting in Darfur, the United Nations has undertaken one of the biggest hu