New Books from UNU Press
African Security Governance: Emerging Issues
Edited by Gavin Cawthra
Africa faces a seemingly ever-increasing range of security challenges. The traditional threats of civil and border conflicts, crises of governance and military coups may have receded but they remain active. Meanwhile, other issues have risen to prominence, such as globalisation, security sector reform, terrorism, private security actors, peacekeeping and peace-building and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This book is a result of research carried out over a number of years by the Southern African Defence and Security Management Network (SADSEM) on many of these new and emerging security issues, in cooperation with the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Envisioning Reform: Enhancing UN Accountability in the 21st Century
Edited by Sumihiro Kuyama and Michael Fowler
The term accountability is increasingly heard at the United Nations. More than six decades after the organization’s founding, people continue to ask exactly how the UN is accountable for what it does, and many agree that enhanced UN accountability is a prerequisite to effective global governance. Nevertheless, the concept is elusive and rarely defined, and views have diverged on its proper meaning and various implications. The contributors to this volume identify key issues, raise pertinent questions, and suggest useful reforms regarding accountability in the context of the United Nations system.
Heads Up! Early Warning Systems for Climate, Water and Weather-Related Hazards
Edited by Michael H. Glantz
Heads Up! provides a useful review of early warning systems in operation today, while exploring a range of hazards including hurricanes, heat waves, floods, droughts, tsunami and volcanoes. With contributions from an international team of scientists, this practical handbook serves as a valuable contribution to our awareness and understanding of the role early warning systems play in disaster avoidance and reduction.
HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: Understanding the Implications of Culture & Context
Edited by Jean Baxen and Anders Breidlid
Popular understanding of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa is riddled with contradiction and speculation. This is revealed in HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, which explores the various contexts in which debate about HIV/AIDS takes place and examines how the pandemic is perceived by scholars, religious leaders and traditional healers, among others – in communities in and around South Africa. Using a social theory lens, the book focuses on not only the cultural and contextual practices, but also the methodological and epistemological orientations around HIV/AIDS in education that shape community and individual interpretations of this disease.
Human Insecurity in East Asia
Edited by Michio Umegaki, Lynn Thiesmeyer, and Atsushi Watabe
East Asia, no stranger to regional wars or major natural disasters, is also known as the best performer in the United Nations poverty reduction program. The essays in this volume explore the interior of this dynamic and vibrant region and examine ordinary life as it illustrates the ubiquitous subtlety and obvious threats to safe and secure life.
New Perspectives on Liberal Peacebuilding
Edited by Edward Newman, Roland Paris and Oliver P. Richmond
Peacebuilding in conflict-prone or post-conflict countries — such as East Timor, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone — aims to prevent the re-emergence or escalation of violent conflict and establish a durable peace. This volume explores and critiques the ‘liberal’ premise of contemporary peacebuilding: the promotion of democracy, market-based economic reforms and a range of other institutions associated with ‘modern’ states as a driving force for building peace. If a liberal peace is viable, is it also legitimate? Or is it, as some claim, a new form of hegemonic control or neo-imperialism? What is the relationship between statebuilding, liberal peacebuilding and the more emancipatory agendas of peacebuilding? Insofar as peacebuilding resembles statebuilding, what or whose vision of the state is being promoted? Is peacebuilding a realist strategic enterprise meant to contain conflict and its international repercussions, or can it resolve the underlying sources of conflict and engage with grassroots actors and issues? Should it address objectives such as emancipation and social justice, and if so how?
Sexed Pistols: The Gendered Impacts of Small Arms and Light Weapons
Edited by Vanessa Farr, Henri Myrttinen and Albrecht Schnabel
Contributors to the book draw on experience and research from around the world on the nexus of gender, age, violence and small arms in developing and developed countries. Their findings feed into a number of recommendations for future policy formulation, programme implementation and research designed to further illuminate and counteract the firing of the “sexed pistol”.
United Nations Justice: Legal and Judicial Reform in Governance Operations
By Calin Trenkov-Wermuth
At the end of the 20th century, and at the dawn of the 21st, the United Nations was tasked with the administration of justice in territories placed under its executive authority, an undertaking for which there was no established precedent or doctrine. Examining the UN’s legal and judicial reform efforts in Kosovo and East Timor, this volume argues that rather than helping to establish a sustainable legal system, the UN’s approach detracted from it, as it confused ends with means. In the process, justice standards were sacrificed for the sake of prosecutions; the legal vacuum was not filled effectively; the UN’s desire to create functioning courts exceeded its efforts to deal with detainees; local ownership was erroneously regarded as a means to the end of achieving a sustainable legal system; and the UN’s adoption of rights standards unsuited to the circumstances led it to break its own laws. As a result, instead of easing key tensions at the heart of governance operations, the UN’s approach aggravated them.
The United Nations and Nuclear Orders
Edited by Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss
Recent tensions surrounding the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, as well as the shocking revelations of A.Q. Khan’s atomic bazaar, have drawn attention to the role of the United Nations in addressing a host of nuclear challenges. Yet the world organization’s role has largely been absent from both scholarly and policy research. The United Nations and Nuclear Orders fills this void by shedding light on the past, present, and future roles of the UN in responding to the threats and challenges posed by nuclear weapons.
Vulnerability in Developing Countries
Edited by Wim Naudé, Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Mark McGillivray
Vulnerability has become the defining challenge of our times. More than one billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty. Facing risks exacerbated by natural hazards, ill-health and macroeconomic volatility, many are mired in inescapable poverty while millions others are on the brink of poverty. This volume brings together essays from leading scholars to study the critical dimensions of vulnerability in developing countries, including the relationship between poverty and vulnerability as well as vulnerability arising from ill-health and external shocks.
Which Way Latin America? Hemispheric Politics Meets Globalization
Edited by Andrew F. Cooper and Jorge Heine
At a time when a new administration in the United States is shifting gears in foreign policy, and the global crisis is leading many to question the very survival of capitalism as we have known it, Latin America is especially well-positioned to make the most of this new international conjuncture. This book provides a sharp, up-to-date analysis of the new sources of political power and allegiances in the region today.
◊◊◊
Page last modified 2009.09.15.
