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states to move to eliminate these weapons. That is, well before the achievement of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in March 2017, numerous formal efforts had been made to change the dynamics of nuclearism and to implement a process of disarmament via a series of mutual, balanced, phased, and verified steps. These have been put forward by various states and state groupings and have been
Recovery Fund – Round 3: UN Joint Stabilization Programmes . South Sudan Recovery Fund, Outcome Evaluation August 2015 . UN Women . ( 2012 ), Sudan and South Sudan Programme Evaluation Report: Building Capacities for Gender Equality and Protection of Women’s Rights in Sudan 2008–2011 . UN Women June 2012 . UNDP . ( 2012 ), Evaluation of Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) Programme . United Nations Development Programme Sudan Final Report November 2012 . UNDP . ( 2013 ), Final Evaluation of Disarmament
’s Hidden Crisis , which recorded eighteen months of what it termed ‘intercommunal violence’ in the state of Jonglei ( Médecins Sans Frontières, 2012 ). According to the report, the disarmament campaign carried out by the Sudanese government, though ‘aimed at bringing security and stability to Jonglei’, had led instead to widespread insecurity, localised displacement and abuses ( ibid. : 1). The six health facilities run by MSF-H and MSF-Belgium in Jonglei
Edward P. Thompson's activities and writings were diverse spanning literature, history, fiction and poetry, biography, adult education, socialist and libertarian politics, and peace-movement activism. This book explores the various aspects of his intellectual and political work, and its legacy to later generations of radical thinkers and activists in Britain and internationally. Thompson taught exclusively literature classes for the first three years at the University of Leeds, and aimed to attain and maintain a university standard of adult education. The book examines the way in which The Making of the English Working Class grew out of Thompson's day-to-day work at Leeds. Although Thompson's fusion of Marxism with social history constituted the central attraction of his work, he himself bore a degree of responsibility for subsequent dismissals of the Marxist dimension in his work. The book examines Thompson's career-long commitment to literature and to the craft of writing, and makes clear some significant continuities and contrasts within Thompson's specifically literary output. Thompson's concept of socialist humanism retained a resonance and distinctiveness for the twenty-first century, which was a defining characteristic of the early New Left after 1956. The content of Thompson's analyses provides us with one of the richest account of the flesh and blood of emancipation, and the experience, suffering, failure and courage of the working class. The book also looks at his peace movement from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s and 1960s to the European Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s.
This is the second book in a two-volume study tracing the evolution of the Labour Party's foreign policy throughout the twentieth century to the present date. It is a comprehensive study of the history of the Labour Party's worldview and foreign policy. The study argues that Labour's foreign policy perspective should be seen not as the development of a socialist foreign policy, but as an application of the ideas of liberal internationalism. Volume Two provides a critical analysis of Labour's foreign policy since 1951. It examines Labour's attempts to rethink foreign policy, focusing on intra-party debates, the problems that Labour faced when in power, and the conflicting pressures from party demands and external pressures. The book examines attitudes to rearmament in the 1950s, the party's response to the Suez crisis and the Vietnam War, the bitter divisions over nuclear disarmament and the radicalisation of foreign and defence policy in the 1980s. It also examines Labour's desire to provide moral leadership to the rest of the world. The last two chapters focus on the Blair and Brown years, with Blair's response to the Kosovo crisis and to 9/11, and his role in the ‘war on terror’. Whereas Blair's approach to foreign affairs was to place emphasis on the efficacy of the use of military force, Brown's instead placed faith in the use of economic measures.
This book provides a critical exposition of the international law concerning child soldiers. It starts by looking at the situation of child soldiers in the world today, examining why children are recruited into armed forces and groups; why they volunteer for military service; and, once recruited, what treatment they receive. The book explores how perceptions of childhood and children's rights have changed, and how this has affected the ways in which child soldiers have been treated. It describes the activities of the United Nations with regard to the child soldier phenomenon. The book examines the legal regulation of the recruitment and use of children in hostilities. It shows that although international law comprehensively regulates the recruitment and use of child soldiers, owing to the plethora of treaties on the subject, states' obligations continue to differ and children can still lawfully be recruited and used to participate in armed conflict. The book discusses how, once recruited into armed forces and groups, international law treats child soldiers. It considers the status of child soldiers as combatants and as persons in the power of an adverse party in both international and internal armed conflicts, and states' obligations with regard the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers. An unusual feature of how child soldiers are viewed is that they are often seen as both victims of human rights abuses and as human rights violators. Finally, the book examines the extent to which the recruitment and use of child soldiers is an international crime.
For decades, nuclear weapons have been portrayed as essential to the security of the few states that possess them, and as a very ‘normal’ part of national and international security. These states have engaged in enormous programmes of acquisition and development, have disregarded the humanitarian implications of these weapons, and sought to persuade their publics that national security was dependent on the promise of killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians. The term ‘nuclearism’ has been used to describe this era, and several elements of nuclearism are explored here to identify how these states have been able to sustain their possession of nuclear arsenals. By perpetuating a discourse of ‘security’ which avoided international humanitarian law, by limiting decisions on nuclear policy to small groups of elites, by investing vast amounts of resources in their nuclear programs, and by using the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to perpetuate their privileged status as nuclear states, despite their promises to disarm, the great powers have been able to sustain a highly unequal – and dangerous – global nuclear order. This order is now under challenge, as the Humanitarian Initiative explored the implications of nuclear weapons’ use. Its sobering findings led non-nuclear states, supported by civil society actors, to create the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, making these weapons illegal, for all states. The Humanitarian Initiative has posed a challenge to all the elements of nuclearism, and has resulted in a significant rejection of the existing nuclear order. The treaty will not result in quick disarmament, and it faces several hurdles. It is, however, a notable achievement, delegitimizing nuclear weapons, and contributing to the goal of a nuclear-free world.
This book is the collective use of force within the framework of the Charter, whose ambitious project is based on the premise that armed force can be resorted to exclusively in the common interest. It begins with a short discussion of the powers granted to the Security Council for the discharge of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and the conditions under which these powers may be exercised. The United States, supported by its NATO allies, or at least some of them, openly challenged the authority of the Security Council and attempted to downgrade its authorisation from a legal requirement to a matter of political convenience. The book deals with the use of force by States either individually or jointly. Through the lenses of the interaction between the Charter and customary international law, it considers the evolution of the right to self-defence, the only exception expressly provided for in the Charter, and the possible re-emergence of other exceptions. The book focuses in particular on the controversial question concerning the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons in self-defence and of the pre-emptive military action against threats posed by these weapons. Often referring to the recent Iraqi crisis, it further deals with the collective and unilateral means at the disposal of the United Nations and its members to enforce disarmament obligations and tackle the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
responsibilities’ to lead the way in the ending of nuclear arms races and towards disarmament (even as their membership of the Security Council was never granted on the basis of their nuclear status). These responsibilities are assigned to those states which have the capabilities to alleviate global dangers, especially where it is their own actions which make the rest of the world vulnerable to risk (Bukovansky
In the early 1970s the peace movement in Britain was a shadow of its former self. As far as the public was concerned, the threat of nuclear war was far less acute than it had been in the most fraught period of the Cold War in the early 1960s, as the détente between the Cold War powers led to treaties that reduced the build-up of strategic nuclear weapons. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was the most prominent of these anti-war groups, endured a significant decline in membership. It was not uncommon for CND activists to encounter