The General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, as called for in the Rio+20 outcome document, convened its first session on March 14-15, 2013. David Steven, CIC's expert on post-2015 development issues, had the honor of addressing the Open Working Group. His comments underline the importance of creating clear, simple, and memorable goals around the high-priority issues of food, water, energy, education, and poverty.
March 16, 2013 marks the one year anniversary of Kofi Annan's presentation of his six-point peace plan for Syria at the United Nations. In an article in the journal Stability , Richard Gowan takes this opportunity to reflect on Annan's role as mediator and the effect that uncertainty has in conflict resolution.
In late 2011, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, the Center for American Progress, and the Stanley Foundation formed a study group of US and Chinese experts, including CIC Director Bruce Jones, to evaluate the role of the G-20 in the US-China bilateral relationship as well as how the relationship influences the G-20. After meeting for two conferences over the course of 2012, the group reached consensus on a set of recommendations to improve the efficacy of this important body.
After the discovery of a covert nuclear program in Iraq in 1991, the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) role transformed from promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy to verifying compliance with nonproliferation agreements. Over the next decade, the nuclear programs of three other countries - the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, South Africa, and Libya - further tested the IAEA's ability to locate nuclear weapons and dismantle them.
During the January 2013 meeting of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda in Liberia, CIC released an options brief by Senior Fellow David Steven on the role that global goals can play in a new development framework.
CIC's Political Missions 2012 highlights the activities of political missions deployed by the UN and other regional organizations over the year and provides mission-by-mission data on UN-led special political missions. The report also provides analysis on the operational and political implications of deploying political missions to unstable environments.
Addressing the issues of climate change, resource scarcity and sustainability will be critical to the future of development. Yet these issues are also among the most politically difficult to address in multilateral settings and have become a sticking point in deliberations over successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals.
This paper, commissioned by the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations, analyzes current trends in United Nations peacekeeping and makes predictions about the development of UN operations over the next five years (to 2017).
Over the past decade the United States and the international community have funded an unprecedented private security industry in Afghanistan. As a result, this industry has become entangled with the Afghan political economy, as international spending has been implicated in funding informal armed groups and commanders. Considerable uncertainty remains as Afghanistan approaches the 2014 deadline for assuming national security responsibilities.
CIC Expert Speaks at First Session of Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals
The General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, as called for in the Rio+20 outcome document, convened its first session on March 14-15, 2013. David Steven, CIC's expert on post-2015 development issues, had the honor of addressing the Open Working Group. His comments underline the importance of creating clear, simple, and memorable goals around the high-priority issues of food, water, energy, education, and poverty.