South Africa

Peacebuilding continues to gain recognition in international and national spheres for the crucial role it plays in laying the foundations for sustainable peace. In the last two decades, the United Nations has developed its peacebuilding architecture (PBA) in order to strengthen its responses to countries recovering from conflict. Within this larger context, 2015 will be a critical year for peacebuilding as member states undertake a comprehensive review of the UN PBA.

Member states are increasingly looking to 2015 as a milestone for progress on United Nations Security Council reform. 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of the UN, fifty years since the implementation of the last (and only) Council enlargement, and ten years since the 2005 World Summit. This paper provides an overview of the current context, an explanation of global perspectives on UNSC reform, and analysis of discussions on UNSC reform in and around the African Union.

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.