By Otto Spijkers

At the moment, I am in New York, doing a short internship at the Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations. Apart from the work I do for the Office of Legal Affairs, I also have lunch in the cafeteria of the UN Secretariat, and attend some meetings of the Security Council and the General Assembly (of course, I also have plenty of time, after work and in the weekends, to explore New York, one of the most exciting cities in the world, together with a wonderful group of fellow-interns from all four corners of the world). Today (12 February) I went to a debate on children and armed conflict at the Security Council, and another on climate change, at the General Assembly. In the future I will write more substantive posts, but now I just want to give an impression of what it is like to attend these debates. Of course, I keep in mind what happened to my compatriot, mr. Jan Pronk, former Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Sudan, who had to step down when the Sudanese government disapproved of some of the things he wrote on his personal blog and labeled him "an unwelcome person" (or in Latin: a ‘persona non grata’). If you work for the UN (even as an intern?), I guess you have to be careful. Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

On 6 November 2007, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Verhagen, presented his new policy, entitled A life of human dignity for all: A human rights strategy for foreign policy. An English summary is available here; the entire report, which is in Dutch, can be found here. The goal of the strategy is ‘comprehensive and ambitious’, and it is, quite simply, ‘to protect and promote human rights throughout the world.’ Four key themes are highlighted:

(1) the universality of human rights;

(2) the relationship between human rights and peace and security;

(3) the indivisibility of human rights; and

(4) the voice of human rights.

Continue reading →

By Nick Li

Yesterday I finally got a chance to see what waterboarding actually looks like when CNN aired part of this video by journalist Kaj Larsen. Now this practice certainly violates article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention – whether or not we would call it "torture" or merely "cruel treatment" or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment" is irrelevant from this point of view. Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

Last week, Mr. Vuk Jeremic, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, came to Leiden University to speak, among other things, about the future of Kosovo and the importance of the deadline of 10 December 2007. Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

Yesterday was United Nations day. Of course, the UN Secretary-General had very positive things to say about his employer:

The world is changing in the United Nations’ favor — as more people and Governments understand that multilateralism is the only path in our interdependent and globalizing world. Global problems demand global solutions — and going it alone is not a viable option. Whether we are speaking of peace and security, development, or human rights, demands on our Organization are growing every day.

More interesting, perhaps, is to read some of the comments posted on the US Department of State Official Blog (to make such a blog is a wonderful idea, I think, and I hope the Dutch Government will start a blog of its own soon). The question asked to all Americans was phrased in a very positive way: ‘Does the United Nations continue to effectively fulfill its mission?’ (It could easily have been formulated otherwise, as in ‘Does the costly and ineffective bureaucracy, referred to as the UN, which failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica, and which now fails to establish peace and security in the Congo.. etc. etc., need to be abolished?’) There were quite a few people who answered the question. Continue reading →