Towards an Emotional Geography of Diplomacy: Insights from the United Nations Security Council

The rapid growth in the study of emotions in geography in recent years has fueled new conceptual and methodological insights into understandings of power, its expression, and socio‐spatial underpinnings. ALUN JONES progresses an emotional geography of diplomacy by considering emotions as part of calculative action on the part of diplomats.
In ‘Towards an emotional geography of diplomacy: Insights from the United Nations Security Council’, published in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, JONES seeks to move the spotlight away from what emotion is to what emotion, as an embodied sociality, seeks to do to the alteration or reproduction of geopolitical relations.
“This unique focus on the calculative dimensions of emotional usage in diplomacy is a central though unexplored dimension of emotional geopolitics and one that I consider supports a perspective in which emotions are not depoliticized or trivialized, but situated, historicized, and relational, and which may be mobilized for political purposes,” he states.
Focusing on the socio‐spatiality of calculative emotions, and building on recent scholarly interest in the mobilization and manipulation of emotions, JONES explores their use in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a poignant and powerful context for the study of emotional diplomacies.
Using empirically rich materials derived from interviews with Security Council delegations, the paper’s aims are threefold. First, JONES explore the different ways in which emotions are perceived, performed, interpreted, and acted on by diplomats in this international, inter‐cultural geopolitical body. Second, from a geographical perspective he investigates the ways in which embodied emotions are distinctively connected to specific sites and spaces, and demonstrate the complexities of their usage in the UNSC.
Finally, using a case study of Russian–UK emotional exchanges in the UNSC over the civil war and humanitarian crisis in Syria, JONES show that research on emotional diplomacies must be sensitive to the specific social and cultural assumptions over what particular emotions mean and do in altering and reproducing geopolitical relations.

Jones A. Towards an emotional geography of diplomacy: Insights from the United Nations
Security Council. Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2020;00:1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12371

The Effect of Peacekeeping on Postwar Violence

Existing research shows that peace after civil wars is more stable with peacekeepers present. Yet, violence persists in many postwar contexts, and although postwar violence is often strategic and closely linked to the faultlines of the preceding war, we know little about the impact of peacekeepers on such violence, writes CORINNE BARA.
“What we know, moreover, focuses on the former combatants, while this study shows that the majority of deaths in postwar violence are inflicted by other armed actors,” she writes in ‘Shifting targets: the effect of peacekeeping on postwar violence’, a research article published in the European Journal of International Relations. “This is a challenge for peacekeepers who – for mandate or capacity reasons – usually focus on the warring parties.”
BARA argues that the impact of peacekeepers on postwar violence hinges on the extent to which they fill a public security gap after war, since responsibility for violence not covered by a mission’s mandate lies with the often dysfunctional security agencies of the state. To test this, she uses a novel spatial approach to generate data that captures the manifold manifestations of violence across different postwar contexts. The author finds that only UN police – with their broader effect on public security – mitigate postwar violence generally. UN troops have some impact on civilian targeting by former combatants but no such effect could be identified for violence by other armed actors. The findings highlight the importance of peacekeeping police at a time when the modus operandi and capacity of UN police have been questioned, but also the importance of accounting for a multitude of violent actors when analysing the impact of international interventions more generally.

Bara, C. (2020). Shifting targets: the effect of peacekeeping on postwar violence. European Journal of International Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120902503

China and Russia in UN Security Council R2P Debates

Beijing and Moscow both have exerted significant influence on the evolution of the concept of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), which has come to the forefront of the global human rights agenda in recent years. What are the similarities and differences between the two states in those debates, and what are the reasons behind them?
ZHENG CHEN and HANG YIN compare the rhetoric of the two countries in debates relevant to R2P at the UN Security Council (UNSC). The primary subjects are thematic debates on protection of civilians in armed conflicts, in which R2P is a key topic, and debates on the Syrian crisis, the most controversial recent issue involving the application of R2P.
“As discourses reflect and construct social reality, probing these questions will help us to a better understanding of the two states’ R2P policies within a broader strategic context,” the authors write in ‘China and Russia in R2P debates at the UN Security Council’, published in International Affairs.
The positions of China and Russia towards R2P are similar, expressing support for the first two pillars of R2P while resisting coercive intervention under the third pillar. For both Beijing and Moscow, safeguarding domestic political security is a predominant concern. They strongly opposed external interventions that could lead to regime change and state fragmentation, especially in those regions close to their borders or in their partner states.
In other cases, both states were ready to adopt a conditionally cooperative approach. They are very keen to preserve their role as ‘permission givers’ for international actions and to participate actively in relevant discussions to shape the further development of R2P.
The two states have found each other useful to lean on during some difficult situations, CHEN and YIN write. In the case of Syria, for example, they used each other as diplomatic cover. That is, however, a far cry from a looming ‘partnership of spoilers’.
“The notion of a Sino-Russia bloc obscures the subtle differences between the two. While Beijing appears to prefer a more cautious approach, Moscow is inclined to adopt increasingly aggressive stances on issues such as the Syrian conflict.”
CHEN and YIN argue that many of these differences between the two arise from China’s and Russia’s divergent status prospects, and their correspondingly different ways of signaling their Great Power status. While the power gap between China and the United States is still large, Beijing is confident of its rising status prospect.
“For Beijing, the future seems bright and so it can afford to wait, a cautious and patient approach promising better long-term pay-offs. It thus focuses on ensuring favorable external conditions for its internal development and preventing any external efforts to contain or disrupt its continued rise.”
Beijing has adopted an assertive posture from time to time in the past few years and its potential as a challenger is real; but we should also note the limitations of Chinese assertiveness as well as the continuity of its foreign strategy, the authors state. As long as the Chinese core interests of political security and territorial sovereignty are not adversely affected, Beijing is inclined to follow a course of cooperation and conflict avoidance in its diplomacy. In this process, China has developed a moderate discourse on R2P.
Meanwhile, Russia is in a much more precarious position and perceives its status more from a frame of loss. “It is the successor to a failed superpower and is encountering great difficulties in overcoming a systemic decline. Moscow’s recent assertiveness stems from its frustration at not being treated as an equal, and its consequent intention to signal its resolve to recover at least some of its former prestige,” the authors state.
Russia is very sensitive to events that challenge its status and is risk-prone in countering perceived threats. Amid its continuing concern about ‘losing ground’ to the West in its traditional sphere of influence, Moscow’s attitude to risk prompts it to play the role of a loud and visible dissenter on the international stage, and R2P became a victim to this approach. The R2P debates thus provide a revealing prism through which to analyze the two countries’ foreign strategies. In sum, although the two regimes do instinctively look to each other for mutual support so as to avoid isolation at the UNSC, Beijing and Moscow do not have an identical outlook on issues such as the application of R2P.
The current partnership between China and Russia is not without its difficulties. Washington’s dual containment strategy against both has contributed greatly to their current rapprochement. For the foreseeable future, Moscow and Beijing will regard Washington as their shared principal adversary, and each will treat the other as a main partner. However, both also know well the limitations of what the other can offer, since they have different objectives and agendas. While Russia is anxious about becoming overly dependent on China, Beijing is worried about being dragged into unnecessary conflicts which would jeopardize China’s peaceful rise.
The continued success of this partnership depends on both sides’ ability to manage their underlying differences. As they have divergent perceptions of their own status prospects, the temporary synergy between the two states on R2P debates does not necessarily set a norm for the future.

UN Peace Operations and the Rule of Law 1989-2017

Despite widespread recognition of the rule of law as a necessary condition for establishing and sustaining peace after conflicts, promotion of that imperative faces difficult conceptual, institutional and resource-related challenges.
The promotion of the rule of law has become a key objective of UN peace operations, and considerable resources are being invested in a range of related topics and activities. At the same time, discussions are underway within the United Nations and elsewhere on ways of addressing these challenges.
‘UN Peace Operations and the Rule of Law 1989–2017’, published by the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), the Swedish government agency for peace, security and development, presents new data on the rule of law as a global peacekeeping and peacebuilding topic in the period 1989-2017. The data paint a picture of the kind of assistance actually being provided, how orientations and focal areas evolve, as well as geographical variations. They also offer a basis for discussion on how essential shifts in peacekeeping and rule-of-law policy are reflected in practice.
“We hope that this knowledge will enrich the discussions on the way peace operations define, deliver and measure the rule of law, writes FBA Director-General Sven-Eric Söder, in the Foreword. “We also hope that the report will inspire to and be a platform for further research and scholarship on various aspects of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and the rule of law.”
The data show that rule of law activity has rapidly grown from virtually nothing in 1989 to something almost all peace operations are currently engaged in. The rule of law has also expanded horizontally and now encompasses a range of different focal areas and practices. “The wider application of the rule of law seems more influenced by operational demand and evolvements in peacekeeping policy (for example the Brahimi Report) than the issuing of new rule of law policies and other instruments,” according to the principal authors PER BERGLING and MARIA NYSTEDT.
Several rule of law policy instruments in the period 1989-2017 actually endorse developments already underway, such as the expansion of the rule of law from law enforcement, justice and corrections to also addressing law-making, access to justice and constitutional reform. “It should be noted that since 2005, the proportions between the various focal areas are almost the same. It may be concluded that there is an increasingly established idea in the Security Council that the rule of law has a given place among other key peacebuilding tasks, and that individual peace operations interpret and report on their rule of law mandates in rather similar ways.”
Another observation the authors make is that the rule of law is not equally in focus everywhere. Of the total number of reported activities in the period, 64 percent have been implemented by operations in African countries. Of course, the vast majority of peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations has also been deployed to African countries. Other geographical areas, including Europe and the Americas, have seen only a few operations and consequently a much lower number of activities.
“There are some interesting implications. For example, is it at all possible to make empirical statements on the global ‘relevance’, ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the rule of law, when the concept is so unevenly applied, or to claim that rule of law policy is grounded in global experience and best practice?”
A closer look at data on individual peace operations reveals some patterns or crude sequences, the report states. The rationale and raison d’etre for peace operations – to keep and build peace – typically reflect in an initial focus on supporting law enforcement and judicial functions, and particularly in bringing high levels of political and ordinary violence and crime under control. After a few years in the country, and when the situation has stabilized, the scope of engagement tends to expand to comprise other focal areas such as legislative reform and administrative law reform, while maintaining a high activity level in law enforcement and adjacent areas such as detentions and corrections.
In recent operations, the expansion into new focal areas and increasing multifunctionality has taken place quickly, perhaps as a reflection of the stronger policy emphasis in the United Nations and among influential member states on various aspects of prevention and sustainability. However, another much discussed topic, handovers between peacekeeping missions and special political missions does not reflect in reported activities in any clearly discernable way.
These observations should benefit different users in different ways, the authors state, adding that certain observations and claims related to systematically collected data as an essential element of evidence-based decision-making merit special mentioning:
1. The large number of peace operations reporting on similar combinations of activities over long periods shows that the rule of law is an established component of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The effects of the so-called ‘push-back’ in the related areas of human rights and international criminal justice seem rather limited.
2. The increasingly multidimensional scope and application of the rule of law ought to reflect in long-term policies, planning, resourcing and evaluation. Among other things, more comprehensive measurement and evaluation mechanisms and methodologies need to be introduced, and new categories of rule of law professionals need to be systematically identified and such professionals trained to work in a wider range of areas.
3. The gap between rule of law norms and applications needs to be addressed to secure the political legitimacy of rule of law promotion and the sustainability of results so far. The political appetite among several influential UN member states for high-level normative initiatives may be limited, but new uses of data can help to demonstrate that there is consistent and uncontested practice in the Security Council and among peace operations of understanding and applying the concept in specific ways.
4. More knowledge is needed about the relationship between activities and goals, including new and global goals (for example, SDG 16, Just and peaceful societies). The inference of rule of law activities and outcomes to larger goals is known to be difficult, and several attempts have been justly criticized, but continued and intensified efforts to combine systematically collected data on activities and outcomes are essential for legitimacy, efficiency and effectiveness.
5. The accelerating proliferation of rule of law actors promoting similar goals makes analysis of United Nations operations and activities in isolation less meaningful and possibly misleading. Data and analysis need to be broadened and encompass the policies and activities of several international, regional and national actors, as well as a much wider range of political, social and legal outcomes.
6. While the overarching conclusion is that the scope of future rule of law data collection and analysis would need to be much expanded, perhaps beyond the current reach and capacity of any researcher or institution, the sixth claim is that much can be done today by more effectively combining and synthesizing existing data from multilateral actors such as the World Bank or the United Nations, governments, civil society organizations, think tanks and academic institutions.
7. Another important step towards making data accessible and useful would be the development of a comprehensive coding system for rule of law activities in UN peace operations. Such a coding system should ideally be developed with the greatest possible political and institutional buy-in, and in alignment with existing UN reporting functions, but more modest initiatives by one or a few institutions could play an important role by illustrating the utility of such systems and providing models.

United Nations Peace Operations: Evolution, Challenges And New Dynamics

Over the past 70 years, UN peace operations have tended to vary in size, mandate, duration, and rules of engagement (or use of force), as well as in number and variation of the actors involved. The format of each operation depends not only on the circumstances in which it is moved but, above all, on how international society understands this context.
For those who analyze peace operations as an international instrument for conflict management and resolution, write VANESSA BRAGA MATIJASCIC and CAMILA DE MACEDO BRAGA, it is necessary first to understand the conception of the nature and causes of violent conflict that underlies the design of operations. “By understanding the problem, identifying the associated threats and risks, we can then analyze the proposal that engenders and mobilizes the operational new framework of a peace operation,” they write in a working paper titled ‘United Nations Peace Operations: Evolution, challenges, and new dynamics’, published by the University of Sao Paulo’s International Relations Research Center.
Given the three phases of evolution – the emergence of (traditional) POs during the Cold War, their transformation into more complex operations in the 1990s (multidimensional operations), and their consolidation into a format proposed as ‘peace support’ – it is possible to understand that the development of operations occurred from ad hoc responses to particular problems encountered in the field and was not accompanied, simultaneously, by their normative and institutional development. “Nevertheless, the last decades have provided a fruitful space for reviewing, standardizing, and institutionalizing peace operation practices.”
Although the fundamental principles that underpinned the development of POs from the outset involved impartiality, neutrality, and minimal use of force, the authors state, their adherence to these principles often depended on the varying levels of political will of the actors involved, as well as how they understand and position themselves in conflict. These two elements will be decisive for the design and implementation, success or failure, of a peace process.
While the Millennium Development Goals reflected a growing demand for peacebuilding actions, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development determines the need to make it sustainable in the long term by emphasizing conflict prevention and peacebuilding mechanisms, peace operations emerge as windows of opportunity for this agenda to materialize. Understanding the role of POs in the post-Cold War global governance system is today an essential task for those engaged in international security studies and particular peace studies.
Peace is inherent in human life, yet how we understand it and seek to put it into practice are continually debated and revisited by various academic and decision-makers. The historical development process of POs is marked by several experiences with unintended consequences and results different from what was planned or expected. Notwithstanding, the immediate effects of humanitarian protection and support for populations directly affected by humanitarian conflicts and disasters cannot be relativized. Equally, there is no manner to deny its mechanisms to facilitate a peace process by promoting a space for building trust between parties. Thus, the PO mechanism is not invalidated in situations of extreme human suffering.
At the same time, the contradictions pointed out remained essential challenges to the success of peace operations currently in the field or in the future, in particular concerning mechanisms capable of ensuring effective local dominance over the peacebuilding process. It is observed that local actors cannot always fail to agree with the international peacebuilding agenda to be implemented, producing a local adaptation of international standards that is not always sustainable.

International Civil Service: Without Fear or Favor?

Throughout the world, national civil servants take official pledges, among other things, to provide advice ‘without fear or favor’. When it comes to international civil servants, the ‘without fear or favor’ expectations are far more equivocal – specifically, where ‘without fear’ is concerned, writes KATE GILMORE.
Article 100 of the United Nations Charter explicitly bars the seeking or receiving of instructions from States or other external authority – including, one presumes, incentives and disincentives. The Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service and the UN Staff Regulations and Rules apply this by covering conflicts of interest and banning receipt of gifts. Yet, their provisions deal only with the ‘without favor’ element, states GILMORE, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“The ‘without fear’ aspects are comparatively neglected,” she writes in ‘Without Fear or Favor?’, a paper published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation as part of its ‘100 years of international civil service’ series.
Elsewhere, of course, the UN has taken a clear stand on reprisals by Member States against those who avail themselves of its human rights mechanisms – thus some effort of protection is offered for those who speak to the UN, she states. The Secretary-General has issued a policy on ‘whistleblowing’ – so some protection is offered for those who speak within the UN about the UN. “But the assurance of protection for those who speak for the UN? That is a less certain story.”
It can be tough to take risks with your professional future, but we are all worse off if international civil servants are not able and willing to speak ‘without fear’, writes GILMORE. “Protection when they do so should be unequivocal.”
Elaboration of what that means: of what service ‘without fear’ requires and how it should be protected, might be challenging. However, a first step would be for the UN Staff Rules and Regulations to spell out clearly both the requirement to speak the truth without fear – and the institution’s commitment to protecting staff who do so, she states.
“[Dag] Hammarskjöld emphasized that a UN Secretary-General is not some kind Delphic oracle. Nor is the interna-tional civil servant. Yet, the provision of evidence-based, fact-loyal, standards-upholding advice without fear or favor, including in the public domain as required, is essential. It was a point that Hammarskjöld underscored in his last ever speech to the staff of the UN Secretariat, ‘To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear.’ Without fear that is, not merely without favor.”

Improve the Link Between the UNSC and Fifth Committee To Align Peacekeeping Mandates and Resources