This thesis examines the UN's existential crisis of efficacy following its ineffectiveness in Rwanda (1994), Srebrenica (1995), Kosovo (1999) and Iraq (2003). Specifically, this thesis examines the reform agenda initiated by Secretary-General Kofi Annan's High-level panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (HLP). The work seeks to diagnose the HLP-initiated reform of the UN and apply that analysis to prescribe the optimal shape of future UN reform. The current work analyses three main areas of reform initiated by the HLP—Security Council, Human Rights Council and development activities. One of the key subplots of the reform agenda concerned the expansion of the definition of security to encompass non-traditional issues such human rights and the coherent system-wide delivery of development functions. I put forth two intertwined theses: 1. The effectiveness of reform increased directly with distance from the Security Council and the veto powers contained therein; 2. The effectiveness of reforms in development placated developing countries and reduced the impetus for meaningful Security Council reform. The changes brought about by these reforms fell into two categories—structural and normative. Structural change is Charter-based legalistic reform, while normative change alters the ideals to which the UN aspires. Ineffective normative change took place at the Security Council, while ineffective structural change took place at the Human Rights Council. Only at the development level was there structural and normative change where intent was matched with action. It should be no surprise that the HLP-initiated reform agenda brought about effective, pragmatic changes only in development. Having completed this analysis of the effectiveness of the HLP-reform agenda, I will conclude by prescribing ways in which the UN can optimally reform itself based on a theory of tragedy that suggests political action to be best pursued in a piecemeal, small-scale results oriented fashion. The methodology of this work will be based on textual analysis of primary UN and Member State documents, expert interviews with UN personnel, and observation of the UN reform process. The empirical findings from thus will be correlated against a theoretical review of the purpose and effectiveness of the UN, and the UN reform agenda. It is anticipated that the combined empirical and theoretical sections will work together to elucidate new ways forward concerning the current limitations, and potential way forward, for the UN reform process.

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Challenging questions arise in the effort to adequately protect the cultural rights of individuals and communities worldwide, not the least of which are questions concerning the very understanding of ‘culture’. As contemporary anthropologists began to understand ‘culture’ as the fluid and ubiquitous narratives that are shifting and sometimes contested, does it still make sense to speak of culture in the context of human rights? If so, what kind of State obligations does this understanding entail? This thesis explores the issue whether the United Nations human rights treaty-bodies jurisprudence is sufficient in protecting the cultural rights of groups and individuals. To achieve this, the present thesis analyses the works of the treaty-bodies on the scope of cultural rights protection and how the treaty-bodies impose limitations on cultural rights. Borrowing from contemporary anthropological knowledge on culture, this thesis demonstrates how the work of the treaty-bodies has failed to acknowledge culture as competing discourses of power and has failed to address potential violations on cultural rights which accompany discourse production as individuals and community struggle over meanings. It also demonstrates how the treaty-bodies, when applying limitations on cultural rights, adopt an highly essentialised notion of culture which sets up culture and gender as fundamentally opposite positions and obscures the question on individual agency in cultural practices. To solve the above difficulties, this thesis argues that, in the context of protecting cultural rights, the treaty-bodies must look beyond the cultural text and must seek to understand the power relations which underpin the production of meaning. In the context of limiting cultural rights, treaty-bodies should begin their assessment by understanding how discourses are produced, reproduced, experienced and resisted, and how these processes impact women emotionally and practically. Concrete steps to accommodate these perspectives are also considered.

This is an examination of a neglected class of relations that have become more common after the Cold War, those between the United Nations and sub-State insurgent groups. This relationship has changed significantly after the end of the Cold War, both in the nature and frequency of the United Nations' response, and in the character of the insurgents that are addressed. Observing a strong influence of realism in both the motivations of insurgent actions and in the determinants and constraints of United Nations security initiatives, this study hypothesises that the predominant determinant of the effectiveness of United Nations-insurgent interactions is an essential concurrence in their approaches to the interaction. The research design develops an analytical framework of approach indicators to test the validity of this hypothesis across a range of United Nations-insurgent interactions. Those interactions chosen for analysis are Mediation; Peacekeeping, including Monitoring Ceasefires, Humanitarian Peacekeeping; and Disarmament and Demobilisation; and Election Monitoring. United Nations interactions with contemporary insurgent movements - the FMLN, the Khmer Rouge, the Bosnian Serbs, Renamo, the USC-SNA, the Contras, and Unita - are chosen according to their operational viability in order to fully test the hypothesised relationship. The general support for the hypothesis revealed by the analysis suggests important conclusions for the planning and conduct of United Nations initiatives, which are increasingly being called on since the Cold War to intervene in civil wars.

This thesis offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how to increase the legitimacy of the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security. In order to provide this answer, it connects the minutia of institutional design with the abstract principals of democratic theory in a systematic and reproducible method, thereby enabling a clear normative evaluation of even the smallest technical detail of reform. The thesis elaborates criteria for the evaluation of both the normative desirability as well as the political feasibility of individual reform proposals and applies these to a compilation of all the relevant proposals in four issue- areas: Security Council (SC) membership and voting, SC working methods, relations between the SC and the General Assembly, and relations between the SC and civil society. This evaluation demonstrates that there is a range of feasible proposals for reform that could improve the SC’s accountability both to the GA and to the general public, that could increase the opportunities for effective input from the UN membership and NGOs, and that would thereby promote the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security as a more inclusive, coherent and decisive deliberative system.

Notre étude, à la fois exploratoire et synthétique, cherchera à répondre aux interrogations suivantes : pourquoi, comment et à qui l’ONU communique-t-elle ? En quoi la communication de l’ONU est-elle révélatrice des réalités politiques qui la traversent ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous organisons notre étude autour de deux axes. Dans le premier, nous tentons une sociohistoire de la communication onusienne en commençant par une analyse métapolitique de la communication contemporaine (chapitre I). Ceci a pour but de comprendre le contexte dans lequel la communication onusienne est amenée, comme toute communication contemporaine, à évoluer. Nous cherchons ensuite à montrer la similitude des trajectoires communicationnelles entre Société des nations et ONU ainsi que la continuité sociohistorique qui les lie en la matière (chapitre II). Cela nous mène à une étude sociohistorique de la communication onusienne qui, selon qu’elle soit entendue comme programme politique ou comprise, au premier degré, comme un instrument de propagation d’idées et de symboles, n’a pas la même influence sur le continuum historique dans lequel l’ONU, comme toute institution, évolue (chapitre III). Dans le second axe, nous confrontons cette analyse globale et théorique à la réalité actuelle de la communication onusienne. D’abord, nous en analyserons de façon détaillée le fonctionnement en nous intéressant à sa cheville ouvrière, le Département de l’Information Publique (chapitre IV). Ensuite, nous étudions le rôle communicationnel du Secrétaire Général de l’ONU, qu’il s’agisse de la fonction politique ou des différents individus l’ayant incarnée (chapitre V). Enfin, nous nous focalisons aussi bien sur les limitations financières de la communication onusienne que sur le rôle de cette dernière dans la survie financière de l’ONU (chapitre VI). Cette étude nous apprend que bien que la communication ne permette pas de compenser les faiblesses organisationnelles et politiques de l’Organisation, elle en a tout de même les capacités, pour peu que celles-ci soient développées et utilisées de façon adéquate. / Our study, both exploratory and synthetic, will try to answer the following questions : how, why and to whom is the UN communicating ? How is the the UN’s strategy of communication a good indicator of the political balance of power within the Organization ? To answer these questions, our study will be divided in two parts. We will firstly try to analyze the UN’s strategy of communication from a sociohistorical perspective. Therefore, we will begin with a metapolitical analysis of modern communication (chapter I). This allows us to grasp the very context in which the onusian communication, like any other strategy of communication, is developing. We will then look to show the similarities between the UN and the League of Nations from a communication perspective, which shows a form of sociohistorical continuity (chapter II). This will lead us to a sociohistorical study of the UN’s strategy of communication, which, depending of its use and status, will have a very variable impact on the historical flow of events (chapter III). In the second part, we use the intermediary conclusions of our theoretical and global analysis and apply it to the present functioning of the UN’s strategy of communication. We analyse in details the role, the principles and the actions of the Department of Public Information, which is at the heart of the UN from a communication perspective (chapter IV). Nonetheless, the Secretary general being the most essential part of the strategy we studied, we also analyse the communicational role of the political function as well as the individual who embodies it (chapter V). Finally, we focus on the financial limitations of the UN’s strategy of communication and, reversely, the role communication can play as a way for the Organization to survive financially (chapter VI). This study shows that although communication doesn’t compensate for the organizational and political frailties of the UN, it has a potential to do so. As for any instrument, the efficiency of communication lies in the use the actors make of it.

The Security Council has sometimes failed to perform its main duty, which is the maintenance of international peace and security. The Council’s responsibilities in this regard have grown as new international challenges have emerged. These challenges include global environmental issues, refugee flows and mass migration across borders, the rapid spread of infectious diseases, civil war that threatens international peace and security, global terrorism, transnational crime and illegal stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The Security Council has thus become the subject of both severe criticism and calls for its structural reform. A variety of reform proposals have been offered by scholars and politicians, almost all of which have focused solely on state-based solutions. The current study considers that reforming the Council through such means would not alter its current state to any significant extent. International law no longer reflects the state-based system of the Westphalian World Order. The international legal order does not involve only nationstates, and state-based systems are not able autonomously to deal with problems such as these in the post-Westphalian era. It is widely acknowledged that there are many non-state actors that could contribute to enhancing the Council’s representativeness, effectiveness and accountability. It is thus concluded that a reform proposal for the Security Council must consider these factors and produce a non-state based solution. It is proposed that the Council must consider granting formal access to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that have, as non-state actors, been active in the international legal order, and that have already made significant contributions to the above-mentioned issues.