William H. Luers, a top U.S. expert on the United Nations, says the recent Security Council resolution authorizing increased UN diplomatic activity in Iraq marks a change in U.S. policy.

Sudan’s U.S. ambassador says Western states need to give the National Unity Government space to solve the Darfur crisis.

A joint Chicago Council/PIPA poll looks at global attitudes toward the United Nations. People around the world favor dramatic steps to strengthen the United Nations, including giving it the power to have its own standing peacekeeping force, to regulate the international arms trade and to investigate human rights abuses.  

Lee Seymour, of the German Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, argues that events in Darfur may weaken the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and lead to a collapse of Sudan's tenuous peace settlement.

International efforts have focused on getting UN peacekeepers into Darfur. But what about a peace agreement?

As the one-year anniversary of the Darfur peace agreement approaches, the Sudanese president agrees to a partial deployment of UN troops but many wonder if it just another diplomatic feint.

A UN envoy is proposing phased independence for Kosovo, nearly eight years after Belgrade’s dominion over the province ended.

The United States has proposed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a regional peacekeeping force to bring stability to Somalia, but some experts say such a resolution might achieve precisely the opposite.

In this report Amnesty International says that the presence of an African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (AMIS) since 2004 has failed to stop the mass killings, rapes and forcible displacement of civilians in the region. Amnesty says that despite the presence already in Sudan of 10,000 UN peacekeepers, whose mandate was extended to include Darfur by the UN Security Council in August 2006, the Darfur region is now so insecure that one third of those affected are inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. Amnesty International’s agenda for effective protection of civilians sets out a 16-point programme that should be implemented by any peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Princeton N. Lyman says that despite calls for military intervention in Darfur, he does not believe that such an approach would be practical. He hopes the U.S. special envoy to Darfur will be able to get the parties back to the negotiating table.

The Security Council resolution that ended the monthlong war with Israel called for the disarmament of Hezbollah. But new reports suggest the group continues to smuggle in weapons from Syria, which, if true, could threaten the delicate peace in the region.

Roberta Cohen of the Brookings Institution discusses the expanded African Union peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region. She says the AU force, besides being undermanned and underfunded, is seriously limited by the actions of the Sudanese government.

The African Union is assuming an increasingly high-profile role in peacekeeping on the continent, most recently in Sudan’s Darfur region. But the young institution faces organizational and financial barriers that are limiting its effectiveness.

The lifting of the Israeli blockade and the arrival of European peacekeepers are two long-awaited signs of progress in Lebanon. The withdrawal of Israeli forces could be next. Despite these developments, the UN force has a tough job ahead.

The election of René Préval as Haiti’s president earlier this year raised hopes the region’s poorest country was finally ready to move toward social and economic stability. But chronic concerns about gang violence and the UN commitment to Haiti have resurfaced again.