On CIGI’s “Inside the Issues”
A conversation with David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, on civil society and peace advocacy.
A conversation with David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, on civil society and peace advocacy.
A new report from Oxfam, Protection of Civilians in 2010: Facts, figures, and the UN Security Council’s response (Report), offers a clear and disturbing account of the devastating impact of war, but goes on to present a compelling set of recommendations designed to enhance both national and international protections to vulnerable civilians.
UN resolution 1973 authorizes states to take all necessary measures[i] to protect Libya’s civilian population, but given that “all necessary measures”
is essentially UN-ese for military force, the one absolutely essential measure
needed to protect civilians in the long run, diplomacy, is largely ignored.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has famously said the US can’t get out of its wars by capturing and killing its way to victory,[i] and in Afghanistan Canada and NATO will have to learn that you can’t train your way out of a war either.