ENG ELC 220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Disaster Risk Reduction, Mikhail Gorbachev, Angela Merkel
13 Oct 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
10/12/18
Who’s Who in IR
Regional Actors in IR: Peace Operations and Summary
Introduction
• What have we learned about regional organisations?
• What is their purpose?
• Why are they created?
• How effective are they in terms of form, function and global impact?
• Their expanded role in peace operations / peacekeeping
Summative assignments
• Your marks for the article review have now been published. Please visit the
Dropbox in the INTR11020 learning room.
• Next assignment due 22 February 2019: (Critical) biography
– 1500 words + or – 10% (excluding bibliography)
– Students can choose from any of the following individuals to assess through a
biography (or present an alternative political figure that has had an impact on
IR): George W. Bush, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler,
Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Angela
Merkel, etc.
– Or anybody else of key political interest that you deem worthy of a review
– Biography should critically assess: Domestic impact, Assess their ability to
influence international events, international impact, and legacy
• →Start reading up on your chosen IR leader over the holidays
Introduction
• The organisations that we covered were:
– EU
– ASEAN
– Arab League
• But there are many other organisations that you can focus on and that you will see
throughout the degree
Not Just About Politics
• Regional organisations have become major players in the realm of peace operations.
– They have developed specialised policies and institutions to tackle issues
such as emergency response, disaster risk reduction and conflict
management.
Regional Orgs and Peace Ops
• Regional institutions are most engaged with humanitarian issues when they are not
seen as threatening state sovereignty:
– when they are financed by donors from outside of the region
– when they are framed in technical terms
– when they are part of broader global processes
• Regional organisations have received credit for signing international agreements and
establishing institutions regardless of the enforcement of those agreements or the
effectiveness of those institutions.
– See: http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-
opinion-files/8766.pdf
Examples?
• ASEAN worked closely with the United Nations and the Myanmar government to
ensure foreign aid agencies could enter country and respond to aftermath of Cyclone
Nargis in 2008
• 2011 the Gulf Cooperation Council helped negotiate a resolution to conflict in
Yemen.
• 2013 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deployed
peacekeepers to Mali to work with French and Chadian forces in securing the
country following a military coup and outbreak of insurgency in north.
How to engage with humanitarian conflict?
• While the recent proliferation of regional humanitarian initiatives has been
reasonably well reported, less is known about what these institutions have achieved
in practice
– E.g. while many regional organisations have policies addressing refugees, few
were involved in coordinating assistance for refugees, studied refugee issues
or consolidated donor funds to help meet humanitarian agencies’ needs.
• Where they did engage directly with refugees, regional organisations generally
provided mostly symbolic levels of assistance.
– ECOWAS allocated up to $15 million in food aid to refugees in West Africa,
though the food involved had been financed by the African Development
Bank and distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP)
– The Arab League has arranged for the delivery of modest amounts of medical
supplies to Jordan for the benefit of Syrian refugees.
• One problem: national governments which prefer to address such issues internally or
bilaterally with neighbouring countries have, at least in particular instances,
prevented regional forums from engaging.
