True or False Warning? The United Nations and Threats to Namibia's Independence, 1989
Dr. A. Walter Dorn is Professor of Defence Studies at Canada’s Royal Military College and the Canadian Forces College, where he has been teaching since 2000. He earned his bachelor of science and master of sciences, as well as his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, which deals with chemical sensing for arms control, at the University of Toronto. Earlier, Dr. Dorn was a program coordinator for the Parliamentarians for Global Action, a senior research scientist and visiting scholar at the University of New Mexico and the Sandia National Laboratories, and a senior research fellow and visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Institute for African Development and its Peace Studies Program. Interviewed frequently in the print and electronic media, he is the author of Keeping Watch: Monitoring, Technology and Innovation in UN Peace Operations (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2011).
Keeping Watch: Monitoring Technology and Innovation in UN Peace Operations
Knowledge in the hands of the UN peacekeepers can be a power for peace. Lacking knowledge, peacekeepers often find themselves powerless in the field, unable to protect themselves and others. The United Nations owes it to its peacekeepers and the "peacekept" to utilize all available tools to make its monitoring and surveillance effective. Keeping Watch explains how technologies can increase range, effectiveness and accuracy of UN observation. Satellites, aircraft and ground sensors enable wider coverage of areas, over longer periods of time, while decreasing intrusiveness. These devices can transmit and record imagery for wider dissemination, further analysis, and as evidence in human rights cases and tribunals. They also allow observation at a safe distance from dangerous areas, especially in advance of UN patrols, humanitarian convoys or robust forces. Sensor technologies have been increasing in performance ..., but the United Nations continues to use technologies from the 1980s. The few cases of technologies effectively harnessed in the field are identified. This book identifies potential problems and pitfalls with modern technologies and challenges of incorporating them into the UN system. It offers creative recommendations on how to overcome institutional inertia and widespread misunderstanding of ways in which technology can improve security in war-torn regions. Technological innovation can serve as a complement to human initiative in the quest for peace.
Haiti’s unending crisis of governance: Food, the constitution and the struggle for power
More than two decades after the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship and the massive popular approval of a new and democratic constitution, Haiti remains in a state of crisis. The political system is still extremely fragile, lacking vital and functioning institutions; the economy is incapable of providing the most basic necessities to the population; and the personal safety of Haitians continues to be precarious. Moreover, rampant unemployment and old and obscene patterns of poverty and inequalities are as entrenched now as they have been in the past. Haiti has not moved away from the abyss of utter catastrophe; in fact, the country has moved closer to it under the combined and devastating impact of the recent food riots, four consecutive hurricanes – Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike – and the earthquake of January 2010. That President Preval has remained in office since 2006 and re-established a modicum of stability is largely due to the much maligned presence of international forces from the United Nations, the so-called United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Had it not been for the UN’s presence, the current situation would have easily degenerated into a chaotic Hobbesian world; in addition, had the Haitian military not been disbanded it is likely that a coup would have materialized.