This volume is the first English-language work to focus specifically on South America in the context of peace operations. The region of South America has been undergoing significant changes recently with regard to its attitudes towards participation in peace operations. Leaving behind a strong reluctance with regard to intervention, the states have recently taken on a much stronger presence among UN peacekeepers. The foremost showcase of this more robust and responsible stance has been MINUSTAH, the current UN mission in Haiti. South American contributors provide over half the operation’s troops, and the Force Commander is provided by Brazil. This book is intended as an introduction for researchers to the nexus of issues surrounding South America’s increasing influence as a contributor to peace operations. The authors provide the reader with a historically and theoretically grounded understanding of what motivates defence policy and decisions on intervention in the region. Featuring contributions from prominent thinkers in the field and a broad range of case studies, this volume successfully combines practical applicability with diversity of analysis. This book will be of much interest to students of peacekeeping, South American politics, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.

Protection challenges around the globe require innovative legal, policy and practical responses. Drawing primarily from a new generation of researchers in the field of refugee law, this volume explores the ‘boundaries’ of refugee law. On the one hand, it ascertains the scope of the legal provisions by highlighting new trends in State practice and analysing the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies, as well as national and international Courts. On the other hand, it marks the boundaries of refugee law as ‘legal frontiers’ whilst exploring new approaches and new frameworks that are necessary in order to address the emerging protection challenges.

This book encourages a critical dialogue between interdisciplinary fields that border heritage boundaries and seeks to contribute a wide range of scholarly perspectives and case studies (both national and international). The widespread use of the concept of soft power is sometimes grossly misused as a synonym for anything other than military force. While the concept is one of the most popular and influential in progressive foreign policy circles and is noted for being the ability of a country to convince others that its cause is the best, without having to resort to economic or military threats, the your ability to accurately describe the world we live in needs repair lenses. The power of example, the power of attraction through culture or, in other words, the ability of a country to attract others because of its culture and political values ​​in its foreign policy, that is, soft power, is something that emerges in partly because of government and partly in spite of governments. To have soft power, you need to be connected, and the interaction, management and dissemination of assets can be seen as exercises in soft power action. This book seeks to detail in examples how the concept of “soft power” encompasses and problematizes the multiplicity of themes on the contemporary international agenda, focusing on one of its least discussed elements: the universe of international cultural heritage and the relationship between actors and society, preservationist actions in the globalized world. While cultural heritage embodies different values ​​and can serve different economic, social and political objectives in development contexts, the past becomes a cultural currency when it becomes essential to the human experience.

This book collects essays on the political economy of Brazil, focusing on the administrations led by the Workers’ Party, under Presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff (2003-16). The essays examine the economic, political, and social aspects of these governments.