In 2010, millions of men, women, and children were killed, raped, displaced, injured, or recruited by force in armed conflicts throughout the world. Whether caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted, civilians too often suffer disproportionately as a result of conflict. The primary obligation to protect civilians affected by conflict lies with national governments and parties to conflict. However, when these actors are unable or unwilling to fulfill this obligation, the international community, in particular the UN Security Council (UNSC) has a responsibility to recognize the plight of civilians caught up in conflict and to take action to protect them. This paper reviews the impact of armed conflicts on civilians in 2010, and challenges the UNSC to be more informed and consistent in its approach to protecting civilians in armed conflict.

The protection of civilians which has been at the forefront of international discourse during recent years is explored through harnessing perspective from international law and international relations. Presenting the realities of diplomacy and mandate implementation in academic discourse.

These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.

The nature and scope of UN Security Council decisions - significantly changed in the post-Cold War era - have enormous implications for the conduct of foreign policy. The UN Security Council offers a comprehensive view of the council both internally and as a key player in world politics. Focusing on the evolution of the council's treatment of key issues, the authors discuss new concerns that must be accommodated in the decisionmaking process, the challenges of enforcement, and shifting personal and institutional factors. Case studies complement the rich thematic chapters. The book sheds much-needed light on the central events and trends of the past decade and their critical importance for the future role of the council and the UN in the sphere of international security.

This book examines the practices in Western and local spheres of humanitarian intervention, and shows how the divide between these spheres helps to perpetuate Western involvement. Using the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a case study – an object of Western intervention since colonial times – this book scrutinizes the contemporary practice of humanitarian intervention from the inside. It seeks to expose how humanitarian aid and peacekeeping works, what obstacles they encounter and how they manage to retain their legitimacy. By examining the relationship between the West and the DR Congo, this volume asks why intervention continues to be so central for the relationship between Western and local spheres. Why is it normal and self-evident? The main answer developed here is that the separation of these two spheres allows intervention to enjoy sufficient degrees of legitimacy to be sustained. Owing to the contradictions that surface when juxtaposing the Western and Congolese spheres, this book highlights how keeping them separate is key to sustaining intervention. Bridging the divide between the liberal peace debate in International Relations and anthropologies of humanitarianism, this volume thus presents an important contribution to taking both the legitimizing proclamations and ‘local’ realities of intervention seriously. The book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, anthropology, research methods and IR in general.