The escalation of fighting in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has brought one of the world's worst humanitarian crises back to the attention of international policymakers. In response, the United Nations (UN) Security Council has authorized three thousand additional troops to reinforce the...

A new book on large African countries explores why these countries have security problems and what that means for Africa.

Introduction

For a bankrupt country in the middle of hyperinflation, the discovery of a major diamond deposit in Zimbabwe in June 2006 should have been good news. Instead it has provided sustenance to a volatile and violent political elite that suppresses the majority. The power sharing/coalition government in Zimbabwe came into...

Asdrug companies wonder whether to continue researching AIDS drugs, the news that resistancewill build up because of fakeswill notconvince them to stay in the AIDS research field.

Despite outward appearances of crisis, the prospects for sustained peace and security in the Great Lakes region of Africa are better today than at any time since the mid-1980s.

Although this brief survey of five current case studies of UN peacekeeping is necessarily summary in nature, I believe that the evidence forms a sufficient pattern to conclude that the UN is substantially overextended and in danger of becoming more so.

The UNis involved in conflicts, or is considering involvement, where it has neither the authority nor the competence to be effective, and its instinctive reaction to difficulties it has encountered has been simply to do more of the same.