UN in Focus Newsbrief N0. 6/2011 December 2011 Quick Links FES NY Events FES NY Publications More About Us Dear colleagues and friends, This is the last issue of our"UN in Focus" Newsbrief for 2011, and our last event of the year took place in the context of the Financing for Development (FdD) High-level Dialogue, when FES joined with UBUNTU and the NGO Committee on FfD to organize a Civil Society Forum on December 6th. Representatives from longtime UN participants Social Watch, the Association for Women's Rights in Development and the International Trade Union Confederation joined in discussion with participants from Occupy Wall Street, the Fiscal Policy Institute and National Nurses United on the impact of rising global inequality on development and economic stability, and how to begin to link the global and local agendas focusing on innovative financing for development, domestic resource mobilization(including tax reform to curb tax avoidance and evasion and to produce a more equitable tax system) and holding the financial sector more accountable. We end our year with a number of publications that emanated from the various threads of our work on global challenges to peace and security. The publication by Richard Gowan scrutinizes this year's performance of the UN Security Council against the backdrop of its unique composition in 2011. By contrast, Colin Keating is taking the long-term perspective on reforming the Council's working methods, an issue that is often overlooked in the heated debates about the Council's much needed structural reform. Robert Schütte focuses on gaps in the implementation of the protection of civilians in UN-mandated military interventions. Below the level of intervention by force, sanctions are often seen as the coercive measure of last resort. Yet the crises of 2011, from Côte d'Ivoire over Libya to Syria have demonstrated that there is vast disagreement about the utility of sanctions. The International Policy Analysis by Enrico Carisch and Loraine Rickard-Martin is therefore intended as a one-stop manual to clarify the pitfalls and power of this tool. All these publications point to need to improve the instruments at the disposal of the international community when confronted with threats to peace and security in the future. As usual, I hope this Newsbrief will make for informative reading. We wish you very happy holidays and a peaceful and successful 2012! Sending you season's greetings from New York, Dr. Werner Puschra Director Friedrich Ebert Stiftung- New York Office