October 24th is United Nations Day. It marks the day when the UN Charter went into force in 1945. The following UN information resources have recently been made available:
Yearbook of the United Nations [access]
- The complete collection of yearbooks, from 1946-2005, are now online in full-text. The yearbook reports on the organization's activities in the areas of international peace and...
Conflict-induced migration and remittances: exploring conceptual frameworks, RSC Working Paper, no.47 (RSC, August 2008) [text] Review of the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report (The Protection Project, Summer 2008) [text] Seeing People Through the Trees: Scaling Up Efforts to Advance Rights and Address Poverty,...
The Second Meeting of Legal Experts from Member States on the Draft AU Convention for the Prevention of Internal Displacement and the Protection of and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons in Africa was recently held in Addis Ababa. NGO commentary on the draft is available here. (The First Meeting of Legal Experts was held in December 2007, but proved an insufficient amount of time to...
An international conference on war-affected children was held last week in Paris (February 5 and 6). The aim was to highlight the "illegal and unacceptable use of children in armed conflict." Participants endorsed two texts, 1) The Paris Commitments to Protect Children Unlawfully Recruited or Used by Armed Forces or Armed Groups (“The Paris Commitments”), and 2) The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups ("The Paris Principles"). The latter text "provides more detailed guidance for those who are implementing programmes," and it includes a section on refugee and internally displaced children.One of the speakers at the conference was the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy,...