Is There a Role for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding

The focus of this essay is to enquire as to what role UNECE can play in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The historic role of the UNECE in bridging the East-West divide and guiding the transition process of the former planned economies is testimony to the importance of this type of activity. During the transition process, political and economic systems often had to be recreated from scratch and sometimes in newly formed nation States. The lessons learned during this process, especially regarding the importance of good governance, provide the basis of the UNECE’s contribution to conflict prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding. The regional significance of peacebuilding and thus the role of a regional body such as UNECE is stressed by explaining that conflicts usually have major transboundary impacts such as migration, environmental degradation, disrupted transportation corridors, or broken trade links. The authors also provide an overview of the institutional initiatives that are being developed within the various UN agencies and other international organizations emphasizing their activities in South-east Europe and Central Asia. The essay ends by considering the future role of UNECE in creating a framework convention or standards, on the basis of agreed principles for post-conflict governance.Peace building, Europe, transition economies, institutional cooperation

A call for action to the fish world: a guide to fish-related paragraphs of the plan of implementation of the world summit on sustainable development

It contains tables and a selected verbatim set of the paragraphs and sub paragraphs of the recent Plan of Implementation of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August-4 September 2002. The selected paragraphs and sub-paragarphs are those most relevant to the sustainable use, management and conservation of fish and other living aquatic resources.Living resources, Fisheries, Sustainability, Resource conservation

Low-Carbon Technologies in the Post-Bali Period: Accelerating their Development and Deployment. CEPS ECP Report No. 4, 4 December 2007

This report analyses the very broad issue of technology development, demonstration and diffusion with a view to identifying the key elements of a complementary global technology track in the post-2012 framework. It identifies a number of immediate and concrete steps that can be taken to provide content and a structure for such a track. The report features three sections dealing with innovation and technology, investment in developing countries and investment and finance, followed by an analysis of the various initiatives being taken on technology both within and outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A final section presents ideas for the way forward followed by brief concluding remarks

International Profiles of Health Care Systems, 2012

This publication presents overviews of the health care systems of Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Each overview covers health insurance, public and private financing, health system organization, quality of care, health disparities, efficiency and integration, care coordination, use of health information technology, use of evidence-based practice, cost containment, and recent reforms and innovations. In addition, summary tables provide data on a number of key health system characteristics and performance indicators, including overall health care spending, hospital spending and utilization, health care access, patient safety, care coordination, chronic care management, disease prevention, capacity for quality improvement, and public views

Iowa Disaster Recovery Framework

This Iowa Disaster Recovery Framework (IDRF) is meant to detail a lasting, flexible structure and system to coordinate and manage disaster recovery in the long-term. The IDRF provides a structure to engage stakeholders such as individual Iowans, local and tribal governments, businesses, voluntary, faith-based and community organizations as well as state and federal agencies to identify and resolve recovery challenges both before and after disaster events. It applies to all disasters, recovery partners, and recovery activities

Key issues in trade facilitation : summary of World Bank/European Union workshops in Dhaka and Shanghai in 2004

Trade facilitation is the ability of countries to deliver goods and services on time at the lowest possible cost. It has emerged as an important issue in unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral trade liberalization. Most countries have embarked on heroic reforms aimed at reducing transaction costs of trade. Thus, among the four new Singapore issues, there was least resistance from World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries to include trade facilitation in the Doha Round discussions. However, all countries are not equally placed in initiating reforms in the complex areas of customs procedures, transport and port logistics, harmonization of standards, and simplification of procedures. Trade facilitation reforms require a large volume of technical assistance for national capacity building. To facilitate what these reforms entail and what can be learned from cross-country experiences, the EU and the World Bank organized two workshops in Dhaka (South Asian countries) and Shanghai (East Asian countries) in 2004. Jointly they succeeded in bringing together renowned experts from multilateral organizations, selected bilateral donor community, the private sector, ex civil servants, and scholars. The participants were largely drawn from the relevant government departments and chambers of commerce and industry. This paper summarizes the main presentations in the workshops. It also indicates the areas that need more focus in future events. The paper should serve as a reference document for national policymakers and for future seminars and workshops on trade facilitation. It has also linked the presentations to the ongoing research work on trade facilitation.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy

Made in the USA? The influence of the US on the EU's data protection regime. CEPS Liberty and Security, November 2009

Recent developments have shown that the EU’s border security policy is greatly influenced by the US. This influence simultaneously has implications for other EU policies, including those on data protection. This paper highlights that policy-making at the transatlantic level is increasingly taking place through informal networks, such as the High-Level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security and the High-Level Contact Group on data protection, which allow US involvement in EU policy-making. This tendency stems from the growing personal relationships among policy-makers, the gradual substitution of formal instruments with less formal contracts and informal understandings shaping the content of formal agreements. Drawing from empirical examples of EU–US cooperation on data protection in the context of homeland security, the paper analyses the repercussions of these developments and the issues that remain unresolved, and offers policy recommendations