The Iranian Review for UN Studies
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Summer and Autumn 2018

The devastating Iran - Iraq war was the longest war of the 20 century, that also affected Iranian children from Sep 1980 to August 1988, suffering immediate or subsequent physical, mental, sociological and economic impacts. The focus of this paper is children’s victimisation as there are thousands of them killed, injured, captured as prisoners of war, acts that all are now categorised as grave violations of children rights during armed conflicts by the UN. To highlight the extent of these violations and their con-sequences, this study investigate ‘war of cities’ with missile attacks on Iranian cities, schools and hospital.  Despite existence legal framework for protection the children in International Humanitarian Law and other documents, United Nations failed to positive action to protect them even as a moral imperative. Study will also recount stories of children affected by chemical weapons and remaining mines in western Iran, that still killing them.

The UN Security Council initially used the phrase ‘disputed internal boundaries’ in an operative part of Resolution 1770 (2007) and then reiterated it in preamble paragraphs of Resolutions 1883 (2009), 1936 (2010), 2001 (2011), 2061 (2012), 2110 (2013), 2169 (2014), 2233 (2015), 2299 (2016), 2367 (2017) and 2421 (2018). That was the first instance in the history the UNSC to use such phrase. This article tries to survey and analyze this unusual phrase in these resolutions and it`s legal repercussions in the light of Iraq’s constitution as well as the political situation there. It seems that the 15-member Council has repeatedly endorsed the obligation of Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government to resolve their outstanding disputes including internal boundaries based on the national constitution especially Article 140. According to the Security Council, there exists a critical link between maintaining peace and security and the peaceful settlement of disputes in Iraq.

Regardless of the debates concerning the impact of the world trading system on developing countries’ “policy space,” evidence shows that a handful of these economies have been able to take advantage of the rules of the game to pursue their development objectives. The case of accession to the World Trade Organization is not an exception. However unruly and unfair, WTO accessions can either contribute to or hamper development depending on the details of accession commitments as well as the level of serious engagement on the part of the applicant county. Those acceding countries that were able to locate accession in their pre-determined development strategy, rather than an aim in itself, utilized this opportunity as a driver of sensible reforms. Rather than being captured by rent-seeking globalizing/neoliberal forces, the accession policy should be used as an instrument to enforce and embed a well-designed industrial development policy in a world of globalized production.

Given that the UN has increased its humanitarian activities over the past years and sometimes uses its own places and bases to shelter displaced civilians, the protection of such places during armed conflicts is an issue that can be a subject of an independent study. International humanitarian laws, both customary and conventional, call for the places with a UN flag to be granted immunity. The statute of the International Criminal Court has, particularly, taken the issue into consideration. The UN regulations, including the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (1946), too, have taken into account the issue to a greater extent. Still, there remain certain contradictions between the aforementioned legal instruments that will be discussed in the current paper. Nonetheless, the international humanitarian laws and the UN regulations, aimed at protecting the UN flag, have been sadly trespassed during recent wars and armed conflicts worldwide.

This article aims to evaluate the underlying foundation of the reasoning of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on evolutionary interpretation of treaties. The paper questions the common narrative on the evolutionary interpretation based on the generic nature of terms and the presumed intention. It argues that the decision about genericity of terms cannot be decided on the basis of the textual interpretation of the terms of a treaty. Nor, the intention of the parties or the presumed intention can provide the proper ground for making such a decision, as the intention of a writer is always constructed by the reader. Based on the idea that interpretation of law is an act within the legal sphere that follows the rationality of that legal system, the paper argues that what determines the content of a norm to evolve in time is its legal nature considered together with the purpose it aims to serve within the ambit of a legal system.

The statelessness has marked significantly the agenda of the United Nations from early days of its inception in 1945. Its series of activities focused largely on the development of international legal framework in the post-World War II until 1960s. However, despite growing statelessness and the negative impact on fundamental rights of people around the world, the issue remained off the global agenda for almost three decades. Not only states, but even scholars and practitioners had until recently ignored the scope and nature of the statelessness. It was only in the mid-1990s, the issue regained international attention, with the UN General Assembly expanding the mandate of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to also encompass the plight of stateless people. The current paper discusses the content and scope of the statelessness regime which gave birth to two universal instruments. It also explores the mandate and global actions of the UNHCR on statelessness. Conceiving the statelessness as a human rights issue, this article seeks to understand whether the endeavors within UN adequately respond to the magnitude of the problem. This article discusses the content and scope of the international statelessness regime which gave birth to two universal instruments. It also explores the mandate and global actions of UNHCR on statelessness. As activities and actions of UN to encounter statelessness as an “anomaly” are based on its root cause and consequences, therefore they will be briefly analyzed in this paper. Conceiving the statelessness as a human rights issue, this article seeks to understand whether the endeavors within UN adequately respond to the magnitude of the problem.

The concept of development has changed over periods of time and gained momentum particularly after the end of WWII. The establishment of the United Nations (UN) brought about a new dimension to this concept in international relations. In other words, the development then came into a concrete meaning, mostly understood as economic growth and one-sided process dominating the functioning of the UN and relations among the States during the Cold War. Although, the issue has gone through many changes and phases in the context of the UN, yet the end of the Cold War and the emergence of globalization are considered as turning points in bringing about a whole new idea, giving development a multi-dimensional meaning and becoming a multitude process under the framework of Sustainable Development which eventually led the UN to play a proactive role unlike the past. This paper tries to study and analyse the fact that how the concept of development has qualitatively changed under the UN auspices and the emergence of globalization in order to offer a better understanding of the changing role of the UN in the realization of sustainable development and future nature of international system.

Over the past years, Iran’s surrounding maritime area in the Middle East and Indian Ocean has encountered with a number of security threats, including piracy and armed robbery at sea, terror acts, illicit trafficking in arms and weapons of mass destruction, human trafficking as well as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and unlawful damage to the marine environment. Piracy and armed, in particular, as the main concerns can undermine local, regional and international security and stability. The following article tries to address the issues, with special focus on the eradication of organized maritime crimes through the international legal framework governed by the United Nations’ holistic approach. The study analyzes Iran’s own legal perspective on maritime security challenges and the ocean governance contributing to eradicate security threats.To this end, the paper encompasses various aspects and dimensions of the topic from the perspective of international law and the UN stewardship.