Lord Hurd (perhaps better known as Douglas Hurd), occupied a number of very senior posts in the Conservative Administration of 1979 to 1997, and was Foreign Secretary from 1989 to 1995.  He is a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and a Vice-President of the Oxford Branch of UNA.

Lord Hurd began by saying that, as Parliamentary Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, he had succeeded Evan Luard, in whose honour these lectures were held.

The conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had resulted in a number of attempts to restore justice and prevent recurrence of strife.

The Congress of Vienna (1814-15) was concerned with putting the Emperors back on their thrones after the defeat of Napoleon: in other words, restoring the map of Europe.

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) attempted to treat the nations as equals - though they were not, and Germany and Japan remained defiant.  The British and French were allowed to carve up the colonies.

The Treaty of San Francisco (1945) established the United Nations, but (perhaps inevitably) conceded the major powers a right of veto, which has been used again and again.

The UN Security Council was to have five permanent members (USA, USSR, the UK, China, and France) and ten non-permanent, but there have been arguments over enlargement.  The Chinese don’t want Japan admitted, and Russia has also been obstructive.

So what do we do if a state misbehaves?  Very often we do nothing; but sometimes public opinion may move us to intervene (not always wisely).  For instance, in 1876 Turkey committed atrocities in the Balkans.  Many in Britain were outraged, but Disraeli treated the episode flippantly.  But when Russia wanted to make political capital out of it, British opinion turned to support Turkey against Russia!   It was noteworthy that public opinion, which in 1991 had largely supported the First Gulf War and the ejection of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, had been very divided over the Second.

It is here that the Right to Protect (RtP) becomes relevant.  We look inside another country and employ a set of rules which govern the type of action which we should take.  These bring us back to St Thomas Aquinas and the concept of the Just War.

- We must be absolutely sure about the facts (as we failed to do for the Second Gulf War).


- Every other means (such as sanctions) must have been exhausted.


- There must be an international authority, typically a resolution by the UN Security Council (as in the First Gulf War).


- It must be clear that the situation created by military intervention will bring about an improvement.


The last, particularly, creates a high barrier to surmount.  It is folly to get involved unless we are sure that the conditions are fulfilled.  At present, the case for applying RtP to Syria falls to the ground.

Lord Hurd wondered whether President Obama could succeed in getting consensus on these issues.  Could the US therefore give a clear lead?  So far, he had not been successful.

Putin’s Russia was much more difficult to deal with than Yeltsin’s, and Europe lacks leadership.  So the situation has deteriorated since 1989.

The USA must accept the same constraints as other countries - but has Obama either the will or the power to achieve this?




Evan Luard Lecture 2015

‘A United Nations Fit for Purpose?  The challenges facing the UN as it turns 70’

Sam Daws, Director of the Project on UN Governance and Reform, Oxford University

Thank you very much Professor Sir Adam Roberts for your generous introduction.  Thank you Lord Mayor for your kindness in hosting this event.   I am delighted to be giving the Evan Luard memorial lecture in the UN’s 70th anniversary year.
   
Evan Luard was a fascinating man, a polymath combining scholarship – including his influential books on the early history of the United Nations – with public service.   He worked for charities, served twice as Member of Parliament for Oxford and as a Foreign Office minister.

I think Luard – even with his breadth of experience - would have been amazed at how the UN has adapted and evolved over the quarter century since his death.  There is much to be thankful for, as the High Commissioner for Human Rights so eloquently noted in a recent address to UNA-UK:

“Multiple conflicts have been resolved or prevented in the past 70 years thanks to UN mediation, adjudication or intervention.  National independence has been assisted and promoted.   There has been unparalleled, though incomplete, progress on recognition of the rights of groups of people who for centuries had been marginalized – including women, people of African descent and LGBTI people.”

“Unprecedented advances in health, in wealth, in education, and in the ability to make decisive personal choices have immensely improved the lives of enormous numbers of people, particularly the most vulnerable. There has been investment in the development of the Global South on a scale, and of a complexity, that would previously have been inconceivable, with far greater emphasis on practical work to ensure equality, health and opportunities for women.”

But as we celebrate the achievements of this remarkable organization, the UN faces many significant challenges if it is to prove equally relevant for future generations.

None of us could fail to be appalled by the growing humanitarian crises facing civilians worldwide. 60 million people globally are today displaced from their homes because of conflict and violence – the highest number since World War Two.  

The plight of civilians in Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Iraq and Yemen – who continue to be killed daily with impunity – led the UN Secretary-General and the President of the International Red Cross to issue, in Geneva last week, their first ever joint warning.

Ban Ki-moon used uncharacteristically blunt language:
“In the face of blatant inhumanity, the world has responded with disturbing paralysis.   This flouts the very raison d’être of the United Nations.   The world must reaffirm its humanity and uphold its commitments under international humanitarian law. Enough is enough.  Even war has rules.  It is time to enforce them.”
 
Their joint statement called on States to do more:
* Rein in armed groups and hold them accountable for abuses
* Protect and assist displaced people fleeing insecurity
* Ensure unhindered access to humanitarian missions
* Condemn those who violate international humanitarian law
* Stop the use of heavy explosive weapons in populated areas
* Redouble efforts to find sustainable solutions to conflict

The UN faces at least three major challenges in adapting to the changing face of migration:

First, people are being displaced for longer – the average is now a remarkable 17 years – in no small part due to decades long displaced Palestinian refugees.   Thus strategies based around short-term fixes – the typical refugee camp – need to be rethought, with a focus on greater integration with the host societies, and enabling refugees to work – Malaysia has recently set a great example of permitting this.

Second, the international community must join up its treatment of development assistance and humanitarian aid, and lift restrictions on aid to middle income countries to help with long-term migration.  Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have each accepted not just thousands but millions of refuges.  One third of the population of Jordan are now Syrian or Palestinian refugees.   Similarly Kenya and Cameroon have received huge influxes of refugees from neighbouring countries.  We should ensure that the aid rules help such middle income countries cope with those they so generously take in.

Third, the sheer scale of the need. The figures for the numbers of people displaced by conflict are indeed staggering.   In 2010 there were 11,000 new people displaced by conflict worldwide each and every day of the year. Last year, 42,500 people were displaced each and every day.   The UN humanitarian system’s funding has proved woefully inadequate in the face of this tidal wave – the Secretary-General has called for an additional $15 to $20bn dollars a year to respond effectively.  The first World Humanitarian Summit – to be held in Istanbul in May of next year (2016) – will be a key test of whether such sums can be raised in a time of continuing austerity. Ultimately the causes and solutions of this vast displacement are political.

Turning from humanitarian crises to the challenge of longer term international development

The UN has played a key role in galvanizing international action to lift millions out of poverty.   It has also been a recent key testing ground of its convening and normative powers.

In the year 2000 the UN Millennium Summit led to the establishment of eight Millennium Development Goals, with targets to be reached by the end of 2015.  These goals helped both highlight neglected issues and mobilize additional resources – galvanizing action on health, on education and on gender equality.   
As the timetable for these goals was set to expire there was a question mark over the UN’s ability to secure consensus among its member states on a new set of credible goals.

In 2012 Ban established an independent 27-person panel to make recommendations on the design of new goals.  It was co-chaired by the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Indonesia, Yudonoho, and British Prime Minister David Cameron.  I was seconded at the time to the Cabinet Office to advise the Prime Minister - through his envoy - on navigating the various UN processes.

In 2013 the Panel produced its report entitled “A New Global Partnership”.   The report concluded that the post-2015 development agenda must focus on five transformative shifts to remain fit for purpose.

They were:
1. Leaving no one behind.  We can be the first generation in human history to end hunger and ensure that every person achieves a basic standard of wellbeing. 
2. Putting sustainable development at the core, acting now to halt climate change and bring about social inclusion.
3. Transforming economies for jobs and inclusive growth.  Diversified economies with equal opportunities for all, to unleash dynamism and creativity, to create jobs especially for young people and for women.
4. Building peace, and effective open and accountable institutions.  A strength but also a weakness of the MDGs was that they focused on outputs – the amount of children attending school or the number vaccinated.  It did not capture some of the essential ingredients that underlie successful development.   These include the rule of law, freedom of speech and the media, open political choice, access to justice and accountable government. A transparency revolution is also needed so all citizens can see exactly where taxes, aid and revenues from extractive industries are spent.
5. Forging a new global partnership.  A new spirit of solidarity, cooperation and mutual accountability between North and South. Putting our own house in order – reducing corruption, illicit financial flows, money-laundering, tax evasion and hidden ownership of assets. 
 
A crucial enabler will be the use of smart phone technology, social media, and crowd sourcing – part of a statistical data revolution.

The panel proposed 12 indicative goals.  The UN General Assembly – after intergovernmental negotiations – unanimously agreed in September (2015) a new set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, largely based on the five key shifts narrative.   Retaining key goals on gender equality, hunger, poverty, health and education, there were new goals for energy, for infrastructure as well as peace and accountable institutions – the means as well as the ends.

So this initial test of the UN’s convening and normative power – its ability to chart a new fifteen-year roadmap for international action on development – has been passed.

But four key challenges lie ahead:

First, each country must set and feel ownership of credible targets and indicators.

Second, sources of funding must be secured from traditional and innovative sources

Third the new goal framework must be integrated with whatever agreement emerges on climate change in Paris next month (December 2015).

Fourth, The UN must break down its own siloed institutional responses in order to respond to the convergence of development, humanitarian assistance and conflict management.

The convergence of conflict and poverty.  One half of the world’s poor can currently be found in fragile states, and this is projected to rise to 80% by 2025.  

Traditional aid is becoming less important than remittances – which are already three times greater than aid and growing; less than foreign investment; and less than taxation raised by developing country governments.  

Developing country governments can frequently now choose whether they accept “aid” with donor preferences and accountability strings, or foreign investment – in some cases with bribes or loss of future ownership attached.

Development will increasingly be more about policy choices and harnessing new technological, scientific, engineering and medical breakthroughs than about donor-recipient financial relationships.

Climate change
One of the greatest challenges facing humankind is that of climate change.  The UN has contributed in two ways.   
First it has provided, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a forum for the world’s scientists to present a coordinated and authoritative evidence base.   This has convinced almost all governments that climate change is influenced by human activity, that it is a real threat, and that unchecked the situation will get worse.  

Second the UN has provided a process for a political agreement among member states to take shape – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Progress on this track has been slow and halting.   The summit at Copenhagen in 2009 was a significant disappointment.   
But in the run up to a crucial conference in Paris next month (December 2015) an innovative approach in global negotiation has been emerging.  Instead of the UN Secretariat or General Assembly seeking to agree and then impose a top-down solution, countries have been encouraged to put forward their own voluntary commitments.

So far these commitments – which include the US, China, India and the EU - account for 86% of global greenhouse gas emissions.   The UN’s top climate official Christiana Figueres has said that the commitments made prior to Paris have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to 2.7% centigrade by 2100.   This is still more than the 2% that scientists believe will lead to catastrophic consequences.   And these are only commitments – countries may not live up to them.   But it does mean that averting disaster is still possible.   We first need an agreement in Paris – which I believe will be achieved - and then a mechanism to ratchet-up commitments as technological breakthroughs make this possible.
 
A combination of tremendous human ingenuity and public pressure will be needed.  On the former, the UK’s scientists and companies have been leading the way in renewable energy efficiency breakthroughs – in tidal power, in offshore wind, and just this month has seen breakthroughs from Imperial College London in hydrogen power, Oxford University spin off Oxford Photovoltaic in commercialization of innovative perovskite solar cells, and in Cambridge more stable Lithium-air batteries five times lighter than current designs.  Batteries enable us to store power from the wind and sun, turning renewable energy from an intermittent source to an on demand one.

There is much we can and must do as individuals to play our part – in our own choices about our travel, our energy use, and our consumption.
Security Council reform

Are the intergovernmental structures of the United Nations fit for purpose?   In particular can the composition or voting procedures of the UN Security Council be changed to make it more representative and accountable but retain its effectiveness?  Currently the Council consists of the five permanent members and ten members elected from the General Assembly for two-year terms.

     Composition
The main advocates for change in the Council’s composition are countries that would like to become permanent members.   Four of these, Brazil, India, Japan and Germany have made common cause, calling themselves the G4, and seeking permanent seats for themselves as well as for key African countries.  
The main obstacle to their aspirations are their regional rivals, who don’t want to be permanently relegated to a lesser status at the UN.

These rivals – Italy opposes Germany, Argentina and Mexico oppose Brazil, Pakistan objects to India, a host of African countries object to Nigeria and South Africa - have created a rival “Uniting for Consensus” group – very Orwellian sounding.  The drafters of the Charter made amending it very difficult.  It requires two stages – first a vote in the GA (two-thirds majority) then two-thirds of world’s parliaments, including at that stage all of the P5 governments.

So that produces a stalemate since both these groups are always able to generate enough votes – one third plus one vote - to block any proposal.  They prefer the status quo, however flawed, to any particular proposal that would disadvantage them.

Over recent years there’s been discussion of compromise “intermediate” or “semi-permanent” seats – perhaps 10 year renewable seats, but as yet none have inspired a sufficient majority of States.

Key to unlocking this stalemate will be the African position – codified at Ezuwini which seeks two permanent seats with veto for Africa, and China which is firmly opposed to Japan becoming a permanent member.

     Veto

The issue of reform of the veto has become more prominent in the wake of Russia’s use of the veto in relation to the Ukraine, and Russia and China on Syria.  The proposal from a 2004 UN expert panel that the P5 should voluntarily refrain from use of the veto in cases of Council action to prevent atrocity crimes – genocide, war crimes etc. – has come back into discussion.   First with the French government arguing for a code of conduct, and then the Elders making a valuable related proposal.   The UK government has declared that it would not use its veto to block a Council response in such a situation, as long as the action proposed was a credible one.

However for different reasons China, the US and Russia are all firmly opposed to placing prior restraints on their use of the veto.
Instead countries supportive of the West’s position on Syria and the Ukraine – echoing the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution of 1950 over Korea – put to the vote in the Assembly resolutions virtually identical to those previously vetoed in the Council, attempting to add the moral force of the Assembly’s voice on those issues.   But such Assembly resolutions can only recommend they cannot overrule a Council veto.

In the face of this structural impasse on membership and voting it would be easy to think that Council legitimacy will inevitably decline.  I think this is wrong for two reasons.

First, approximately 90% of Council resolutions, on a wide range of issues, continue to be passed by consensus – the US/Russian disagreements on the above two issues has not contaminated the wider work of the Council authorizing and supervising peace operations and political missions across the world.
Second, the Council has evolved considerably in the way that it works despite only limited membership reform.  This includes innovations in friends and contact groups, and peacekeeping consultations, leading to greater transparency and the empowerment and inclusion of non-Council members in decision-making.   Given that the majority of Council time is spent on addressing conflicts in the Africa and the Middle East, I think there is a strong case for giving greater agency to African countries, and to the African Union and sub-regional organizations, in decisions relating to African conflict prevention and resolution.  This could include the initial drafting – called penholding – of resolutions, and the tools used to address conflicts.  AU peace operations approved by the Security Council could be funded by UN assessed peacekeeping contributions.

Peace and Security*
UN peacekeeping and political missions have contributed significantly to the reduction of conflict worldwide, and recognition of that should not be overshadowed by the challenges presented by wars in Syria and elsewhere.

But to be fit for purpose in fulfilling its primary purpose in the future, the UN will need to adapt.

Conflict is increasingly transnational in nature, but UN responses -  both peacekeeping and the situations assigned to the peace building commission - have tended to have a country-specific focus.  This is despite a clear trend toward regional approaches, regional organizations and regional mediation.

New robust models of peace operations may need to be developed to tackle transnational threats, terrorism and organised criminal violence.

Groups such as ISIL, Al Qaeda or Boko Haram actively target UN humanitarian workers and oppose the principles underlying the UN Charter.  But they rely on a wider support base of people that are less ideologically motivated.   We can “drain the swamp” (to use Kofi Annan’s phrase) that supports terrorist action by providing political and economic incentives to this wider base (e.g. disaffected Bathists or Sunni tribespeople in Iraq).

The UN has for many years maintained a blind spot on political economies of conflict, and on organized crime.   This has particularly plighted a number of central and Latin American countries.   The new Sustainable Development Goals recognize that addressing criminal violence will be a crucial element of successful development.

The recent UN expert report on peacebuilding highlighted the need for a less siloed approach with a new concept of “sustaining peace” to be adopted by the UN system as a whole, covering the arc from conflict prevention through to reconstruction after conflict, it also highlighted the need for better UN leadership, greater local ownership, and more predictable financing.

The UN will also need to reflect on whether the responsibility to protect concept has become too divisive in the wake of Libya and whether the next Secretary-General will want to put forward a new conception of the responsibilities of states.

The UN Charter was not written with the threats of cyber-attacks or drones in mind, and so the UN must consider how international humanitarian and human rights laws can best be applied to these new means of waging war.

The UN must also adapt to changes in member state approaches to international engagement.   Will an increasingly energy-independent US (because of shale gas and renewables) be as keen to intervene abroad?  What differences would a President Hillary Clinton – or a President Donald Trump - bring?

The Group of 77 developing countries have traditionally been wary of invoking Chapter VII resolutions in the Security Council, but a split has been gradually emerging between countries such as India which retains a strong anti-interventionist approach to sovereignty, and others, particularly African states and middle eastern states, who have come out more strongly in favour of robust peace enforcement mandates – admittedly on a case by case basis.  This includes the Arab League regarding Libya, the AU on Mali, the DRC, and Boko Haram, and the Gulf Cooperation Council on Yemen).  And Chinese generals involved in UN peace operations in Africa have come closer to Western approaches to robust peacekeeping.

Whither peacekeeping?
Indeed a UN Summit in September convened by President Obama witnessed something of a renaissance in support for UN peacekeeping - it saw major new pledges including 40,000 peacekeepers, 40 helicopters and 10 field hospitals, from 50 countries.

The UK has unexpectedly agreed to send personnel to South Sudan and to Somalia, after years of confining our contributions to Cyprus.

Most significant of all is China’s offer to contribute 8000 troops for a UN peacekeeping standby force, to lead in setting up a permanent peacekeeping police squad, and providing $100 million in military assistance to the African Union to help establish an Afican standby force.  This is part of a new 10 year, $1 billion China-UN peace and development fund.

Women, Peace and Security
It has been 15 years since the UN Security Council adopted the landmark resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.
 
A study to mark this anniversary by UN Women found:

* Greater numbers of women peacekeepers and police in missions was critical in gaining trust in communities.   The more female police, the higher the reporting rate of sexual assault.
* More women are needed in UN mission leadership roles – but it is getting better – in the last four years between 15% and 25% of UN field missions were led by women.  
* And in the summer of 2014 40% of ambassadors on the UN Security Council were women – a record.  
* Involving women in peace negotiations is effective, the statistics show.  Negotiations influenced by women are more likely to end in agreement and to endure.  
* Progress is being made - last year half of all signed peace agreements contained references to the role of women.
* The report also urged that a special international court should be set up to try peacekeepers responsible for sexual abuse.

Human rights
The UN faces significant challenges in advancing human rights, with the risk that the lesson drawn from Syria, Iraq and Libya is that human rights abusing dictators are preferable to the chaos that can be unleashed by their overthrow.

The UK has also cited sovereignty concerns for its plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights.   The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights did not pull his punches in response:

“If Britain – a key member of the human rights council, a founding member of the UN and a privileged, permanent member of the security council – is considering a move that will potentially weaken a vital regional institution upholding fundamental human rights guarantees, this would be profoundly regrettable.  Moreover, many other states, where civil society is currently threatened, may gleefully follow suit.  Surely this is a legacy no British government would wish to inspire.”

Appointment of a new Secretary-General

Leadership matters in any organization, but especially for the role of the UN Secretary-General.  He or she relies greatly on the power of persuasion, the skill to remain impartial yet effective in order to speak with moral authority, and the agility to innovate so that the UN itself learns and adapts.

So the appointment to succeed Ban Ki-moon before he leaves office at the end of next year (2016) will be a critical one.

The process for appointing a Secretary-General has only the briefest mention in the UN Charter – he or she will be appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.  In practice the Security Council has always only recommended one candidate who is then rubberstamped by the Assembly.  And the decision of the Council is subject to the veto of the permanent members.

Four organizations, including UNA-UK, have established a  campaign named “1 for 7 Billion”, which seeks to ensure a wider field of candidates, a clear job description and a more public and accountable selection process for the UN’s top job.  It also proposes that the Council should nominate three candidates for the Assembly to choose from, although there are of course risks that this might politically split the Assembly.

Ultimately the choice of SG will remain a political one.
The first consideration will be from which of the five UN-designated regional groups a candidate should come.   There is no explicit agreement on regional rotation.  Three of the first four Secretaries-General were from Western Europe  (Norway, Sweden and Austria – the other was U Thant from Burma).   But the most recent four Secretaries-General were from Peru, Egypt, Ghana and South Korea.  So there is a sense that it is the turn of Eastern Europe.   But agreement of Russia and the US on a candidate from that region may be difficult – and a lot may depend on the state of their cooperation over Ukraine and Syria at the time of the appointment.

If no agreement on an eastern European is found then attention may well go to Latin America and the Caribbean, or to a candidate from the Western Europe and Others Group.  

I think it is frankly time for a female Secretary-General, after eight men in a row – nine if you count the acting Secretary-General in 1945, Gladwyn Jebb – and there are plenty of good candidates (female and male) to chose from.  

Likely candidates from Eastern Europe include:
Two leading Bulgarian candidates, Kristalina Georgieva (an EU Commissioner) and Irina Bokova (the Director General of UNESCO).  
Dalia Grybauskait?, the President of Lithuania.   Her nationality means, however, that she is unlikely to be acceptable to Russia.  
Danilo Türk, former President of Slovenia and former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs has said he will stand.   He is the Eastern European candidate with the most in-depth direct experience of the UN.
There are also plenty of candidates from Latin America waiting in the wings.  These include:
Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile and former head of UN Women
Maria Angela Holguin, foreign minister of Colombia
Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil.
I also wouldn’t rule out Susana Malcorra, Ban’s chef de cabinet from Argentina (who has now become that country’s Foreign Minister).
And then from the Western Europe and Others Group:
Antonio Guterres of Portugal, high commissioner for refugees
Helen Clark, former President of New Zealand and head of UNDP
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who grew up in East Germany, speaks fluent Russian, and is facing challenges in her current role because of her strong stance on admitting refugees into Germany.  

Whoever is chosen, she will face the challenges of what Trygve Lie, the first Secretary-General, famously described as “the most impossible job in the world”.

Concluding remarks
I will end with some words from Evan Luard’s book “Peace and Opinion”.  Luard was a believer in the power of public opinion in changing the behavior of governments.   Moreover he encouraged idealists to become good strategists.   In his own words:
“Mankind’s deepest aspirations for security, love – and life itself – encourage us to devise Utopian pictures of that type of society which all aspire to.  The drawback of such imaginative exercises is that they normally ignore all the steps which must be traversed in between.  Any practical scheme must consider means as well as ends; map out the route as well as the goal.   And only a careful examination of the way nations in fact behave can serve to discover the most likely routes.”

The world was of course more state-centred when Luard wrote those words.   Today it is not just the way nations behave that we have to assess and navigate to craft a better world – it is a multiplicity of other actors that have benign or malign influence – human rights activists, billionaire philanthropists, city governments and multinational companies, computer hackers, transnational terrorist groups and organized crime syndicates.

Luard’s words remind us that the United Nations is a unique, precious and potentially fragile experiment in humankind’s recent history.  Its continued survival – and I hope flourishing as a fit for purpose organization – relies in no small part on continued public advocacy for a fairer, sustainable and more peaceful world – backed by cogent arguments for why a strong, credible and effective United Nations is also firmly in the national interest.   

Such advocacy has been one of the great contributions of the United Nations Association and its many branches around the UK over the last seven decades - and I would like to conclude with a deep thank you to your President, your hardworking officers and all those among you who have toiled for many years to keep the UN ideal alive.

The section on peace and security in this lecture draws largely on the valuable insights of an unpublished April 2015 lecture by Michèle Griffin, Director for Policy Planning in the Office of the UN Secretary-General, entitled “The Changing Global Landscape and its Implications for the UN”.

Biographical note on the Lecturer
Sam Daws has worked for or with the UN for over 25 years. He served as First Officer to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and then spent six years as the Executive Director of the UN Association UK. He has since worked for the British Government in UN-related roles in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office. He has co-authored or edited 13 books on the UN, including The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.
Sam is currently a senior research associate in Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, where he directs a research project on UN Governance and Reform.




The Evan Luard Lectures


These annual lectures are in honour of (David) Evan Trant Luard (31 October 1926 – 8 February 1991), better known as Evan Luard, MP for Oxford, 1966-70 and again from October 1974. He was educated at  Felsted School and  King's College, Cambridge, where he gained a First in Modern Languages. In 1950, he joined the  Diplomatic Service, and after learning Chinese was stationed in Peking from 1952 to 1954. In 1956 he resigned from the diplomatic service in protest at Britain's involvement in the Suez Crisis.


He became a research fellow at  St Antony's College, Oxford in 1957 where he was able to research Chinese relations with Britain. He was a Labour councillor on Oxford City Council from 1958 to 1961. Evan Luard contested the Oxford parliamentary constituency for Labour in 1964, and in 1966 was elected. In 1970 he lost his seat but was re-elected in October 1974. He served as a  Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office from 1969 till 1970 and again from 1976 until Labour left power in 1979. He joined the SDP soon after its formation, and contested the 1983 General Election for the party in the newly formed constituency of Oxford West and Abingdon. He was de-selected in 1987 in favour of Chris Huhne.


Luard is also known for his sociological theories including the hierarchy theory. His exhaustive study of war, War in International Society: A Study in International Sociology, was published in Britain in 1986 and by Yale University Press in the United States in 1987.


Evan Luard Lectures: 16 October 2002: The Rt Reverend Richard Harries, “The Just War”. 13 November 2007: Professor Sir Adam Roberts, “Guantanamo Bay and all that”. 25 November 2008: General Sir Hugh Beach, “The Hydropolitics of Palestine”. 10 November 2009: Dr Nigel Bowles, “Barack Obama and Changes in American Foreign Policy”. 30 November 2010: Professor Richard Caplan, “Humanitarian Intervention” 7 November 2011: Dr Michael Willis, “The Arab Spring”. 4 December 2012: Douglas Hurd, Lord Hurd of Westwell, “A New Role for the United Nations - the Right to Protect”.

'A New Role for the United Nations -
The Right to Protect'
Lord Hurd of Westwell

4 December 2012