worldviews

Nigerien troops patrolling outside Dirkou, Niger, Aug. 6, 2018, a key transit hub near the border of Libya. The author describes how the G5 Sahel force, a French initiative to combat jihadists in the Sahel region, is struggling to be useful as violence in the area soars. JOE PENNEY
BAMAKO, Mali — The G5 Sahel Force was conceived to enable greater coordination among five countries in the Sahel region of West Africa in fighting jihadist groups and to strengthen regional administration and development while relieving the United Nations mission in Mali of those burdens.

A project of the UN Development Program has enabled the Aatral Arasi Palmyrah Crafts, a group in Sri Lanka, to grow. The author of this essay says, however, that in postwar societies, the private sector must play a major role in rebuilding societies to ensure lasting economic recovery. 
Another year of Secretary-General António Guterres’s reform of the peace and security pillar of the United Nations is ending without fully addressing a main obstacle to peacebuilding in conflict-torn countries under UN intervention: sustainable economic recovery.

A trip by the members of the UN Security Council, above background, to the Congo in October 2018 included meeting with female political candidates (front rows) who are competing in the country’s Dec. 23 elections. Recent murders of UN peacekeepers in the Congo raise the question as to whether the Council is clear on the consequences of peacekeepers becoming parties to a conflict. MICHAEL ALI/Monusco

The inaugural Paris Peace Forum brought in a range of attendees, who concentrated on “people-centered multilateralism,” the author writes. Here, among the VIPs: President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania, second from left; President Paul Kagame of Rwanda; Defense Minister Hamed Bakayoko of Ivory Coast; President Alpha Conde of Guinea. 

President Trump with, from left, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, at the G7 lunch in Canada, June 9, 2018. The author suggests Japan should work closely with Europe to uphold the UN and multilateralism amid the US void.  

A road traffic company, made up of the Central African National police with assistance from UN police, above, regulates traffic and writes accident reports in the capital, Bangui. The country is on the verge of either a breakthrough to peace or relapsing into a civil war. HERVE SEREFIO/MINUSCA

Activists in London, June 2018, protesting the war in Yemen. Aircraft flown by Saudi coalition pilots but serviced by British and Americans and armed with their bombs, have been targeting Yemeni civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and, for a year, the main port in Hodeidah, through which 70 percent of Yemeni aid flows, starving the country. ALISDARE HICKSON/CREATIVE COMMONS

A participant at the 14th annual International Human Rights Summit of Youth for Human Rights, held at the UN on Aug. 25, 2017 and organized by Cambodia and Panama. As the world’s youth population surges, the UN is paying more attention to young people’s needs, but the author writes that the strategies could be more “gender sensitive.” 

Akuei Malwal, left, ambassador for South Sudan to the United Nations; Omer Dahab Fadl Mohamed, Sudan’s envoy; and Joanna Wronecka, Poland’s envoy, in the Security Council, Oct. 11, 2018. The authors suggest that the multilateralism system of the UN can be shored up despite the faltering leadership of America globally. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO

ISIS fighters entering Raqqa in 2013. In 2014, the jihadists committed genocide, including rape, against the Yazidi population in their ancestral home in northern Iraq. The authors list six explicit ways that rape as a weapon of war can be tackled in work on peace and stability. CREATIVE COMMONS