Scientific Articles
The UN Zero Tolerance Policy’s Whereabouts: On the Discordance between Politics and Law on the Internal-External Divide
Author:
Machiko Kanetake
University of Amsterdam, NL
About Machiko
Postdoctoral Researcher; MA (Sheffield), LLM (London), Ph.D (Kyoto). This paper is based on the author’s previous work: ‘Whose Zero Tolerance Counts? Reassessing a Zero Tolerance Policy Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN Peacekeepers’ (2010) 17 International Peacekeeping 200. A version of this paper was presented at the International Law Forum held at Kyoto University on 15 October 2011, and at the Workshop held at the ANU on 8-9 December 2011. The author thanks Róisín Burke, Hilary Charlesworth, Shotaro Hamamoto, Colin Keating, Bruce Oswald, Hironobu Sakai, and Mandira Sharma for their helpful comments
Abstract
Sex scandals involving UN peacekeepers have ignited media attention since the late 1990s. In order to reclaim its reputation, the UN has committed itself to the Zero Tolerance policy embodied in the Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 2003, which has been subject to detailed analysis. This paper’s aim is to reconsider the policy’s genesis and problems from the perspective of discordance between politics and law. I argue that the Zero Tolerance policy can be understood as the UN’s attempt to resolve discordance between political and legal lines which separate the UN (internality) from non-UN elements (externality). The political boundary internalises broader conduct and tasks within the UN. The legal boundary, however, externalises much of the conduct and tasks that are internalised by the political line. The place of the Zero Tolerance policy is therefore to substantially remedy such ‘discordance’ between politics and law, by aligning the policies of externalities with those of the UN.
How to Cite:
Kanetake, M., 2012. The UN Zero Tolerance Policy’s Whereabouts: On the Discordance between Politics and Law on the Internal-External Divide. Amsterdam Law Forum, 4(4), pp.51–61. DOI: http://doi.org/10.37974/ALF.235
Published on
01 Sep 2012.
Peer Reviewed
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