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This spring four social entrepreneurs will be descending on the Stanford campus from as far away as Bosnia, Palestine, and Kenya and as close as San Francisco, to spend the quarter at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) engaging researchers and students across the university. These social change leaders are part of the newly launched Program on Social Entrepreneurship at CDDRL, which brings the work of practitioners to the Stanford classroom where it is rarely on display.

Social entrepreneurs use new approaches and innovative methods to challenge existing systems that keep people socially, economically, and politically marginalized. Rather than generating personal or private wealth, dividends are paid directly to society through new programs, advocacy campaigns, and more.

The first cohort of Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS) includes leaders working on the frontlines of gender justice and social reform in societies that have experienced civil war, ethnic division, and continued economic and social injustice. Zawadi Nyong'o and Taida Horozovic are both advancing the rights of women and girls in regions affected by violent conflict. Nyong'o, a Kenyan Afro-feminist, leads several initiatives across the African continent to advance the reproductive rights of women and sexual minorities, and works to promote a more participatory role for women in peace-building efforts. After fleeing the civil war in the 1990s, Horozovic returned to her home in Bosnia-Herzegovina to launch CURE, an organization committed to ending gender violence through educational awareness, media tools, and global campaigns.

The Program looks forward to welcoming the first class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to Stanford this April where they will have the opportunity to develop their initiatives further, enrich themselves in our academic community, and bring their experiences directly inside the classroom for students to learn first-hand about the realities on the ground.    Kavita Ramdas

Confronting racial and political injustice in their local communities, Ramzi Jaber and Steve Williams initiated innovative projects to give voice and resonance to these important issues. Jaber, a member of the Palestinian diaspora, returned to the West Bank to launch Visualizing Palestine, an initiative that uses visual stories and graphics to build international awareness around past and present injustices. Jaber was also the key organizer of the first TEDx conference in Ramallah in 2011, to give a global platform to Palestinian activists and change-makers. Williams, a Stanford graduate (‘92), co-founded the organization POWER, a grassroots organization that works to defend the rights of low income workers, immigrant women, and advocates for housing justice in some of San Francisco's poorer communities.

The Program on Social Entrepreneurship is led by two faculty co-directors, Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL deputy director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Deborah Rhode, the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession at the Stanford Law School. Kavita N. Ramdas serves as the Program's executive director and brings her relevant experience as the former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women where she worked to identify and support an international network of social entrepreneurs. 


Beginning in April, the SEERS will spend eight weeks at Stanford plugging into the academic community and benefiting from a brief respite from their professional lives to reflect on their experiences and recharge their batteries. Ramdas and Stoner-Weiss will be teaching a course (IR 142) examining how social entrepreneurs contribute to shaping democracy, development, and creating more just societies.According to Ramdas, "The Program looks forward to welcoming the first class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to Stanford this April where they will have the opportunity to develop their initiatives further, enrich themselves in our academic community, and bring their experiences directly inside the classroom for students to learn first-hand about the realities on the ground."

Students enrolled in the course will work with the social entrepreneurs to develop case studies that examine, document, and share lessons learned from their work. With little original research available on social entrepreneurship, this is a rare opportunity for the Stanford community to examine new practices and approaches to promoting social and economic change, highlighting what has worked and failed to work. Guest lecturers include leaders from IDEO.org and Lulan Artisans, as well as faculty members Sarah Soule of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Professor Emeritus David Abernethy.

In addition to the course, the SEERS will be featured in events and gatherings on campus hosted by the Faculty Advisory Council whose members hail from the Haas Center for Public Service, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Stanford Law School, the Stanford School of Medicine, the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Graduate School of Business. The Launch of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship will be hosted at CDDRL on April 5 at 5:30 pm to introduce the SEERS to the larger Stanford community and kick-off their eight-week residency. It is free and open to the general public.

The Program is planning to welcome the second class of social entrepreneurs to Stanford during the fall of the 2012-13 academic year. Focusing on using legal frameworks as a force for change, the program will solicit nominations from experts in the field who have engaged with leaders working to transform and improve legal structures that challenge prevailing inequalities or protect the rights of marginalized groups in society.

For more information on the Program on Social Entrepreneurship, the Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford, or to view the calendar of events during their stay, please visit: pse.stanford.edu. 

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The hegemony of the democratic ideal may be waning. Until recently, even the custodians of dictatorships claimed democratic status for their regimes. Many still do. But other rulers now drop the pretense of democracy and claim that their nondemocratic regimes provide the people with conditions that are superior to those found in democracies. They portray themselves as demophiles rather than democrats, and claim that their concern for their people provides a superior alternative to popular control over the state. What is more, some actually do pursue policies that differ meaningfully from the predation that characterizes the behavior of elites in many nondemocratic regimes. How may we understand contemporary demophily, and how does it challenge democracy?

Speaker Bio:

M. Steven Fish is a comparative political scientist who studies democracy and regime change in developing and postcommunist countries, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. He is the author of Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (Oxford, 2011). He is also author of Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge, 2005), which was the recipient of the Best Book Award of 2006, presented by the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association, and Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1995). He is coauthor of The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey (Cambridge, 2009) and Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton, 2001). He served as a Senior Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia, in 2007 and at the European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2000-2001. In 2005, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Social Sciences Teaching Award of the Colleges of Letters and Science, University of California-Berkeley.

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M. Steven Fish Political Scientist Speaker UC Berkeley
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This event is co-sponsored with The Europe Center

Abstract:

Ruby Gropas is a lecturer in international relations at the law faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini) and research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Gropas was in residence at CDDRL in 2011 as a visiting scholar. In this seminar she will discuss the ongoing Greek economic and political crisis, and what it means for the future of the European Union and monetary system. Is the crisis in Greece ‘internal’ or is it symptomatic of a wider European failure? Is the Greek crisis the result of failed modernity, or rather a precursor of things to come? Why has Greece become so important and why has it dominated global politics and world news for the past two years?  Are its malignancies purely domestic or are they representative of a wider malaise within Europe and possibly beyond? The collapse and orderly default of a eurozone country at the heart of the Western financial system arguably marks the end of an era. It has brought with it the deepest social and political crisis that modern Greecehas faced since the restoration of democracy and it has also led to Europe's deepest existential crisis. With the EU struggling to effectively managing the eurozone crisis and the burst of recent movements opposing neo-liberal orthodoxy and the “Occupy” movements – what does this mean for Europe? And what is next?

Speaker Bio: 

Ruby Gropas has worked on asylum and migration issues for UNHCR in Brussels and worked for McKinsey & Co. in Zurich and Athens (2000-2002). As part of the ELIAMEP team, her research concentrates on European integration and foreign policy, Transatlantic relations, human rights, migration and multiculturalism. She was Managing Editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (Taylor & Francis) between January 2006 and October 2009. Ruby has taught at the University of Athens and at College Year in Athens. She was Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC in 2007 and again in 2009. She is Vice-President of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholars' Association since June 2009, and was Member of the Academic Organisation Committee of the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Civil Society Days, Athens 2009.

Ruby studied Political Science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (1994) and undertook graduate studies at the University of Leuven (MA in European Studies) and at Cambridge University (MPhil in International Relations). She holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University (New Hall, 2000).

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Ruby Gropas is Lecturer in International Relations at the Law Faculty of the Democritus University of Thrace (Komotini) and Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

Ruby has worked on asylum and migration issues for UNHCR in Brussels and worked for McKinsey & Co. in Zurich and Athens (2000-2002). As part of the ELIAMEP team, her research concentrates on European integration and foreign policy, Transatlantic relations, human rights, migration and multiculturalism. She was Managing Editor of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (Taylor & Francis) between January 2006 and October 2009. Ruby has taught at the University of Athens and at College Year in Athens. She was Southeast Europe Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC in 2007 and again in 2009. She is Vice-President of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholars' Association since June 2009, and was Member of the Academic Organisation Committee of the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Civil Society Days, Athens 2009.

Ruby studied Political Science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (1994) and undertook graduate studies at the University of Leuven (MA in European Studies) and at Cambridge University (MPhil in International Relations). She holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University (New Hall, 2000).

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Ruby Gropas Lecturer in International Relations at the Law Faculty of the Speaker Democritus University of Thrance (Komotini)
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Steve Hilton, senior advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, will join Stanford as a visiting scholar at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Hilton, who will also be a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, will arrive in May and spend his year on campus teaching, researching and writing.

“We look forward to having Steve Hilton in residence at FSI starting later this spring,” said Coit Blacker, FSI’s director. “Lively and engaging, Steve is certain to bring a fresh perspective to many of the issues and challenges that are of ongoing concern to our faculty, fellows and students.”

As Cameron’s top advisor, Hilton’s primary responsibility is the development and implementation of domestic policy. He specializes in the promotion of enterprise and economic growth, public service reform, family policy, decentralization, and government transparency and accountability.

Hilton will focus on innovation in government, public services and communities around the world while at Stanford. He will work with a wide range of centers and organizations across the university, including FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center; the Graduate School of Business' Center for Social Innovation; the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society; and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

"I'm delighted to be joining the academic community at Stanford and greatly look forward to an exhilarating and productive year,” Hilton said. “It will be a huge pleasure to be able to focus on our most pressing social and governmental challenges."

Before Cameron’s election as prime minister in 2010, Hilton served as his chief strategist and developed the ideas associated with the modernization of the British Conservative Party.

Hilton previously ran Good Business, a corporate responsibility consulting firm, and is the author of Good Business: Your World Needs You. The book makes the case for businesses to play a more direct and active role in advancing social progress.

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The brief war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 provoked vigorous international reactions among the European states as consequence of the sudden shift in the strategic balance. This article argues for a focus on the great powers France, Germany and Britain as crucial actors for understanding the policy reactions towards Russia. It argues furthermore that reactions must be explained from the perspective of experience based on past geopolitics which translate the external pressures into concrete foreign policy: France oriented towards the creation of a strong EU as global actor, Germany influenced by her self-imposed restraint in foreign affairs and Britain influenced by Atlanticist commitments in her balancing behaviour. Beyond the Russo-Georgian war, the article points to an interest-based foreign policy approach towards Russia in the longer term driven by a great power concert with the Franco-German axis as stable element but increasingly with backing from Britain, thus contributing to transatlantic foreign policy convergence on the issue.

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Routledge: European Security
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Henrik Larsen
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36th Annual Stanford - Berkeley Conference on Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

 

 From Prague Spring to Arab Spring:  Global and Comparative Perspectives on Protest and Revolution,

1968-2012

 Friday, March 2, 2012

9:30 am - 5:00 pm

McCaw Hall, Arrillaga Alumni Center, Stanford 

9:30 a.m.

Coffee

9:45 a.m.

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Robert Crews (Director, Stanford CREEES)

 10:-00 – 11:45

Panel One – Who Makes Revolutions?

Chair:  Katherine Jolluck (Stanford) 

Jane Curry (Santa Clara Univ.), “Media - New and Old:  How It Has Made Protest and Revolutions” 

Joel Beinin (Stanford), “Working Classes and Regime Change in Egypt and Poland” 

Edith Sheffer (Stanford), “Global 1989?”  

1:00 – 3:00

Panel Two – How (Some) Revolutionaries Prevail and Others Fail

Chair: Gail Lapidus  (Stanford)

 Cihan Tuğal (UCB), “Islam and Neoliberalism in the Revolutionary Process”

 Sean Hanretta (Stanford), “The Arab Spring and West Africa: Influences and Consequences” 

Djordje Padejski (Stanford), “Serbian Fall:  Lessons from a Democratic Revolution”  

Natalya Koulinka (Stanford), “A Revolution that Persistently Fails:  The Case of Belarus” 

3:00-3:15

Break 

3:15 - 4:45

Panel Three – Interpreting Protest Movements

Chair: John Dunlop (Stanford)

Jason Wittenberg (UCB), “Political Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Hungary” 

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss (Stanford), “Arab Spring, Slavic Winter?” 

Edward Walker (UCB), “The Collapse of Soviet Socialism and the Arab Spring Compared” 

4:45-5:00

Closing Remarks

Yuri Slezkine (Director, UCB ISEEES) 

 

Co-sponsored by: the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at Stanford University, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers program

 

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Robert Crews Speaker CREEES
Katherine Jolluck Speaker Stanford
Jane Curry Santa Clara University Speaker
Joel Beinin Speaker Stanford
Edith Sheffer Speaker Stanford
Gail W. Lapidus Speaker Stanford
Cihan Tugal Speaker UCB
Sean Hanretta Speaker Stanford
Djordje Padejski Speaker Stanford
Natalya Koulinka Speaker Stanford
Jason Wittenbrg Speaker UCB

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Stanford University
Encina Hall C140
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation at FSI. From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and she teaches in the Department of Political Science, and in the Program on International Relations, as well as in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 2004, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Princeton School for International and Public Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School). At Princeton she received the Ralph O. Glendinning Preceptorship awarded to outstanding junior faculty. She also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University. She has held fellowships at Harvard University as well as the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author or co-editor of six books: "Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective," written and edited with Michael A. McFaul (Johns Hopkins 2013);  "Autocracy and Democracy in the Post-Communist World," co-edited with Valerie Bunce and Michael A. McFaul (Cambridge, 2010);  "Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia" (Cambridge, 2006); "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions" (Cambridge, 2004), coedited with Michael McFaul; and "Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional" Governance (Princeton, 1997); and "Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order" (Oxford University Press, 2021).

She received a BA (1988) and MA (1989) in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University (1995). In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iliad State University, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Stanford University
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Hoover Institution
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Kathryn Stoner-Weiss Speaker Stanford
Edward Walker Speaker UCB
Yuri Slezkine Speaker UCB ISEEES
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Michael Aagaard Seeberg is a CDDRL visiting researcher in winter and spring 2012, while researching on his PhD project titled “Democracy Against the Odds”. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark in the fall 2013.

Michael Seeberg’s PhD project seek to understand the emergence of stable (though minimalist) democracy in a number of countries despite low levels of modernization, lack of democratic neighboring countries and other factors consistently related to democratic stability in the literature. Cases in point are Ghana, India, Mauritius and Mongolia. The study of deviant democracies can give us some leverage in understanding the determinants of democracy – determinants that have not really been uncovered yet. Current accounts stress the absence of ‘damaging factors’ as decisive for the successful emergence of democracy. With the project, Michael Seeberg hope to refine existing explanations of democratization while, on the other hand identify the positive drivers that also contributed to new stable democracies. The overall aim is to build a foundation for a better understanding of why some regime changes result in stable democracies whereas others are stuck as hybrid regimes or return to the set of outright autocracies.

Prior to his PhD studies, Michael Seeberg has been a visiting scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle, assistant attaché at the Danish Mission to the United Nations in New York, and a visiting scholar at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark. He holds an MSc in political science from Aarhus University. Concurrently with his PhD studies, Michael Seeberg is engaged in the Scouts in Denmark, where he is a member of the executive board at the YMCA Scouts, and member of the Steering Committee for the Project supporting Guiding and Scouting in Eastern and Central Europe.

 

Publications

  • "Mongolian Miracles and Central Asian Disappointments: Nomadic Culture, Clan Politics and the 16. Soviet Republic”, Politica, 2009, 41(3): 315-330.

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Isabelle Delpla is assistant professor of philosophy, HDR in philosophy and political science, University Montpellier III, and member of the Research Center Triangle (UMR CNRS 5206). Her research focuses on the relation between philosophy and anthropology and on international ethics and justice. She has carried out fieldwork in postwar Bosnia (with victim associations; warcrime trial prosecution and defense witnesses; and convicted war criminals). Her work on postwar Bosnia deals with the Srebrenica massacre, the reception of the International criminal tribunal (ICTY) and the status of victim and witnesses (see Peines de la guerre, La justice pénale internationale et l’ex-Yougoslavie, coedited with M. Bessone, EHESS, 2010 et Investigating Srebrenica, coedited with X. Bougarel et J.-L. Fournel, Berghahn, forthcoming in 2012; Viols en temps de guerre, Paris, Payot, 2011, coedited with R. Branche, F. Virgili,  J. Horne, P. Lagrou, D Palmieri). On this basis, she is developing a (philosophical) attempt at moving beyond moral and political solipsism in a general theorizing of international ethics and justice (See Le mal en procès. Eichmann et les théodicées modernes, Hermann, 2011).

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Isabelle Delpla Professor of Philosophy Speaker University of Montpellier III
Norman Naimark Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies Moderator Stanford University, FSI Senior Fellow by courtesy
Helen Stacy Director Moderator Program on Human Rights
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About the topic: When democracy returned to Pakistan, Americans and Pakistanis had high expectations of an improved partnership. Those expectations have not been met: The events of 2011 were hard on both sides, and pushed the relationship to a series of dangerous crises. What can we expect in 2012 and beyond, not only in bilateral ties, but in the plans both countries have for regional stability in South Asia?

About the Speaker: Cameron Munter was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan on October 6, 2010. Prior to his nomination, Ambassador Munter completed his tour of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He served there first as Political-Military Minister-Counselor in 2009, then as Deputy Chief of Mission for the first half of 2010. He served as Ambassador in Belgrade from 2007 to 2009.

In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Prague from 2005 to 2007 and in Warsaw from 2002 to 2005. Before these assignments, in Washington, he was Director for Central Europe at the National Security Council (1999-2001), Executive Assistant to the Counselor of the Department of State (1998-1999), Director of the Northern European Initiative (1998), and Chief of Staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office (1997-1998). His other domestic assignments include: Country Director for Czechoslovakia at the Department of State (1989-1991), and Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (1991).

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Cameron Munter U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Speaker
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On January 24, Madeline Rees, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights in Bosnia and secretary general for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, spoke at the second installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Speaker Series. Rees, has been working with the CDDRL Program on Human Rights to promote research on human trafficking, posed an interesting question: can extraterritorial jurisdiction — the legal ability of a government to exercise authority beyond its borders — be a tool for improving accountability for human rights abuse during peacekeeping operations?

Rees was referring to a situation that she experienced in Bosnia where peacekeepers reportedly abused, tortured and actively trafficked women and girls. She noted, however, that there have been similar situations and accusations of sexual exploitation and abuse, including sex trafficking, in U.N. missions ranging from Cambodia to Haiti to Congo since the 1990s. Rees argued that these abuses and the involvement of peacekeepers in human trafficking in particular, result from a combination of factors, which include:

  • The perception of immunity (based on UN peacekeepers status)
  • Impunity that results from the lack of specific legislation and enforcement mechanisms
  • Lack of formal training
  • Peer pressure
  • Patriarchic militarized model of peacekeeping

There has been some slow progress. Rees recalled that when she first brought up the issue of human trafficking to the U.N., laughter was a common response. Her struggle, portrayed in part in the recent film The Whistleblower, has enabled an open discussion within the U.N. In 2007, the U.N. created the Department of Field Support and made some structural changes, but these reforms have not yet addressed the heart of the problem. In part, Rees believes, this is because the U.N. has lacked the political will to hold peacekeepers accountable for their actions.

 

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