UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea

• Armed pirates hijacked ships as far away as 1,000 nautical miles from the Somali coast.
• The World Bank estimates that Somali pirates received more than US$400 million in ransom payments between 2005 and 2012.
• It was, therefore, generally held that the solution lay ashore: major state-building in Somalia to remove the root causes of piracy.

• What makes the Somali case special is the international community’s ability to agree to them and pay for their implementation.
• Further, Somali pirates were stopped even though the conditions onshore in Somalia didn’t improve in any major way.

Collective action

• Theoretically, the international community’s collective effort shouldn’t have happened because safety from piracy is a costly public good.
• The result is a collective action problem that’s rarely overcome in international politics.
• Our study sought to understand how and why the collective action problem was overcome.

What worked

• This induced France to take the lead in military action against the pirates.
• The US subsequently led with respect to formulating a comprehensive strategy to implement the four factors presented earlier.
• China and Russia supported the American-led strategy and launched their own naval operations because their ships were attacked as well.
• Second, the US established an institution, the Contact Group on Somali Piracy, tailor-made to formulate and implement a broad anti-piracy strategy.

Shared interests

• Somali piracy aligned great power, as well as private sector, regional and local state interests to an unusual degree.
• It was the high degree of shared interests among the many actors involved that made the Somali anti-piracy campaign so effective.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has reportedly offered his “full and unconditional support” to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to eastern Russia this week.
• Analysts speculate this could mean ammunition for Russia’s war in Ukraine, given North Korea is believed to have large quantities of ammunition compatible with Russian artillery.

How Russia can help the North militarily

• North Korea’s two failed spy satellite launches in the past several months suggest that it has problems with reliability.
• Russia could, in theory, offer North Korea missile technology know-how from decades of experience in weapons development, as well as advanced satellite technology.
• Russia might also be able to offer North Korea submarine technology, giving the regime an alternative means of launching nuclear weapons.
• What Russia certainly cannot provide North Korea is military aid on an industrial scale.

An offer of a new economic partner

• After the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program in 2009, many countries cut their trade ties with the regime.
• As a result, North Korea has opportunistically sought to redevelop ties with other countries to reduce its susceptibility to Chinese pressure.
• Pursuing Russia as a new economic partner opens up the rail route between Vladivostok and North Korea, as well as shipping routes between North Korea and eastern Russia, which have already played a role in the past in North Korea’s coal smuggling operations.
• Read more:
  Camp David summit turns attention to North Korea, as well as China

• Mass atrocity crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
• Amid the challenges facing the world today, the urgency of preventing mass atrocity crimes has taken centre stage.

Progress stagnating

• While there has been some success in efforts to curb these human rights abuses, such as the introduction of the United Nations’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine and the creation of the International Criminal Court, recent developments have raised concerns that progress has not only stagnated but regressed.
• Particularly troubling is the spectacle of two UN Security Council members — China and Russia — that stand accused of perpetrating mass atrocity crimes.

China, Russia ties

• The emerging alliance between authoritarian China and Russia is a grave cause for concern.
• During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Moscow, he told Putin:
  “Now there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years.
• When we are together, we drive these changes.”
  “Now there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years.

Four ways to uphold global human rights

• Countries that commit genocide within and outside their borders — not to mention imprisoning journalists, political opposition leaders and civil society groups — are a danger to humanity.
• When they are permanent members of the UN Security Council and working together in unison, they represent a totalitarian threat that cannot be ignored.

• The enlargement will grow the association’s membership to 11, and increase its envisaged role as a geopolitical alternative to global institutions dominated by the west.
• The Brics five represent about 42% of the world’s population and more than 23% of world GDP.
• Using the IMF’s 2022 GDP data, we can deduce that it will account for about 30% of global GDP.
• The disparate nature of the six new members is bound to spark debate about the real nature of Brics.

Understanding the nature of Brics

• Brics is not an organisation (it has no headquarters, secretariat or treaty).
• But it does have a formal institution that is jointly owned – the New Development Bank.
• Read more:
  South Africa's role as host of the BRICS summit is fraught with dangers.
• As a political scientist interested in global politics, I have written about Brics and its potential for changing the status quo.
• With hindsight, I can assert that certain principles have informed it since its establishment and first summit in 2009.


The association self-reportedly seeks secure sustainable development for itself and the global south, to safeguard and advance multilateralism, to institute reform for the goal of representative institutions, and to achieve solidarity among members.

Economic development

• Economics comes first in the group; at its root, it is a collective of emerging economies eager to sustain and improve their economic trajectory.
• Read more:
  China’s Africa strategy is shifting from extraction to investment – driven from the industry-rich Hunan region

  The group’s first, and so far only, notable establishment is the New Development Bank, primarily to finance infrastructure development.

Multilateralism

• The second value refers to the group’s concern about the use of entities outside the UN to pursue global objectives.
• The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN.

Global governance reform

• Thirdly, the Brics countries have long pushed for leaders of global institutions to be elected in a transparent and democratic way.
• For example, the president of the World Bank has always been an American, and the managing director of the IMF a European.

Solidarity

• Finally, the members have articulated solidarity with one another in a number of declarations, beginning in 2010.
• Read more:
  When two elephants fight: how the global south uses non-alignment to avoid great power rivalries

  In light of criticism and sanctions plans against China, for its alleged suppression of the Uyghur-Muslim population, and Russia, for invading Ukraine, solidarity has come to mean silence or nonalignment.

A blank slate

• This has proved beneficial for member countries hosting Brics summits.
• They get to set the agenda and use it for their ends – without upsetting the consensus.
• Brazil and Russia have inserted issues that are important to their region, and often invited leaders of neighbouring countries to retreats.