Speaking of the United Nations, what's up with IRIN News? The normally staid news service, a site run by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that covers important stories that don't usually see the light of day elsewhere, seems to really be spicing up its coverage of late.

Check out this spate of recent stories...

ZIMBABWE: Wives playing seductress for food:

Dereck Gurupira, 50, was bathing in the river near his home in Zimbabwe's Manicaland Province late one afternoon when he saw a woman on the opposite bank begin to undress, apparently oblivious of his presence.

Usually the women in Manicaland's Odzi district, about 55km northwest of the border town of Mutare, wash downstream in a more secluded part of the river, but after undressing completely the woman greeted him by name and then suggested to Gurupira that he should join her.

BENIN: Power cuts and risky sex:

With selective power cuts regularly plunging Benin's largest city, Cotonou, into darkness, Alain*, a young taxi driver, no longer has to worry about paying for a hotel room to have casual sex – a quiet corner on a dark street will do.

MALAWI: High hopes for female condom:

Malawian women have little say when it comes to condom use, but the government hopes that the recent launch of the female condom in the country could go some way in solving this age-old dilemma.

Not that we here at Passport mind, of course. When it comes to humanitarian news, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Throw the word "sex" into a post, and Google traffic is bound to follow. Still, one can't help but wonder whether someone over at IRIN is taking a mandate to "sex up" its coverage just a little too literally...

Cue the "hot air" jokes.

The United Nations plans to go casual for the month of August in a bid to cut back on electricity use. The idea, inspired by a similar initiative in Japan called "Cool Biz," is that you can turn down the air conditioning when everybody isn't wearing wool and stuffy ties:

The campaign calls for raising the thermostats in most parts of the U.N. Secretariat building from 22.2 C to 25 C [77] and from 21.1 C to 23.9 C [75 F] in the world body's conference rooms.

The initiative would save some 2 million tons of steam during the month of August, or the equivalent of 300 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, [a U.N. spokesman] said.

I love this quip from David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador:

If the rise in the temperature could cut back on the interminable negotiations running late into the evening for often disappointing results, then the outcome of the initiative would be a very good one."

If it works, the U.N. plans to ask its employees to bundle up in the winter. Now if they can just take care of that smoking problem...

How poorly supported is the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur? According to a report by the Darfur Consortium, this poorly:

Some of the soldiers from the former African force were so badly supplied that they were reduced to putting blue plastic bags over their helmets to indicate that they now worked for the UN, the report says.

Only about a third of the promised troops have been deployed. No wonder Bashir is sitting pretty.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright fears that it is:

THE Burmese government's criminally neglectful response to last month's cyclone, and the world's response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world's necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.

I'm not so sure Burma represents the best test case here. Can we really imagine a Haiti-style intervention in one of the world's most xenophobic countries? We're not talking about a failed state here, but a paranoid, Stalinist military junta that would need to be violently shoved aside in order for a Haiti-like receivership to take hold.

There's another thing Albright doesn't take into account: the China factor. Guess who is not too enthusiastic about humanitarian intervention in places like Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and guess who's vastly more powerful than in the 90s?

UPDATE: Yglesias chimes in.

It's easy to identify a global crisis, but much more difficult to resolve it when all parties act exclusively in their own self-interest.

At the U.N. food summit in Rome, heads of state and other global leaders met today to address skyrocketing global food costs. Among those in attendence? Zimbabwe's President-for-life Robert Mugabe, who should know a thing or two about food crises.

Surprisingly, the attendees may have reached a consensus as to what must be done to reverse the "silent tsunami":

There was little disagreement about how to resolve the spiraling costs of food and its impact on the world’s poor: more food aid to feed the world's hungry, additional seeds and fertilizer for poor farmers, fewer export bans and tariffs that restrict the flow of trade, and more research to improve crop yields.

Unsurprisingly, there was strong disagreement over the key causes of rising global food prices, particularly with regard to the so-called food vs. fuel argument. 

When developing countries blamed shortages on the transferring of crops from food to biofuels, leaders of countries investing heavily in ethanol and biolfuel production, notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, fired back:

Biofuels are not the villain menacing food security in poor countries ... It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels -- fingers tainted with oil and coal."

The debates on farm subsidies for biofuel production is unlikely to end anytime soon. Then again, with gas prices at $4 a gallon, I'd say you can safely bet that biofuels -- subsidized or no -- are here to stay.

KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images

Since last week's deadly cyclone in Burma, the nation's ruling military junta has been reluctant to allow aid to enter the country. Since then, trickles of food, water and medicines have been allowed to enter the country, but international aid workers have not. Citing a government that failed to even warn its citizens of the impending disaster, international observers believe that the regime in Burma has neither the will nor the capacity to distribute aid fairly, that corrupt officials are profiting from aid packages, and that the situation created by these conditions threatens to outpace the humanitarian devastation of the 2004 tsunami.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner--the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)--suggested that the international community and the UN are obligated to intervene in Burma, regardless of the wishes of the military junta, in accordance with the "Responsibility to Protect", or R2P, as outlined by the UN at the General Assembly in 2005. The concept asserts that the international community is obligated to intervene in cases where states fail to protect their populations from "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

There are widely varying opinions (pdf) on the legality of the Responibility to Protect. Some argue that it violates the basic concept of sovereignty, while others like the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, believe as Kouchner does, that the UN is abdicating its responsibility in Burma. Garreth Evans, of the International Crisis Group, offers a more nuanced interpretation in an editorial for The Guardian:

If it comes to be thought that R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global south. And that means that when the next case of genocide or ethnic cleansing comes along we will be back to the same old depressing arguments about the primacy of sovereignty that led us into the horrors of inaction in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990s."

He admits that if the inaction and neglect of the Burmese government is widely interpreted as a crime against humanity, then there might be room for the principle's application.

But there is no disagreement that the people of Burma can't wait for these issues to be bandied about at the Security Council or across editorial pages. Frustrated nations have a choice to make: either they must defy the wishes of the Burmese junta and send aid workers or airlifts to the Irrawaddy Delta, or they must submit to the regime and send whatever they have in the hopes that it will reach those in need. Regardless, it is clear that moralizing and posturing on the issue is not going to influence many, either in Rangoon or at the UN.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The U.S. needs the UN according to a new report by Alistair Millar and Eric Rosand, of the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation titled, Building Global Alliances in the Fight Against Terrorism. Both authors spoke on Friday afternoon at the New America Foundation along with Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens. The speakers point out that if we can stress the common security interests of all nations, the UN will once again function as an effective international body. Fighting terrorism is one issue that requires nothing less than the whole world's attention, but it is also a divisive issue. The UN has so far failed to even agree on a definition of terrorism, though Eric Rosand had a good working one: "Politically motivated violence against civilians."

The main argument is that the United States is missing an opportunity to work with the United Nations in its global fight against terrorism. The speakers were careful to stress they are not suggesting the fight be handed over to the UN. Instead, the U.S. should use the platform as underlying support for its existing efforts while maintaining sovereignty over U.S. interests. They believe that many bi-lateral negotiations are perceived as American sledgehammering and may be better received through the lens of third party. Policy recommendations include the appointment of a counterterrorism czar in the White House (non-military in nature), and the formation of a global counterterrorism body.

While I agree that the U.S. cannot "go it alone" in the war on terror, the bottom line is that unilateralism is a direct result of international lack of will. The United States has gone it alone in part because of the inaction of the UN and its member states. Hezbollah is a prime example of this inaction. Under UN resolutions enacted in 2004 and 2006, Lebanese militias were to be disarmed. In April of this year, the security council adopted a presidential statement reiterating this. Instead, over the past few days Hezbollah has taken over half of Beirut.

While I like the idea of a future with international cooperation and committment to fighting terrorism, I think we need to first make sure the international community is interested in bearing the costs to achieve results. And state-sponsored terror is going to be a big obstacle in this process.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

You may have seen some of the recent over-the-top comments on the food crisis from Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociologist and the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the right to food (thankfully, a largely ceremonial position). If not, here's a sampling:

• "We have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror."
• "Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time -- just as (Karl) Marx thought. It is rather that a murder is behind every victim. This is silent mass murder."
• Multinational corporations are practicing a form of "structural violence" and "monopolizing the riches of the Earth"
• Biofuels are a "crime against humanity"

In previous years, Ziegler said the United States is an "imperialist dictatorship" that is committing "genocide" in Cuba and that Gaza is "an immense concentration camp." Not exactly the most constructive comments, but par for the course for a guy who was nominated for his position by Libya and Cuba. Perhaps Ziegler's finest moment was in helping to launch the "Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize" in 1989.

The good news? Ziegler's mandate ends today. The bad news? He's still going to be an advisor to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

After a record-setting week, the price of rice dropped 3 percent following announcements yesterday that the United States had accelerated its rice planting and that, more importantly, major rice exporters Thailand and Brazil would not impose export bans.

The news may be a drop in the bucket compared to the world-wide "silent tsunami" of inflated food prices (last month saw a 57 percent increase), but as this week's Tuesday Map shows, Thailand's decision to stay in the game was very much needed:

Three of Asia's top rice exporters shown above (China, India, and Vietnam) have already cut their rice exports this year, leaving neighboring importers high and dry. And according to the U.N. World Food Program's executive director, who spoke with FP during her recent visit to Washington, the countries who have the greatest potential for massive unrest, suffering, or starvation are "import-dependent countries, because we're seeing a strain on their capabilities to obtain enough food to meet their needs."

But the global food crisis is unfortunately not limited to import-heavy countries. The WFP estimates that more than 100 million people around the world could soon be without food. The problem has already reached great enough proportions that 33 countries have already seen hunger-driven, social unrest.  

Today, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he would chair a U.N. task force to create and carry out a response action plan. Let's just hope his efforts don't prove too little, too late.

Below are some photos of Jordanian peacekeepers showing off their skills for Ban Ki-moon during the U.N. secretary-general's visit to the Ivory Coast.

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

It looks impressive, doesn't it? Still, I have to wonder: When does the neck-choking body-slam move actually come in handy as a U.N. peacekeeper? When you're wrestling with civilians trying to cut in the rice line?

Note: This post is part of our online salon, UN Peacekeeping: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Administration, co-hosted with UN Dispatch.

I agree with Mark that the gap between the Security Council's mandates and what is achievable on the ground has often been startling. In part, this is just hope prevailing over good sense. But it also reflects a deeper reality: When the Security Council authorizes a mission, it may actually be less concerned with the situation on the ground than it is with the political effect of the action at home or vis-à-vis other Council states. This points to an important political role that peacekeeping missions can play: providing political cover for the Great Powers. Historically, peacekeeping evolved in this way and, in a sense, little has changed. The early observer missions to Palestine and then the larger Suez mission in 1956 were explicitly designed to help major powers out of tight spots. Having small states provide troops made sure that the peacekeeping forces didn't themselves become triggers for great power conflict. Obviously, there have been exceptions to the rule that peacekeeping contributors should be small states and "middle powers." (The British have contributed large numbers of troops to several missions, including Cyprus and Bosnia.)

It's important to keep this context in mind, however. In the larger geopolitical game, peacekeeping forces have been buffers between the major powers. Bill Durch suggests that the major powers -- or at least more developed states -- should start providing manpower for the missions. I think he may be right. But we should acknowledge that this would be a significant conceptual shift and that it might involve political complications. The danger of great power conflagration is much reduced, though it will obviously be prudent to keep certain great powers out of certain regions. China has shown increased interest in peacekeeping, and there was grumbling by human rights activists about the participation of Chinese personnel (mainly engineers) in Sudan. The great powers have troops, but they also bring some heavy political baggage.

Note: This post is part of our online salon, UN Peacekeeping: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Administration, co-hosted with UN Dispatch.

David Bosco raises a legitimate concern about "bang for the buck." However, it is very difficult to measure results with any degree of accuracy when mission mandates are increasingly broad and often patently overambitious. I'd like to turn the question around, and ask if mandating authorities (like the UN, EU and AU) are not expecting way too much of peacekeeping -- regardless of the financial costs?

For example, UN Secretariat officials repeatedly warned of the overwhelming obstacles to deployment to Darfur, but their warnings went unheeded by a Security Council that mandated 26,000 uniformed peacekeepers for the mission -- with one of the main mandate elements being implementation of the defunct Darfur Peace Agreement.

The African Union Mission in Somalia managed to deploy only a quarter of its authorized strength of 8,000 due to a combination of logistical constraints, financial shortfalls, and a lack of peace to keep. With only 2,000 AU troops in Somalia and only 9,000 in Darfur, in March 2008 the UN Security Council was seriously debating the notion of deploying 28,000 UN troops to Somalia.

The widening gap between aspirations and the implementation of successful peace operations is very evident. The multi-billion dollar question is: How do we close this gap? By simply saying "enough" and retreating from the peacekeeping enterprise, as happened in the mid 90s after the last big peak in global peace operations and some nasty experiences in the Balkans and Africa? By trying to expand the available means with the likes of the US-sponsored Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), which aims to train a total of 75,000 peacekeeping troops -- mostly Africans -- by the year 2010? By commissioning another expert panel, like the one led by Lakhdar Brahimi in 2000 which produced very substantive recommendations on how to get the operational mechanics of UN peace operations right? Or by taking a really hard look at the mandate end and the peacemaking processes that precede the crafting of seemingly impossible mission mandates?

Note: This post is part of our online salon, UN Peacekeeping: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Administration, co-hosted with UN Dispatch.

Even as we discuss the logistical, manpower, and financial pressures on [the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations], I hope we do not leave aside the question of what precisely the international community is getting for its (admittedly modest) investment in peacekeeping. Is the current crop of missions producing political and humanitarian results? The UN, of course, endured intense soul searching during the 1990s about the efficacy of peacekeeping in the wake of the Bosnia and Rwanda missions. Today's missions are far less scrutinized but I suspect that has more to do with a distracted media than it does an easing of the operational dilemmas facing peacekeepers in the field.

Note: This post is part of our online salon, UN Peacekeeping: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Administration, co-hosted with UN Dispatch.

First, just so we're clear, [the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)] has been growing -- nominally, 25 percent in the past year alone -- just not as fast as its operational commitments. Eight years ago, 520 people in New York supported roughly 40,000 military, police, and civilian personnel in the field. Today, about 1,200 support up to 140,000 mission personnel who work in more violent places than before (like eastern DR Congo, south Sudan, and Darfur).

Exactly how many work where at what time is hard to measure, as it takes the UN many months to fill a new position in NY or in the field. That inability to respond fast (apparently treasured by many of its member states), the growing combat risks posed by new missions, and the sheer size of the enterprise (spread over nearly 20 countries on four continents) mean that the UN is indeed approaching the breaking point (as it not only has to staff 140,000 field positions but find rotation replacements for most of them every 6-12 months). Pile on the departure in June of Under­secretary-general Jean-Marie Guehenno, who has ably managed UN peacekeeping's expansion for nearly eight years, and the simultaneous scattering of UN personnel across NYC as their iconic but aging headquarters is gutted and rebuilt, and you have the makings of a severe morale and management crisis.

UN peacekeeping has a future if only because it will take years to finish the tasks it has already started, and because NATO is already jammed in Afghanistan, the EU risk-averse (though its new "battle groups" make ideal reinforcements for UN operations in crisis), and the African Union is broke. The AU has ambitious plans for peacekeeping but nothing like the money it needs, and donor train-and-equip programs may suck funds from development and good governance -- and bad governance breeds war. So, UN peace­keeping has a future; it would be a better one if more developed state troops showed up on UN rosters outside the Middle East or if those same states paid their share of UN mission costs on time. UN PK costs $6.7 billion a year but its arrears are a fairly steady $2 billion, and it can't borrow (at US insistence) even to stop wars (making for two-edged irony). When short of funds, it pays vendors first and troop contributors last. Both are needed but vendors quit sooner. Still, no troops, no peacekeeping. Tick, tock.

As Bill Durch aptly points out in the paper (pdf), the surge in UN peacekeeping has been neither met by commensurate increases in the number of staff in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), nor by commensurate increases in the funding streams available to DPKO. Is peacekeeping reaching its breaking point? Is there a future for UN peacekeeping? If so, what can be done to boost peacekeeping's capacity to deal with the multitude of challenges it faces?

The next U.S. president is going to have a lot of work to do. Or, as my colleague Matt Cordell puts it at U.N. Dispatch, he or she "will have a unique opportunity to create a new global agenda for the United States and right the course of America's foreign policy."

To that end, Passport and U.N. Dispatch are teaming up to host an online salon discussing one of the thorny topics George W. Bush's successor will likely confront while in office. Kicking off the discussion will be William J. Durch, editor of Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations and author of "Peace and Stability Operations: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next U.S. Administration," (pdf) a new paper published through the Better World Campaign. He is a senior associate at the Stimson Center, an independent think tank here in Washington.

The following participants will be chiming in:

• David Bosco, contributing writer to FP
• Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution
• Mark Malan of Refugees International
• Eric Reeves, English professor, Sudan researcher, analyst, and blogger

Mark Leon Goldberg of U.N. Dispatch will be moderating the discussion, with some help from me.

Over the next few days, we'll be dissecting Durch's ideas and probably introducing a few of our own into the mix. You can follow the action here or over at U.N. Dispatch, or contribute your own thoughts in comments or at OnDayOne.org.

RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images

More than three years after a massive car bomb in Beirut killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, there's been scant progress on the U.N. investigation into the culprits behind the assassination. Conspiracy theories abound. One popular among Lebanese political leaders is that notorious Hezbollah leader Imad Mougniyah was killed in Damascus in February in exchange for cooling the pressure on the Hariri tribunal, which has implicated top Syrian leaders.

Now, a key witness who implicated pro-Syrian generals in the Hariri assassination has gone missing. The family of Mohammed Zuheir al-Siddiq, a Syrian intelligence officer who had been living under house arrest in France, accuses the French government of being involved in his "liquidation." It's no wonder that the new head of the U.N. investigation is saying that he needs his June deadine extended.

And on a side note: Mougniyah is getting his own postage stamp in Iran. First-class postage.

Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images

Kosovo is one step closer to full statehood. Today, its assembly officially adopted a new constitution declaring Kosovo a democratic, secular, multiethnic state. Right from the start, the constitution makes clear that Kosovo will not be partitioned nor will it be joining a Greater Albania.  From Article 1:

The Republic of Kosovo is an independent, sovereign, democratic, unique and indivisible state . . . The Republic of Kosovo shall have no territorial claims against, and shall seek no union with, any State or part of any State."

Per recommendations from U.N. Special Envoy to Kosovo Marti Ahtisaari, the constitution also includes an entire chapter spelling out the rights of and provisions for Kosovo’s minority groups, including parliamentary seat allotment. Twenty of the assembly’s 120 seats shall be reserved for minorities, each of whom are guaranteed a respective minimum number of seats as follows:

the Roma community, one (1) seat; the Ashkali community, one (1) seat; the Egyptian community, one (1) seat; and one (1) additional seat will be awarded to either the Roma, the Ashkali or the Egyptian community with the highest overall votes; the Bosnian community, three (3) seats; the Turkish community, two (2) seats; and the Gorani community, one (1) seat. . ."

Bet you didn’t know that Kosovo even had an ethnic Egyptian community.

Pieter Feith, head of the EU-led supervisory office in Kosovo, has already approved of the new constitution, but Kosovo's U.N. mission (UNMIK) has been less than eager to react. In 1999, U.N. resolution 1244 granted UNMIK the authority to administer Kosovo until the Security Council could agree on a more lasting solution. But because Russia has blocked all efforts to pass a new Kosovo resolution, UNMIK now lacks the mandate to actually hand over their authority to Kosovo’s fledgling government, new constitution or not.

If you want to wrap your head around Russia's current attitude in the world, you have to understand the Russian view of three key periods: the breakup of the Soviet Union, the chaos of the 1990s, and the so-called color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Dmitri K. Simes ably deals with the key issues here, but I just want to highlight this insightful quote about U.S.-Russian relations in the 1990s:

We haven't played everything brilliantly with these people; we haven't figured out how to say yes to them in a way that balances off how much and how often we want them to say yes to us. We keep telling Ol' Boris [Yeltsin], "'OK, now here's what you've got to do next – here's some more shit for your face.'"

–Bill Clinton to Strobe Talbott, 1996

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.

Ireland's decision to send Dustin the Turkey -- a crass puppet who rides around in a shopping cart -- as its representative to the Eurovision Song Contest was met with mixed reviews by audience members last month. But the Irish aren't the only ones calling this turkey "fowl." Once again, because of the Macedonia name issue, the Greeks are up in arms.

At one point in the turkey's song "Irelande Douze Pointe" ("Ireland Twelve Points," in reference to the maximum points each country can give a contestant), Dustin sings, "Eastern Europe we love you, do you like Irish stew, or goulash as it is to you?" then proceeds to list countries in Eastern Europe one by one, including Macedonia (check here for clearer audio -- the lyrics are pretty great).

Ever since Macedonia's independence in 1991, Athens has argued that the name "Macedonia" is a part of Hellenic cultural heritage and that the former Yugoslav republic expresses territorial claims on northern Greece by using it. Now, thanks to Greek paranoia, rumor has it that Dustin the Turkey will have to join the U.N. in calling the country FRY Macedonia ("The Former Yugoslav Republic of...") in his lyrics.

But the name issue gets far more serious on the security front. Macedonia hopes to be invited to join NATO at the Bucharest Summit this coming Wednesday, but an invitation requires the unanimous support of existing NATO members, including Greece. Despite months of U.N.-supervised negotiations, neither Athens nor Skopje seem capable of coming to an agreement any time soon, spelling trouble for Macedonia's NATO aspirations.

Greece may have Macedonia in a NATO bind, but come May we'll see who gets the last Eurovision laugh. With acts like this as the winning standard, it's really anyone's game.