CYBERNOTES
;
improve resource allocations and
strengthen future requests to Congress.
She also expects the QDDR to highlight a comprehensive plan for development — not just foreign assistance
— in an effort to further integrate
USAID into State.
Although the department intends to
publish the results of the QDDR by
2010, the specifics of the undertaking
— namely its scope, funding and completion date — remain hazy. Given the
cost in staff and contractors that the
Defense Department incurs in its
QDR, this is not an inconsequential
matter.
Moreover, some observers, such as
Jim Thomas, vice president for studies
at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, have voiced concerns that such an exercise may not, in
any case, be appropriate for State because the department tends to operate
in a more daily, crisis-management
mode than the Pentagon ( www.gov
exec.com/dailyfed/0709/071509l1.
htm).
To follow the QDDR process as it
takes shape, watch the State Department’s blog (at http://blogs.state.
gov/) and press releases ( www.state.
gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/ index.htm).
Meanwhile, at this writing there are
still no candidates to lead the nation’s
premier development agency. And
whether USAID will be further submerged into the State Department,
threatening the end of its development
mission altogether, or become a new,
more powerful institution in its own
right, remains to be seen.
Site of the Month: www.usip.org
In tandem with the construction of its new headquarters, the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan institute founded and funded by Congress for the
management and resolution of conflicts and continuation of stability thereafter, has
been reconstructing its Web site ( www.usip.org).
Chief among the alterations is the addition of several impressive resources,
among them an amazing aggregation called “On the Issues” ( http://origin.usip.org/
on_the_issues/). For instance, all of the resources and research on major hot spots
collected by USIP during its 20 years of existence are now available in a subsection
titled “Conflict Resources.”
“On the Issues” also offers a set of transcripts discussing the background and
stakes for the United States of recent developments in conflict zones. These “
Expert Interviews” contain some of the most succinct, reliable and informative accounts of recent events in Iran, Lebanon and North Korea. Currently, the coverage
of issues and conflicts extends only as far back as 2007, but the project continues
to expand.
Given the rapid escalation of nearly all the topics covered in these expert interviews, one might expect them to become obsolete eventually. Instead, USIP has re-acted to the pace of events by conducting interactive discussions with its experts
on the institute’s Facebook pages ( www.facebook.com/pages/United-States-
Institute-of-Peace/75608370019). It has thereby succeeded in creating one of the
most consistent and informative databases on these highly contentious, fluid issues available anywhere on the Net.
“On the Issues” is just one of the many new resources on the site. Others include records of congressional testimony, peace agreements from around the world,
and briefings on events and field work, as well as collections of oral histories (www.
usip.org/resources-tools/types). Using these links, one can quickly gain a sound
general knowledge of the background and impact of any prominent issue and go
into depth on it easily.
Hope from The Hague
Two cases coming out of international dispute resolution institutions
based in The Hague are helping restore faith in the conciliatory powers of
world bodies.
The first decision, handed down on
July 13 by the United Nations International Court of Justice, settles a dispute
between Nicaragua and Costa Rica
over the San Juan River (http://arti
cle.wn.com/view/2009/07/14/UN_
International_Court_of_Justice_Af
firms_Nicaraguan_Soverei/). The
case, brought before the court in 2005
by Costa Rica, concerned issues of
maritime regulation dating back to an
1858 treaty. Though the court sided in
favor of Nicaraguan claims, San Jose
has given every indication it accepts
that decision, so the 150-year-old conflict may finally be laid to rest.
Similarly, a ruling on July 22 by the
Permanent Court of Arbitration, the
administrative organization for international dispute resolution that is
housed with the ICJ in The Hague’s
Peace Palace, has settled a dispute over
the oil-rich Sudanese region of Abyei.
The issue arose in negotiating the 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement between northern and southern Sudanese
forces ( http://news.xinhuanet.com/
