Suchergebnisse

The rationale for India's development and peacebuilding assistance and the mechanisms employed have changed over the period. India's assistance is starkly different from the way the developed countries do peacebuilding. This difference is due to India's different historical experiences, socio-economic conditions and lived experience. The conflict-affected states have appreciated India's assistance due to the suitability and appropriateness of technical assistance, training and educational programs to their socio-economic context. India's ways of development and peacebuilding assistance have similarities with the 2016 UN concept of 'sustaining peace', which has been formulated to liberate peacebuilding from the strict limitation to post-conflict contexts. However, both the western and non-western donors have a certain reservation about 'sustaining peace' concept, for different reasons. The way forward to implement the UN 'sustaining peace' is to facilitate both the western and non-western donors to learn lessons from each other's experiences and view their varied approaches as complementary rather than contradictory.

The emotional and ideological factor to express solidarity with the other developing countries is the main driving factor for India to engage in development assistance. In the changed geopolitical and geo-economic context in the globalized world, the economic factor of access to the market for Indian products and natural resources for its growing industrial sector became the additional motivation. As India does not subscribe to peacebuilding, it has no separate category of peacebuilding assistance. This study's central focus is on why India's way of providing development and peacebuilding assistance captured the world's attention in the 21st century and how India's ways are different from that of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries. It highlights India's unique guiding principles, approaches, and modalities for development and peacebuilding assistance. It focuses on why the developing countries appreciated India's development and peacebuilding assistance, although it is not much in terms of volume compared to the Development Assistance Committee countries. It emphasizes the advantages of accepting diversity instead of an attempt for uniformity in peacebuilding assistance.

India's opposition to humanitarian intervention has been influenced by its colonial experience and its predisposition towards the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. However, India did not adopt a strident opposition in the post-Cold War due to the changed power configuration. The article discusses how India adopted a cautious approach and yet used every opportunity to remind the international community the baleful effect of intervention in the internal affairs. After securing concession to a considerable extent on the ambitious Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and when most of the countries showed an inclination to accept humanitarian intervention in the form of 'R2P' at the UN summit in 2005, India grudgingly went along accepting it. India participated in the deliberation on the implementation of R2P and took its stand on various crises in which R2P was evoked. The experience of NATO's Libya operation under R2P was regarded as substantiation of India's apprehension of the misuse of the concept, and India reverted its position to the sceptical view of humanitarian intervention/R2P. By mere complaining about the mixing of peace enforcement with peacekeeping, when the United Nations deployed 'intervention brigade' for the protection of civilians, India lost the opportunity to take the initiative to propose a new mechanism to deal with the humanitarian crisis in atrocious internal conflicts.

The article starts with highlighting the peculiarity of Tibetan diaspora seeking not only personal safety but also the protection and preservation of their culture and religion when they sought refuge in South Asia in 1959. It then discusses how the Tibetan diaspora from South Asia disperse to distant countries and the variance of their interactions with political and social institutions under Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in India. The major focus of the article is to highlight the various societal and institutional challenges of the Tibetan diasporic community. It focuses on five major challenges such as confusion over goals of Tibetan freedom movement, the generation gap among three generations of Tibetan diasporas, unemployment among the Tibetan youth, the controversy over acquiring Indian citizenship and gender discrimination. It also discusses why and how Tibetan diasporas confronted with challenges of declining host countries' support. It ends with highlighting the kinds of reforms that need to be carried out in the diasporic institutions and the community to take the Tibetan freedom movement forward and to facilitate the possibility of CTA and diasporic community holding their own in the changed international context of rising China.

When the Western countries confronted backlash in their promotion of democracy, they wooed India to join them. India has shown reluctance to join them due to various factors. It starts with discussion of how it was inconceivable for India to promote democracy during the Cold War and then examine factors that made India reticent to commit itself to democracy promotion in the post-Cold War. The paper discusses the reasons as to why a nuanced shift towards supporting democracy promotion has taken place in the turn of the Century and how this shift is made with the intention of making a difference through participation rather than openly protesting and standing aloof on principle ground. The main focus of the paper is to highlight how India provides democracy assistance differently from that of the Western countries and what kind of tangible assistances India provided to those who sought. It highlights how, keeping in view the sensitivity of sovereignty among the developing countries, India uses term such as 'democracy assistance' or 'democracy support' instead of 'democracy promotion' and how it adopts policy of providing democracy assistance only when requested and it follows top-down approach, dealing mainly with the sovereign states and their institutions. It ends with an emphasis on the value addition of having diverse approaches to spreading democracy.

India accords high significance to its participation in the UN peacekeeping in Africa. Apart from examining India's contribution in quantitative terms and the varieties of personnel involved, it highlights the Indian peacekeepers' unique characteristics in terms of professionalism, reliability, humane approach and other distinctive features. It also discusses blemishes they brought on the country because of allegations of corruption and sexual abuse, and how India tackles those issues. The major focus is on the driving factors, which motivated India to participate in the risky operations in Africa that have evolved in keeping with the geopolitical shifts at the global level. Initially, the rationale for its participation was to express solidarity with African countries, but now it is more to ensure energy security and to maximize the opportunity for trade and investment. The aspiration for recognition as a great power remains a constant factor of its involvement in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, and India has been leveraging this contribution for claiming a permanent seat at the UN Security Council since the early 1990s. It discusses the apprehension of a shift in India's participation due to frustration at the lack of progress in UN reform. However, the indicators direct that the attempt is more to reconfigure its participation and to highlight the need to go back to the traditional root of the peacekeeping operations, keeping in view the diversions that took place in the post-Cold War.

There were great differences between Indian and Chinese positions on the UN peacekeeping operations during the Cold War. India played a pioneering role both in the conceptualisation and consolidation of the peacekeeping mechanism. On the other hand, China vehemently opposed the UN peacekeeping operation as a tool of imperialism even after joining the United Nations in 1971. Both India and China are apprehensive of motivation of the Western enthusiasm for complex peacekeeping operations of the post-Cold War and both expressed strong reservation on number of issues arising from them. As they do not want to be marginalised hence, despite their reservations, they individually participated actively in the operations with the intention of making a difference through participation. The differences in their participation are partly due to vast experience and confidence of India and partly due to hesitancy of China to engage in new terrain. They have taken similar positions to strengthen UN peacekeeping such as advocating for stronger financial resources, participation of the troop contributing countries in the decision-making process, favouring standby forces, opposing a selective approach and effective training of peacekeepers. Their participation in peacekeeping operations is no longer just a means to prevent Western powers from misusing peacekeeping operations. Different motives and incentives appear to be driving India and China's participation in the peacekeeping operations.

As the United Nations lacks the capacity to implement the multidimensional tasks of peacebuilding, it resorted to formal inter-organizational networking in Kosovo. The network structure gave birth to various coordination mechanisms and could accomplish some of the tasks, especially those involved with establish-ing straightforward institutional structures. However, it could not accomplish substantial change in Kosovo to ensure sustainable peace because there was no effective coordination. The analysis highlights the reasons for the lack of coordination among networking organizations and concludes that the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission has to be given more powers in order to overcome these problems and to bring about a degree of accountability among networking organizations.