United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD), among them Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are common chronic diseases affecting a growing group of patients. Physical activity (PA) is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. The aim of the study was to critically evaluate current knowledge of impact of PA on gastrointestinal (GI) health and prevention and treatment of some most common GI tract diseases, such as IBS and IBD. The comprehensive research of literature available on PubMed, Google Scholar, ResearchGate and Springer Link was performed. PA improves function of GI by increasing colon transit and bowel movements. These mechanisms contribute to reducing the risk of colorectal cancer and, to varying degrees depending on location, other digestive-system cancers. There is a potential association between PA and the more health-beneficial gut microbiota, but more research in this area is needed. Sedentary lifestyle seems to be a risk factor for IBD, while physical activity seems to be a protective factor only for Crohn disease. Altough, PA contributes to improvement of quality of life and reduction of stress in patients with IBD, futher conclusions on the effect of PA on the course of ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease still require expanded research. Available literature suggests that physical activity prevents obesity, a proven risk factor for worsening the course of the disease, and osteoporosis, an important complication of glucocorticosteroid therapy. Despite evidence of a sedentary lifestyle as a risk factor for IBS, there is still a lack of studies examining the impact of physical activity as a protective factor. the number of RCTs examining the effect of PA on the course of IBS remains insufficient, and studies conducted should take into account the various symptoms of IBS.

In mental patients with concomitant somatic pathology, psychotropic drugs are prescribed in combination with other drugs used in the treatment of various somatic diseases. As well as a large number of patients with somatic diseases, they receive therapy aimed at correcting mental disorders. At the same time, it is important to take into account the possibility of cross-influence of such pharmacotherapy on the functions of the central nervous system and internal organs, as well as the peculiarities of drug interactions between drugs. According to the mechanism of development, there are pharmaceutical, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions of drugs. The result of the interaction of drugs is more often a change in the intensity of the effect of drugs, less often there are qualitative changes in their action. The review article provides up-to-date practical information on the interaction of drugs for the treatment of mental disorders with drugs of other groups.

Die Rolle der Polizei in UN-Friedenseinsatzen hat sich seit ihren Anfangen 1960 stark entwickelt, sowohl im Hinblick auf die Anzahl der entsandten Polizeikrafte als auch auf ihre Zusammensetzung und die Komplexitat ihrer mandatierten Aufgaben. Seit 1989 haben sich die Aufgaben der UN-Polizei von einer berichtenden Funktion auf die Aufrechterhaltung offentlicher Sicherheit, den Schutz der Zivilbevolkerung und den Aufbau nationaler Polizeiorganisationen erweitert. Zu diesem Zweck entsendet die UN individuelle Beamte, geschlossene Einheiten und spezialisierte Kapazitaten und Teams aus knapp 90 Beitragslandern. Seit 2010 liegt die Anzahl der UN-Polizisten konstant zwischen 12.000 und 14.000. Die grosten Personalbeitrage liefern – auser Jordanien – Lander aus Sudasien und Afrika; Europa stellt nur einen geringen Anteil, wobei Deutschland unter den grosten funf Finanzmittelgebern ist. Ausgesprochen wichtig ist die Zusammenarbeit der UN mit regionalen Organisationen, speziell der EU und der AU, bilateralen Partnern und anderen Organisationen. Herausforderungen begegnen der UN-Polizei im politischen Kontext und der Zusammenarbeit mit der Regierung im Gastland, im lokalen Kontext und der Zusammenarbeit mit nicht-staatlichen Gruppen in entlegenen Teilen eines Staatsgebiets und im regionalen Kontext, in dem transnationale Bedrohungen die Friedenssicherung untergraben. Die UN-Polizei wird sich stetig neu erfinden mussen, um den vielschichtigen Herausforderungen gerecht zu werden.

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A key driver of Liberia's re-emergence from utter destruction, between 2004 and 2008, was the willingness of international actors to accept the responsibility and risks associated with stabilization. This was accomplished by confronting these risks directly, even at the cost of temporarily filling institutional voids and sharing sovereignty with the Liberian transitional authorities. The main international diplomatic representations and aid agencies on the ground came to accept from their varying perspectives that peace in Liberia was fragile and that the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (ACPA) of September 2003 was only the beginning of a protracted stabilization effort. The domestic market for consultants and goods did not exist, requiring the World Bank to innovate with new modes of delivering assistance. Thus, peace consolidation compelled international partners to simultaneously (i) prevent full state capture by corrupt elites in advance of elections and (ii) secure a peace dividend to vulnerable groups which could most directly threaten peace (young ex-combatants and refugees). Building on a solid UN-World Bank partnership, the international community found the internal consensus to address each of the two complementary peace consolidation challenges, adopting two highly innovative instruments: (i) an anti-corruption scheme labeled Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), involving such robust measures as expatriate co-signing authority, and (ii) a short-term employment-generation scheme now known as roads-with- United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), centered on a rare direct collaboration between the Bank and the engineering units of the UN's military peacekeeping force on the ground. This paper examines these two instruments more closely, in their successes and failures as well as from the perspective of temporary shared sovereignty and co-production.

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The authors delineate the specific roles of the research partner institutions from Turkey, Egypt and the USA, in planning and implementing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Science for Peace sponsored Kamal Ewida Earth Observatory (KEEO), a network of real-time satellite remote sensing ground stations, being established over the next three years in Egypt, with a tracking station for polar orbiting satellites at Cairo University, and a networked geostationary receiving station for the European Space Agency's Meteosat being deployed at Al Azhar University. The primary objective of the project is to facilitate early warning and mitigation of a wide range of biogenic and anthropogenic disasters. The project will also address mitigation of epidemics and epizootics, through identification and monitoring of infectious disease vector and reservoir habitat. Some examples of common concern among participating countries are climate change and its impacts, the land use problems in agriculture, air pollution problems in major cities such as Cairo and Istanbul, recent epidemics such as the bird flu, swine flu and oil spills along the seashores. Archival and real-time remote sensing and generation of near-real-time spatial data products, utilizing high performance computing clusters, are planned throughout the life cycle of disaster management, including vulnerability assessment, infrastructure safeguards, early warning, emergency response, humanitarian relief, as well as post-disaster damage assessment, reconstruction and societal recovery.

The article investigates the creation and performance of the peace operations in Darfur, the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), conducted by the African Union, and the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) which replaced AMIS.The analysis is centered in three current tendencies of the doctrine and practice of peacekeeping: the development of regional capability in peace maintenance; the approval of more robust

In the face of an unprecedented surge in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping activity over the past three years—with now almost 100,000 military, police and civilian personnel deployed on four continents in 18 operations—there is a need for the UN to develop a comprehensive doctrine that better defines what modern UN peacekeeping has become and that covers the full range of civilian peacebuilding activities that are now a standard feature of Security Council mandates. This paper serves as a primer and proposes an agenda for debate on such a doctrine. It summarises evolutions in thinking and practice over the past 15 years. It also highlights key conceptual challenges and political fault lines to be reconciled in order for a new comprehensive doctrine to enjoy broad support of the UN's 192 Member States, while still providing relevant guidance to thousands of personnel on the front-lines of the effort to help rebuild war-torn states.

ABSTRACTMore than ten years after the end of the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia, this paper examines the process of return of the displaced to their homes, offering a comparison of factors affecting the process in the two countries. The first section sketches the nature and modality of obstruction to minority return in places of origin, describing some of the ways in which politicized obstruction has interacted with other conditions in return locations. The second section looks at the impact on the return process of conditions in places of refuge, examining how particular circumstances of their displacement have differently affected questions of mobilization and representation among displaced communities. In particular, some observations are made about the relationships between the displaced communities and the authorities in the various places of refuge, and about the effect that these relationships have had on the approach taken to the question of return by the different communities. In the final section a comparison is made of the nature of international intervention to support minority returns in the two countries, arguing that considerably more resources, attention, and diplomatic pressure were focused on the question of minority return to Bosnia than to Croatia. Some possible explanations for this include the burden on third countries of large numbers of Bosnian refugees, the perceived peace‐building imperative behind minority returns in Bosnia, and the attempt to redress the highly visible failures of the international community in preventing ethnic cleansing there. These factors are absent in the Croatian context, and it is argued that the corresponding lack of attention to minority return there demonstrates an inconsistency behind the moral claim made by international actors in upholding the right to return. The paper concludes by commenting on the effect of the combination of these factors on individual displaced persons and refugees, and on the parallels that can be drawn with other situations of forced migration, specifically Kosovo (Republic of Serbia).3 Current opportunities to redress some of the inconsistencies in approach and outstanding obstacles to return are highlighted.