CMES Research Seminar: UN Agencies in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This lecture focuses on United Nations agencies in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and their workers. Building on the field of peacebuilding and development, sociology of empire and colonial and postcolonial studies, the book asks to what extant UN agencies follow in the footsteps of the British mandate colonial legacy? This leads us to ask how, despite the long involvement of the UN and its huge and unparalleled financial support for the region, there is no parallel example in other nations for the disdain shown by Israelis and Palestinians towards this world organization. According to Pew 2013, Israel has the lowest support for the UN, with 70% of Israeli Jews holding an unfavorable opinion of the organization. This is followed only by Palestinians, 69% of whom hold a negative view.

Liora Sion is Associate Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen and and the head of Hebrew Studies program at the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies (ToRS). She is specializing in military, international organizations, citizenship, ethnicity and gender.Liora Sion got her PhD from the University of Amsterdam and the Free University where she wrote her dissertation about Dutch peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Olin Institute, Harvard University and Northwestern University and an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham.

Hybrid Seminar

The talk is presented at CMES, Finngatan 16. If you prefer to attend via Zoom please register here: https://lu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5EkcOihqj4vGdDjRNrk0gLMmOTOpU7eUGy3