Answer: India has one of the largest diaspora populations in the world, with over 30 million, including Non Resident Indians (NRI’s) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO’s). Championing India’s cause on international issues and making a mark on the global stage economically, they are one of the most vital components of India’s soft power. India’s diaspora can contribute significantly to each of the five pillars identified under our vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat i.e. economy, infrastructure, demography, democracy and supply chains. This is owing to the following:

• Strategic Asset: Indian diaspora can be developed into a ‘strategic asset’ and leveraged to play the role of facilitator in globalising the Indian trade/export through their global network and bringing investment across many small cities of the country.
• Centre of World Affairs: The direction of change in the world regarding self-reliance and creation of alternate supply chains, offers an opportunity for India to leverage its diaspora to play a significant role in keeping India at the centre of global affairs.
• Strengthening India’s image: The outflow of the Indian diaspora has positively transformed the perception of the world towards us. The dominance of Indians in computer software, particularly in the Silicon Valley, has strengthened the image of India as a technology powerhouse and a source of quality human resources. Notable Indians like Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Indra Nooyi, Vinod Khosla, Deepak Chopra and many others have reached the highest echelons in their respective sectors.
• Investments: With a focus on ‘Make in India’, Indian diaspora can be facilitated to contribute to the Indian development story by investing in the greenfield and brownfield projects, as well as, portfolio investments in India. It is worth noting that India became the largest recipient of remittances in the world (87 billion USD in 2021).
• Guiding Policy: With the world order witnessing a structural shift in terms of high skill jobs and high value of the future, the Indian diaspora can guide policy-makers in the field of the high technology driven sectors like Al, ML etc. and make India self-reliant in them.

India wants to leverage its diaspora to build greater domestic capacity and enhance its contribution to the world. However, there remain certain challenges existing in this regard:

• Lack of automatic correlation: A significant proportion of our diaspora hold back from having business interests in India. India must work towards establishing a conducive and business friendly environment for the diaspora to contribute to their home countries and confidently create an outreach strategy in their areas of influence.
• Stricter Norms: Rising protectionism and efforts to regain their importance in the global value chain, has created concerns related to stricter immigration and visa norms across countries including the USA, Australia, etc.
• Heterogeneous demands: Given its diversity, it will be challenging for the Indian government to accommodate varied expectations and demands of the diaspora. For instance, diaspora in the Gulf wants India’s support on welfare issues; those in the US look to India for investment opportunities; while those from Fiji and Mauritius wish to reconnect with the country on cultural grounds.
• Security challenges: Sectarian crisis, increasing terrorist activities and strife and wars in the Middle East countries (Yemen, Oman, Libya, Syria etc.) leave our diaspora vulnerable to attacks.

The Indian government has taken various initiatives such as OCI Card Scheme, Ease of doing business, Know India program and Study India Program and Launch of informative projects etc. to facilitate greater interaction with our diaspora. However, there is a need for further incentivising and accommodating their expectations, if India wants to achieve the target of becoming a $5 trillion economy.

Answer: The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent court to prosecute serious international crimes committed by individuals. It was established in 2002 under the Rome Statute and has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. The court has played a critical role in the international legal architecture to combat massive human rights violations which affect peace and security. Some of its investigations, trials and remarkable rulings include:

• In 2011, the court had issued arrest warrants against Muammar Gaddafi in connection with civilian killings during the Arab Spring protests.
• Similarly, ICC had issued arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010 against former Sudanese Head of State Omar Al Bashir for alleged war crimes.
• In November 2021, the ICC decided to open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during Venezuela’s clampdown on anti-government protesters in 2017.
• In 2019, the ICC opened an investigation into alleged persecution of the Rohingya population across the borders of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
• Investigation is also going on into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan since 2003, which is when it became an ICC member.
• Based on ICC rulings, convictions have been made in cases from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Mali.

Despite its noble aspirations, the ICC comes up against continued scrutiny and criticism over its operational activities such as:

• Jurisdiction: ICC has automatic jurisdiction only for crimes committed on the territory of a state which has ratified the treaty; or by a citizen of such a state; or when the United Nations Security Council refers a case to it.
• Also, the court has no retrospective jurisdiction as it can deal only with crimes committed after 1 July 2002 when the 1998 Rome Statute came into force.
• Dependent on state cooperation: It does not have its own police force or enforcement body and thus relies on cooperation with countries for support.
• Lack of participation: Countries like the US and Russia, have historically and fundamentally opposed ICC and hence weakened the court on a fundamental moral basis.

India opted to remain out of it is based on the following principal objections:

• By providing extraordinary power to the UN Security Council to refer cases and bind on-States Parties to the ICC, it violates Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and undermines state sovereignty.
• It refused to designate the use of nuclear weapons and terrorism among crimes within the purview of the ICC, as proposed by India.
• It vested wide powers to initiate investigations and trigger jurisdiction of the ICC in the hands of an individual prosecutor.
• It blurred the legal distinction between normative customary law and treaty obligations and in turn placed countries in a position of being forced to comply with provisions of international treaties they have not yet accepted, through the Rome Statute.

Justice contributes to long-term peace, stability and equitable development in post-conflict societies. Thus, states should encourage cooperation with ICC towards the fulfilment of ICC’s mandate. Even if India is not ready to join, it should move towards a posture of constructive engagement with the ICC as an observer.

Answer: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is the largest military alliance on the planet. It was established in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet armies after the Second World War. It guarantees the freedom and security of its members through political as well as military means. Born from a desire for collective defence and containment of the USSR, its mandate post Cold War morphed to include nation-building, peace-keeping, military-civil relations and the never-ending fight against terrorism and organised crime, with varying degrees of success. Since then, NATO has been struggling to remain relevant and faces challenges in redefining its role:

• Failures of NATO: The notion of collective security has receded in the background post USSR era. However, it needs to be re-invigorated. For instance, the 2014 bloodless assimilation of Crimea into Russia and recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia have sent shockwaves, especially amongst Russia’s neighbours.
• Shift in focus of collective security from within Europe towards east: The old East-West partitions have become a thing of the past and new fault lines dividing the increasingly worried Baltic States and Poland from a resurgent Russia, have emerged.
• NATO has always been a fractious alliance: The attempts to consider the national wants and needs of all its member states at times seem to be an impossible task. For instance, France left NATO in 1966, only to return, under certain conditions, decades later in 2009.
• Differences within NATO: Turkey, a vital member of the Alliance, has recently involved itself in conflicts on its doorstep in Syria and as far away as Libya. In these civil wars, NATO members have at times found themselves on opposing sides.
• Issue of economic burden sharing: Failure to share the costs of NATO operations more equitably pose risks of unravelling of the alliance as the issue of “burden sharing” has been revived.

Throughout history, military alliances have formed to balance the countervailing power. They have collapsed when the need for a balance disappeared as a result of either power crumbling or changing threat perceptions. However, the collapse of Soviet imperial rule in the late 1980s did not lead to NATO’s demise rather it has evolved, Le.:

• Maintain strategic balance: Post Cold War, NATO identified the need to “preserve the strategic balance in Europe” and adopted it as one of its fundamental security tasks. Under this, it would provide security to democratizing countries, solidifying their transitions from communism and opening new economic prosperity through greater connections with the European Union.
• Reconceived as a “cooperative-security” organization: Under this, NATO has two main objectives, Le., to foster dialogue and cooperation with former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact and to “manage” conflicts in areas on the European periphery, such as the Balkans.
• Pluralistic security community: NATO grew from being a military alliance principally dedicated to protecting its members into institutional expression of the transatlantic community of states and the western values that both defined and united them. Further, the NATO grew into a pluralistic security community where use of force for settling disputes among its members has been ruled out.
• Redefined its missions: Politically, NATO has sought new missions to retain its relevance from peacekeeping to countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to counter-terrorism etc. While on the military side, it has streamlined and created a more flexible command structure capable of deploying military forces rapidly and over greater distances than was the case during the cold war.

Thus, post Cold War, the NATO has not only survived but been transformed into a politico-military entity. NATO of today is a confluence of like-minded democratic ideals and of shared values. The world order has changed and it is in this climate that NATO now has to operate. Unlike the Cold War era, with one clearly defined adversary, today there is a need to fight a patchwork of local conflicts while maintaining an ever-growing alliance between countries.

Answer: United Nations Peacekeeping is a joint effort between its Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Operational Support. Every peacekeeping mission is authorized by the Security Council and forces are contributed by member states on a voluntary basis. Peacekeeping is one of the most effective tools in the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security owing to its unique strengths such as legitimacy, burden sharing, deployment of troops around the world and integrating them with civilian peacekeepers to enforce various multidimensional mandates. However, the physical and political fragility of conflict situations limit the likelihood of success. Peacekeeping faces several challenges that undermine its ability to deliver on its mandates:

• Change in nature of armed conflicts: The nature of conflicts has changed over the years, and peacekeeping, which originally emerged to deal with interstate conflicts, began to be applied to intrastate conflicts including civil wars, organized crime and new generation of weapons.
• Peacekeepers have become targets: Peacekeepers often go where no one else is prepared to go. However, incidents of attack on peacekeepers have become common.
• Elusive political solutions: With the closure of UNOCI and UNMIL, several missions are deployed in the face of weak political agreement, diminished consent and stalled peace processes with vague exit strategies.
• Broad and complex mandates: Peacekeeping missions have been given staggering tasks and wide-ranging responsibilities. At the same time, regional partnerships, though critical, are often unable to deliver the necessary political impact.
• Performance issues: There are challenges related to maintenance of well structured, equipped and trained forces, participation of women in peacekeeping, accountability for perpetrators of sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of misconduct.
• Lack of stronger commitment: All the actors in support of peacekeeping efforts, from political to operational spheres, lack stronger commitment which is needed to achieve peacekeeping excellence.

The accomplishments from past missions have raised the expectations from UN peacekeeping beyond its capacity to deliver. To respond to these challenges, following reforms are needed:

• Institutionalization: Time has come to move from pursuit of activism of individual member states to collective action by the Council. There is a need for greater and effective cooperation between Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs), the Security Council and the Secretariat.
• Incentivization: As of July, 2019, women peacekeepers constituted 6 per cent. There is a need to provide special incentives for women peacekeepers and priority deployment of all women- unit pledges.
• Innovation: Innovation in capacity building of peacekeepers needs to be a priority. This can be done through innovative options such as co-deployment of peacekeepers, enhancing capabilities and capacities through Mobile Training Teams and expansion of online initiatives to develop capacities of future commanders and managers.
• Future proofing: There is further need of better training of peacekeepers and involvement of experts from various fields in peacekeeping in order to better deal with emerging challenges.

Peacekeeping has proven to be one of the most effective tools available to the UN to assist host countries navigate the difficult path from conflict to peace. In this regard, the Secretary-General has launched Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) to renew mutual political commitment to peacekeeping operations and called on Member States to join in developing a set of mutually-agreed principles and commitments to create peacekeeping operations fit for the future.