Ústav mezinárodních vztahů

The US Withdraws From The UN Human Rights Council
In mid-June 2018, the US announced its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council. It sat in the Council for the third time since the establishment of the organ in 2006. This time, however, it left its three-year mandate (2017–2019) unfinished. The paper analyses the four main arguments that the US put forward to justify its withdrawal from the Council. It shows that while some of the arguments have some merit, none is truly convincing. The paper also warns against any re-assessment of the current Czech candidacy to the Council.

Principles of Russian Military Thought
New discussion paper by IIR's former independent researcher intern, Nicolò Fasola.

Invented Traditionalism vs. Entrenched Informal Institutions
Invented Traditionalism vs. Entrenched Informal Institutions: Viability of Hybrid Governance and Democratization Prospects in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland is new discussion paper by former IIR independent researcher intern, Tamar Lagurashvili.

Collective Defence in the Age of Hybrid Warfare
The discussion paper by Benjamin Tallis and Michal Šimečka, senior researchers at the Institute of International Relations, provides a (critical) reflection on hybrid warfare – as both a concept and a practice – in the context of collective security in Europe, and discusses the role of the institutions and policies of NATO, the EU, and Member States.

The Czech-German Strategic Dialogue: Assessment of Current State and Future Prospects
The discussion paper by Benjamin Tallis, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations, seeks to examine such competing evaluations of the current state and future prospects of the CGSD.

Success or Failure? Assessment of the Readmission Agreement Between the EU and Turkey from the Legal and Political Perspectives
The discussion paper by Berfin Nur Osso, former intern at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a senior undergraduate student at the Koç University in Istanbul majoring in Law and minoring in International Relations, focuses on the assessment of the readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey.

The Coalition Airstrikes in Syria from the Perspective of the Responsibility to Protect
The discussion paper by Emir Abbas Gürbüz, former intern at the position of the Independent Researcher and currently a lawyer based in Istanbul, discusses the status of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in the customary international law and the applicability of the doctrine in the case of Syria.

Bordering the Central Mediterranean Search and Rescue Assemblage
Since the beginning of 2015, the news about migrant boat disasters in the Mediterranean Sea have been filling the headlines of major national and international media. Horrible pictures of boat wrecks and floating bodies of migrants have made it to covers of well-known newspapers. Very soon, statistics suggesting that 2015 might be the deadliest year for migrants who have been crossing the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better life appeared. However, the death of so many migrants comes as a surprise, as the Mediterranean Sea belongs to one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

The EU Normative Power as a Shield for Dependency?
This paper aims to assess the substance of the claim that the European Union acts like a normative power in its relations with Colombia. The first section explains the reasoning behind selecting Ian Manners’ normative power theory for approaching this topic, and compares the relevance of this theory to alternatives. The second section examines the EU’s normative influence over Colombia based on the sub-regional and bilateral agreements made over the last 20 years. The third section contains a critical analysis of political and economic relations between the EU and Colombia, based on EU Country Strategy Papers, the EU-Colombia-Peru FTA, and EU-CAN relations in general. Having established that there is a gap between pure intentions and actual outcomes, the final section proposes the restoration of dependency theory as a useful means for examining this discrepancy.