For many years, the United Nations Security Council expressed its concerns about the proliferation risks presented by the Iranian nuclear program, doing so in the context of its primary responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations for the maintenance of international peace and security. With the intent to resolve its concerns, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2231 on July 20, 2015. The Resolution endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that had been concluded on July 14, 2015, by China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and Iran (the E3/EU + 3). Resolution 2231 and the JCPOA are closely intertwined. Their implementation will result in strict limits on Iran’s ability to produce weapongrade nuclear material. On-site verification and monitoring of these limits by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will provide assurance that Iran is observing them. Resolution 2231 and the JCPOA also provide for a step-by-step removal of sanctions imposed on Iran for its past failure to resolve concerns about its nuclear program. Past concerns about “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program, while neither misplaced nor necessarily fully assuaged, were put aside, being outweighed by the prospect that the JCPOA offers, “a comprehensive, long-term and proper solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.”

On November 25, 2015, the U.K. Supreme Court dismissed a case in which the British Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Defense failed to hold a public inquiry into an atrocity committed in 1948 by British troops in the British protectorate of Malaya, today Malaysia. The case is of particular interest because it concerns the obligations of states for atrocities committed in the past, before their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (European Convention) or a comparable treaty, entered into force. Whereas the principle of the nonretroactivity of treaties protects a state from responsibility for acts committed before the human rights treaty entered into force for that state, the issue in this case was whether the state nonetheless had an obligation to investigate the crimes of the past.

On April 29, 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) adopted the United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right of Anyone Deprived of Their Liberty to Bring Proceedings Before a Court (BPGs). This comprehensive and practical document is based on an extensive range of international law sources, standards, and good practice. It provides states with specific and specialized guidance on how to fulfill their international obligations to protect against the arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

This year, 2016, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery of “Minamata Disease,” so-named for the town ravaged by the effects of methylmercury poisoning, and the namesake of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. As of April 22, 2016—Earth Day—128 nations have signed and 25 have ratified the international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic releases and emission of mercury and mercury compounds.

More than ever, the United Nations relies on armed peacekeeping to promote peace and security. Currently, more than 120 member states contribute about 100,000 troops and police on a voluntary basis to sixteen peacekeeping operations around the globe. Unfortunately, some troop and police contributing countries continue to fail to hold their nationals accountable, whenever appropriate, for sex crimes committed against the local population.