Professor Jeffrey Sachs has been awarded the UCD Ulysses Medal for his global contribution. He is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on economic development, global macroeconomics, and the fight against poverty. His work on ending poverty, overcoming macroeconomic instability, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental practices, has taken him to more than 125 countries with more than 90 percent of the world’s population.

The United Nations is an embodiment of a continually evolving international order and UN peace operations are the physical manifestation of that order. Though there is no international consensus as to what peace and security mean, the prevailing understanding of these ideas is modeled by what peace operations do and how they do it. So what do current peace operations tell us about how the world understands peace and security? Has the recent global focus on terrorism changed what we think peace and security really means?