Researcher
Morten Bøås
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Summary
Morten Bøås (PhD) is Research Professor and works predominantly on issues concerning peace and conflict in Africa, including issues such as land rights and citizenship conflicts, youths, ex-combatants and the new landscape of insurgencies and geopolitics.
Bøås has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books and published a number of articles for academic journals. He has conducted in-depth fieldwork in a number of African countries and travelled widely elsewhere on the continent.
Expertise
Education
2001 Dr.Polit. (Ph.D) in Political Science, University of Oslo
1995 The CRE/Copernicus Seminar on Environmental Law
1994 Cand.Polit., in Political Science, University of Oslo
Work Experience
2013- Research professor, NUPI
2010-2012 Head of Research, Fafo’s Institute for Applied International Studies
2002-2010 Research Fellow, Fafo
Aktivitet
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Constructed anarchy: governance, conflict and precarious property rights in Bukavu, DR Congo
What is the nexus between conflict, property rights and land governance in some parts of DR Congo?
CANCELLED: How can the EU improve its crisis response?
One month ago, the NUPI-led and Horizon 2020-funded research project EUNPACK was finalised. This seminar will provide an opportunity to look back at three years of research and fieldwork to consider the policy implications of its findings.
The violence in Mali is getting bloodier, but religion is not necessarily at its root
The massacre of Fulani in central Mali on 23 March marks a grave, new turn in the conflict. How did we get here? NUPI researchers Natasja Rupesinghe and Morten Bøås provide insight into possible reasons.
EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...
Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordination. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mechanisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.
Assessing the EU’s Toolbox in Handling Internal and External Challenges
In recent years, the EU has faced several major challenges. Experts meet in Brussels for a roundtable discussion on what tools the Union has to solve these, and what role it can play in the time to come.
The EU, Migrants and Refugees: Building Walls, Fueling Global Crisis?
Marking the end of the EUNPACK project, experts will discuss whether the EU’s crisis response in the Middle East and Sahel has been helpful or counterproductive.
Islamic Insurgents in the MENA Region. Global Threat or Regional Menace?
This working paper analyses a broad range of Islamic insurgents, spanning from the Sahel and North Africa to the Middle East, examining the threat that these groups represent on a regional and global scale. We assess their local, regional and global strategies and evaluate the extent to which they make use of Jihadist discourse to further local/regional aims, or whether they are more truly devoted to a global struggle, operationally as well as in discourse and rhetoric. We make use of several analytical dimensions and factors in a way that allows us to develop a threat assessment that seeks to disentangle the local, the regional and the global levels. In doing so, our aim is also to develop a methodological framework that may be used for analytical updates and future research in this region and elsewhere.
Fragility, conflict and climate change in Mali and Sahel
The combined effects of fragile states, conflict, and climate change pose severe challenges to development and governance. What does this mean for Mali and the larger Sahel region?
Is the EU ready to handle the major challenges it is facing?
Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the EU, and whether the union is ready to handle major challenges such as migration, the spread of right-wing populism, and instability in the east.
The anglophone crisis in Cameroon: uncovering a neglected conflict
Guillaume Nseke discusses a conflict that – despite hundreds of casualties, and thousands internally displaced – has failed to gain international attention.