Event

The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs has the pleasure of inviting you to the public seminar:

Mali and the Sahel – the geopolitics of conflict, collusion and collaboration

After eight months of hard talks the Algiers process has resulted in a cease-fire agreement and the final draft of a plan for peace in Mali. This is noteworthy, but the sustainability of the agreement is still uncertain. Thus, even if the Islamist insurgencies has been pushed back to periphery of the Sahel and Mali has been returned to constitutional rule, this region is still facing an acute crisis of climatic variability, poverty and inequality, instability and conflict. In order to take stock of the events that has unfolded in Mali and the Sahel since the international community got involved in early 2013, this seminar will present findings from a project financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Defence that has focused on the Sahel as a complex landscape of conflict, collusion and collaboration. In this seminar Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari will present their own work on the geopolitics of Sahel and the trajectory of Sahel insurgencies as well as presenting the conclusions from the research carried out by Lotte Vermeij on MINUSMA’s challenges on the ground and Marina Caparini’s work on the challenges of DDR and SSR in Mali. Norway's former ambassador to Algeria Arild Øyen will also give a comment after the presentations based on his personal experience from his last posting.

You can follow the seminar directly on YouTube