Publications
African Peace Operations: Trends and Future Scenarios, Conclusions and Recommendations
The Future of African Peace Operations: From the Janjaweed to Boko Haram
Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgencies to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU's African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved over the past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.
Gender Based Violence and Access to Justice: the Case of Ganta, Liberia
Amongst the various civil and criminal issues plaguing post-war Liberia, Sexual and Gender Based Violence (GBV) is one of the most prominent. A number of historical and contemporary realities are expressed through the issues of GBV in Liberia. Among these are the traditional gender roles that codify the domestic subordination of the women in Liberian society, and the widespread practices of GBV that emerged as a consequence of the ‘nationalisation of local conflict’ that the civil war in such a weak state brought about. Against this background, the Mapping Gender-based Violence and Access to Justice: Re-traditionalisationin Liberia (GENTRA) project was established to address the knowledge gap between assumptions about how GBV is best attended, and the actual preferences of Liberians. The focus of GENTRA is not on GBV cases as such, but rather on how people chose to address GBV in the plural legal system of Liberia, why people make these choices, how the different legal systems address GBV cases, and how people perceive the outcomesof these processes. Through this focus, GENTRA is mapping GBV and access to justice in Liberia, while creating a local database and capacity to help inform policymakers on GBV issues. The GENTRA project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council and is a collaborative effort between the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation at the University of Liberia. In this Working Paper the researchers will document and analyse how people make these choice in and around the town of Ganta in Nimba County.
På bålet - UK og folkeavstemmingen
Britene kan sette EU i brann med sin folkeavstemming.
Kongo-Kinshasa landeprofil
Den Demokratiske Republikken Kongo (Kongo-Kinshasa) i det sentrale Afrika er det nest største landet på kontinentet og har intet mindre enn ni naboland: Republikken Kongo, Den sentralafrikanske republikk, Sør-Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia og Angola. Landet har lenge vært preget av enorme flyktningstrømmer og mange væpnede konflikter, og særlig i de nord-østlige og østlige regionene er situasjonen fortsatt alvorlig. I tillegg er de politiske, sosiale og økonomiske forholdene svært vanskelige.
Measuring the Success of Peace Operations: Directions in Academic Literature
This background paper examines how the academic literature has approached the question of success in peace operations. Here it should be noted that many theoretical and methodological issues have not been settled, nor does this contribution seek to resolve them. The aim here is to shed light on the issue, and indicate where choices need to be made for research into success to be rigorous. The first section examines differences between the way that scholarly and practitioner analyses approach this question. The section that follows looks at how the academic literature has approached the definition of success and where some of the fault-lines lie. In the conclusion I outline a number of methodological decisions that need to be made when conducting research on success.
Synthesis Report: Reviewing UN Peace Operations, the UN Peacebuilding Architecture and the Implementation of UNSCR 1325
In 2015, three reviews in the field of Peace and Security were undertaken: the UN peace operations review, the review of the UN Peace building Architecture and the review of the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325. These reviews reflect the acknowledgement that the changing dynamics of conflict in the world necessitates a revision of the UN’s tools in order for the organisation to maintain its relevance and ability to meet these challenges. This report presents the key recommendations as well as common themes across the reviews. The common themes are: the changing nature of conflict; the importance of the women, peace and security agenda for the UN’s work;the primacy of prevention and the need for a long-term focus; the necessity to shift towards people-centred, inclusive processes; the primacy of politics; the need for field focus and context awareness; the privileging of the military response to violent conflict is counterproductive; partnership with other actorsis important; leadership and professionalisation of the UN is needed; and a call for stronger UN system coherence. It ends by offering some recommendations to the current and next UN Secretary General.