Publications
MONUSCO’s 2021 Mandate Renewal Transition and exit
In December 2021, in the context of mounting political tensions and growing insecurity in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will decide whether to renew the mandate of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). The state of siege declared by President Tshisekedi in May 2021 has yet to stabilize the provinces in which it has been implemented. The political coalition in power remains fragile, and social and iden- tity-based conflicts are on the increase. Everyone expresses the need for stability, but effective strategies and decisive actions are still lacking. The joint transition plan developed by the United Nations team with participants from agencies, funds and programmes, and the DRC govern- ment recognizes the complexity of stabilization and provides a holistic plan for long-term sta- bility and peace recovery. This plan goes beyond traditional peace processes and expands its reach to social and economic issues. Although very ambitious, it offers a necessary bold step toward a responsible transition with clear benchmarks and a timeframe. This transition plan speaks to Congolese expectations toward MONUSCO, with priority accorded to the security situation in eastern DRC and the eradication of armed groups, based on three focus areas: the need for institutional reforms, an emphasis on holistic peacebuilding, and a people-centred approach to stabilization. The Security Council will have to decide how to strengthen and support these multiple reform processes by ensuring they are depoliticized and objective. Security sector reforms, administrative reforms, and fair redistribution of the dividends from natural resource exploitation will be central to the effectiveness of institutional reforms. The upcoming mandate should also look at how instability is caused/driven by not only violence and armed conflict, but also by socio-economic factors (inequalities, competition) and the weak social contract. For instance, despite the estimated labour participation of 64.07 per cent, the persistent high poverty rate (80 per cent, according to the 2019 UN Human Development Index Report) constitutes one element with the potential for social instability. One example of the weak social contract is the government’s struggle to provide essential services such as free education. Since the beginning of the 2021/2022 school year, in October 2021, many primary and secondary school children, and their teachers, have been protesting the lack of governmen- tal support to provide funding to public schools. These protests come in addition to others in sectors such as healthcare and public transport. All these elements fuel social and institutional instabilities, in turn affecting the prospects for a sustainable peace. It is important that the terms and framework of the mandate and logistical support to the DRC be expanded to include these areas as key determinants of stability. There is a need for a people-centred approach in defining stabilization, which must be locally owned and driven. While the UN mission supports the DRC in re-establishing peace, MONUSCO remains an outsider in this setting: it is up to Congolese and the DRC government to lead the process: local voices and adaptation to local contexts and strategies must be taken into consider- ation and included. MONUSCO can achieve its goals only if it focuses on ensuring local own- ership of the peace process. The Security Council can empower the mission to this end, through a more reflective and context-sensitive mandate.
Ecosystemic politics: Analyzing the consequences of speaking for adjacent nature on the global stage
This article introduces a conceptual framework for analysing and comparing the broader or unintended effects of cooperation anchored in border-crossing ecosystems. The importance of addressing this lacuna in our scholarship on such sub-global cooperation is underscored by research in political geography that has demonstrated how the creation of scale is an important expression of power relations and how interaction with the materiality of different kinds of spaces necessitates distinct political technologies (and thus may have distinct effects). The article introduces three key analytical angles central to policy field studies in international sociology and demonstrates their utility through a case of the Arctic/Arctic Council. These analytical angles – networks (what are the relationships shaping the field?), hierarchies (who leads and how does leadership work?), and norms for political behavior – capture key consequences and dynamics of ecosystemic politics in a concise fashion that lends itself to cross-case comparison. The Arctic case focuses on the changing network positions and roles of non-Arctic actors over time, as an initial exploration of the broader ordering effects of such forms of cooperation. The findings suggest that most non-Arctic actors have experienced a decline in their centrality in Arctic cooperation, even as the Arctic has received intensified global interest and the number of participants in Arctic Council work has increased. Further comparative work along these lines would leave us better equipped to assess whether states speaking for their own immediate environs is better – and if so, in which ways – than seeking common solutions to global challenges.
Security and defence challenges after the coronavirus
What are the implications of the pandemic on security and defence, in the short, medium and long term perspectives?
UN Peacekeeping and the Kindleberger Trap
I nærmere et tiår har FN vært under press på grunn av et stort antall fataliteter, samt press fra medlemsstater om å kutte kostnader, særlig fra USA. Siden 2013 har ikke FN iverksatt noen nye store fredsbyggingsprosjekter, mens større prosjekter har blitt avsluttet i Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, Liberia og Sierra Leone. På det afrikanske kontinentet gjenstår fire store prosjekt - i Den sentralafrikanske republikk (SAR, MINUSCA), Den demokratiske republikken Kongo (DR Kongo, MONUSCO), Mali (MINUSMA) og Sør-Sudan (UNMISS). Også disse er under press for å kutte kostnader.
Fitting the Pieces Together: Implications for Resilience, Adaptive Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice.
This edited volume set out to explore how resilience, adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice can help societies recover after collective violence. To do so, it examined diverse societies across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East that have experienced, or are continuing to experience, violence. The eight case studies – Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Rwanda, Uganda, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala and Palestine – provide in-depth conceptual and empirical analyses of resilience and adaptive peacebuilding in a range of transitional justice settings. This final chapter will reflect on what we have learned from the cases covered in this volume. In particular, it will discuss how they enrich our understanding of the concepts of resilience, adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice, and what they tell us about the complex ways that resilience and adaptive peacebuilding manifest in transitional and post-conflict settings. The chapter begins with a discussion of adaptive peacebuilding and resilience in transitional justice contexts.
Hvis ikke Norge går i bresjen for en grønn omstilling, hvem da?
The faster Norway embarks on a responsible but speedy end to its reliance on oil, the greater the potential reputational, diplomatic, and commercial gains for Norway, write three NUPI researchers in this op-ed.
UN Security Council to Discuss Climate-Related Conflict, But What Role Should It Play?
Last month, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General called the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a “code red for humanity,” noting that the evidence is irrefutable: global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible. His message is one that all countries are now recognizing: climate change is not a future risk. It is already affecting every aspect of our collective lives, including our ability to sustain international peace and security.
Krigen mot terror - et vanskelig bindemiddel mellom Russland og USA
The Unsustainable Russia-US Partnership in the War on Terror. Russia and the USA forged a strategic partnership following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Today it seems obvious that such a partnership would not last. But why did it break? The article argues that the Kremlin leaves the partnership because its expectations of mutuality were not met. Russia also fundamentally disagreed with the USA on the sources of international terrorism and how best to conduct GWOT. Russia’s revival under Putin’s leadership is an underlying cause and implies that the terrorist threat is overshadowed be the traditional fear of NATO and US dominance. Albeit still figuring among the issue-areas suggested for US-Russian collaboration, the common fight against international terrorism will not function as a vehicle for rapprochement in the current cold war climate.
The Sahel’s jihadists don’t all govern alike: context matters
The way jihadist insurgents in the Sahel governs differs between but also within groups. Jihadists do not follow strict ideological templates for imposing their rule or rely only on the use of violence. They continuously adapt the manner in which they govern in response to internal factional dynamics and pressure from state and non-state actors. They also respond to local politics and conflicts.
Security Communities in Crisis: Crisis Constitution, Struggles and Temporality
How do we approach a security community in crisis? This article theorises crisis dynamics in and on security communities. How do security communities evolve during crises, and how can we best approach such crises analytically? Responding to a lack of focus and knowledge of crisis dynamics in the literature on security communities, this article develops a methodological model to study security communities in crisis. I argue that the study of security communities in crisis could evolve around four analytical categories: processes of constituting crisis and power struggles and the temporal aspects of social action concerning situatedness and imaginaries. This move allows IR theory to rethink the dynamics of security communities in crisis beyond the endurance/decay binary and provide for more process-oriented and context-sensitive empirical work. By way of illustrating the empirical saliency of the article, I use examples from the Brexit process.