Mixed Signals: What Putin Says about Gender Equality
Researchers on Russia have noticed that Putin gradually has adopted a more conservative agenda, especially as regards gender issues. But is this reflected in the Russian president's own rhetoric?
Why lack of will to limit climate change amongst ASEAN states?
The countries of Southeast Asia are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Why, then, has there been so little will to take action? This paradox is the focus of a new article from the ACCEPT project.
Governance, Social Policy, and Political Economy: Trends in Norway’s Partner Countries
In 2017–2018, NUPI (the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) headed a project where political economy analyses were undertaken in eleven of Norway’s partner countries. These analyses were published as eleven separate reports. The reports focused on power relations and political developments in the partner countries, but they also analyzed the nature of governance. After the publication of the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2019, the MFA approached NUPI and requested that we summarize the findings of this report for Norway’s eleven partner countries and assess these findings in light of the political economy analyses. We were also asked to investigate whether there were any connections between the nature and quality of governance on the one hand, and the nature of social policies and the human rights situation on the other. This report presents the findings of this assessment of the governance scores in the light of the above-mentioned political economy analyses. The report is structured as follows: Firstly, after briefly describing the governance indictors used by the World Bank, we summarize the eleven countries’ scores on the various governance indicators. Secondly, we assess the evolution of governance in the eleven countries, by comparing the scores in the 2019 report with those from 2011. Thirdly, we summarize the findings of the political economy analyses of the eleven countries and discuss how they fit with the governance scores. Finally, we present the eleven countries’ expenditure on social policies, as reported in the ILOs World Social Protection Report, and the human rights situation for the partner countries, and then describe how these findings relate to the governance scores.
The impact of climate change on UN Peacekeeping operations
Follow this webinar to learn more about how climate change impacts UN peacekeeping operations.
Bastionforsvaret og Russlands militærmakt, Et utdatert trusselbilde?
Russlands potensielle etablering av Bastionforsvaret er forankret i inneværende langtidsplan (LTP) som Forsvarets dimensjonerende scenario for en eventuell stormaktskonflikt. Kombinasjonen av våpenteknologisk utvikling og den russiske militærmaktens vesentlige reduksjon siden konseptet ble utviklet har imidlertid medført en manglende evne, og tilsynelatende vilje, til å implementere og opprettholde dets omfattende forsvarssoner. En diskusjon om Bastionforsvarets fortsatte relevans for norsk forsvars- og strukturplanlegging er dermed på overtid.
Adaptive Peace Operations: Navigating the Complexity of Influencing Societal Change Without Causing Harm
Peace operations are deployed to contain violence and to facilitate this process, but if they interfere too much, they will cause harm by inadvertently disrupting the very feedback loops critical for self-organization to emerge and to be sustained. To navigate this dilemma, this paper by Research Professor Cedric de Coning proposes employing an adaptive approach, where peace operations, together with the communities and people affected by the conflict, actively engage in an iterative process of inductive learning and adaptation. Adaptive Peace Operations is a normative and functional approach to peace operations that is aimed at navigating the complexity inherent in trying to nudge societal change processes towards sustaining peace, without causing harm.
New study shows 95% South Sudanese depend on climate sensitive livelihood
The collaborative project undertaken by the Norwegian institute of international affairs, is aimed at achieving UN climate agenda. The institute has been conducting its research for close to ten years and it will complete its mandate in 2023. Lead researcher on the South Sudan fact sheet, Dr Andrew E. Yaw Tchie says they have identified livelihood decline, migration and mobility, military and armed actors and political and economic exploitation as pathways negatively affecting climate, Peace and Security.
Global handel og medisinsk beredskap i lys av Covid-19
The study analyzes world trade and value chains for medical goods before and during Covid-19, and on this basis discusses lessons learned for medical preparedness in Norway. Since Norway imports much of what we need, emergency preparedness is an international issue, while it has largely been treated as a national matter. Report to the Corona Commission 2.2.2021.
Children in Violent Extremist Organizations
Terrorist organizations, like ISIS, Hamas and the Taliban have exploited children for years. This seminar takes a closer look at the different ways in which these groups recruit and deploy children.
Analyzing Security Subregions: Forces of Push, Pull, and Resistance in Nordic Defense Cooperation
How can we best analyze security subregions? The most commonly used theory of regional security in the discipline of international relations, the regional security complex theory, focuses on large regions, such as Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. It pays less attention to smaller regions within these. This is unfortunate, because the security dynamics of these subregions often are a result of more than their place in the larger region. At the same time, the security of subregions cannot be reduced to a function of the policies of the states comprising them either. In short, security subregions are a level of analysis in their own right, with their own material, ideational, economic, and political dynamics. To capture and understand this, we need an analytical framework that can be applied to security regions irrespective of where and when in time they occur. The aim of this article is to offer such an analytical framework that helps us theorize the forces forging regional security cooperation, by combining external push and pull forces with internal forces of pull and resistance. The utility of the framework is illustrated through the case of Nordic security cooperation. It allows for a systematic mapping of the driving forces behind it and the negative forces resisting it. The Nordic region thus becomes a meeting point between global and national forces, pushing and pulling in different directions, with Nordic Defense Cooperation being formed in the squeeze between them.