How can peacekeepers strengthen their engagement with local communities? Opportunities and challenges in the field
This Policy Brief examines the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs that peacekeepers have to face when deciding when, with whom and how to engage effectively at the field level. It argues that by integrating bottom–up and people-centric approaches as a core strategy in peace operations, UN practices can be made more sensitive and responsive to the local people. Achieving this will be more realistic if communities are systematically involved in decision-making and if existing practices are incorporated into a set of coherent bottom–up and top–down operational guidelines.
New Momentum for European Defence Cooperation
For better or for worse, the politics of Brexit, in combination with the implementation of the new EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, have generated renewed momentum for European defence cooperation. EU member states have tabled a range of proposals. Some consolidation will be necessary, especially if effective defence integration is the aim – and that is the way to overcome current fragmentation. National forces can cooperate and be made interoperable with other forces in various formats simultaneously, but they can be integrated only once. Two levels of defence cooperation and integration must be addressed. At the level of the EU as such, and using EU incentives such as Commission funding for R&T, largescale projects for the development and acquisition of strategic enablers can be mounted, with the European Defence Agency acting as manager. At the level of state clusters, large deployable multinational formations can be created (such as army corps and air wings), with fully integrated maintenance, logistics and other structures in support of the national manoeuvre units that each participant can contribute. By pooling all-too-limited national military sovereignty in this way, defence cooperation and integration can revive sovereignty, understood as the capacity for action, at a higher level.
When Russia goes to war
What makes war acceptable? Julie Wilhelmsen launches her most recent book, followed by a conversation with Aftenposten commentator Helene Skjeggestad.
Tunisia´s Ennahda: A model for Democratizing Political Islam?
What has been the role of Ennahda, the moderate Tunisian Islamic Party, during the country´s democratic transition? Does Ennahda represent, more broadly, a democratic model for Islamic politics? These are questions to be discussed at a seminar with Abdelfattah Mourou, Tunisian politician, lawyer, Vice-President of the Parliament and co-founder of the Ennahdha Party.
TTIP: Consequences and implications for Norway
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) is pleased to invite you to an open seminar where the results from the project "TTIP: Consequences and implications for Norway" will be presented.
The Arctic buffer
Indigenous peoples are safeguarding Arctic cooperation, Elana Wilson Rowe (NUPI) writes in her most recent High North News commentary.
NATO looking North: What are the priorities after the Warsaw Summit?
Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs, The Norwegian Atlantic Committee, German Marshall Fund of the United States and the U.S. Mission to NATO are pleased to invite you to this event: NATO looking North, What are the priorities after the Warsaw Summit?