Sudan: Int'l community concerned over reported coup
The arrest of the civilian leadership in Sudan follows more than a week of two kinds of protests; one group calling for the military to take over, while the pro-democracy group wants the military prevented from taking over.
Assessing the Effectiveness of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) and The Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary- Ge...
This report assesses the extent to which the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) along with the Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary- General on Cyprus (OSASG) – also called the mission of the Good Offices – is achieving its mandate enshrined in Resolution 164 of March 1964. In 2024, the UN Missions in Cyprus will celebrate the 60th anniversary of their presence in the country, and it seems timely to analyse their impact and effectiveness over the years. The EPON report looks for the first time at what the peacekeeping research community has called “legacy operations”, those born during the Cold War and still in place today. UNFICYP is the eighth peacekeeping mission created since 1948. The report looks also at the interaction between peacekeeping and peacemaking in the context of a frozen conflict, often referred to by researchers and scholars as the “Cyprus problem”. Cyprus is a unique case in international relations and peace operations. Its capital city is the only remaining divided capital in Europe and in the world. Cyprus is the only country in the world to have “Guarantors” with a right to intervene and station troops on a permanent basis. The report acknowledges the role of prevention of UNFICYP to the extent that the people in Cyprus tend to forget that no cease-fire agreement exists between the parties. Peacekeeping has been successful at creating a comfortable status quo that peacemaking has yet been unable to break down. In this context, the lack of will from the parties to engage in a meaningful political process has limited the UN’s effectiveness.
‘It’s us or them’: How Sudanese generals sacrificed civilian politicians to save their own necks
Fear that political reform would weaken the military’s grip on Sudan society led to the coup, writes Ahmed Aboudouh. Senior Research Fellow Dr. Andrew E. Yaw Tchie weighs in.
Editorial: The New Right’s internationalism
The editorial team welcomes you to the final issue of 2021. For this issue, convened by Minda Holm, one of New Perspectives’ Associate Editors, we have brought together a group of invited essays on the Internationalism of the New Right. As an object of analysis for political science and International Relations, the New Right refers to intellectual movements that have emerged since the 1980s, including Reaganite economic conservatives, theorists and philosophers like Alexandr Dugin and Alain de Benoist, and political movements that have swept to power across the globe, but with particular successes in Central and Eastern Europe. Globally these movement include actors as diverse as Bolsonaro in Brasil, Modi in India, and Putin in Russia, and in Central and Eastern Europe are exemplified by Fidesz in Hungary and Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc in Poland. So far, academic conversations have happened mostly in parallel, rather than with each other, drawing seemingly different conclusions as to both who we are speaking of, and what their global ideas entail – both for world politics, and IR as a field (see Abrahamsen et al., 2020; Azmanova and Dakwar, 2019; De Orellana and Michelsen, 2019; Drolet and Williams, 2018). In this special issue, we bring together some leading voices to reflect on the transnational and international relations between these movements.
Rolf Tamnes
Professor Rolf Tamnes is a member of NUPI’s Research Group on Security and Defence. Tamnes holds a dr.philos (PhD) from 1991 and a cand.philol. (M...
Sudan’s top general says army ousted government to avoid civil war
Sudan’s top general, Abdel Fattah al Burhan, says the decision to oust the government of Abdalla Hamdok was taken in order to avoid civil war. Andrew Yaw Tchie from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs weighs in.
Al menos tres muertos y 80 heridos en las protestas en golpe de Estado en Sudán
Andrew E. Yaw Tchie comments on current developments in Sudan on W Radio.
Ad Hoc Crisis Response and International Organisations (ADHOCISM)
International organisations (IOs) are created with the aim of solving collective action problems when a crisis arises. Yet, member states have repeatedly established ad hoc crisis responses in situations where IOs might be expected to play a central role. ADHOCISM asks what is the impact of ad hoc crisis responses on international organisations? In this way, ADHOCISM wants to contribute to filling this knowledge gap through a systematic study of ad hoc crisis responses in two policy domains: security and health. With this paired comparison, ADHOCISM wants to tap into a broader empirical governance phenomenon. Ad hoc crisis responses are here understood as loose groups of actors that agree to solve a particular crisis at a given time and location outside of an existing international organisation in the same policy domain. Ad hoc crisis reponses can, in the short-term, lead to more rapid and effective crisis responses among like-minded states, but if international organisations are no longer seen as the principal instruments to confront global challenges, the risk is also that the relevance of these international organisations will diminish, and similar trends may unfold in other domains.
Anne Funnemark
Anne Funnemark was a Junior Research Fellow at NUPI. She was a part of the Climate-related Peace and Security Risks (CPSR) project and the MCDC Cl...
The Georgian far right and the post-election crisis
This article examines the role of the far right in political polarisation in Georgia. Polarisation has been a constant feature of Georgian politics, reaching new levels after the 2020 parliamentary elections. On the one hand, polarisation leaves little (if any) room in the political space for newcomers and small actors, including the far right. Carving out a niche in an extremely polarised political space requires a strong, consolidated, alternative force. To date, the fragmented nature of the Georgian far-right movement has hindered its mobilisation as a viable alternative to either the ruling party, Georgian Dream, or the opposition. On the other hand, the far right has also played a role in polarisation: Critics have argued that far-right groups have been used as an instrument to fuel polarisation further. Even though the activities of the far right seem to play into the interests of one end of the polarised political space more than the other, this article asserts that the far-right movement should not be reduced to a mere instrument in the hands of political powers.