The future of peace in Africa
Africa does not need saviors, but partners, according to Cedric de Coning and John Karlsrud, co-editors of the recent book ‘The Future of African Peace Operations: From Janjaweed to Boko Haram’.
UN70: Rethinking the humanitarian-development nexus?
How can the UN improve the interplay between humanitarian and development actors?
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.
Cooperation between the OSCE Academy and NUPI
The project consists of a wide range of activities including capacity-building of the OSCE Academy as a regional meeting point for research and education, support for two MA programmes in Politics and...
Best practices in EU crisis response and policy implementation
This report has two aims. First, to take stock of how the Europen External Action Sercvice (EEAS) and the Commission have institutionalized lessons-learned mechanism. Second, to discuss the extent to which these mechanisms and practices incorporate the EU’s ambitions for a ‘conflict-sensitive’ and ‘comprehensive’ crisis-response approach. In this sense, this report will serve as a point of departure for case-study research to be undertaken within the framework of Work Packages 5–7 of the EUNPACK project, on whether there is a gap between policy and practice with regard to institutional learning.
Next step for the United Nations
The new Secretary-General of the United Nations takes office the 1st of January 2017. Will we be needing a new agenda?
National crisis-management: Learning from Finland?
New societal vulnerabilities and new risks and threats require an agile national crisis management organization.Finland and Norway have addressed these challenges differently. What can we learn from Finland?
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.
Advocacy, action and obligations: The UN’s work to promote human rights
New seminar in the series "UN70: A new agenda seminar series". The discussion in this seminar aim to identify ideas and suggestions for the agenda of the next Secretary-General, who takes office on 1 January 2017.