The violence in Mali is getting bloodier, but religion is not necessarily at its root
The massacre of Fulani in central Mali on 23 March marks a grave, new turn in the conflict. How did we get here? NUPI researchers Natasja Rupesinghe and Morten Bøås provide insight into possible reasons.
Improving Future Ocean Governance – Governance of Global Goods in an Age of Global Shifts
Japan’s G20 presidency in 2019 will take the lead in promoting environmentally sustainable economic growth and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a gathering of coastal states, under Japan’s presidency the G20 will specifically work to reduce marine plastic pollution and support marine biodiversity. This policy paper highlights how oceans are governed spaces and points to the key role of the oceans in realizing the SDGs. We argue that the G20 can and should play an important role in addressing major governance gaps in ensuring the sustainable management of oceans. Recognizing that there are increased geopolitical tensions, and that we do indeed already have comprehensive multi-level governance systems in place to handle many aspects of the growing ‘blue economy’ and avoiding the tragedy of the commons, the G20 should primarily stress the need for full and effective implementation of existing instruments and measures at the national, regional and global levels and increased consistency across levels of governance. This would effectively address many of the challenges and make use of the opportunities of the oceans. However, the rapidly moving horizon of technological development and insufficient progress in mitigating global climate change represent new governance challenges that require renewed effort and innovative thinking for a sustainable future for the oceans. This policy paper provides recommendations as to how G20 states can: consolidate their own capacity and assist non-G20 states in taking responsibility for strengthening marine science and implementation of existing regulatory frameworks, exercise innovative global and regional leadership to address emerging opportunities and associated governance challenges and facilitate the meaningful involvement of the private sector and the public in ensuring a collective governance order around oceans.
Information worth killing for
What is the role of investigative journalism in unveiling financial secrecy?
Marianne Riddervold
Marianne Riddervold is a research professor (part time) in NUPI’s Research Group on Security and Defence. She is also professor in political scien...
EUNPACK Executive Summary of the Final Report & Selected Policy Recommendations. A conflict-sensitive unpacking of the eu comprehensive approach to...
Since adopting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach and improving internal coordination. New and protracted crises, from the conflict in Ukraine to the rise of Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and the refugee situation in North Africa and the Sahel, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But the implementation of the EU’s policies on the ground has received less scholarly and policy attention than the EU’s actorness and institutional capacity-building, and studies of implementation have often been guided primarily by a theoretical or normative agenda. The main objective of the EUNPACK project has been to unpack EU crisis response mechanisms and provide new insights how they are being received and perceived on the ground by both local beneficiaries and other external stakeholders. By introducing a bottom–up perspective combined with an institutional approach, the project has tried to break with the dominant line of scholarship on EU crisis response that has tended to view only one side of the equation, namely the EU itself. Thus, the project has been attentive to the local level in target countries as well as to the EU level and the connections between them. The research has been conducted through an inductive and systematic empirical research combining competencies from two research traditions that so far has had little interaction, namely peace and conflict studies and EU studies. A key finding in our research is that while the EU has been increasingly concerned with horizontal lessons learnt, it needs to improve vertical lessons learnt to better understand the local dynamics and thus provide more appropriate responses.
EUNPACK Final Conference: synthesising three years of research on the EU’s crisis response
Conflict sensitivity in focus as the three-year NUPI-led research project on the EU’s crisis response (EUNPACK) organised a final conference in Brussels in March.
The Arctic Council and US domestic policymaking
One widely recognized achievement of the Arctic Council and its various working groups has been the production of collectively generated assessments on Arctic problems. Assessment reports such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) provide an important baseline of shared knowledge for making collective circumpolar policy recommendations. But how does the knowledge produced through Arctic Council working groups figure into the policymaking of the Arctic states? This is an important question for understanding Arctic politics and the relationship between national decisionmaking and international relations more generally. Much of what the Arctic Council produces is in the form of recommendations, declarations of intent, and commitments to "best practices" in areas of shared interest and activity. While in recent years the Council has produced three binding agreements covering specific functional areas—search and rescue (2011), oil pollution preparedness and response (2013),and science cooperation (2017)—much ongoing Arctic collaborative work falls outside of these areas. This policy brief explores how science/policy outputs of and discussions at the Arctic Council fit into the Arctic political discourse of the USA, with an emphasis on key actors within the executive branch: the White House, the Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
How can the EU improve its response to crises?
Researchers within and beyond Europe have been studying the EU's approach to conflict and crises. Here's what they found out.
Digital sovereignty and autonomy (GAIA)
NUPI in collaboration with Simula Research Lab will map global data flows and their impact on national autonomy and sovereignty....
For the greater good?: “Good states” turning UN peacekeeping towards counterterrorism
The usual suspects of middle power internationalism—small and middle powers such as Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden—have all contributed to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA). This article argues that while these and other Western countries’ contributions to MINUSMA may still be characterized as investments into UN peacekeeping reform and a rule-governed world order, the liberal underpinnings of that commitment are withering. Instead, these countries seek to enhance their own status. This is done by gaining appreciation for their contributions, primarily from the US; strengthening their bids for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council; and self-interested contributions to reformUNpeacekeeping by efforts to enable it to confront violent extremism and terrorism. Paradoxically, the article concludes, when moving the UN towards counterterrorism and weakening the legitimacy of the organization, Western states undermine a cornerstone of their own security.