A humanitarian mission in line with human rights? Assessing Sophia, the EU’s naval response to the migration crisis
This article adds to our understanding of the role of norms in the European Union’s (EU) response to the migration crisis by conducting a critical assessment of the EU’s anti-smuggling naval mission “Sophia”. Is Sophia in line with the normative standards the EU has set for itself in its foreign policies? Conducting the analysis in two steps in line with the main criteria of a humanitarian foreign policy model – first exploring Sophia’s launch and then assessing Sophia’s in theatre behaviour – findings suggest that although concerns for migrants at sea mobilised the initial launch of the mission, the mission is not conducted in line with key human rights principles. As the operation mandate is amended and updated with new tasks, and as the EU-NATO in theatre cooperation increases, the EU is moving further away from what one would expect of a humanitarian foreign policy actor.
Teheran. Revolusjon og reaksjon.
Temaet for kapitlet er Teherans rolle og betydning i et Midtøsten i endring og konflikt. Jeg ser byen som brennpunkt for tre store slag som står i regionen: kampene over Vestens rolle, folkets makt over politiske avgjørelser og islam som samfunnskontrakt. Jeg viser hvordan kampene spilles ut i Teheran, og hvordan de speiler Irans utfordringer som regional makt. Kapitlet drøfter forholdet mellom innen- og utenrikspolitikk og tar konflikten med Saudi-Arabia som eksempel.
Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia
The present article investigates how sovereignty is performed, enacted and constructed in an everyday setting. Based on fieldwork and interviews with international embedded experts about the elusive meaning of ‘local ownership’, we argue that while sovereignty may, indeed, be a model according to which the international community ‘constructs’ rogue or failed polities in ‘faraway’ places, this view overlooks that these places are still spaces in which contestations over spheres of authority take place every day, and thus also spaces in which sovereignty is constructed and reconstructed on a daily basis. Local ownership, then, becomes our starting point for tracing the processes of the everyday enactment of sovereignty. We make the case that sovereignty should not be reified, but instead be studied in its quotidian and dynamic production, involving the multiplicity of actors reflecting the active production of the state beyond its presumptive existence as a homogeneously organized, institutionalized and largely centralized bureaucracy.
Brexit og framtida til europeisk og norsk tryggleik
Steven Blockmans, Garvan Walshe og Øystein Bø skal sjå nærare på Brexit og moglege konsekvensar for Noreg, og korleis Storbritannias utmelding kan påverke EUs felles tryggleiks- og forsvarspolitikk (CSDP).
Rival priorities in the Sahel – finding the balance between security and development
The G5 Sahel initiative goes some way to make up for the lack of supranational coordination in the troubled Sahel region. If moulded in the interests of development, it could bring about positive change. But the initiative risks becoming yet another excuse to get more ‘boots on the ground’, if external stakeholders place too much emphasis on fighting terror and stopping migration.
Working Paper: Comparing the EU’s Output Effectiveness in the Cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali
This part of the overall report (Deliverable 7.1) on the EU’s crisis response in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali compares the findings of three comprehensive cases-studies. The analytical focus is on the output dimension of EU policy-making that is the output of decision-making of the policy-making machinery in Brussels. Thus, the analysis is confined to the choices and decisions made regarding the EU’s problem definitions, policy goals, strategies and instruments – both on a strategic and operational level; thus policy implementation or impact will be analysed as next steps in following project reports (D 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4).