Global styring

Norway and the European Economic Area: Good Deal or Just an EU Rule-Taker?

'After more than 20 years in the European Economic Area (EEA), it may look as if this remains the solution for Norway – part of the EU's single market but not an actual EU member state. There is no great political push to change Norway's status for now but there are still debates on the political, economic and institutional pluses and minuses of being on the margins of the EU not at its heart, skriver Ole Gunnar Austvik i denne kronikken.

Knowledge Management and Police Peacekeepers: Experiences and Recommendations.

While over 90 countries contribute police personnel to international peace operations, only a handful systematically interview returned police and attempt to gather insights and information on their mission experiences. This report explores a selection of police-contributing countries (PCCs), examining their mechanisms for deploying police officers to international missions, and then, on return from international missions, for collecting information on their experiences. From this overview, we identify good practices as well as gaps in knowledge generation, and offer some recommendations for improving the collection, management and application of mission-relevant police knowledge. Establishing coherent systems for gathering insights from on-the-ground experiences of police officers deployed to peace operations is valuable for building and sharing awareness of what works and what does not work in international police deployments. Such feedback should be used by PCCs to inform and tailor police pre-deployment training programmes, support mechanisms for deployed officers, and post-deployment reintegration practices. The insights of police officers who have served in peace operations can also be applied to enrich what is known about the complex tasks international police are commonly asked to perform, such as supporting the reform and restructuring of host-state police and law-enforcement institutions, and the challenges of undertaking such tasks in specific mission and country contexts.

Researching the Effectiveness of Peace Operations, Seminar Report, 31 May – 1 June, Oslo

The African Union (AU), European Union (EU), and United Nations (UN) are under increasing pressure to justify the effectiveness of the peace operations they deploy. Justifying this effectiveness requires precise assessments based on systematized and evidence-based data. Per now, however, this data is lacking, a gap the global research community could help address. On 31 May and 1 June 2017, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) hosted a seminar that brought together thirty participants from the AU, UN, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as research institutes and think tanks from across the globe. The aim of the seminar was to share insights on how best to research the effectiveness of peace operations and to explore the establishment of a network that could seek to address this gap. The seminar discussed how to research and measure the effectiveness of peace operations. It looked at current definitions and conceptualizations of effectiveness, and it discussed the varying perceptions stakeholders have of the effectiveness of peace operations. The group also explored the options for establishing a network dedicated to research on the effectiveness of peace operations. The seminar agreed on the value of establishing such a network, with an aim to produce knowledge that is both academically valuable and relevant for policymakers. Hence, it considered different organizational modalities for a potential research network, with regards to governing principles, funding, and how researchers could undertake joint research projects. This report summarizes the key conclusions and recommendations from the seminar, and lists what the next steps may be for the establishment of a research network on the effectiveness of peace operations.

Tryggingspolitikk sett frå Tyrkia og Russland

The UK withdrawal from the EU - Legal implications for Norway as party to the EEA Agreement

By leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom withdraws from all EU international commitments. The disentanglement of the UK from the EU, Brexit, will thus affect third states and organisations with which the EU entertains relations. Norway will be no exception, particularly in view of the many agreements the country has concluded with the EU, covering a wide range of areas and entailing a high degree of integration with the Union’s legal order, the EEA being the most important of these agreements.