Publikasjoner

Africa in 2022

Dr Andrew E. Yaw Tchie shares his assessment on what have been the most significant issues shaping Africa in 2022.

The humanitarian-development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics

The humanitarian–development nexus is increasingly being cast as the solution to humanitarian concerns, new and protracted crises, and to manage complex war-to-peace transitions. Despite widely endorsed amongst policymakers, this nexus presents some challenges to those implementing it. Humanitarian action and development assistance represent two distinct discursive and institutional segments of the international system that are hard to juxtapose. Humanitarianism’s apolitical and imminent needs-based approaches building on established humanitarian principles are fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, rights-based approaches of development. As they rub shoulders, as intentionally instigated by the nexus, they affect and challenge each other. These challenges are more acute to the humanitarian domain given the constitutive status of the humanitarian principles, which, when challenged, may cause changes to the humanitarian space and a mission-cum-ethics creep. This article explores the formation and effects of the humanitarian–development nexus as rendered both at the top, amongst policymakers, and from the bottom. The latter explores the discursive transition from conflict to reconstruction in Northern Uganda. Humanitarian organisations’ different response to the transition demonstrate more pragmatic approaches to the humanitarian principles and thus how the nexus itself is also formed bottom up and further exacerbates the mission creep.

A quest to win the hearts and minds: Assessing the Effectiveness of the Multinational Joint Task Force

I januar 2015 autoriserte den afrikanske union Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) som en regional sikkerhetsordning av Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) for å håndtere trusselen fra Boko Haram (BH) i Lake Chad-regionen. Dens mandat inkluderer ansvaret for å sikre et trygt og sikkert miljø i områdene som er berørt av BH-opprøret, redusere voldelige angrep mot sivile, legge til rette for stabiliseringsprogrammer i Lake Chad regionen, tilrettelegge for humanitære operasjoner og gi bistand til berørte befolkninger. For å oppnå sitt mandat, gjennomfører MNJTF både kinetiske og ikke-kinetiske operasjoner. Mandatet har blitt fornyet årlig siden 2015, og i desember 2022 fornyet AU sitt mandat for ytterligere 12 måneder. Denne rapporten vurderer effektiviteten til MNJTF i å levere på sine tre mandatprioriteringer for å generere anbefalinger. Det er viktig å merke seg at AUs freds- og sikkerhetsråd (PSC) fornyet mandatet til MNJTF tidligere enn forventet, og som et resultat gir denne rapporten refleksjoner om hvordan man kan forbedre effektiviteten av oppdraget fremover.

More than just a petrol station: Norway's contribution to European Union's green strategic autonomy

NUPI-forsker Kacper Szulecki diskuterer hvordan Norge kan bidra til Europas «grønne» strategiske autonomi. Han skisserer mulighetene, utfordringene og risikoene Norge har som olje- og gassleverandør og samarbeidspartner i klima- og bærekraftsspørsmål. Når Finland og Sverige blir med i NATO, er vi også det eneste nordiske landet som bare er delvis med i den europeiske familien. This Policy Brief has also been published as a Policy Brief within the GreenDeal-NET project

The Russian Arctic Threat: Consequences of the Ukraine War

The subsea cable cut at Svalbard January 2022: What happened, what were the consequences, and how were they managed?

Svalbard is, like most other societies, largely dependent on an internet connection. The fiber connection on Svalbard consists of two separate subsea cables that connect Longyearbyen to the mainland. In some areas the cables were buried about two meters below the seabed, especially in areas where fishing is done, to “protect against destruction of the fishing fleet’s bottom trawling or anchoring of ships. (New version uploaded 18 January 2023)

The localisation of aid - debate and challenges

The localisation agenda resurfaced with the Covid 19-pandemic among development and humanitarian actors. Aid localisation refers to providing aid through local, grassroots institutions without the use of intermediaries, which involves a shift in power over policy and financial issue to local actors.

External Voting among Central European Migrants Living in Western Europe

Non-resident citizens’ participation in national elections is known as external voting. This report presents the first comparative dataset of external voting, both in parliamentary and presidential elections. We gathered voting results among migrants from nine Central and Eastern European countries, with the main analysis focusing on six where most data were available: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Romania. The analysed countries of residence where diasporas cast their votes were Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden (EU members) as well as two countries belonging to the European Economic Area (Norway and Iceland) and Switzerland. How different are external voting results from those seen in countries of origin? What are the ideological differences between voting migrants and the ‘mean’ voter back home, and to what extent does that matter? These are some of the questions the data gathered may help shed light on.

Opportunities Matter: The Evolution of Far-Right Protest in Georgia

What role do political opportunities play in far-right mobilisation? The case of Georgia indicates that modernisation in itself may be insufficient to trigger a far-right backlash. A systematised database of 154 far-right protest events in Georgia in the period 2003–2020 shows that the movement remained dormant for over two decades after post-Soviet independence and a decade after the 2003 Rose Revolution. After 2012, however, less severe repression of protest, divides within the political elite, and the sympathetic attitudes of mainstream political and societal actors enabled far-right mobilisation and violence. Thus, however deep-rooted anti-modernisation, a backlash may not erupt until mobilisation opportunities become available.

Loss of Tonga’s telecommunication – what happened, how was it managed and what were the consequences?

In January 2022 the subsea volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in Tonga had a major eruption which also cut the country’s communication lines nationally, between Tonga’s inhabited islands and the outside world. The damage led to a complete halt in international communication (a “digital darkness”) which meant that, in the period immediately after the outbreak, not much was known about the extent of the damage in Tonga. Due to very limited access to contact with both the authorities and the population of Tonga, it was only during overflights carried out by the Australian and New Zealand air forces that one could begin to map the extent of the damage and the need for assistance.