Åsmund Weltzien
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Åsmund Weltzien is Head of Communications at NUPI. He has a major (hovedfag) in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, and has previously worked as a researcher and research leader in Telenor R&D and as a diplomat and executive officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Weltzien works to promote NUPI's research to a wide audience and to the users of our research. He is particularly committed to helping NUPI's researchers create social and scientific impact, to improve our digital communication through development and experimentation, and to build networks of professionals, users and stakeholders where knowledge and insight are shared across institutions and sectors.
In Telenor, Weltzien's own research was focused on the development of new digital technologies and how information and influence spread in social networks. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has worked with various fields such as Norwegian climate policy, security policy, and European policy. From 2011, Weltzien was part of the Foreign Ministry's "Reflex Project", which was to contribute to the development of foreign policy through public debate on central foreign policy issues.
Weltzien has been Head of Communications at NUPI since 2013.
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Clear all filtersFrance and the European Union: a story of reason rather than love
In France, the push for the European integration process has come historically for a large part from the political and administrative elite. Over the past 60 years, they have expressed not only interest but also belief in European integration, as the US scholar Craig Parsons has rightly noted. Three beliefs about the EU have been recurrent fundamentals for French political and administrative elites: 1. The EU must have a ‘core’ consisting in the major member states which exercise a leadership on the rest. In this regard, France and Germany must share the role of motor or driving force. 2. The EU must not be limited to a single market. It should develop as a political project including a foreign and security policy. This is usually called in France l’Europe puissance, a term difficult to translate. 3. The EU governance should be a combination of supranational and intergovernmental institutions
Security Sector Reform: A Literature Review
‘Security sector reform’, or SSR, has become a cornerstone of international development, post-conflict peacebuilding and state-building initiatives. The term emerged in the late 1990s in recognition of the changing international security environment and the limitations of peace accords in failing and failed states. Aimed at promoting both effective and legitimate provision of security in countries emerging from conflict or undergoing processes of political transition, SSRrelated activities have growth significantly in scope as well as scale. However, security sector reform remains a contested concept that can have different meanings in different contexts and for different audiences. Various institutions, groups and nations involved in SSR tend to understand the concept on the basis of their own policies, doctrines and practices.1 Experience has also shown that SSR is often conducted in challenging political, socio-economic and security environments. Given the diversity of perceptions and contexts, SSR approaches and implementation vary greatly within the international community. Against that backdrop, this contribution reviews the comprehensive literature on security sector reform. Specifically, it asks: what were the authoritative influences and actors in the development of the SSR concept? What is the current state of theoretical discussion? What challenges and opportunities does adoption of SSR entail? How successfully has the concept been adopted in international peace operations? Are there any particular criticisms of the SSR concept? How might SSR practice be improved?
Russia and China in Central Asia
Over the last three years, Russia and China have increased their engagement in Central Asia in response to NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Moscow has deepened its security cooperation with the Central Asian states with a new strategic purpose– guarding against instability spilling over from northern Afghanistan– and has promoted the expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union. China also has dramatically accelerated its economic activities in the region by announcing the One Belt One Route (OBOR) initiative, an ambitious project to upgrade regional infrastructure and connect China to Europe and the Middle East. Although both Beijing and Moscow claim to be regional partners and not rivals, since the Ukraine crisis Russia has been forced to accept China’s terms of cooperation in order to signal that it has non-Western partners and opportunities.
New internet pages for NUPI
Welcome to the new internet pages for nupi.no! The changes are big, both in appearance and where to find the material. This is still only a small part of what is new. We believe that the new solution is better than the old one - and we hope you agree with us.
Sustainability Coffee Certification in India: Perceptions and Practices
Abstract Certification programs has been employed in many agricultural products as a means to encourage and communicate compliance with standards associated with various attributes, such as organic, fair-trade, GMO free, and eco- friendly, among others. Such programs further seek to provide added value, through a price premium, to producers and supply chain actors associated with the label. In this paper, we review a number of global labeling and certification programs that could add value for coffee farms in India through the promotion of conservation and environmental protection. We provide results from a survey conducted on a sample of coffee farms in Coorg district, India to assess their awareness and perceptions related towards certified coffee and environmental conservation in general. Survey results illustrate strong positive associations with the environment by coffee planters, particularly among certified and organic producers. However, price premiums for certified and organic coffee are relatively small. While the potential of conservation-oriented certification for coffee in Coorg could be relatively limited outside of a few individual-level niches, branding Coorg more generally as a conservation-oriented region could hold promise, lever- aging and personalizing the uniqueness of the natural offerings from Coorg and tapping into burgeoning associations with place and region in India.
Role of South-South Cooperation and Emerging Powers in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding
Extending State Authority in Liberia The Gbarnga Justice and Security Hub / Marina Caparini
This report examines the establishment of the first regional justice and security hub near Gbarnga, Liberia. By building up law enforcement and justice capacities in the outlying regions, the hub represents a joint effort by the Government of Liberia and the UN Peacebuilding Fund to extend Liberian state authority. The context for this pilot initiative is that Liberian police and justice services have a weak presence outside the capital city of Monrovia and will increasingly bear sole responsibility for safety and security as the UN Mission in Liberia draws down its forces with a view to eventual withdrawal.