How can peacekeepers strengthen their engagement with local communities? Opportunities and challenges in the field
This Policy Brief examines the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs that peacekeepers have to face when deciding when, with whom and how to engage effectively at the field level. It argues that by integrating bottom–up and people-centric approaches as a core strategy in peace operations, UN practices can be made more sensitive and responsive to the local people. Achieving this will be more realistic if communities are systematically involved in decision-making and if existing practices are incorporated into a set of coherent bottom–up and top–down operational guidelines.
New Momentum for European Defence Cooperation
For better or for worse, the politics of Brexit, in combination with the implementation of the new EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, have generated renewed momentum for European defence cooperation. EU member states have tabled a range of proposals. Some consolidation will be necessary, especially if effective defence integration is the aim – and that is the way to overcome current fragmentation. National forces can cooperate and be made interoperable with other forces in various formats simultaneously, but they can be integrated only once. Two levels of defence cooperation and integration must be addressed. At the level of the EU as such, and using EU incentives such as Commission funding for R&T, largescale projects for the development and acquisition of strategic enablers can be mounted, with the European Defence Agency acting as manager. At the level of state clusters, large deployable multinational formations can be created (such as army corps and air wings), with fully integrated maintenance, logistics and other structures in support of the national manoeuvre units that each participant can contribute. By pooling all-too-limited national military sovereignty in this way, defence cooperation and integration can revive sovereignty, understood as the capacity for action, at a higher level.
Tunisia´s Ennahda: Ein modell for demokratisering av politisk Islam?
Ved tildelinga av Nobels fredspris i 2015 blei rolla til det tunisiske sivilsamfunnet i utviklinga av eit demokratisk styresett i landet anerkjend, representert ved dialogkvartetten. Ein annan viktig og ofte oversett faktor i denne overgangen gjeld rolla til Ennahda, det tunisiske islamistpartiet, som vatn landets første frie og rettferdige val halde i 2011. I motsetning til andre islamistiske parti som fekk makt under den arabiske våren, har Ennahda vist ein oppsiktsvekkjande vilje til kompromiss og til å finne igjen den politiske identiteten sin.