Repatriation of Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Families in Central Asia
What happens when foreign fighters return home? How do states approach repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration?
Care, Control and Calories: A Genealogy of Measuring International Undernutrition
This article documents the historical development of the calory and its application in international measurement of undernutrition. It provides an empirical account of the origins of caloric measurement as a scientific instrument, its uptake into international statistics on undernutrition produced by the League of Nations and the United Nations, and eventual use in monitoring global development goals. The historical analysis explores and discusses how a dialectic of care and control is embedded in macrosocial measurement of hunger: Caloric statistics have served as a condition of possibility for states and international agencies to render food systems governable through constituting a novel form of legibility that pushed the frontiers for modern schemes of top-down intervention and control. Such measurements have furthermore served as a vital resource to legitimize and justify the ambitions of the UN and modern development agenda, serving to establish and shape grand narratives of humanity’s progress under different food regimes. Based on this historical analysis, the article provides a normative and epistemic argument for centring the perspectives and knowledges of those affected by hunger in the enumeration of nutrition and food security. Such democratic agency should however not just be an object of measurement but be leveraged through participatory methodologies that draw upon the voices of the food insecure to better capture the multidimensional nature of food security through numbers.
Webinar: Civic mobilisations in hybrid regimes – A transnational perspective on Serbia and Georgia
How are grassroots movements in Serbia and Georgia reshaping civic activism and challenging power structures?
European Security and Defence: Challenges and Opportunities
How has Russia’s war on Ukraine reshaped Europe’s security landscape? What are the key challenges and opportunities facing European defence cooperation today?
Breakfast seminar: How the former jihadis who took over Damascus embraced politics and toppled the Assad regime
The Assad-family has ruled over Syria for more than 50 years. In December, it took opposition groups less than two weeks to overthrow the regime.
The IDP situation in Borno State, Nigeria – returning to uncertainty?
Nigeria is faced with a protracted displacement crisis caused by jihadist insurgencies, banditry and natural disasters. This crisis is particularly manifest in the north-east, where for more than 12 years over 2 million people have been forced to move in to, out of and between internally displaced person (IDP) camps and informal settlements. Some have tried to return home or resettle to another community, only to have to move again. All suffer from limited access to essential services such as healthcare and education, and deficiencies in food security and adequate shelter. Moreover, the young age of the IDP population means many camp residents have few, if any, memories of their lives prior to leaving their homes of origin. The state of Borno is one of the most affected in Nigeria. Here, about 900,000 people continue to live in about 65 formal and 158 informal camps. In 2021, Borno State Governor Prof Babagana Umara Zulum began the process of closing the camps and returning IDPs to their homes of origin. While more than 100,000 people have already moved out of the camps, uncertain remains as to what the majority of IDPs will do once the camps are closed. This report aims to fill this knowledge gap by presenting a foresight study that, coupled with analysis of previous studies, draws on ethnographic data and field observations collected among IDP populations around Maiduguri in October 2024. The foresight analysis framework used relies on three inter-related factors: 1) the weight of history; 2) the contradictions of the present; and 3) the pull of the future. While this method cannot offer statistical representativity, it does allow for indicative scenarios encompassing known (albeit uncertain) risks and probable futures. These scenarios are not only valuable for policy planning, but constitute important pilot data for larger, more systematic studies going forward.
Managing Climate, Peace and Security Risks from the Borderlands of the Lake Chad (CPS-Lake Chad)
How can local efforts in the Lake Chad Region teach us how to manage the effects of climate change on peace and security? ...