South Sudan’s battle for Democracy
South Sudan’s peace process is still largely up for negotiation. A new South Sudan must emerge through a civilian technocratic government. This will require transforming the way security forces control the state. It also means being serious about addressing the root causes of conflict, implementing a transitional parliament, drafting a new constitution, deciding what type of federalism best suits the country and strengthening the electoral commission, writes Andrew E. Yaw Tchie in this analysis.
Belarus: At the Height of Mobilisation and Repression
Nine months after the massive political protests started as a reaction to the 2020 presidential elections, this webinar examines the state of the political crisis in Belarus.
Climate, Peace and Security: The case of South Sudan
The consequences of climate change can worsen South Sudan’s humanitarian crises and fragile security environment, marked by widespread communal conflict and a civil war since 2013. With a population estimated at 11 million, more than 1.6 million people have been internally displaced due to prolonged conflict.
Resilience in the age of crises
This research paper examines the concept 'resilience' as a response to the constantly changing environments and turbulence of the world. While resilience is used by several international organisations and nation states, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what the concept really means – it denotes both resisting change and being willing to adapt at the same time. This paper offers some clarity and argues that a temporal dimension is needed when applying the concept of resilience.
The weakest link? Digital technology and cyber security capacity building in Developing Countries
The world gets more interconnected, and the dependency of cyberspace and its infrastructure is now evident in most sectors. Join this seminar to learn more about the need for security standards across countries.
The EU's comprehensive response to out of area crises: Plugging the capability-expectations gap
Since adopting a “comprehensive approach” to crisis management in 2013, the EU has spent considerable time and energy on streamlining its approach. Recently, we have also seen a terminological shift from “comprehensive” to “integrated”, indicating an expansion of the approach beyond the development–security nexus to encompass the commitment to the synergistic use of all tools available at all stages of the conflict cycle. It also recognises the need to overcome the EU’s own legal, institutional and budgetary internal/external dichotomies that have troubled a truly joined-up approach in the past. But has this change improved the Union’s capacity to act? Drawing on institutional theory, this article analyses whether the EU has the administrative capacities needed in order to be an effective actor in this area.
UN peace operations in a multipolar order: Building peace through the rule of law and bottom-up approaches
UN peace operations need a new peacebuilding agenda that acknowledges both the transboundary nature of conflict drivers and the multipolar nature of the global order. This means casting aside the current stabilization approach, but also abandoning the pursuit of liberal peacebuilding of the unipolar era. Such a conflict transformation agenda would require UN peace operations to prioritize the rule of law and bottom-up approaches, thus creating the potential to be embraced by a much broader range of member states. In this article, we bring liberal peacebuilding critiques into a discussion with debates on the nature of the global order. Liberal peacebuilding critiques are rooted in the bottom-up problematization of international interventions and show what kind of peacebuilding is desirable. Conversely, the debates on the multipolar nature of the global order expose the top-down constraints as to what kind of peacebuilding is feasible.
Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: South Sudan
Flooding and droughts significantly disrupt livelihood patterns and food-security and may result in temporary displacement or longer-term migration. Such shocks exacerbate vulnerabilities and weaken the resilience and adaptive capacity of agriculture-dependent communities; they can heighten competition over natural resources, sometimes leading to cattle raiding and communal conflict. Unpredictable annual variation and extreme weather events, like flooding and droughts, affect pastoralist mobility patterns and routes, and farmers’ agricultural production. These changes may exacerbate tensions between herders and farmers, often in connection with land, grazing, water and communal conflicts. Female-headed households are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as most depend on agriculture to sustain their families, and rely on natural resources like firewood and water. Climate-related livestock losses compound ongoing rivalries, increasing the risk of cattle raiding, which can trigger retaliations, communal conflicts, displacement and the growth of new or existing armed groups.