Performance of Peace Operations
How should we assess and improve the performance of peace operations? This is the topic of the third dialogue strand of VCAF20. UN peace operations are under growing pressure to increase performance and enhance mandate delivery. This background paper assesses recent research into the effectiveness and performance of peace operations and new UN initiatives for internal monitoring, evaluation and related data management systems.
Kazakhstan's Reforms during the Pandemic: Progress and Challenges
Covid-19 has led to a global economic crisis, but how has the pandemic affected Kazakhstan and the other countries in Central Asia?
Kristne først
When the Norwegian Progress Party Frp argues for prioritising the protection of Christians, they are following in the footsteps of the national right in the US, Europe and Russia.
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They impressed us in the year that has been. Klassekampen have chosen a few young people we think will have an impact in the news and in culture in the years to come.
USAs autoritære vending
US institutions that were created to spread democracy internationally, are now increasingly turning the criticism inwards. This op-ed is in Norwegian.
Kacper Szulecki
Kacper Szulecki is a Research Professor in International Climate Governance at NUPI, and a Professor II at the Centre for Development and the Envi...
Cristiana Maglia
Cristiana Maglia is a senior research fellow at NUPI. She is currently the post-doctoral researcher of the project Ad hoc crisis response and inte...
Unexplored resources for EU Arctic policy: Energy, oceans and space
The EUs current Arctic policy from 2016 focuses on climate and environmental protection, sustainable development and international cooperation. The EU has followed up with contributions to research and international cooperation in these areas. However, the EU’s engagement in the Arctic is overlooked internally – with the Arctic perceived of as a marginal arena for policy action – and externally – with a lack of broader recognition for the EU’s Arctic efforts and contributions. We suggest that the EU has perhaps defined its Arctic policy approach - and understood Arctic governance - too narrowly. Arctic policy has been a niche concern in Brussels, and this has resulted in a focused and consistent approach, but involved too few EU actors in Arctic policymaking. Consequently, the EU has unwittingly limited its role in the Arctic and made it even more difficult to formulate a convincing narrative about what the EU has to do with and in the Arctic. In our view, there are three broader policy areas that have untapped potential for giving additional ballast to the EU as an Arctic actor: energy, ocean and space governance.
Governance, fragility and insurgency in the Sahel: a hybrid order in the making
Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the international community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, transnational crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing especially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reformation of political orders.