Are we overlooking positive synergetic effects of peacekeeping operations for peace and development?
UNIFIL soldiers guarding ‘the blue line’ between Lebanon and Israel, August 2023. Photo: Houssam Shbaro / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
While UN peacekeeping operations have increasingly come into disrepute, studies underline that operations can prevent conflict re-escalation, limit violence against civilians, and promote settlement – even if not all missions are fully successful.Read More
Russians still do not call the full-scale invasion of Ukraine what it actually is — a war. Now in its third year, the war continues to be referred to in Russia by its awkward abbreviation SVO, short for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s so-called “special military operation.”
Citizens stroll along the city streets, passing by a woman beggar in St. Petersburg, Feb 2024. Photo: Artem Priakhin / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Russian war propaganda pushing this narrative is everywhere.
This year’s Munich Security Conference recently took place on February 16 but was soon overshadowed by other events, which is becoming a tradition for the annual conference. In early February 2022, most high-level participants did not believe a Russian attack on Ukraine was imminent. In 2023, many expected decisive success in Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive. This year, the primary dealings were the signing of the French-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian security pacts, specifying Europe’s commitments to Ukraine (RBC.ru, February 16; NV.ua, February 16).
Flowers, candles, and a portrait of Alexei Navalny, are placed near the walls of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw during the rally dedicated to the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine. Photo: Volha Shukaila/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The sudden death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, however, overshadowed these ceremonies. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, held Russian President Vladimir Putin personally responsible in her address in Munich (Moscow times, February 16).
On February 1, the European Council unanimously approved the 50 billion euro aid package to Ukraine. Although this package will not alter the course of the battles for Avdiivka or Kupyansk as it does not include funding for armor or ammunition, it will deliver a boost to Ukraine’s struggling economy.
Wartime destruction. Building damaged by a massive Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 7, 2024. Photo: Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In a long war of attrition, economic performance has a decisive impact. Russia’s economy got a boost last year from the massive increase in military expenditures. However, even if this volume of funding is sustained this year, the economy’s limits of growth have already been reached.
At the start of 2024, the deadlocked European war reached the balance point where Russia was at the peak performance, while Ukraine arrived at the dangerous minimum of its capabilities.
A monument of the city founder Duke de Richelieu is seen covered with sand bags for protection, amid Russian attacks on Ukraine, in central Odessa, Ukraine on March 12, 2022. Photo: Maksym Voitenko/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Massive budget allocations ensured that Russian defense-industrial complex expanded production to the maximum possible level, while North Korea supplied wagon-loads of artillery shells and Iran delivered hundreds of Shahed-135 drones. On the other side of the equation, Western military and economic aid to Ukraine contracted to a patently insufficient volume, feeding a stream of prophecies on the consequences of another lost war.
By the end of January, however, two major shifts in favour of Ukraine had happened, and three more are in the making.Read More
The war in Gaza is the most deadly in modern times for journalists and UN personnel. Despite the seriousness of the situation, these killings are under-reported.
Funeral of Al-Quds TV journalist Cebr Abu Hedrus’, who died in Israeli attacks in Gaza. December 30, 2023. Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images
While humanitarians remain sceptical of legal regulation, litigation, and lawyers, the sector is going through a process of juridification.
This blog post takes stock of the ambivalence to law and emergent shifts in the sector and calls for international law scholars to pay more attention.
Illustration: Getty images
‘We have a toxic relationship with the law’ the aid worker at the end of the table exclaimed. It was mid-January 2024, and we were seated in a meeting room at the European Convention Center in Luxembourg.
On Friday, February 2, the United States conducted a massive airstrike, targeting terrorist militia bases in Iraq and Syria but reverberating across Russian geopolitical designs.
Putin visits Saudi Arabia in December 2023. Photo: Contributor/Getty Images
In Russia’s grand strategy, the escalation of tensions in the broader Middle East triggered by the shocking attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel on October 7, 2023, is of much greater importance than just an unexpected means to redirect international attention away from its aggression against Ukraine.
The pledges of USD 2.2 billion for refugees that were secured by Global Refugee Forum in December are a mere drop in the ocean.
It can seem that we have reduced refugees to pawns in a political game; a game in which they are unwelcome both in their neighbouring countries and also in Europe.
Children at Sendiyan Refugee Camp, Idlib, Syria on February 05, 2023. Photo: Muhammed Said/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Conflict, poverty, persecution and human rights violations are causing ever more people to flee their home countries. The figure reached a record high in September 2023, with 114 million displaced people worldwide, of whom 36 million are registered as refugees, according to statistics released at the Global Refugee Forum, which concluded in December.Read More
Today it is still the case that neither side seems to possess the military capability needed to end the war to its advantage, but there is also no prospect of peace negotiations anytime soon. Ukraine’s summer offensive did not alter the overall state of the war. From the perspective of military history, there is nothing unique about this situation, says lieutenant-general Arne Bård Dalhaug in this reflection.
“While the whole of the Crimean Peninsula is of interest in this context, the bridge over the Kerch Strait is of particular importance”. In this picture, people in Kyiv take selfies in front of an image of a stamp showing explosions on the Kerch Bridge on October 11, 2022. Photo: Ed Ram / Getty Images