Month: June 2021

Cultural Heritage and Renewable Energy: How Bujagali Hydro-Electricity Generation Project sparked a latent conflict

The Bujagali hydropower dam, on the Bujagali Falls, is located on the Victoria Nile on Dumbbell Island, in Jinja. It is an important hydropower project in Uganda, and was initially approved in 1994 as the lowest cost option to increase power production in the country with a total cost of its implementation at $800 million… Read more »

Do Cease-Fires in Syria Work? We Checked the Data.

Our research looks at 10 years of truces in Syria. A missile attack last weekend in northern Syria left a hospital in ruins and further casualties in a residential area. But these types of attacks have become less common in Syria. Although this civil war remains among the most devastating global conflicts, the number of… Read more »

Agents of Change? How to fulfill the promise of education to refugees

Education in situations of conflict and crisis is central in efforts to protect children and youth in the near-term and fostering peaceful coexistence over the longer-term. But how can education enable individuals and communities to build durable futures when there is great uncertainty about where these futures will be? Education can offer crucial stability and… Read more »

Climate and Security: What will Norway do during its term as an elected member of the Council?

Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. While climate change is rarely, if ever, the root cause of conflict, its cascading effects make it a systemic security risk. The UN Security Council will increasingly be forced to respond to the security impacts of climate change. Our global stability, human development,… Read more »

Climate and Security: What will Norway do during its term as an elected member of the Council?

Today, no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis. While climate change is rarely, if ever, the root cause of conflict, its cascading effects make it a systemic security risk. The UN Security Council will increasingly be forced to respond to the security impacts of climate change. Our global stability, human development,… Read more »

Are Women the Solution to Violent Extremism?

Women can contribute to preventing and countering violent extremism, but the international community’s understanding of their contributions is lacking. Women are often expected to assume roles as deradicalizing councillors or informants, but depending on context, it may be unsafe and unrealistic to assume that women will take on such roles. If policies designed to combat… Read more »

The State and Its Nation-Builders

Our research project ‘Negotiating the nation’ focused on how different people discussed the nation’s borders and questions related to national identity. Specific parts of this project examined, among other, how «ordinary» men and women thematized national identity, how mayors on 17 May handled the balance between being inclusive but at the same time emphasizing the national, and how the King… Read more »

Russia Readying for Compromise on the UN Humanitarian Aid to Syria

The UN Security Council is due to make a decision on a particular and particularly controversial issue pertaining to the humanitarian disaster in Syria by July 10, and Russia positions itself as the key part of the problem and a necessary contributor to a solution. The discord in the UN Security Council (SC) on the… Read more »