With the devastating news from Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan among other wars, we witness a crisis of the international regime for protecting civilians in armed conflict. However, this is not a total collapse but a return to the troubling world that the legal protections for civilians in the 1949 Geneva Conventions were made for.
Author: Kristoffer Lidén
Ethical Dilemmas in Humanitarian Negotiations
This blog provides reflections from both humanitarian practitioners and researchers on the ethical dilemmas associated with humanitarian negotiations and how humanitarian organisations respond to them. The blog post includes the following contributions: Ethical dilemmas in humanitarian negotiations, by Kristoffer Lidén and Kristina Roepstorff Challenges to neutrality and impartiality, and their value, by Jérôme Grimaud No… Read more »
Ungovernable or Humanitarian Experimentation? Generative AI as an Accountability Issue
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Kristoffer Lidén discuss the type of accountability challenges generative AI, such as Chat GPT, represents for humanitarian governance.
When Are Economic Sanctions Morally Justified?
In spite of widespread support for the sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, international economic sanctions remain a controversial instrument in world politics. In this blog post, we discuss how the ethical criteria of just cause, proportionality, last resort and reasonable chance of success can help us think about the justice of sanctions.
Nordic Noir: National Risk Assessments in Times of Peace and Pandemics
As a result of their criteria for what counts as risks, the national risk assessments of the Nordic countries currently resemble the crime genre of Nordic Noir, where the Nordic societies are rendered in a gloomy but revealing light. By zooming in on potential crises without placing these in a global or long-term perspective, they… Read more »
National Risk Assessments: a political vaccine against the next disaster?
The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the political potential of National Risk Assessments (NRAs). The consistent focus of European NRAs on the risk of pandemics while public attention was glued to terrorism demonstrates their relevance to the question of how to prevent and prepare for future disasters – be they natural or man-made. As a basis for… Read more »
Red Lines and Grey Zones: Ethical dilemmas in humanitarian negotiations and the need for a research agenda
When turning humanitarian principles into practice, humanitarian organisations are faced with a range of difficult ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas are rarely as tangible as when the organisations negotiate with local counterparts for access and programming in settings of armed conflict. This dimension of humanitarian negotiations remains to be systematically studied, and we hereby argue why… Read more »
Korona og rettsstaten
Tirsdag 24. mars ble den nye koronaloven vedtatt av Stortinget. Dagen før arrangerte Juridisk fakultet og PRIO webinaret “Korona og rettsstaten: hva skal vi med fullmaktsloven”. Arrangementet gikk via Zoom og hadde 600 deltagere. En redigert versjon kan også sees på youtube. Webinaret – som i utgangspunktet skulle spisse kritikken mot lovforslaget – ble i… Read more »
Against the Merger of Humanitarianism with Development and Security
In the recent World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul 23-24 May, the interconnections between humanitarianism, development and security were highlighted. Recognising that humanitarian assistance alone cannot address ‘the needs of over 130 million of the world’s most vulnerable people’, the conference chair’s summary report states: ‘A new and coherent approach is required based on addressing root… Read more »
Why the Veto Powers All Support Protection of Civilians (And Why They Often Fail to Agree on It)
The Protection of Civilians (PoC) expands the responsibility of the UN Security Council (UNSC) for international peace and security to the internal affairs of conflict-ridden countries. As such, it bolsters the authority of the five permanent members (the P5) in world politics and presents them with a flexible tool for exercising this authority. In reply… Read more »