White Helmets in the Dark Night

Posted by & filed under Civilians in Conflict, Humanitarianism, Regions and Powers

In the long dark night that is the Syrian nightmare, the White Helmets have become the only ray of light.

In an earlier PRIO blog post, Erica Chenoweth observed that “there are really two types of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates – elites (or elite-led institutions) and ordinary people.” This year, for example, the Colombian nominees President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC guerilla leader Timoleón Jiménez, one of the duos on PRIO Director Kristian Berg Harpviken’s shortlist, would be an example of the former, while the Syrian Civil Defence, or the White Helmets as they are better known as, clearly represent the latter.

Aleppo under siege. PHOTO: CC2.0

At least the volunteers behind the White Helmets used to be “ordinary people”, such as blacksmiths, tailors, builders and gymnastic teachers. After the escalation of the Syrian crisis, however, their daily tasks are nowhere close to ordinary. They run onto the streets when others take hide, scouting the horizon for the place of the latest impact of the bombs dropped from the jet planes above. Often they are the first to arrive, and then their work begins. Body after body; old people, adults, youth, kids, and babies are located and lifted out of the pile of rubble that used to be their homes. Some are saved, others stand no chance. They work long hours these days, the white helmet rescue-workers.Read More

This Week in South Sudan – Week 39

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Monday 26 September Nearly 40 aid workers, the majority from UN agencies, have been evacuated from Jazeera and Nhialdu in Unity State due to deteriorating security. Tuesday 27 September A faction of the South Sudan Democratic Movement/Cobra Faction has again vowed to wage war against the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) citing failure to implement… Read more »

Svetlana Gannushkina – A Worthy Nobel Laureate

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– Svetlana Alekseevna!

A young Syrian man comes running towards Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina in the winter cold of the asylum reception center in Kirkenes, Northern Norway.

– How are you doing? So glad to see you here after all these weeks since we met in Moscow, he smiles.

– Ahmed, Gannushkina smiles back – how are you? Did your wife give birth yet?

Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina has helped countless refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and victims of human rights abuse in her 74-year long life, but she always sees the individual, remembers the details, and feels with each and every one of them. She enjoys tremendous respect from all those she has helped, from colleagues in her native Russia and abroad, and also from Russian authorities.

Svetlana Gannushkina. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

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An Alarm from Aleppo

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

At dawn on 23 September, Syrian and Russian fighter jets roared over eastern Aleppo, bringing new death and destruction to the city’s besieged inhabitants. The attacks followed several days of relative quiet, but the ensuing days and nights were worse than ever. The chaos makes it difficult to determine exactly how many were killed, but between 50 and 70 people lost their lives in the course of that one morning. The death toll is not only difficult to confirm; it is also difficult to comprehend. When the United Nations stopped counting in 2014, the war had taken at least 300,000 lives. A more recent report in February 2016 from the Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll as high as 470,000. In any event, these figures mean that the war in Syria is the deadliest conflict since the end of the Cold War. Research by institutions including PRIO has shown a decline in the number of conflicts worldwide since the fall of the Soviet Union. Statistics depict a world that has become more peaceful, where fewer people are dying as a result of war. The war in Syria shattered this trend.

Aleppo under siege. PHOTO: CC2.0

Syria, which was famed for its architecture, cuisine and long, proud history, has been reduced to a crime scene. Aleppo, which before the war was Syria’s largest city, and which for centuries has been an important hub for trade and industry, is now one of the worst places to find oneself anywhere on Earth. With Russian and Iranian help, Assad’s forces have encircled the whole of rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo. Approximately 250,000 people are trapped in the city with nowhere to go. The relentless besieging of cities and neighbourhoods and the slow starvation of adults and children has become one of the regime’s gruesome specialities. Another speciality is barrel bombs. Packed tight with explosives, shrapnel and nails, and weighted with concrete, these are dropped over civilian populations with the aim of causing maximum death and destruction.

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 38

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Monday 19 September A SPLA spokesperson openly accused UNMISS of “making South Sudan very conducive for rebellion” Foreign Policy Journal: “South Sudan’s American-Made Robber Barons” Tuesday 20 September The SPLM (IO) criticized the United States government and the UN for receiving Taban Deng Gai in the US. Taban Deng attended the 71st sessions of the… Read more »

Women, Peace and Security?

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One of the military gender advisers talking to local kids in Faryab. Photo: Geir Bøe/Norwegian Defence

The Norwegian government had lofty ambitions to implement UN Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in Faryab Province in Afghanistan. However, attempts to realise these ambitions were half-hearted. The role of the gender adviser became a political alibi for the Norwegian Provincial Reconstruction Team’s haphazard efforts to implement the resolution.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in October 2000. Norway, a leading nation in the fields of peace negotiation, human security and women’s equality, became one of the first countries to develop a national action plan to implement the resolution.Read More

Rhetoric as Required

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Norway has borne «its share of responsibility», Grete Faremo said i 2010. She was Defence Minister in the period when politcal rethoric chaged from helping Afghanistan to making the Afghans help themselves.
Photo: Torbjørn Kjøsvold/Norwegian Defence

From “the pre-emptive defence of Norway”, to “conflict resolution and peace”, even in the event of “war-like actions”, Norwegian politicians have adapted their rhetoric on Afghanistan as required by circumstances and public opinion.

From day one, the Norwegian government has been enthusiastic in its support of intervention in Afghanistan. But over the years many different reasons have been put forward to justify Norwegian involvement. If one considers the period from 2001 to the present day as a whole, the only phrase that has remained set in stone is “a clear UN mandate”. Apart from that, it is possible to identify changes in the reasons put forward to justify Norway’s military presence in Afghanistan.Read More

This Week in South Sudan – Week 37

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Tuesday 13 September In response to a recent UN report, the SPLA denied responsibility for the July fighting in Juba, saying it was ‘outraged’ by the report and ‘UN’s continuation of negative smear campaign against top leadership of the military’. Taban Deng Gai vowed to shortly integrate SPLA (IO) forces in Equatoria into the SPLA faction… Read more »

The End Of Migrants As We Know Them?

Posted by & filed under Humanitarianism, Migration

Embarkation of migrants, Cala Pisana, Lampedusa, (Matchbox Media Collective)

The UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants holds the promise of progress. But ahead of the summit, communications staff were pushing a warped view of migrant diversity. Even the International Organization of Migration (IOM) is straying from its mission to uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants.

When migration issues rose to the top of international agendas last year the word ‘migrants’ became a matter of contention. Many interventions were cast as a matter of clarification and correctness, but actually concealed a fundamental disagreement: do ‘migrants’ include ‘refugees’?

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Refugee Resettlement as Humanitarian Governance: The Need for a Critical Research Agenda

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Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) visits the Catholic Centre for Immigrants in Ottawa, Canada, where he met with families who have arrived from Syria and the region and who are now part of Canada’s resettlement programme. Photo: UN/Evan Schneider

This blog post suggests understanding refugee resettlement as an instrument of humanitarian governance from the selection of refugees to their long-term integration. It presents a five-point research agenda aiming to investigate resettlement’s power dynamics in multiscalar perspective, with a focus on: political economy; the UNHCR’s competing goals; and the role of discretion, persuasion and coercion in resettlement’s discourse and practice.

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