A Peace Prize Against Terror

Posted by & filed under Peacebuilding

European news headlines in 2015 have been all about the refugee crisis and religion-based terrorism. Is there still room for discussing “peace”? Should we not concentrate on bombing ISIS and protect national security?

Yesterday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. This quartet consists of four organizations – with distinct differences – that have contributed to brokering a foundation for a democratic, rights-based society in the former French protectorate in Northern Africa. The situation in Tunisia is tense. Internal rifts, impulses from other countries that have more or less broken apart after the “Arab Spring”, along with recent acts of terror, may lead to failure for the Quartet’s endeavors. The Peace Prize is a small push in the right direction for Tunisia. If the fragile democracy crumbles and religious extremists try to establish an order of their own, will the Nobel Committee’s choice of 2015 laureate be shown to be wrong?Read More

Dialogue is Not Enough

Posted by & filed under Peacebuilding, Regions and Powers

National Dialogue Quartet

Why did Tunisia succeed in reaching a compromise that led to democratic development, while other countries in the region have failed?

The answer does not lie in the large numbers of activists and demonstrators. There were also massive crowds protesting against the regimes in countries such as Egypt and Yemen. Nor is the answer an absence of Islamists. Islamist parties dominated in all the Arab countries.

Following the award of the Peace Prize, politicians and commentators have emphasized that the award shows the importance of “dialogue” and “compromise” in the building of strong democracies. But dialogue alone is insufficient. In Tunisia’s neighbour Egypt there were several attempts at national dialogue. The parties engaged in discussions, but never reached agreement.

Read More

National Dialogues as Self-Mediation Mechanisms

Posted by & filed under Peacebuilding

Tunisian National Dialogue in October 2012. Photo: Magharebia

In the last century, peace was far more likely the product of victory on the battlefield than a negotiated settlement. From 1940 until 2002, the world witnessed more than 370 state-based conflicts. At any point in time over the last decade, the world hosted nearly 30 armed conflicts simultaneously — many of them “check book wars,” with external powers funding and supplying arms to different internal factions in order to enhance their access to the beleaguered state’s resources.

In this “post-post-colonial” era we are witnessing the post-colonial government incarnations of the colonial “strong man” being replaced by new democratic forces. These new movements are re-defining democracy; they are innovating new forms of representative government; and many are re-considering the nation-state concept. As each of these countries attempts to cut the umbilical cords from their former colonial powers, we see a reduction in external foreign mediation and an increase in mass people’s movements and national dialogues as tools of political transformation. With these significant phenomena, local and national peacemakers and concerned parties work together to resolve their conflict through the creation of joint “self-mediation” instruments, different types of national dialogues and various forms of supporting peace infrastructures that emerge out of these local contexts.

Read More

This Week in South Sudan – Week 49

Posted by

Tuesday 1 December The government of South Sudan accuses the SPLA (IO) of killing four government soldiers in an attack on government positions in the town of Bazia in Western Bahr el Ghazal state. The SPLA (IO) later denied the accusations. Nigeria’s government promised to assist South Sudan with setting up a Debt Management Office…. Read more »

Why Not Nuke ISIS?

Posted by & filed under Law and Ethics

Last week I received a call from a journalist doing background research for an article.  The journalist wanted to know whether I thought a nuclear weapon could be used against ISIS. I was admittedly surprised at this question.  But apparently the journalist queried me about this issue because others are asking about it as well.

So why not nuke ISIS?

A mushroom cloud forms after a nuclear blast. PHOTO: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

First we must consider why this “alternative” is being considered at all.

Read More

Research Training in Eastern Congo

Posted by & filed under Civilians in Conflict, Gender

I have just returned from two weeks in Congo. PRIO colleagues Ragnhild Nordås, Siri Aas Rustad and I held project meetings with our local partner. Most of our time in Congo, however, was spent teaching how to conduct research.

Motivated participants and teachers at the research training. Photo: Ali Rock

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is often described as one of the most dangerous countries in the world in which to be a woman. Female Empowerment in Eastern DRC is a project supported by the Research Council of Norway that focuses on ways of improving the situation of women in eastern Congo who have survived brutal sexual violence. The project is a collaboration between the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the International Centre for Advanced Research and Training (ICART), a recently established research centre in Bukavu, the capital of the South Kivu province. ICART is the product of a collaboration between a local university and Panzi Hospital, headed by Dr Denis Mukwege.Read More

What’s Wrong with the Idea that ‘Robots don’t Rape’?

Posted by and & filed under Gender, Humanitarianism, Law and Ethics

Photo: Flickr/Teymur Madjderey

The politics of rape denunciation is fast becoming the politics of lobbyists, vendors and military manufacturers seeking access to new customers and markets.

The recognition of wartime rape as a fundamental violation of international law has been a hard-fought victory. Ending rape and other forms of sexual violence in war ought to be a central aspiration of the international community. But the struggle against rape has attained a kind of moral currency, put to use by those lobbying for ‘lethal autonomous weapons’ (LAWs). And in doing so, the politics of rape denunciation is fast becoming the politics of lobbyists, vendors and military manufacturers seeking access to new customers and markets.

A recurrent argument within the debate surrounding ‘lethal autonomous weapons’ is the idea that taking humans out of the loop would make war more humane. And in particular, it would end the occurrence of rape. This ‘robots-don’t-rape’ argument is premised on the assumption that robots are better at keeping to the norms of war, and free from human inclinations towards lust and greed, panic and rage.

This equation of technological innovation with human progress is deeply problematic.

Read More

Attacks on Humanitarian Aid Workers: Five New Findings

Posted by , and & filed under Civilians in Conflict, Conflict Patterns, Humanitarianism, Peacebuilding

More aid workers are being targeted in violent attacks than ever before, but the roots of humanitarian insecurity have nuanced and surprising causes.

Syria. Afghanistan. Mali. Central African Republic. Today’s complex conflicts seem to be defined by insurgents, terrorist groups and other violent actors with ideologies that increasingly disregard the rules of war. Over 150,000 people died in conflicts around the world last year, with a further 59 million displaced – the highest total ever recorded.

Troublingly, aid worker attacks have increased in tandem. Headlines relay stories of humanitarian aid workers caught in the middle, killed either in the fog of war – or worse, targeted for their very efforts to help the neediest. In 2013, 474 aid workers were attacked – the most violent year ever.Read More

The Syrian Refugee Crisis & The Two Europes

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers, Religion

In the early September days of 2015, for the second time in a quarter century, Hungary became the site of a European refugee drama.

In 1989, during the months preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of East Germans trying to flee their “Workers and Peasants State” had besieged the West German embassy in Budapest, and tens of thousands eventually made it across the green border to Austria as Hungary rolled back its barbed wires. This was the beginning of the end of communism, not only in Eastern Europe. Hungary was then known as the country of “Goulash Communism”, the most liberal and prosperous of communist Eastern Europe.

Syrian refugees cross into Hungary underneath the border fence. Photo: Freedom House / Flickr

By 2015, now under the right-wing government of Viktor Orban that does not question Hungary’s (financially lucrative) European Union membership yet prides itself on building an “illiberal state on national foundations”, with Turkey and Russia as models, border fences were rebuilt, now along the border to Serbia.

Read More