Foreign Helpers

Posted by and & filed under Migration, Religion

While a small number of young Norwegian Muslims have travelled to Syria to join militant groups as “foreign fighters”, far greater numbers of young Muslims are supporting humanitarian efforts.

Most media attention is focused on young people travelling abroad to fight, rather than on young people’s humanitarian work. Throughout the autumn, aid organizations and groups of individuals have been collecting winter clothing, footwear, sleeping bags and blankets. With winter closing in, the situation is precarious and there is great enthusiasm for collecting clothes and blankets to send to civilians both in Syria itself and in refugee camps in the region.

Photo: Marta Bivand Erdal, PRIO

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Denmark challenges Russia with the Arctic claim

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Denmark (together with Greenland) delivered on Monday the claim for expanding its continental shelf in the Arctic by 895,541 square km to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (the impeccably prepared submission is filed on the UN CLCS website). The statement from the Danish Foreign Ministry is concise and precise –… Read more »

This Week in South Sudan – Week 50

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Monday 8 December In Pictures by the Guardian: The Sudans: after the divide: South Sudanese IDPs caught in no man’s land, Mile 14, in Northern Bahr el Ghazal state.* The ongoing conflict has crippled South Sudan’s economy as much of the labor force is displaced and oil revenue is down. The SPLM continues to push… Read more »

Fighting the War with the Ebola Drone

Posted by & filed under Humanitarianism

A particularly interesting and puzzling corner of the War on Ebola imaginary is inhabited by the triad consisting of Ebola, humanitarian governance, and unmanned technology, drones more precisely. Out of this triad has emerged what will here be called ´the Ebola Drone`. The Ebola Drone has materialized from a confluence of ideas about the relationship between diseases and (inter)national security; the means and ends of effective aid delivery; and the potentiality of drones to «be good».

Wikimedia Commons image.

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Education Creates Peace

Posted by , and & filed under Conflict Patterns

On 10 December Nobel’s Peace Prize 2014 is awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. Critical voices have claimed that their work is more about rights activism than promoting peace and that there is no obvious association between education and peace. Research into the causes of war suggests, however, that the Nobel Committee was right on target.

School children in Kenya. Photo: Gudrun Østby, PRIO

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 49

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Monday 1 December Following a private meeting between President Salva Kiir, and prominent members of the Bahr al Ghazal Dinka, Bona Bang Dhel – a Dinka elder, claimed the proposed power-sharing deal would set a bad precedent in South Sudan. Tuesday 2 December In response to national and regional media reports, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon… Read more »

Do they Really Care? Protection of Civilians and the Veto Powers

Posted by & filed under Humanitarianism

It was not until the advances of IS in Syria and Iraq turned into an international security threat that a military intervention was launched in September 2014. A horrendous civil war had then killed tens of thousands Syrian civilians and displaced millions without provoking any similar reaction. In this blog post I reflect on what this tells us about the commitment of major powers to the principle of protecting civilians across borders. Do they really care? And do they agree on its meaning and implications?

Civilians flee from fighting after Syrian army tanks entered the northwestern city of Idlib, Syria in 2012. Photo: Nasser Nouiri via Flickr

A report of the UN Human Rights Commission from 13 August this year describes the humanitarian situation in Syria as follows:

With 6.5 million internally displaced persons and 2.9 million registered refugees, Syria has become the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. According to UN agencies, 10.8 million Syrians are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance inside the country, 241,000 people still live under siege and 4.7 million reside in hard-to-reach areas.

Yet, the veto powers of the UN Security Council have not been able to agree on any effective response. This ‘failure’ seems to contradict their repeated statements in the Council on their commitment to the Protection of Civilians in armed conflict (PoC).

Read more at the blog of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies.

Whither UNMISS?

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The recent renewal of the mandate and the six-month extension of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) warrants a broader discussion of its current state of affairs and future strategy. Not only has the political context of the mission changed significantly since the onset of war, but the nature of the operation has also… Read more »

Where is My Home?

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Considerations about return are a persistent dimension of identity work in migrant populations. The question of where and what constitutes ‘home’ for migrants is central to understanding processes of integration in settlement contexts. Simultaneously, where and what constitutes ‘home’ sheds light on motivations for sustained transnational ties, but also on return considerations, ranging from planning and actually returning, to an ongoing myth of future return, or a decision of staying put.

Photo: Holger Detje

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 48

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Monday 24 November The National Assembly in South Sudan’s capital Juba did not go for recess as previously planned, but instead remains on call to be briefed on the status of the peace talks in Ethiopia. Unity state authorities praised the SPLA-in-Opposition for their recent move to open humanitarian corridors in the state and allowing… Read more »