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
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 »
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.
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 »
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
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 »
State Capitol: Rumbek … Read more »
Jens Stoltenberg and Dalia Grybauskaite are not amused with Russian military activities in the Baltic.
Last weekend (November 21), Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the EuroMaidan—the public protests in Kyiv that lasted through the hard winter of discontent and brought down the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych on February 21. As its war for state survival continues to rage, the country is in no mood for street festivities. Nevertheless, the EuroMaidan clearly still drives Ukraine’s policy, as was illustrated by the formation of a broad governing coalition pledging to restore the country’s territorial integrity and deepen its pro-Western orientation, including the goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Gazeta.ru, November 21). United States Vice President Joe Biden was in Kyiv to express full support for reforms and to warn Russia against further violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which would be punished by new sanctions (Lenta.ru, November 21). This warning was reinforced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who checked the deployment of new military assets in Lithuania and confirmed that the Alliance was carefully monitoring the movements of Russian troops and heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine (Newsru.com, November 21).
Read the article in Eurasia Daily Monitor, 24 November 2014.
Monday 17 November Human rights and policy organizations criticized the continued failure to count victims of South Sudan’s conflict – in particular the number of war dead – calling it a ‘scandal’ and ‘dishonor.’ Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, hosted reconciliation talks in Kampala, with South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, and the SPLM-G10, led by John… Read more »
A change of prime minister will not resolve Iraq’s structural problems, and while a dysfunctional Iraqi state is reeling from onslaughts by Islamic extremists, the Iraqi Kurds in the north of the country have never been stronger. Even so, we are very unlikely to see an independent Iraqi Kurdistan in the immediate future.
Behind the recent flood of news reports from Iraq, about the brutal efficiency of the Islamic extremists, ethnic cleansing, and Western intervention, there is another, deeper question that deserves more attention: Now that the Iraqi state is so weak, will the Kurds in the north of the country take the opportunity to break free?