Europe should expect ever-increasing pressure from refugees on its southern borders unless it is prepared to bear the cost and risk of military operations to control conflict in Europe’s southern neighbourhood, according to this policy paper. It says while the growing refugee problem generated by conflicts in the Middle East and Africa calls for a more interventionist response from the EU, Europeans have preferred to leave the job to others, notably the UN.
Peacebuilding continues to gain recognition in international and national spheres for the crucial role it plays in laying the foundations for sustainable peace. In the last two decades, the United Nations has developed its peacebuilding architecture (PBA) in order to strengthen its responses to countries recovering from conflict. Within this larger context, 2015 will be a critical year for peacebuilding as member states undertake a comprehensive review of the UN PBA.
Until recently, 95% of the bandwidth for talking and thinking about the post-2015 agenda was focused on goals and targets. Now that the Open Working Group (OWG) on the post- 2015 agenda has reported, though, policymakers and opinion formers are starting to think more seriously about the ‘how’ as opposed to the ‘what’ – and what a new Global Partnership on development, as well as the overall political outcome on means of implementation (MOI) more broadly, might look like by the end of next year.
Since 2008, energy and food markets—those most fundamental to human existence—have remained in turmoil. Resource scarcity has had a much bigger global impact in recent years than has been predicted, with ongoing volatility a sign that the world is only part-way through navigating a treacherous transition in the way it uses resources. Scarcity, and perceptions of scarcity, increase political risks, while geopolitical turmoil exacerbates shortages and complicates the search for solutions.
The last decade has seen not one but two energy revolutions. The first, explosive growth in demand from Asia’s rising powers, fueled fears about scarcity and conflict. The second, an American revolution in technology and markets, is rapidly strengthening America’s hand in the world. There are major security consequences of these shifts, from Saudi Arabia to Africa to Russia, and the emerging powers are increasingly exposed to them—risks, as well as energy flows, are pivoting to Asia. All while a third revolution is struggling to be born, driven by climate change.
Just over five years ago, relations between the EU and UN were strained due to the difficulties of planning and implementing coordinated missions in Chad and Kosovo. Today, relations are considerably more cordial, but there is still room to improve the two organizations’ joint planning procedures. This paper aims to assess what has been achieved in the field of planning coordination and what the remaining challenges are; it also makes some suggestions for further action.
As part of UNICEF UK’s Every Child in Danger campaign, CIC’s David Steven contributed research with an eye toward the political solutions necessary for ending violence against children. In this report, he describes the scale of the epidemic, reviews the likely post-2015 targets that will make a difference in combating violence, and proposes ways forward on the issue, urging political leadership and global partnership above all.
On October 14 through 16, Richard Gowan participated in the Challenges Forum, an annual peacekeeping conference in Beijing. The Challenges Forum is a strategic and dynamic platform for dialogue among policymakers, practitioners and academics on key issues and developments in peace operations. The aim is to shape the debate by promoting awareness of emerging issues and identifying key challenges facing military, police and civilian peace operations.
This publication examines the main cooperation fields between China and the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the post-NATO period. In doing so, this study looks at the initiation of various bilateral joint projects as a distinctive turning point in China-US relations. It argues that existence of such bilateral projects and cooperation in this region does not only produce added value for the countries in question but also have the potential to enhance the mutual relations between China and US. This study also reveals the main common priorities and practices between China and the US and concludes that they have a partial convergence in their attitude towards the infrastructure projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For the past 20 months, the Congo Research Group has documented the vast and eclectic business portfolio of Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his family. This report presents our conclusions, based almost entirely on legal documents.
You can find the whole report and examine the underlying documents here
The Pathfinders group is convened by the governments of Brazil, Sierra Leone, and Switzerland, with support from the Center on International Cooperation.
The Global Peace Operations Review is a website providing analysis and data on the spectrum of issues surrounding global peace and security, including civilian-led peacemaking and peacebuilding as well as uniformed peacekeeping by the United Nations, regional organizations and ad-hoc coalitions. The site’s objective is to contribute to the effectiveness of all peace operations.
We seek to provide the most comprehensive overview of multilateral contributions to conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and post-conflict peacebuilding. In doing so, we seek to integrate thematic and cross-cutting issues including, but not limited to, the women, peace and security agenda and countering violent extremism.
The India-U.S. relationship is presently stronger than at anytime in their history. The twin summits – less than six months apart – in September 2014 and January 2015 between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have repaired, revived and revitalized the strategic partnership. Yet there remain several hurdles to deepening the relationship, notably, geopolitical differences over Iran, Russia, Syria and India’s membership of various nuclear and missile export control regimes. Perhaps the most formidable of these in terms of immediacy and proximity is the resolution of the Iranian nuclear challenge.
