Peace-building
Since 2005, Africa shows a trend towards decreasing quality of democracy and continuing unconstitutional government changes. In this context, it is important that governance continues to be promoted. Within the African Union (AU), strengthening governance is high on the agenda. On the 15th of February 2012 the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (the Charter) came into force. The adoption of the Charter was followed by the official launch of the African Governance Architecture (AGA) and its African Governance Platform (AGP), in May 2012, designed to increase coordination between the different institutions with a ...
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The EU’s “comprehensive approach” in external action policy has provoked a range of responses – but the most widespread seems to be confusion. Ask 10 people from across the EU institutions to define the comprehensive approach and chances are you’ll get 10 different answers. While the basic premise is simple enough to grasp, it’s hard to find consensus, common language or any sense that the EU is actually acting comprehensively. Current developments in Mali have made the necessity for clarity even more pressing. This blog seeks to explore the key questions needed to frame the ...
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‘Resilience’ is topping the list of new buzzwords in international cooperation rhetoric lately. Many policy makers, including from the European Commission, are using it abundantly. Thus the policy proposal entitled ‘The EU Approach to Resilience: Learning from Food Security Crisis’ the EU launched last week is an important document because it frames the term. Up to now, EU humanitarian aid and development cooperation actors used the word – which has its origin in material sciences, psychology and ecology – without any conceptual underpinning and orientation on how to translate it into practice. In its policy ...
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To meet the challenges that natural disasters, armed conflicts and structural forms of fragility bring to countries or entire regions, more flexibility and participation in implementing the EU policy on Linking Relief Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD) is needed. “We want to be more involved and take leadership in the LRRD process and be accompanied by our partners,” urged Mr. Amadou Alahouri, High Commissioner of Niger for the 3N Initiative (“Nigerians Nourish Nigerians”) during a public hearing on this topic at the European Parliament on 3 September 2012 in Brussels. The Parliament held this meeting at ...
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Organisational charts in general can’t tell you much about what happens behind the scenes in a company or an institution. They don’t show who is in or out of favour, they don’t map influence and informal lines of communication dictating priorities. However, when looking at previous versions and updates, they help to understand how an organisation is evolving, or at least the formal thinking about how it should. Last week the EEAS published a new version of its organisational chart (dated 1st of May 2012), displaying its internal structure and stating the names of key ...
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Andrew Sherriff co-authored this article. ++ SERIES: ECDPM ANALYSIS OF NEW EU DEVELOPMENT POLICY REFORM PROPOSALS ++ Fragility is notoriously and closely related to human suffering, volatile security situations and to ineffectiveness of traditional aid. The continuum of fragility – conceptualizations which characterise the relative strength or weakness of states on a continuum with state failure and collapse at one extreme and states characterized by serious vulnerabilities at the other – is high on the global political agenda. EU Foreign Ministers acknowledged that some countries are “facing increasing fragility” and committed to target their resources ...
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Fragility, as a concept that refers to weak institutional capacity, poor governance, political instability, and frequently conflict, has moved up the international agenda in recent years. As none of the ‘fragile states’ have reached any of the MDGs, these are typically the countries where developmental progress has shown persistent weakness or failure. In an interesting article on his aid on the edge of chaos blog, Ben Ramalingam refers to state fragility as a “wicked problem”, and explores how ideas from complexity theory can help identify new ways of approaching this difficult issue. To me, having worked ...
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Is there a new impetus on the EU to deal with conflict and fragility in third countries? Part 2: recent policy developments
++ SERIES: ECDPM ANALYSIS OF NEW EU DEVELOPMENT POLICY REFORM PROPOSALS ++ When it comes to violent conflict, the common mantra is that prevention is better (and cheaper) than cure. This is also illustrated by the findings of a recent evaluation of support to conflict prevention and peace building. In Georgia, for instance, the contracted amounts to be spent by the European Commission increased from €19 million in 2007 before the escalation of a conflict with Russia, to €72 million in 2008, the year of the clashes, and €116 in 2009 as a result of ...
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The European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) applauds the creation of the European External Action Service’s Directorate for Conflict Prevention and Security Policy and within it a Peacebuilding, Conflict Prevention and Mediation Unit, but calls for the allocation of more staff to the unit to enable it to fulfil this role. EPLO also calls for the unit to be more integrated with the other EU bodies which play a role in conflict and security policy.
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This report from Saferworld critically assesses China’s growing role in Africa and its effect on both the factors that drive conflict and those that promote peace. The report takes a thematic approach, looking at a number of topics: China’s bilateral relations with African states; its military co-operation with their armed forces; the China-Africa arms trade; China’s relations with African regional organisations; its involvement in international co-operation; China’s role in peacekeeping and peacebuilding; and its economic engagements on the continent. The report draws on a wide spectrum of views and perspectives from Chinese, African and international ...
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