From actors to institutions It’s official, institutions are back in peacebuilding and development after having played an ambivalent role for some time. While seen as important for conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction, there has also been a prevailing idea that attending too much to institutions is problematic, and that institutional reform means top-down, technical, elite-centred […]
Some years ago Barbara Streisand learned the painful truth that the more you try to hide something, the more likely it is that your secret will be revealed. Barbara had filed a civil suit against an aerial photographer who happened to snap a picture of the neighbourhood where she lived. Pretty soon, more people than […]
Right now a review of UN peace operations is taking place. The review looks at UN efforts to both keep and build peace, and it is long overdue – it’s been fifteen years since the last review was done and in our line of business, that is a long time considering that conflicts and crises […]
Winter is coming, but it has been cold for quite some time. Looking back, as it is that time of the year, 2014 has been dramatic and disturbing in many ways, not least for people in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Numerous parallels have been made during the year to past times when polarisation and temperature defined global […]
On 13 November, the FBA starts its second round of International Expert Forums focusing on 21st Century Peacebuilding, together with the Centre for International Peace Operations, International Peace Institute, and SecDev Foundation. First in a series of four will be an event on organised crime, extremism, conflict and peacebuilding. The event is important for two […]
Internet and a fad that is not passing The most famous remarks about the Internet came from those who should have known better, brushing it off as a passing fad in the early days of the World Wide Web. Since then, predictions on new developments, not least for social media, tend to be much more […]
A key point in peace building is to make the UN deliver more coherent and effective support the areas of police, justice and corrections. Concretely, the UN can no longer afford having several different agencies working on the same issues, with the same national authorities, without coordinating their efforts better. But the point goes beyond […]
Den senaste tidens händelser i Ukraina har varit omskakande. Säkerhetsstyrkornas brutala våld och de många döda och sårade har med all tydlighet avslöjat Janukovitjs auktoritära och korrupta styre. Troligen har vi inte sett hela omfattningen av våldsamheterna. Det talas om flera sårade och bortförda demonstranter som tidigare inte vågat uppsöka sjukhus. Tre stora utmaningar Många […]
This year the FBA are engaged in two fairly large projects on UN rule of law work after war and crisis. One is a research project where we “map” what kind of rule of law the organisation actually supports in peace operations. A first report was released in 2012 and a follow-up report will be published […]
…och aldrig mötas de två. Så börjar Rudyard Kiplings dikt The Ballad of East and West från 1889. Nyss hemkommen från Ukraina känns dessa rader passande. Inte för att Ukraina ligger österut, utan för att spänningarna inom landet är påtagliga. Ibland är det mer lämpligt att tala om två Ukraina, ett västra Ukraina och ett […]