Human rights, the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda and gender equality are key elements to ensure human security. They are increasingly taken into account in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions. In the ‘CFSP Report – Our priorities in 2017’, the EU and its Member States committed to continue ‘promoting the […]

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, widely referred to as the “Kosovo Specialist Court”, is a hybrid international court established within Kosovo’s judicial system and located in The Hague. Its purpose is to try cases of war crimes which occurred between 1998 and 2000, involving the mainly ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). […]

Relations between the African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) reached a nadir in 2016 following serious disagreements over European payments to AU peacekeepers in Somalia. The fifth AU-EU summit, which will take place on 29-30 November in Abidjan, presents a chance to reinvigorate the partnership if both sides can deal openly with disagreements, and […]

For those of us working on peace, development and security, M&E is ultimately a way for organisations and funders to ensure that our engagements in already complicated, fragile and high-risk contexts are as effective as possible and avoid doing harm. The Critical Friend method emerged to respond to the limitations of traditional evaluations on effectiveness […]

In the Joint Communication ‘Elements for an EU Strategy on Afghanistan’ published in July 2017, the European Commission and the European External Action Service emphasised the need to support economic development and regional connectivity (i.e. improving transit, transport and energy corridors). The Afghan government has been stressing the need for investment in the construction, transport […]

Relations between the African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) are at a turning point in their history. The EU is pushing for a renewed partnership that entails an enhanced responsibility from its African partners, who in turn stress the need not to base the relationship on migration-related issues. The fifth AU-EU Summit, which took […]

The concept of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has become an important part of the normative framework related to peace and conflict. While its operationalisation remains a challenge, the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and civil society organisations have developed new policies, tools and mechanisms to improve the use and effectiveness of this principle. […]

Over the past ten years, peacebuilding and development actors have developed a more sophisticated understanding of why young people, in particular, are driven to participate in (or resist) violent extremist groups. However, understanding those drivers is only the first step. There is also a pressing need to gather evidence of “what works” in reducing violence […]

The EU’s military training mission in the Central African Republic (EUTM RCA) was launched in July 2016. Its second operational objective is to ‘contribute to Central African armed forces (FACA) capability to become credible, accountable, ethnically balanced and under democratic control.’ The international humanitarian law (IHL) and prevention of sexual violence (PSV) component of the […]

It is a common assumption that only armed military or police can do the work of peacekeeping. However, unarmed civilians have been successfully ‘keeping the peace’ in situations of violent conflict all over the world, and their numbers are increasing. Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) is a growing field practice, implemented by more than 40 organisations […]