The UN Security Council does not have the luxury of choosing between normative imperatives associated with preventing atrocities, protecting civilians, and countering terrorism in Mali, the Sahel, and elsewhere.
Analysis
-
-
Despite the instability it faces, Guinea-Bissau—alongside countries like Madagascar, Chad, or the Central African Republic—has long been overlooked by donors. There is an urgent need to re-orientate the international community toward supporting and financing conflict prevention and early action.
-
There are a number of reasons why it is difficult for peacekeepers to protect civilians from sexual and gender-based violence, particularly those forms that fall outside of conflict-related sexual violence.
-
Without a corresponding political process, UN protection activities are an ineffective bandaid in situations of widespread violence.
-
As Finland and Sweden begin the process of applying for NATO membership, misleading narratives about the role of NATO’s so-called eastward expansion in “provoking” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continue to hold sway.
-
The sanctions imposed against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine mark a new page in global sanctions practice yet lessons from earlier cases could help increase efficacy and minimize costs.
-
The UN, in its implementation of A4P+, must address the heavily masculine, exclusionary, and militarized structures which often preclude women (and anyone outside of a very particular gendered profile) from deploying.
-
Facing its most difficult period since its inception in April 2013, MINUSMA, and the Security Council, now need to acknowledge that their biggest problems in Mali are political.
-
Amid mounting pressure to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, the United Nations Security Council took the rare step of creating a humanitarian exception for the 1988 Taliban sanctions regime.
-
The complex, and not always coordinated, ecosystem of military operations across the Sahel has been aptly labeled a security traffic jam. Why are external forces in the Sahel? Can they help resolve any of the region’s crises? And, if so, what configuration of external forces makes the most sense?
