A Confluence of Crises: On Water, Climate and Security in the Middle East and North Africa

Supporting Inclusive Peace Processes

Amid today’s dynamic and fast-changing world of conflict resolution, it is no longer viable to resolve major conflicts through a simple deal between the opposing armed groups or elites within a country. Dealing with the deep-seated challenges within a society, today’s peace processes – from negotiations, through to the signing of a peace agreement and its implementation – need to be inclusive. Of course, the armed groups and their rank and file are also to be included in the peace process and must also share the peace dividends that come from it.
“Thus, any serious conflict resolution efforts to achieve sustainable peace need to ensure that all groups in society have the opportunity to be heard and have their concerns addressed,” writes ELDRIDGE ADOLFO in ‘Supporting Inclusive Peace Processes’, a brief published by the Folke Bernadotte Academy – Swedish Agency for Peace, Security and Development.
“The inclusion and voices of the various constituencies from women, to youth, minorities, business communities and more, are now an essential ingredient in achieving sustainable peace. Diplomats, governments, rebel groups and mediators all need to adjust to this new reality of complex peacemaking,” the author states.
Challenges undoubtedly come with new reality, he adds, but research and communities of practice are working to fill the gaps in knowledge on how to best work with inclusive peace processes.
The professionalization of the dialogue and mediation field over the last two decades has meant that there now exists a core body of expertise and a community of practitioners that have gained significant and chartered knowledge on how to work with these issues.
“Another significant step to move forward is to increasingly inform and gain acceptance for inclusive peace processes more widely among conflict parties and stakeholders – including victims, the regional and international community,” ADOLFO states. An understanding of the value of inclusion and its long-term effects on sustaining peace needs to be pronounced more often to create societal acceptance.
Peace processes are costly and inclusive peace processes even more so as they consist of the participation of a much larger community that includes various segments of society. It also requires much larger efforts to run inclusive peace processes, which also cost more in terms of resources.
“Those paying the bill for a peace process must make a cost-benefit analysis of a failed peace process that reverts to armed conflict and the significantly higher costs that creates, against the increased but significantly lower costs of an inclusive peace process.”

Defining the Concept of ‘Violent Extremism’

Despite being recognized across the international community as one of the critical development challenges of our time, a uniform definition of violent extremism (VE) – one that can ensure a shared understanding of the phenomenon it represents – does not exist.
 “All-too-often, it appears that VE as a concept is framed as self-evident,” write MATHIAS BAK, KRISTOFFER NILAUS TARP and CHRISTINA SCHORI LIANG in ‘Defining the Concept of ‘Violent Extremism’, published by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. This raises questions about whether subjective perceptions wind up influencing the responses and interventions currently designed to address the phenomenon.
 “The fact that interventions aimed at addressing VE are generally designed before the problem is actually delineated and defined is a strange anomaly,” the authors write.
The report, published as part of the Centre’s Geneva Papers Series, attempts to produce a definition that captures the most central characteristics of the types of violent extremism carried out by today’s most prominent violent extremist organizations (VEOs). “As such, it will not be an attempt to deconstruct the concept of violent extremism or deny its usefulness,” the authors state. Instead, the objective is to develop a definition which touches on key aspects of the violent extremism phenomenon, while also delineating the trend vis-à-vis other concepts such as radicalization and terrorism.
VEOs frequently undertake a mode of state-building that is based partly on a quest for legitimacy and partly on fear, coercion and extreme brutality. The report emphasizes VE partly as a political project in which state failure, the collapse of central government authority and the hardening of identity boundaries constitute opportunities for VEOs to build up their public authority and influence.
“[Violent extremism, on one hand, is exceptionally brutal and is undertaken in a deliberate attempt to spread chaos. On the other hand, it is also used as a means to foster state-building that is conducive to a specific ideology as well as to build and strengthen social boundaries,” BAK, TARP and LIANG state.
To capture the behavior of prominent VEOs, the authors assert, the following definition best exemplifies the essence of violent extremism:

Violent extremism is a violent type of mobilization that aims to elevate the status of one group, while excluding or dominating its ‘others’ based on markers, such as gender, religion, culture and ethnicity. In doing so, violent extremist organizations destroy existing political and cultural institutions, and supplant them with alternative governance structures that work according to the principles of a totalitarian and intolerant ideology.

“This definition highlights the political nature of the VE phenomenon, as well as its use of violent force to gain power. Thus, interventions against it must consider the unique regional and political forces at play, while also emphasizing the importance of strengthening social dynamics.”
VEOs use a deadly combination of local grievances and rehearsed narratives to lure its followers deeper into a complex, insular and disturbing world. It is therefore important to continue studying both the concept itself and develop a better awareness of engaging and empowering all stakeholders in the community -- be they women, youth, religious leaders, medical professionals, government and the private sector -- to push back against violent extremism.
The authors further state that violent extremism will only be challenged by designing and carrying out inclusive and effective multi-disciplinary and multi-agency approaches. Attempts to combat the totalitarian and intolerant nature of VEOs has been addressed through programming that enhance the capacity of individuals and community service organizations (CSOs) to engage in preventive dialogue. While such practices may be helpful in establishing a form of cohesion that prevents VE ideology from entering the mainstream and reducing inter-group information asymmetries that lead to group-based security dilemmas, few believe such engagements will reach the most adamant violent extremists.
“To truly put an end to the scale of VE that exists in the world today, the political project of violent extremism and the opportunity structures it exploits must be addressed.”

Transitional Justice, International Law and the UN

What relationship does international law have to transitional justice and what role has the United Nations played in shaping that relationship?
The international legal history of this concept reveals that the UN has shifted from relying on international law to support nationally determined transitional justice efforts to expecting States to conform to a growing body of international legal standards it has set in this field, writes LEENA GROVER in the Nordic Journal of International Law.
“This turn to international legal hegemony and UN managerialism can marginalize some of the most pressing concerns of people attempting to overcome past large-scale abuses.”
In recent years, the UN has expanded its work in transitioning societies and scholars have recommended ways for better addressing the needs of their members, GROVER writes in her research article titled ‘Transitional Justice, International Law and the United Nations’.
However, these measures seem partial at best, as they disrupt neither international law’s hegemony nor the UN’s managerial role in this field, which operate as major constraints on societies weighing their transitional justice options.
“Today, it is difficult to conceive of transitional justice without reference to the thick normative framework established by the UN and embedded in international law,” GROVER states.
To be sure, this regime has made many positive contributions to transitioning societies, supporting justice initiatives that would perhaps not be possible otherwise owing inter alia to legal barriers, limited resources or a lack of political will.
However, this regime contains a hierarchy of interests and does not overtly admit normative contestation. As a result, citizens are constrained in selecting transitional justice responses or else select responses that fall outside of this regime and are therefore not captured by it.
This regime also reflects a particular understanding of transitional justice that diminishes the role of national legal and political orders and assumes the need for international involvement in a normative sense, implicitly regarding transitioning societies and its members as unable or unwilling to conceive of transitional justice themselves.
Normative expansion, when it occurs, is regime-specific and depends on experts within it to do this work, the author states. “But where does the greatest normative expansion originate from if not the needs and imaginations of individuals in transitioning societies?”
If this is the case, is the answer to strengthen this international regime and give it the tools to catch up with developments on the ground in a conceptually authentic manner? Or is there another way forward?

Balancing Incentives Among Actors: A Carrots and Sticks Approach to Reputation in UN Peacekeeping Missions

With peacekeeping operations increasingly including a multitude of actors with varying interests and competing priorities, international organizations are forced to balance the needs of the actors involved in such missions.
And because international organizations often depend on member states as implementing agents, this could cause such organizations to suppress their own interests in favor of member states. That, in turn, could ultimately negatively affect the communities in which the peacekeepers operate.
This dynamic is present in United Nations peacekeeping operations, and some have sought to align the incentives of the UN and the states that contribute peacekeepers so as to harness reputation as a force to encourage the good behavior of all involved.
SABRINA M. KARIM argues that this alignment rarely happens because of international organizations’ reliance on member states. Through the dynamics of UN peacekeeping operations, she shows that the UN reliance on states to provide police officers and troops suppresses the UN’s own interests in favor of the contributing states’ interests.
In ‘Balancing Incentives Among Actors: A Carrots and Sticks Approach to Reputation in UN Peacekeeping Missions’, published in AJIL Unbound, which supplements the American Journal of International Law, KARIM also identifies a carrots and sticks approach to balancing incentives.
Drawing on a rational choice, actor-based theory to identify the mixed motives of the various actors who staff and operate peacekeeping missions, the framework proposed here provides a way to better understand the sources of the tension that exist when evaluating reputation as a disciplinary tool for international organizations.
“Indeed, a careful balancing of carrots and sticks could help balance the interests of both the UN and contributing states,” KARIM states.
What would this entail? On one hand, this means applying the stick – the public naming and shaming of states whose personnel have engaged in misconduct, regardless of the consequences, the author states. “This stick turns into multiple sticks as the UN enables third parties to penalize poorly performing states by publicizing their conduct.”
However, the stick must be coupled with a carrot – an increase in resources to those states that perform well, she adds. “In this way, the carrot incentivizes poorly performing states to reform their behavior instead of withdrawing their peacekeeping mission contributions.”
The logic is not unique to peacekeeping missions but applies to any activity undertaken by international organizations that involves the delegation of duties to other actors, according to KARIM. “Leveraging reputation as a part of a carrots and sticks balancing act is a novel way for any international organization to manage problems associated with misaligned incentives.”

Peacekeeping Missions Can Actually Increase Criminal Violence, Research Finds

Digital Momentum for the United Nations Sustainability Agenda in the 21st Century

While digitalization fundamentally changes the range of options available for future civilizational development, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals requires a fundamental transformation of the economy and society.
“These two challenges can only be met by dedicated global thinking and action,” a policy paper by the German Advisory Council on Change (WBGU) stresses. “So what could be more appropriate than to use the momentum of digitalization to advance the Transformation towards Sustainability and launch decisive stimuli for achieving national and global sustainability targets?”
Digital solutions can make it easier to supply the world’s population with food and renewable energies in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, according to the paper, titled ‘Digital Momentum for the UN Sustainability Agenda in the 21st Century’.
The intelligent design, longevity, reparability and recyclability of products in a digitally supported circular economy can reduce the demand for resources. Individuals can further their education using digital commons and develop an awareness of responsibility for overarching sustainability and humanity issues. Polycentric networks based on a culture of global cooperation and as a foundation for global governance can increasingly use sustainability-oriented social platforms. International sustainability politics could follow principles of open government and improve democratic participation.
However, the paper stresses, leveraging this potential will not happen automatically. Taking into account the opportunities and risks of digitalization in selected fields, WBGU offers four stimuli for using the digital momentum to (1) develop a global (environmental) awareness, (2) establish a globally networked, digitally supported circular economy, (3) modernize sustainability governance, and (4) continue sustainability policy in the digital age beyond 2030.
The implementation of these proposals can provide essential impetus for global sustainability politics: it is a question of the further development of our civilization on a finite planet in the digital Anthropocene. “In this way, the WBGU wishes to generate impetus for inter and transnational initiatives that urgently need to be taken. At the latest, the UN Summit proposed by the WBGU for 2022 should agree on key steps for a sustainable Digital Age – 30 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.”

WBGU – German Advisory Council on Global Change (2019): Digital Momentum for the UN Sustainability Agenda in the 21st Century. Policy Paper 10. Berlin: WBGU.