Peace and security

Contemporary approaches for tackling international peace and security issues require not only a coherent global approach, but also mutually reinforcing responses involving an effective United Nations system in tandem with strong regional organizations. We focus on strengthening United Nations peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts and on enhancing the effectiveness of military and civilian approaches to the protection of civilians.

Team
Joachim Koops
Chair of the Board
Alexandru Fotescu
Fellow
William Lippert
Non-Resident Fellow
Christian E. Rieck
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Gerald Acho
Non-Resident Fellow
Dominik Tolksdorf
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Benedikt Franke
Member of the Board
Niels van Willigen
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Christof Tatschl
Member of the Board
María José Maldonado
Fellow
Silke Rusch
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Alexandra Novosseloff
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Publications
Analysis
Peace and Security
The Somali Crisis and the EU: Moving Onshore and Committing to Somalia
Hubertus Jürgenliemk
July 2012
Somali piracy, costing the global economy $7 billion annually, has led to large-scale naval operations by multiple powers. The Global Governance Institute recommends integrating shore and offshore efforts, emphasizing political stability and addressing root causes like poverty, with the EU's EUCAP Nestor operation seen as a potential starting point
Analysis
Peace and Security
United Nations - European Union Cooperation in the Field of Peacekeeping: Challenges and Prospects
Alexandra Novosseloff
June 2012
The UN-EU partnership in peacekeeping, developed since the early 2000s, faces challenges despite shared goals. This analysis explores the partnership's evolution, successes, and tensions, particularly in Kosovo and Chad, and offers recommendations for a more effective and coherent collaboration in peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations.
Briefing
Peace and Security
The Biological Weapons Convention, Bioterrorism And The Life Sciences
Niels van Willigen
April 2012
Biological weapons pose a serious threat due to their ability to kill without immediate symptoms. The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) struggles to address bioterrorism, with limited tools to monitor life sciences advancements. Efforts to counter bioterrorism will need broader cooperation beyond the BWC, involving various global stakeholders.
Backgrounder
Peace and Security
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)
September 2011
In 2010, the UN created UN Women to strengthen gender equality efforts by consolidating four separate agencies. This reform aims to improve coordination and outreach. The Global Governance Institute is assessing UN Women's impact on global gender equality through a research project on its effectiveness and goals.
Briefing
Peace and Security
The United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture: Background Note
Fernando Cavalcante
March 2011
Outlines the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA), covering its creation, key mandates, functions, and interrelationships with other UN bodies, setting the stage for further research on the Peacebuilding Commission's successes, failures, and lessons learned.
Briefing
Peace and Security
European Civilian Crisis Management Capacities: Bridging The Resources Gap?
Hubertus Jürgenliemk
January 2011
Civilian operations within the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) have become a key foreign policy tool, focusing on areas like rule of law, civil administration, and crisis management. With growing demand, these operations highlight the EU's comparative advantage over NATO and the UN.
Projects
The Global Governance of Autonomous Weapon Systems
GGI’s Peace and Security and AI and Global Governance sections have launched a new research and policy advice project on “The Global Governance of Autonomous Weapon Systems: Policy Gaps, Regulation Challenges and Governance Opportunities”. The project, carried out in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation (GCF) in Stockholm examines the complex challenges as well as various actors’ recent, current and future approaches related to governing and regulating Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS), including lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). The project will focus on the multiple implications of the development and use of AWS and will provide a comprehensive overview of various existing and potential future approaches to their global governance. This includes a mapping and review of the numerous ongoing initiatives and frameworks to address the challenges AWS pose, including efforts by the United Nations (UN GGE, General Assembly, Office of the Secretary General), regional groups, alliances of states and initiatives advanced by NGO alliances. Based on this analysis, the project will identify key policy and legal gaps, the tensions between the fast-paced development of AWS and AI in the military realm on the one hand and the search for the effective governance of AWS and the mitigation of risks they pose. This also includes a discussion of the potential consequences of AWS on warfare, highlighting concerns regarding accountability, human control, and the violation of international laws such as International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Criminal Law (ICL), and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). Finally, the project will advance concrete policy recommendations, based on the input gathered from background interviews with more than 40 core experts (including representatives from the diplomatic and military communities, international and regional organisations, NGOs, civil society and academia as well as the private sector) and on outcomes of the discussions of a high-level expert workshop in Brussels in April. It is hoped that the outcomes of this project will lead to the creation of a strong network and evidence-based proposals for approaching the issue of the global governance of AWS more concretely and more effectively.
EPON – The Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network
The Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network Peace operations are one of the most important international mechanisms for contemporary conflict management. However, their effectiveness remains the subject of confusion and debate in both the policy and academic communities, and there is a distinct lack of independent, research-based information about the effectiveness of such operations. The Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network aims to enhance the effectiveness of international peace operations by enabling and supporting collaborative research. The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), together with over 40 partners from across the globe, has established an international network to jointly research the effectiveness of peace operations.
Transatlantic Approaches to Global Arms Control
GGI has teamed up with the Stimson Center in Washington DC for a new project on global arms control. The research and advice project “Transatlantic Approaches to Global Arms Control: Opportunities, Challenges and Ways Ahead” is funded by the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Washington DC and seeks to identify concrete paths towards a renewed transatlantic partnership for tackling core challenges in the realm of arms control. The project includes three expert workshops on transatlantic approaches to tackling the challenges of small arms and light weapons (SALWs), chemical weapons and the implementation gap of the Arms Trade Treaty. The project runs until the end of 2021 and will lead to a final public report.
Implementing the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping (IPOC)
With the concept of PoC turning twenty and the UN in the process of reviewing its policy on PoC, the German Federal Ministry of Defence (BMVg) has initiated a process for preparing and in-depth study seeking answers to the challenges related to the implementation of PoC mandates. In order to enhance Germany’s “PoC preparedness” in the future, the study report will place a particular emphasis on how the German Armed Forces, the German Police, the Federal Foreign Office, and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development can contribute to this overarching goal. The study project and the preparation of the subsequent report are carried out by an international research consortium consisting of the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK), the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University (ISGA), and the Brussels based Global Governance Institute (GGI). Throughout the project cycle, several workshops will be held in New York City, Washington DC, and Berlin.
Europe’s Return to UN Peacekeeping: Challenges, Opportunities and Ways Ahead
The project, coordinated by GGI, examines the core obstacles, prospects and ways ahead for a selected pool of European countries that are currently intensifying, or are likely to intensify, their engagement with United Nations peacekeeping: Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. In addition, the project addresses other issues concerning the role of Europe and the European Union in UN peacekeeping and the re-engagement of larger EU member states, such as France, the UK and Germany. Thematic issues to be explored include, inter alia, the historical record of European countries' participation in UN Peacekeeping, current military capacities of selected countries and the prospects of enhanced inter-organizational cooperation between the European Union and the UN in Peacekeeping.
Informing Conflict Prevention, Response and Resolution (INFOCORE)
INFOCORE is an international collaborative research project funded under the 7th European Framework Program of the European Commission. It comprises leading experts from all social sciences dealing, and includes nine renowned research institutions from seven countries. Its main aim is to investigate the role(s) that media play in the emergence or prevention, the escalation or de-escalation, the management, resolution, and reconciliation of violent conflict. INFOCORE provides a systematically comparative assessment of various kinds of media, interacting with a wide range of relevant actors and producing diverse kinds of conflict coverage. It focuses on three main conflict regions – the Middle East, the West Balkans, and the African Great Lakes area. Its findings address both the socially interactive production process behind the creation of conflict coverage, and the dynamics of information and meaning disseminated via the media. INFOCORE focuses on the conditions that bring about different media roles in the cycle of conflict and peace building. It generates knowledge on the social processes underlying the production of conflict news, and the inherent dynamics of conflict news contents, in a systematically comparative fashion. Based on this perspective, the project identifies the conditions under which media play specific constructive or destructive roles in preventing, managing, and resolving violent conflict, and building sustainable peace. INFOCORE reconstructs the production process of conflict-related media contents, focusing on the interactions between professional journalists, political actors, experts/NGOs, and lay publics. It analyzes these actors’ different roles as sources or advocates, mediators, users and audiences in the production of professional news media, social media, and semi-public expert analysis. To assess the roles of media for shaping conflict perceptions and responses to ongoing conflicts, INFOCORE analyzes the dynamics of conflict news content over time. It identifies recurrent patterns of information diffusion and the polarization/consolidation of specific frames and determines the main contextual factors that influence the roles media play in conflict and peace building. Specifically, the project assesses the roles of individual agendas and resources, professional norms, media organizations and systems, political systems, and characteristics of the conflict situation. The INFOCORE project team has taken up its work on January 1, 2014. Its findings and selected data will be accessible to all public. During and beyond the project duration, we invite collaboration by interested researchers and practitioners.
UN Peacekeeping 1948 – 2012: Lessons Learned
International Research Project involving 42 senior scholars in order to provide a systematic and comprehensive assessment of all UN-led peacekeeping operations fro, 1948 – 2012.
Operationalising the Responsibility to Protect: Towards a Truly Global Approach
International Research Project on assessing how concretely the UN’s norm of protecting civilians from mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. Emphasis on an inclusive, global dialogue – including the role of regional organizations.
Command and Control in Peacekeeping: A Comparative Analysis of NATO, EU and UN Approaches
Research Project on a Comparative Analysis of Command and Control approaches by the EU, NATO and United Nations in the field of peacekeeping and global crisis management. Lead: GGI Peace and Security Section Output: three analysis papers, one book chapter, one conference.
European Union Security Policy: Lessons Learned and Future Prospects
International Research Project (in cooperation with the University of Cambridge) on the lessons learned and future paths of the EU’s Security and Defence Policies.