Authorized in January 2009, the UN Support Office for the African Union Mission in Somalia (UNSOA) was an unprecedented operation. Through UNSOA, the Department of Field Support used the UN’s assessed contributions to directly support a non-UN regional peace operation (AMISOM). Although this significantly enhanced AMISOM’s capabilities and increased its overall effectiveness, UNSOA faced numerous […]
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The United Nations’ chief humanitarian officer in the Sahel region of Africa said that Nigeria was key to saving the region’s people from the ravages of the terrorist group Boko Haram, but that it needed the help of the international community to do so.Toby Lanzer, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, […]
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The head of the United Nations’ mission in Somalia told an IPI audience on January 24th that there was now a “massive political mobilization” in the long fractured country that might produce its first national government in 26 years.“Even though the process has been very messy, the outcomes of it have been very positive and […]
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Representatives from member states, the UN Secretariat, and experts from civil society organizations and think tanks discussed the challenges and opportunities to civil society engagement in the Malian peace process, in particular in the context of the upcoming National Reconciliation Conference (Conference d’Entente Nationale), due to take place in December 2016 in Bamako, Mali. This […]
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Hilde Johnson, the former United Nations mission head in South Sudan and author of a new book on the country’s descent into violence since its founding in 2011, came to IPI on October 5 to describe in harrowing detail the circumstances of the fledging state’s convulsive first five years and to lay responsibility on the […]
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This was a broad conclusion of a group of regional specialists speaking in a panel discussion at IPI on September 27th on investing in peace and preventing violent extremism in West Africa and the Sahel. The forum was a follow-up to a meeting on the same subject in June in Dakar.The panelists agreed as a […]
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West Africa and the Sahel-Sahara region are faced with peace and security challenges that weaken states and affect state-citizen relations. The emergence and proliferation of violent extremist groups aggravate the climate of fear and insecurity, and the actions of these groups affect peace efforts, sustainable development, and human rights. Over the past decade, efforts to […]
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In January 2016, Kenya suffered its largest ever military defeat at the battle of El Adde in the Gedo region of Somalia. Yet many of the questions surrounding this attack remain unanswered. On the six-month anniversary of the battle at El Adde, this report provides a preliminary analysis of the battle and some of the […]
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Policies to combat terrorism cannot take an exclusively security-based focus, experts at a recent IPI conference agreed. This is the approach efforts made to solve the problem of violent extremism have taken for nearly a decade, and as continued violence illustrates, these policies have been insufficient.Recognizing that violent extremism manifests itself differently in different contexts, 60 […]
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The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease in West Africa from 2014 to 2015 underscored the fragility of public health services in countries emerging from protracted conflict, as well as the link between governance and health. In both Sierra Leone and Liberia, war had seriously undermined the health sector. Ebola arrived as the large-scale postwar […]
Read moreHuman rights activist and lawyer, Razia Sultana, describes her work with the Rohingya population in Myanmar and Bangladesh, relating vivid stories of the brutal violence in the region in recent years, and what she shared with the UN Security…
Desalination in GCC countries cannot be a long-term solution to water scarcity. Rather than primarily focusing on securing supply, GCC governments should also emphasize sustainability of…
AMISOM’s lack of civilian protection and unwillingness to be held to account for collateral civilian casualties has…
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The International Peace Institute is an independent, international not-for-profit think tank with a staff representing more than 20 nationalities, located in New York across from United Nations headquarters. IPI is dedicated to promoting the prevention and resolution of conflicts between and within states by strengthening international peace and security institutions. To achieve its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, convening, publishing and outreach.
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