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The Arctic region has become the site of renewed great power interest. Not only are the US and Russia actively engaged in the Arctic Council, but China has also become an observer. In addition to that, a number of policy commentators have claimed that great power interest in the Arctic region is more than cooperation over natural resources and climate change, and that this “scramble for the Arctic” may, in fact, herald a renewed geopolitical engagement in the region. In the case of Iceland, commentators have pointed to the increased activity of both Russia and China as evidence of this. To the extent that there may be such an interest underlying the Arctic policies of Russia and China, in effect linking economic and public goods to security, we set out to probe this link here. Rather than being able to conclude that there was a clear great power competition going on over influence in Iceland, we suggest that much of the great power presence and interest in Iceland is the result of Iceland’s willingness to play great powers off against one another. We encountered little evidence of a strong Chinese presence in Iceland, although the few avenues China had pursued had resulted in a fair amount of distrust. As for Russia, there seems to have been Russian willingness to provide a loan to bail out Iceland in 2008, but it remains unclear what, if any, the ulterior motives were. For Iceland, the motive seems to have been the ability to use Russia as international leverage. On the balance, the case of Iceland gives little evidence of a strong competition between China, Russia and the US for influence on the island. On the other hand, Iceland’s ability to play different public goods providers up against each other suggests that the model of public goods substitution may have given to little emphasis on the agency of ‘client’ states.

Over the last decade, the Arctic region has become the site of new forms of great power interest. While the US has changed its hegemonic presence, other powers, in particular China and Russia, have been perceived to actively pursue Arctic strategies, perhaps seeking to undermine the western hegemony in the area. One of the most talkedabout features of this new interest, has been the alleged Chinese desire to get engaged in Greenlandic mining. While there is certainly a desire among some in Greenland for alternative sources of revenue, direct Chinese involvement runs into a number of political and logistical challenges. To close observers, the narrative of heavy Chinese interest and involvement in Greenland probably says less about China and Chinese interests, than about dynamics in the relationship between Greenland and Denmark. Even with Greenlandic independence a possibility in the intermediate future, there seems to be no obvious hegemon to take the place of the already existing ones.

Protection of Civilians (PoC) has during the last decade evolved to become an important guideline for international actors in post-conflict and conflict affected societies. While much policy literature has been written on how to better implement the PoC framework, less has been written on the conceptual framework of the protection of civilians and how this fits with local contexts, networks and relationships. Drawing on recent research and empirical material from Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda and Colombia this policy brief identifies five implicit assumptions underpinning the Protection of Civilians as conceptualized in the Aide Memoire and UN Security Council resolutions. Through these assumptions we analyze how a skewed conceptual platform for protection implementers paradoxically disconnects protection needs.

The logics that we have outlined may, indeed, be applicable to a wide array of international actors and organizations that are aspiring to play public goods substitution roles. Likewise, they are applicable to a number of actors seeking alternative access to public goods. For example, supply and demand factors may help explain both the growing pains and potential power of the BRICS and recast debates about the role of alternative lenders in the developing world. Ultimately, our project is an appeal to think more precisely about the components of hegemonic order and the more hidden mechanisms that may contribute to its transformation or, in certain cases, enduring resilience.

The Protection of Civilians (PoC) concept is a prevalent buzzword in the contemporary security-development nexus and comes as a response to new modes of warfare that have made civilians the main causality of war. Just about all actors from the military, development and humanitarian segments relate to the PoC concept in conflict-situations. Although there is a presumably mainstreaming and general infusion of the concept within the international community, there exists no coherent and comprehensive understanding of what the concept really means and what kind of practices it comprises and entails. The concept’s seminal thinkers and proponents fail to provide a clear and unambiguous definition of the concept. Rather it seeks to infuse a culture of protection among international actors operating in contexts which see grave human right violations and direct and indirect targeting of civilians. This report addresses the protection discourse as perceived by various actors in the field, and approaches the discourse in the nexus of PoC and culture of protection. The present paper demonstrates that whereas a narrow definition of PoC runs the risk of repelling actors from the protection-agenda, mainstreaming a culture of protection drawing on wider principles seems worthwhile in order to be comprehensive in terms of including as many actors as possible. A negative facet of such an approach, however, is that PoC becomes open to various actors’ interpretation. Although in line with the implementation of PoC on case-by-case basis, this might not be sufficient to engender an inclusive culture of protection as PoC always will be interpreted at the backdrop of organisations’ embedded mandate and institutional culture, leading to a general conceptual dilution. This paper explores the PoC concept and the culture of protection in the context of Sudan. Utenriksdepartementet

During the last decade, peacekeeping operations have grown in both number and scope. A sign of the latter has been the development of larger “executive” mandates, where peacekeeping operations take on administrative tasks in the area where they have been dispatched. A response to the trends broader peacekeeping mandates have been designed in attempt to include a widening concept of the Protection of Civilians (PoC). In the present report, we outline the main challenges that must be met for the PoC in peacekeeping operations to be effective. First, we address the understanding of “protection” prevalent in UN documents today. The second section of the report addresses the characteristics and problems of the security gap in post-conflict states, as well as their importance in the literature on conflict prevention and resolution. Utenriksdepartementet

«Challenges to Collective Security» Working Papers from NUPI’s UN Programme

Following the conflicts in the Balkans, minority issues have re-entered the European stage after a prolonged absence, and the question of minority rights in international politics has once more become a pressing and legitimate concern to both students and practitioners of international relations. With this revived interest in minority issues, one question that has reached the forefront of the agenda is whether states should still deal with -'their' minorities, or if the implementation and enforcement of minority provisions ought to be left to other international actors. In this article I reflect on the historicity of the issue. When arguing about why actors others than states should have responsibility of imposing and enforcing minority provisions, it is important to understand the relation between minority provisions and the state, and how and why the state emerged as the guarantor of minority rights in the first place. Only then, I argue, can we identify the issues and dilemmas that must be taken into account in any contemporary discussion of the future role of the state vis-a-vis other international actors.