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If you believe ardent Brexit supporters, the EU is close to establishing a joint army that Britain would be forced to join. For UK Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt the only way to escape this certain fate is to vote “Leave.” This is of course rather fanciful scaremongering. But while Mordaunt's…

Expectations were high in 2006 when former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s reform efforts culminated in the replacement of the dysfunctional UN Commission on Human Rights with a new, downsized Human Rights Council. Now, in light of the council’s 10-year anniversary, high expectations have turned…

The Dublin Regulation, which is the cornerstone of the Common European Asylum System, is crumbling. The law, directly applicable in all European Union states, seeks to achieve a system in which asylum seekers submit only one application for asylum in one member state. In May 2016, the EU Commission…

Abstract What is stabilisation, and why do we need a conceptual discussion? Based on interviews and policy documents from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, this article distils two conceptual visions of stabilisation, outlines a range of institutional and…

The oft-invoked “international community” has been caught off guard by a number of events in recent years: the refugee crisis, the rash of terrorist attacks by sympathizers of the Islamic State, regional instability across the Middle East, the Ebola and Zika viruses, the Panama Papers revelations…

Introduction Underfunded, underprioritized and underperforming, rule of law development has been a much-maligned part of the Afghan statebuilding exercise. Critics argue that rule of law efforts were not only poorly managed and implemented but also poorly conceived and designed, driven by…

Five years after France, Britain and the US led a military intervention to protect civilians in Libya, the country is in chaos. Recent territorial gains by Daesh (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS) have even prompted Western countries to consider yet another military…

When the world is burning, tackling excessive bureaucracy in the humanitarian aid machine might seem like rescue ships planning how to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Yet, following talks at the World Humanitarian Summit where EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said she believes $1bn a…

It was the first time that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon invited the world’s political leaders and top bureaucrats to "stand up for our common humanity and take action to prevent and reduce human suffering." But has the summit delivered on the hopes that it would substantially improve…

Während in den USA heftige Auseinandersetzungen um Verschlüsselungsmethoden und die daraus resultierenden Herausforderungen für Sicherheitsdienste toben, herrscht in Deutschland Ruhe. Offiziell gilt das Regierungsmantra der "Digitalen Agenda": "Wir unterstützen mehr und bessere Verschlüsselung",…

In late March, the FBI announced that it would drop its lawsuit against Apple because it was able to unlock the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, a gunman in the December shooting in San Bernardino, California, without the tech giant’s help and using an undisclosed vulnerability. Apple remains alarmed –…

Why Map Civil Society Actors in EU Refugee Policy? After a decade of relatively steady numbers of asylum applications, there was a significant increase in people seeking asylum in the European Union in 2015. Since then, media outlets and civil society actors have described the situation unfolding…

UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) frequently seeks to develop protection capacity of refugee-hosting states, for example through creating or adapting national legal frameworks; assistance in registration and status determination; knowledge transfer in government institutions; support of civil society…

Introduction Objectives The humanitarian system has undergone a series of reform initiatives. While progress has been noted in certain areas, a number of issues have been identified time and time again as critical areas in need of improvement. This raises questions about the ability of the…

June 23, 2016 might very well be a watershed moment for the European project. Depending on the results of the British referendum scheduled that day, it may mark the first time that a country leaves the European Union. This will come as a shock to those who still view the EU as a supranational…

Operating in insecure environments is one of the more critical tests for the humanitarian community. Access constraints, uncertainty, attacks and aid diversion make these unlikely settings for innovation. Yet several new approaches come from highly insecure environments. In these settings,…

Key Points There is an urgent need for the EU to revise its South Asia strategy, given the region’s economic importance but also for the security of the European continent.The EU-India partnership has grown stagnant despite shared foreign policy goals because it is set within an old, outdated…

While Europe has taken a great interest in the “crypto war” between the US government and Apple as well as other Silicon Valley behemoths, it has yet to wake up to the gathering storm of encryption policy within its own borders. Various EU governments have proposed unilateral measures on how to deal…

Since being elected last November, Argentina’s new right-of-center president Mauricio Macri cannot complain about a lack of international attention – most of it welcome, some of it unwelcome, including his outing last week in the “Panama Papers” as a former owner of an offshore company. The United…